The Pharaoh Contract

Chapter 9

Two days passed pleasantly. Occasionally Ruiz was required by a dubious customer to sample his wares, but gradually the inhabitants of Stegatum assumed his reliability and began to buy without reservation. Ruiz dealt with a variety of townsfolk, and he began to feel a little more comfortable in his role.

However, not many of the locals could afford the prices he set, so on the third day business slowed considerably. Ruiz sat alone for two hours after lunch, awaiting his next customer. No one came, and Ruiz was deciding that perhaps it was time to move on to a larger town, when he heard the clank and hiss of an arriving steam chariot. A moment later a messenger from Lord Brinslevos stamped into the common room, dressed in the Lord’s black livery.

The messenger was a tiny man, almost a dwarf. But in front of Ruiz’s table he stood as tall as his body permitted him to. “The Lord requires your presence at Brinslevos Keep.”

Ruiz quirked his eyebrows. “Ah? And why so, if you’d be so good as to elaborate?”

The small man was impatient with Ruiz’s curiosity. “The Lord’s requirement is sufficient explanation. No doubt the Lord will reward you for prompt and humble service — or punish you if you deserve it.”

“No doubt,” Ruiz said gloomily. He began to collect his stock and stow it into his pack. It seemed to him that he had several choices. He could knock the small man on the head and disappear into the waste, there to risk being hunted down by a thwarted and annoyed Lord — and his huntsmen, who, mounted on fast striderbeasts and using coursing beasts, might have little trouble catching him.

He could knock the messenger on the head and steal his steam chariot. That might enable him to escape the local Lord, but it would have the disadvantage of marking him thereafter as a great felon, since only Lords owned personal vehicles, and they took this privilege seriously. Every law-abiding person on Pharaoh would be against him.

Or he could go along quietly, ingratiate himself with the Lord, and move on in a few days. Who knew, perhaps he’d learn something useful at the Keep. It was, after all, the Lords who sponsored the Expiations — the mage plays — that were the planet’s paramount art form.

Ruiz sighed. He remembered the mad face of Lord Brinslevos…. The memory made it hard to feel enthusiasm for making the Lord’s acquaintance.

Still, what other sensible choice was there?

“I must settle my bill with the innkeeper,” Ruiz said, when he had finished packing away his vials.

The messenger nodded indifferently.

Ruiz found Denklar in his storeroom, working over a slate of accounts.

“The Lord summons me,” Ruiz said, in a hollow voice.

Denklar showed no surprise. “Then you must go. Would you like advice?”

“Of course.”

“Then listen. The line of Brinslevos is ancient; the first Brinslevos was a conjuror of the Second Age, almost six hundred years ago. His descendants have grown increasingly strange. The present Brinslevos is eager to take offense, and his catalog of offenses is in constant evolution. But here’s a sampling: Don’t criticize any aspect of the keep, or the servants, or the livestock, or the cuisine — which is almost unendurable, I must warn you. I think Brinslevos scourges himself with that cooking, so that he can enjoy his sojourns here all the more. Don’t be in the slightest degree arrogant; at the same time avoid any whiff of insincere humility. Brinslevos has a nose magnificently attuned to insincerity, for all he’s mad. Above all, do not look admiringly at his wives.”

“I’ll try to bear all these things in mind. Meanwhile, don’t give my room to anyone else; I’ll be back in a day or two. Here, keep my staff while I’m gone… the Lord won’t let me take weapons into his Keep, no doubt.”

Denklar took the staff in careful hands. “No, he won’t.”

Denklar said no more, but Ruiz thought he saw a flicker of pity in Denklar’s hard eyes, which he found disconcerting.

Outside a somewhat rusty steam chariot waited, long and low, like an elongated cannon shell on four spiked wheels, with a small cab at the front, and a trailing coal carrier at the rear. The messenger directed Ruiz into the cab. Ruiz settled into a threadbare seat and looked about with a degree of interest, since this would be his first ride in a Pharaohan vehicle. The engineering seemed fundamentally sound, if rather flamboyant and idiosyncratic. The castings were embellished by elaborate surface designs, primarily of thorny flowering vines, growing in sinuous energetic patterns. The upholstery had once been luxurious red lizard-skin; a trace of the original color remained. Even the bolt heads were made to resemble tiny leering faces; their wide grinning mouths formed the screw slots. Rivets bore a stylized sunburst design. A thousand touches testified to the care and artistry with which the machine had been assembled, but the level of repair was not impressive.

