The Skies Discrowned (8 page)

“No, I’d rather be on my own.”

Orcrist considered it for a minute. “Well, it’s a bad idea, but I won’t stop you.” He stood up and crossed to a desk against the wall. “Be back by one o’clock in the morning or I’ll send some rough friends to bring you back. Here’s ten malories. That ought to buy you a good time.”

Frank gratefully took the money and turned to get dressed.

“Wait a minute,” said Orcrist.

Frank turned around in the doorway. Orcrist was rummaging in another drawer. “Take this, too, in case of a
real
emergency,” he said, holding a small silver pistol. “It only holds one bullet, but it’s a forty-five. And don’t lose it; the damned thing cost me quite a bit.”

“I won’t lose it,” said Frank, taking the little gun. It was the first time he’d ever held a gun, and he felt ridiculously over-armed.

“The safety catch is that button above the trigger. Push it in and the gun will shoot. Leave it where it is for now. And for God’s sake keep it in a secure pocket.”

“I will,” said Frank. “And thanks. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

After Frank had left the room, Orcrist rang for Pons. “Pons,” he said, “young Rovzar is determined to go to the Doublon Festival tonight. I could have forbidden it, of course, but I don’t like to operate that way. So I want you to contact Bartlett and … oh, Fallworth, and tell them to follow him and keep an eye on him.”

“Yes sir.”

“No, damn it. Wait a minute.” Orcrist scowled. “I guess he’s able to take care of himself. Forget it, Pons.”

“With pleasure, sir.”

Frank dressed in the subdued clothes Orcrist had given him, put on his newly-polished bronze ear, and then left the apartment, the gun and the ten malories each occupying a safe inner pocket. He cut across Sheol to a street that was really little more than a tunnel. After following it for three hundred feet, he turned suddenly to the right, into an alcove that could not be
seen
a yard away. It led into a much narrower, darker tunnel, and Frank proceeded slowly, his hand on his knife. He still didn’t think of the gun as a practical weapon.

Water swirled around his heels, and he was glad when his groping right hand found the rungs of the ladder he’d been heading for. He climbed up it through a round brick shaft whose sides were slippery with moss and flowing water, and eventually came to the underside of a manhole cover. This he pushed up cautiously, peering about carefully before sliding it aside. He quickly climbed out of the shaft and pushed the manhole cover back into place with his foot.

He was now on the surface, breathing fresh night air for the first time in almost a month. The stars looked beautifully distant, and he felt almost uneasy to see no roof overhead. The manhole was several blocks away from Kudeau Street, where the Doublon Festival was held, but he could hear the shouts and maniacal music already.

I’ve been cooped up too long in that little sewer world, he realized. Let’s see how much money I can spend in one night.

He followed the alley to Pantheon Boulevard and headed east down it toward Kudeau Street. Long before he reached it, he was surrounded by masked dancers, and the curbs were crowded with the crepe-decorated plywood stands of vendors. The music was a crashing, howling thing, yelping out of guitars, slide whistles, trumpets and kazoos, and crowds reeled drunkenly down the streets, swaying unevenly to the chaotic melody. The warm night air smelled of garlic and beer.

Frank bought a sequined cardboard mask and a cup of cloudy, potent beer from the nearest booth. After putting on the mask and downing the beer at a gulp, he joined the dancing mob. He linked arms with a groaning rummy on his right and a startlingly fat woman on his left, following Pantheons tide of revelers as they emptied slowly into the packed expanse of Kudeau Street. The moon was up now, shining full behind the ragged Munson skyline.

After an hour of dancing and drinking, Frank stumbled over a curb and crossed the sidewalk to lean against a pillar and catch his breath. He was somewhat drunk, but he could see a great difference in the Doublon Festival this year; in past years, when he had come with his father, it had been a festive, fairly formalized celebration of the spring.

This year it was something else. Screams that began as singing were degenerating into insane shrieks. The dancing had become a huge game of snap-the-whip, and people were being flung spinning from the end of the line with increasing force. People had stopped paying for the beer. Couples were making frantic love in doorways, under the vendors’ booths, even in the street. And over all, from every direction, skirled the maddening noise that could no longer really be called music.

