Now I could see him. He lay in a chair, blinking at me. The curled wig was threaded with silver, and there was a silver fringe on his robe and great rings on his fingers, but his face was naked. He would sell me everything, I could see, for an hour without pain. Here was my wage.

  “I have tried several,” he muttered. “All failed. I wasted good cash on them. You, too, perhaps, in spite of your trick with the lamp.” He glared at me with dismal rage. “You’re just a boy.”

  “It is your discomfort that makes you forget yourself,” I said. “So I will relieve you of it, and then we shall do business.”

  The minute I put my hand on him, I felt the stone, “saw” it through my palm, like a black knot in a white branch. I thought, This I will leave you for today. Only the hurt I will take, till I have what I want.

  Rich Phoonlin became rigid. He gripped the sides of his chair, and paused, to be certain.

  “It has-gone-” he said. His face was full of entreaty.

  “You are not yet cured,” I said. “That’s for tomorrow, if you’ll pay my fee.”

  He sighed and shut his eyes.

  “Even for this,” he said, “I would reward you. By the

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  Flame, how sweet it is. If you can make me well, you may name your price.”

  I had questioned Kochus briefly concerning the merchant, and was well primed.

  “I name my fee now. Ten balances of gold, to be weighed at the market rate; fifteen of silver. Also a brief interest in your business dealings, corn and vineyards, I think, and pearls. I ask only enough to provide me an adequate income while I am in the city, say twenty percent of each current measure, vat and gem-at the market rate, of course.”

  “You dog,” he said. “Do you judge me that wealthy? You will batten off my blood, like a parasite, will you? What right have you to ask this of me?”

  “As much right as you suppose you have to live. Choose.”

  “You’ll ruin me.”

  “Death would do it more thoroughly than I,” I said. “I will return tomorrow; you may tell me then if my terms are to be met.”

  I felt no pity for him, trying to keep hold of his life and his hoard at once. It was not my time for pity, at least, not for men such as Phoonlio.

  Torches burned along the front of the Dolphin’s Teeth, in funnels of blue and yellow glass. Inside the vestibule and corridors, I passed no one who did not stare.

  The story had got around, as was to be expected. They had heard everything, the episode with Gold-Arm, the hours as healer in the Grove, the jerdat-prince turning tail with his two hundred men. What would the sorcerer do next?

  The sorcerer went to his apartment. Here I was presently disturbed by Kochus, coming back from his supper with a frightened face.

  “Charpon, Lord Vazkor,” he blurted, his eyes darting nervously. He was about to betray his master to me, and the thought scared him almost as much as I did.

  “What of Charpon?”

  “It’s the ship, the Vineyard. The Hesseks say he means to get aboard tonight, very late, and sail with the dawn tide. That he means to tell you nothing. The other seconds are to be with him, and all the crew he can gather up so fast. The oar-slaves are still aboard. I hear he’s sent them starting rations-the meat and wine they’re given before a voyage.”

  I let Kochus rattle on, explaining this and that to me, Charpon’s foolishness, his own willingness to serve me, how

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  dangerous it had been for him to go against the master and bring me the news. I did not want to lose the ship and did not mean to. Charpon, who seemed almost deliberately to have set himself to be a thorn in my side, had reached his terminus. The onlv way to stop him and surely end his trouble to me was to kill him.

  Having decided that, then I must face the other thing, that I did not want to kill him, or any man for that matter, not in that one infallible way I had, by use of my will. This was no ethic or moral stigma. It was pure fear. I feared the Power in me. At such times as I feared it, I felt some demon had possessed my brain, the sort of dichotomy that would drive me from my wits. So now I shirked it.

  I sent Kochus out, thanking him, and he slunk away to the bed of Thei, furtive with his anxiety not to appear furtive.

  LongEye, who crouched at my door immobile as a wooden sentinel, I called in. I told him of Charpon’s plans.

  Before I need say anything else, LongEye said to me, “I follow Charpon and kill him.”

  “He won’t be alone,” I said.

  “No matter. All Hessek men reverence Lord Vazkor, before Charpon.”

  “You know I could do this myself,” I said, goaded by the bizarre guilt of it. “Don’t you question that I ask you to manage it for me?”

  He gazed at me blankly. Gods were inscrutable. He looked for nothing else. He slipped away into the night without another word.

  He saved me in the sea from my death, that man; I sent him to his own.

  I sat before the purple window till dawn rained indigo through the black, and red through the indigo, and the birds sang softly in their cages.

  It had not been a night for sleeping. I had thought, Is it now he kills Charpon, or now? Maybe the Hesseks adhered to their master after all. Maybe judging LongEye a robber, they have killed him instead, perverse jest to round off this lunacy. For it is foul, it stinks. If a knife must be used, why not my knife? I have slain a man before, I suppose. This is delegated murder.

  Eventually, a knock. The door opened, and I jumped to my feet as if it were I who awaited the executioner.

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  It was not LongEye, but one of the Hesseks, who promptly groveled, obeising himself hands over face.