The messenger climbed into the driver’s seat, which had been raised by cushions to enable him to see through the cloudy windshield. He darted a hot warning glance at Ruiz, as if daring him to comment. Ruiz smiled blandly. The messenger released a brake lever and pushed a steering yoke forward to feed power to the tall iron wheels.

The machine hesitated briefly, uttered a sibilant protest, and then chuffed away from the Denklar Lodge. Ruiz looked back at the whitewashed building, feeling an odd regret; his stay there had been pleasant and unalarming, all things considered.

The tiny man drove with insouciant abandon, slowly picking up speed as they jolted to the top of the track. When he turned on to the main road, he shoved the yoke all the way forward and the chariot seemed to leap over the washboard road. The springs were not especially effective, and before they’d gone a kilometer, Ruiz’s kidneys began to ache. He wondered if the messenger had held his position since early childhood, and if its rigors had somehow stunted his growth. By the time they reached the foot of the mesa on which Brinslevos Keep stood, fifteen minutes later, Ruiz imagined that he might be a few centimeters shorter than when he’d left Stegatum.

The messenger slowed abruptly for the climb up the switchbacks to the keep. The road here seemed in worse repair than the one leading down into Stegatum, and Ruiz was constantly poised to hurl himself from the cab, should the crumbling verge give way under the great weight of the chariot. But they made it safely to a portcullis set into a sheer cliff. The way led through a twenty-meter tunnel cut from the bedrock and then into the main courtyard, where the chariot stopped amid a venting of steam that for a moment obscured the sights of Brinslevos Keep.

When the steam cleared, Ruiz looked about glumly, unable to resist a sudden fit of pessimism. Several iron cages hung from the heights, clasping shriveled corpses. In the center of the courtyard a number of tall sharp poles thrust from a little shrine; their aspect suggested a macabre function, as did their proximity to a three-loop gallows. Ruiz shuddered. Denklar claimed to moderate the Lord’s behavior — Ruiz wondered….

“We’re here,” the messenger said, with an air of grim finality. His small face reflected no joy at the arrival, and Ruiz surmised that Brinslevos was not well loved by his liege men.

“So I see,” Ruiz answered.

“Well then, get out. The steward yonder will see you to your quarters and the Lord will summon you when he wants you.” The messenger pointed to a small door in the western inner wall, where an elderly hunchback waited, a look of benign idiocy cloaking his lumpy features.

Ruiz alighted from the chariot, and gave the messenger an affable nod. “A pleasure to ride with you,” he said earnestly. “A fine machine you drive.”

The messenger’s face warmed slightly. “Yes, she is. Though she deserves better care than she gets.” But then he flushed, as though he had said a foolishly dangerous thing, and his face closed tight again. The chariot chuffed off toward the carriage house, which apparently lay on the far side of the gallows, through a low wide archway.

Ruiz shrugged and carried his pack over to the door — evidently the tradesmen’s entrance. “Hello,” he said to the hunchback.

The hunchback bobbed his head, swung back the door, and gestured for Ruiz to follow. Ruiz got the impression that the hunchback did not speak.

Inside, they went down a dark hall to a narrow stairway. The steward lit a candle and preceded Ruiz up the stairwell, which twisted and turned in a confusing eccentric fashion. They passed several tiny landings; there were no windows. Finally they reached the floor on which Ruiz would be housed, and the steward unlocked both the door to the landing and the door to Ruiz’s room, which was small and musty. Ruiz stepped inside on unwilling feet. Apparently Lord Brinslevos kept his guests in a vertical dungeon. High on one wall a slit of a window admitted a beam of sunlight. A bed frame with a rope mattress, a chamber pot, a washstand, and a tattered quilt comprised the furnishings. Ruiz sighed. The Denklar Lodge seemed in retrospect a haven of comfort and safety. At least, Ruiz thought, the room was dry and no large vermin were immediately apparent.

The hunchback grinned toothlessly and bowed his way out. He closed the door, and a moment later Ruiz heard the clatter of the key in the lock, followed by a more distant rattle as the steward locked the door to the stairway. The locks were a comfort, in a way. They wouldn’t long resist Ruiz’s implements, if he needed to get out, but they reassured him as to his safety, at least for the moment.

He dropped wearily to the rope mattress and assessed his situation. He could not shake off a sense of foreboding, which, he thought, was natural under the circumstances. He was in the hands of a man who apparently recognized no limit to his whim, no constraint on his authority — never a healthy situation. Additionally, Ruiz still felt a bit unsettled by Pharaoh’s alien ambience, and by his personal uncertainties.