Time for a decision
, Frank told himself. Go home now or stay and take whatever consequences are floating around unclaimed. I need another beer to decide, he compromised, and began elbowing his way toward a beer-seller’s stand.

Before he reached it he sensed a change in the crowd. People paused, and were craning their necks, peering up and down the street.

“What is it?” Frank shouted to the man next to him.

“Costa!” the man answered. “The Duke!”

Frank looked around but could see nothing because of the crowd. His drunkenness left him, and he felt a cold emptiness in his stomach.
Costa! he
thought.
Here!
He ducked into the nearest building, ran up the stairs, and blundered his way out onto a second floor balcony that overlooked the choked street.

From this vantage point he saw the procession bulling its way through the mob of drunken, torch-waving revelers; he saw the elegant litter being carried at shoulder height and the languid youth who waved from within at the merrymakers. Even from a distance of fifty feet or so he recognized the pale, contemptuous face of Costa, the patricide, the Duke who had had Franks father killed.

He can’t see me in the shadow of the awning here, Frank thought. Even if he could, I’m masked. Instinctively he drew his coat tighter about his chest to cover his damning tattoo, and his fingers brushed the lump under the fabric that covered the gun. Suddenly and completely, he knew what he had to do. The shot wouldn’t be difficult at this range, and a forty-five-calibre bullet ought to do the job.

Trembling, he took the gun out of his pocket and pushed off the safety catch. The procession had drawn even with him in the street. Costa was as close now as he would ever be. Stepping back, Frank raised the gun. I
can’t
, he thought. There must be twenty guards down there. Some of them have guns, and I’ve only got one bullet. I’d never get away through this crowd. I
can’t.

He stood there, shaking, with the gun pointed at Costa’s face. The procession was slowly moving past. In another few seconds he’ll be out of my line of sight, Frank thought.

There was a commotion in the crowd below, and a man ran at the litter and jumped up onto its running board. Frank saw a brief gleam of moonlight on a knife blade. Four quick gunshots broke the continuity of the crazy music, and the man with the knife stumbled to the ground. His weapon fell on the paving stones. He walked lurchingly back toward the crowd, and Frank could see the blood on his shirt. Two more shots cracked, and the man fell sideways onto the street.

Costa leaned out of the litter and waved to show that he was unhurt. The guards cheered, but the crowd almost booed him. An ugly tension was building; Costa and his attendants left quickly.

Frank replaced the gun in his pocket, feeling sick. He returned to Orcrist’s underground apartment, stopping twice along the route to throw up.

The next morning he gave Orcrist back his gun and told him about the abortive assassination attempt by the man with the knife.

“I heard about it,” Orcrist said. “I knew the man slightly.”

“It was a crazy thing to do,” Frank declared.

“Yes, it was. Did you hear that Costa has abolished the Doublon Festival? He said it’s a ‘free-for-all crime fest,’ to use his words. It won’t even finish out the week, as it normally would.”

“It was pretty wild last night. I’ve been to it a dozen times and it was never nearly as bad as it was last night.”

“That’s because times were prosperous under old Duke Topo. Times are very bad now and getting worse; that’s why the festival was such a madhouse. People figured it was their last chance to enjoy themselves, and they’d do it or know the reason why.”

“Times aren’t
that
bad, are they?”

“I don’t know, Frank. They seem to be. The Transport is a bankrupt organization, but determined not to admit it. The interplanetary shipping lines are collapsing. The Transport seems to have decided to make Octavio its home planet, and so Costa, having sold out to them, is taxing the guts out of the people to support it. The end isn’t in sight—and we haven’t even hit bottom yet.”

Two months later Orcrist once again had occasion to quote Aurelius to Frank.

“You see, Frank,” he explained, “when a man proves himself capable, he is likely to be given more tasks. You began as simply an art forger, you’ll recall, and then also took on the duties of a quality art procurer.”