  “The Lauwyess-” he began, and broke into a gabble of ship’s argot.

  That was how I learned that Charpon, walking with five Hessek sailors, had halted in a winding alley, a shortcut leading from the Fish Market into the docks, saying someone tracked them, some footpad, who must be dealt with. The Hesseks accordingly concealed themselves in the narrow mouths of warehouses that stood about, and Charpon stationed himself alone, facing the direction they had come. The footpad, presumably sensing trouble, failed to appear, so Charpon presently went back a way, with a drawn knife.

  From the gloom of the street there rose suddenly a strangled animal scream, another, and another.

  While it was true that most storehouses in the Commercial City employed guards, it was also true that they recognized their duties as being within rather than without doors. No one therefore emerged to interrupt Charpon as, leisurely and bloodily, he killed LongEye, the messenger he had been expecting.

  Of the Hesseks, three took to their heels. Two stayed, gummed to the shadows, trembling and muttering. Eventually the cries, and the whining note that had replaced them, ceased. Charpon reappeared, a red-armed butcher, and he said to the Hesseks plastered flat in their fear to the doorways, “And shall I do the same for the slave’s master, this reptile Vazkor, someday when he sleeps?”

  Then there was a noise, like a bird disturbed on a roof, and Charpon’s head darted up and met some swiftly moving thing that flew to him like a bird. The bird flew into Charpon’s eye.

  When he was dead, which was not quickly, the Hesseks stole over, and saw this bird was a long piece of flint, filed sharper than a knife. They had been careful, prudent from years on the uneasy perimeter of law and safety, not to look for whoever had avenged LongEye from the warehouse roof. Yet I got from them, when I questioned them later, that it must be a Hessek, a pure Old Blood Hessek from the ancient city, Bit-Hesee, over the marsh, for such slingshot was what they carried there, to get duck or gulls from the reed-beds. Having been prohibited by Masrian law to carry blades, they had invented all manner of devious toys to compensate for the lack.

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  The sailor, having recounted his tale almost on his face, now glanced up. The varicolored lights from the dawn window caught his expression, not of nervousness or secrets, as I had anticipated, but a curious sort of frightened pleasure.

  “Find Kochus and the rest,” I said, “and send them to me.”

  According to his story, he had not glimpsed the “footpad” Charpon had slaughtered. No doubt he had been particular in not glimpsing him, as with the unknown assassin on the roof. Any master of a galley was to a certain extent hated by his men, and Charpon was no exception. Probably one of the three who had run off had put the occasion to his own use in settling an account. A mystery not worth unraveling.

  The master had owned his ship; it would be easy to supplant his rights with mine (a chain of gold cash in a suitable official area), hand the command to Kochus, who would puff up with the delight of an unwholesome and evil boy, and be my creature willingly, as even now he was.

  The thorn, by whatever means, had been plucked from me. It was settled.

  But for LongEye, what? Son of a short-lived people, he had lived no longer in my employ. He had saved me from the hurricane that I might give him to Charpon’s knife. He had believed me a god. Perhaps he died in agony, believing it

  I sat and spoke with Kochus, and listened to the three terrified seconds summoned back from the ship. They had obeyed Charpon in spite of me, and begged me again and again to overlook the lapse. All the while I visualized LongEye’s hacked body in the alley near the docks. I knew that as I gave out my orders and my clemency, the mundane rats who dwell here and there about any port were coming from their houses to a feast.

  4

  That day I returned early to Phoonlin’s house, and cured him of the kidney stone. He railed against me, as before. He told me, as before, that I was a dog to bicker over his life. Still, he had had the papers drawn up, and got witnesses

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  ready-he had no choice. His pain had come back, as I had meant it to, and I would not lay a hand on him till I was paid. I thought sourly then that he could not call me any worse name than I had already coined for myself the previous night. I told him he would not dare cheat his tailor, why should he expect to cheat me?

  A crowd had gathered about the Dolphin’s Teeth soon after sunup. It might have been anticipated-the poor, the sick, the inquisitive. When I came in sight, there was uproar. My fame had spread faster even than I had reckoned on. Despite the efforts of Kochus and the Hesseks, I could make no progress for clutching hands. I stopped and looked around, moved by my shame and by disgust, at them, and at myself who traded on their desperation and naivete.

  “I will heal none of you here. Go back to your homes, and at dusk you will find me in the Magnolia Grove. That is my last word.”

  Then a woman rushed toward me, shrieking in Hessek, and Kochus struck her aside. This turned my stomach, but I dared not help her or they would be bawling again.

  Without another glance about, I walked straight on up the steps, and the crowd gathered itself out of my path, save for a rough swarthy fellow who grabbed my arm. But I let him have a shock from my flesh that sent him off howling, and I was not molested further.

  By noon, Charpon’s death at the hand of robbers was news at the hostelry. Charpon’s seconds, who must surely guess my part in the matter, were too awed to voice their suspicions, and helped spread the tale of a mysterious party of thieves from Old-Hessek-over-the-marsh. There had been crimes in the docks before that had found their origin in Bit-yHessee.