He lay back, fixed his attention on the rough stone of the ceiling. He could hope that Brinslevos observed the Pharaohan custom that allowed snake oil men a greater degree of eccentricity than other low-caste persons. He could hope to be sufficiently entertaining to avoid Brinslevos’s disfavor, and at the same time he must be careful not to be so lovable as to be offered a permanent position at the Keep. The thought of staying long was a depressing one, so he put it aside and instead considered the problems involved in catching the poachers.

All over Pharaoh, conjuring troupes competed for fame and for “translation to the Land of Reward.” Translation was the Pharaohan interpretation of what occurred when a League harvest crew collected a troupe, which occurred whenever the League observers on Pharaoh Upstation decided that a troupe was ripe for collection. The selected troupe was usually allowed one last performance, which almost always took the form of one of the great religious plays called Expiations, during which a victim, usually a condemned felon, was sacrificed to the conjuror’s art. Immediately after the conclusion of the play, a League catchboat — made invisible by pangalac technology — moved in and scooped up the troupe. To the spectators, a miracle had passed.

Religion flourished on Pharaoh, as it did on most League-owned worlds. The League found it easy and efficient to exploit the religious impulses of client populations; what better way to conceal the bizarre evidences of its activities? On Cardoon, from which the League exported astonishingly beautiful women, the most beautiful were chosen at great religious festivals, and then were sacrificed to the gods — a process that involved loading them into small boats and sending them down an underground river. League personnel plucked the victims from their boats, just before the river disappeared into a vast siphon.

On Mortadinder, famous for the quality of its gladiators, men and women competed for the gods’ favor, playing a variety of deadly sports. The survivors became saints — and then product, to be marketed to pangalac worlds that permitted blood entertainments.

On Scarf, scholars strove to outdo each other at intellectual pursuits, for the glory of the gods. The superior were packed off to monasteries on high crags, from which none returned — since the monasteries were staging areas for cataloging and shipment.

On Pharaoh, more than religion drove the conjurors to heights of artistry. Those magicians who weren’t quite brilliant enough to win entry to the Land of Reward, yet were capable of consistently entertaining performances, might move upward through the otherwise rigid caste system, might even attain the status of aristocrats. Anyone at all, even a peasant, might strive for a career as a conjuror.

Ruiz’s problem was one of discrimination. With dozens of major performances on Pharaoh each week, how was he to pick the one that would be attended by the poachers? Presumably the poachers had some means of choosing the best available troupe not yet scheduled for harvest; the League catchboat had never come in conflict with the poachers’ boat. The League organization here was riddled by collaborators, obviously.

Ruiz worried at the problem, coming to no conclusions, until his eyes grew heavy and his thoughts drifted into disjointed speculation. Presently he slept.

By the time Ruiz woke, the sunlight had faded from the high window. Later, the hunchback brought a meal, one markedly less palatable than the food at the Denklar Lodge. Ruiz ate stoically. A long time later, he fell again into uneasy sleep.

Another man wearing the gorgeous rags of the snake oil peddler arrived in Stegatum at sunset, and rode his weary striderbeast through the sandy streets at a stumbling trot. He pulled up in front of the Denklar Lodge and bellowed for a stable boy. One appeared almost instantly and took the beast to the stable.

The man pushed through the doorway into the common room, jostling a pair of departing farmers, who glared at his back. He went up to the bar and ordered a mug of ale from Denklar. Denklar served him with unusual alacrity, then glanced along the bar, to see that no one stood close.

“What brings you back to Stegatum so soon, Anstevic?” asked Denklar in a soft voice. “I didn’t expect to see you again for a threemonth.”

Anstevic gave Denklar a searching glance, which caused the innkeeper to recoil slightly. “Business.” He tipped up the mug and poured the ale down his throat, belched loudly. He leaned forward and addressed Denklar in a confidential murmur. “I’m going up to my usual room, if it’s available. You come to see me later, when no one will connect your absence with me.”

Denklar nodded, and a moment later the man was gone, leaving behind a stink of unwashed flesh and overheated striderbeast.

An hour later, when the supper rush was over, Denklar went back into the oldest wing of the inn, where Anstevic waited.

The man sat on the bed, smoking a pipe of raw gray oil, the cheapest and harshest sort. His narrow eyes shifted and glittered with visions, and Denklar was a little afraid. Anstevic had always seemed the most unpredictable of the agents-at-large that passed through on their information-collection rounds.