  I saw to the business of the Vineyard as quickly as I could, putting Kochus in charge of the vessel as my captain. The man grinned and mouthed his pleasure, yet with a pane of profound unease over his eyes. He only balked once, at my command that the Vineyard’s rowers be unshackled and permitted the freedom of the deck, though under the care of a hired ship-guard, and that these hapless cattle be paid and decently fed. He argued that slaves were violent and prone to flight. Most of those I had seen had looked too broken to attempt it; if they did, I reasoned we could get more. Should the ship be long in dock, I did not want the oar-crew dead from lack of exercise and clean air. Lyo, my former oarmate, who I had long since freed and used as my servant,

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  aboard ship and on land, I delegated to oversee the act and report back to me. It earned me a fresh name in BarIbithni; this time for foolish charity.

  That, my second day, was altogether a busy one. Phoonlin’s agents visited me to arrange payment of my wages, and I spent the remainder of the afternoon in renting for myself rooms fashionably east of Hragon’s Wall and on the fringe of the Palm Quarter, near to the money belt of the city. Everywhere I went my guard of Hesseks went with me, and Kochus, or one of his fellow pirates. Now and again, some group of supplicants would approach me, but I would not break my rule, and rough treatment sent them off. A public benefactor is everyone’s property but his own. I dreaded my evening reappearance in the Grove, the sickness and entreaty, the healing they pressed from me, which brought me no joy, only commerce in reputation and coins. I thought, This is to be sucked dry by leeches. And are they the leeches or am I the leech? Who feeds upon whom?

  It had all come to me too quickly, this I could finally see. But there was no stopping now. I had to remind myself hourly of my goal, my anchor of purpose-requite my father’s name, be worthy of it, slay a white witch.

  At dusk the people were thick on the road, then” little lamps of tallow under filmy greenish glass dotting the way as far as the gate of the Grove. I did not look about, but straight ahead, for I had learned that to catch a man’s eye meant he would begin to plead and fight to reach me. The people opened a way for me to let me through and fell in behind to follow. And they were very quiet. Even when I entered the Grove and walked up the lawns, the crowds there were silent, a massed darkness all of the garden’s dark, except for their lights and the fireflies in the bushes. I remember I had some fancy that they knew I had ordered a man’s death the night before, indirectly the death of two men. But it was more simple than that. They had heard how I intended to “live Masrian,” the other side of Hragon’s Wall on the edge of the Palm Quarter. They guessed this was the last I should consent to be with them. There was no riot, no shouting, and no prayer that I abide. They had accepted that they could not influence anything of mine. They moved by me, I touched them, they received healing and melted into the shadows like a ritual. They were like ghosts. I seemed to see through them to the transience of their persons, the brevity of their days.

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  It was a black moonless night, and became cold as the nights of early summer do in BarIbithni.

  I was exhausted. I wondered how they could yet draw strength from me.

  Quite suddenly the crowd began to thin, to fade away, the cloudy lights and meanings and pressure of fingers, like a dream. I saw with vacant surprise that the sky was lightening, transparent with dawn.

  An old woman stood at my elbow.

  “Make me young,” she whispered.

  “Now, Lellih,” Kochus said. He had been slumbering beneath some arbor. He yawned, waiting to see if Lellih would amuse or annoy me to discover how he should react to her. The remaining crowd, since she was recognized as a thing of mine, had drawn back in awe to let her through.

  “Young,” she said, clawing my arm, “young, and virgin.”

  “She’s a saucy old piece,” said Kochus.

  I stared at her in the slaty light. Crinkled paper on a face of wire bones, but her crooked back straight as a sword from my hands. I had been expecting her to return.

  “Why not?” I said to her. She cackled. “Not yet,” I said. “Before witnesses. Do you agree, granny-girl?”

  Her face smashed into laughter, like a child’s. She smote me a blow with her cobweb hand.

  “Done!”

  I went to the inn and slept like the dead, save that I dreamed. (Maybe the dead dream, too, and forget their dreams when they are born again, as the Masrian priests declare.)

  When I woke I had forgotten Lellih. But she had not forgotten me. She stood in my court, screeching maledictions on me for a fraud who promised her youth and withheld it. Kochus had threatened her with blows and she threatened him with her teeth. She said better men than he had died of her bite.

  It was noon of the middle day of the Masrian month of Nislat. As good a day as any to remove my diverse household from the Dolphin to my new rooms.

  Kochus had seen to the domestic arrangements, hiring a cook from the inn and a couple of girls to feed us and keep the place clean. He also brought Thei and installed him in his own quarters, whispering to me that if ever I felt the need … I kept my guard of ten Hesseks, paying them now, from

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  Phoonlin’s bounty, a daily wage. For these the largest area, the outer yard and stables, was turned into a makeshift guards’ barracks. Shortly, a black dog began to be seen here, which-they said, eager as children-they meant to train against robbers, though mostly they seemed to train it to beg scraps from their fingers.