“Business, you said?” Denklar asked, struggling to keep any trace of mockery from his voice.

“Yes,” Anstevic answered slowly. His eyes focused on Denklar for the first time, and Denklar was a bit more fearful. What did Anstevic mean to do, with such a look on his face? It was the look of a man examining a dead reptile about which he was curious. For a dizzy instant, Denklar wondered when the agent would prod him with a stick, turn him over to look for the fatal wound.

Denklar shook himself. Crazy thoughts! Anstevic was a harsh man, addicted to the oil — and probably to more demanding vices — but for all that he was still a pangalactic, and a League employee. Denklar had no compelling reason to suspect him of uncontrollably violent impulses.

“What do you want?” Denklar asked, his uneasiness making him brusque.

Anstevic’s strange eyes veiled, and he looked away. “I’m hunting a man.” His gaze snapped back and he stared at Denklar with a luminous intensity.

Denklar instantly thought of Wuhiya, the Uberfactorial who had gone up to the Keep that morning. He dissembled, however, remembering the Uberfactorial’s emphasis on secrecy. “Oh? Who?”

Anstevic smiled, a curiously ambiguous expression, and then looked away again. “It’s nothing you need concern yourself with.”

Denklar heard these words with profound relief, and so immediately believed them. “Well, if I can help…”

“Of course. But for tonight, all I need is for you to keep the yokels out of my hair.” Anstevic smoothed his hand over his naked scalp and sniggered. “I’m traveling fast, and I’ve no time to devote to oil selling. If anyone asks, tell them I’m traveling to buy, not to sell.”

“Yes, no problem,” Denklar said, forcing enthusiasm into his voice. “We’re in luck there. Another oil man just came through and spent a couple of days. He took everyone’s money, before Brinslevos called him to the Keep.”

Anstevic stood and clapped Denklar on the shoulder. “Well, we’re sorry for the poor wog, eh? When did he go up to the Keep?”

Denklar laughed uneasily. “Just this morning.” He wondered why he had mentioned the Uberfactorial at all — he’d been too eager to seem friendly, he supposed. He was again uncomfortable. But he reassured himself that if by some unhappy chance Anstevic was looking for the Uberfactorial, then he might have learned Wuhiya’s whereabouts from any of the tosspots who frequented the common room. And this way, Anstevic might not think that Denklar had been deliberately uncooperative — just discreet. To change the subject, he said, “As I recall, you never had any difficulty with Brinslevos.”

Anstevic gave him a comradely hug, which made the bones of Denklar’s shoulders grate together painfully. “You’re right. Brinslevos and I always get along famously. That’s because we’re two of a kind, don’t you think?”

There seemed no safe answer to that question, so Denklar ducked his head and chuckled nervously.

“Well, now I must rest for a bit,” Anstevic said. “But I do have something for you.” Releasing Denklar, he went to his saddlebags, which hung from a peg. He rummaged briefly, drew forth a small package. “Here,” he said, handing it to Denklar.

Denklar unwrapped it, found a black datastrip, of a sort which the League prohibited to its agents on the surface. The sensie pornography encoded on the strip was Denklar’s one indispensable vice, and he smiled gratefully at Anstevic, who was his only source of fresh material. Anstevic had given Denklar the smuggled-in playback unit, years before. Denklar considered this vice to be the only thing that made his life on Pharaoh bearable.

“The latest and hottest from Dilvermoon,” Anstevic said. “Now, let me rest. I’ll have to be on my way in an hour or two — though you may see me again soon… or maybe not.”

Anstevic the assassin filled his pipe again, when the fat innkeeper was gone. The situation could hardly be more to his liking. Brinslevos was a notoriously volatile Lord. Who would suspect Anstevic of involvement in the death of the Uberfactorial? One day he’d punish the innkeeper for his imperfect helpfulness, but not tonight.

Denklar would have to live awhile, unfortunately. When the Uberfactorial met his end, there must be no associated violences for any investigators to find. They might question Denklar, but the innkeeper would be anxious to conceal Anstevic’s visit, lest they discover his contraband. And in a few months, Anstevic would return to Stegatum and snip off that loose thread.

The oil showed him pleasant visions — knives ripping soft bellies, garrotes sinking into soft throats, the innkeeper’s blackened face frozen in fear and disbelief. He enjoyed this satisfying picture for a few minutes, until his pipe had grown cold and stale.

Then he gathered his gear and went out to the stables.