“Am I about to take on someone else’s duties? Did you lose another cousin?” Frank’s bronze ear gleamed in the lamplight.

“What a horrible thing to say, Frank. But yes, as a matter of fact, I was thinking of broadening your functions, giving you some experience in another field—now that my art collectors are so tax-strangled and the museums so heavily guarded and our night runs are becoming so few and far between.”

“My new field being … ?”

“Well, I entertain quite a bit, you know. Pons handles the details quite well, but the kitchen is a chaos. Kitchen boys come and go like sailors in a brothel, and now my chief cook has walked out. So I thought that, in the free time between our night runs and your painting, you might help Pons out with the dinners, cooking and washing up, and all.”

Frank swallowed the indignant anger that Orcrist’s suggestion raised in him.
Take it easy
, he thought. Orcrist’s employment is all that stands between you and the lean life of a fugitive. He’s fed you and taken care of you, and it isn’t his fault that the new government has made affluence an archaic word. Orcrist works as hard as you do (harder, probably), and risks his neck as well as your own on the night raids.

“What do you say?” asked Orcrist, and Frank suddenly realized that the older man was, to his own surprise, embarrassed to be making the request.

“It sounds okay to me,” Frank said. “I guess a little kitchen experience is a valuable thing to have.”

“Of course it is,” Orcrist agreed heartily. “I propose we celebrate it with a couple of glasses of this excellent Tamarisk brandy.”

After downing his brandy Frank went to the kitchen to get acquainted with the layout. He found Pons sitting on a stool, nibbling a chunk of Jack cheese. The tall, skinny servant regarded Frank skeptically.

“Don’t tell me you took it,” he said.

“Matter of fact, I did,” answered Frank. “What is it I do?”

Pons stood up and ran his fingers through his graying hair. “Well now, you’ll find that kitchen work isn’t as easy as painting.” He peered at Frank, who said nothing. “But at least its
honest
work.” Frank smiled coldly.

Encouraged by Franks silence, Pons grinned and took another bite of cheese. “Yessir,” he said. “Liquor and books is all very well, but you don’t get time for that sort of trash in here. You know what I say?”

“What do you say?”

“I say, if you’ve got time enough to lean, you’ve got time enough to clean. Now we don’t have to get started on dinner for another two hours yet, so why don’t you get a rag and a bucket of hot water and clean off the oven hood? And then after that you can clean out these drains. What?”

“I didn’t say anything,” said Frank.

“Well, see that you don’t. I don’t like noisy help.” Pons took his cheese and left the room, on his lips the smile of the man who has had the last word.

Now
what
, thought Frank, have I done to provoke all that? He looked helplessly around himself at the kitchen. A big, gleaming oven stood in the center of the room. Around the walls were sinks and refrigerators and freezers. Years of airborne grease had darkened the yellow walls near the ceiling.

With a fatalistic sigh he began looking for a mop, a rag and a bucket.

When Pons returned at four, he criticized Frank’s cleaning and asked him if his father and he had been accustomed to living in a pigpen.

“No,” said Frank evenly. I will deal with this Pons fellow, he told himself, when the opportunity arises.

“Well, that’s what anyone would think, to see the lazy-man job you did on these sinks.” He looked around the room with a dissatisfied air. “It’s high time we got started on dinner. And let me tell you, sonny, the best way to get on Sam’s bad side is to serve him bad food.”

Spare me your pompous master-chef act, thought Frank. And I’d like to see you call him Sam to his face.

“He’s having eight guests to dinner tonight, and I’m serving them chicken curry. Chop a pound apiece of green onions and peanuts and put them in those silver bowls up there. Also, fill two more bowls with chutney and raisins. Then decant six bottles of the Rigby Chablis, which you’ll find in the cooler yonder. Do you think you can handle all that?”

“Time will tell,” said Frank with false gaiety, hoping it would annoy Pons, as he set out to find the onions and peanuts.

When the guests had all arrived, the table was set and dinner was ready to be served, Pons strode into the kitchen and grabbed Frank’s arm.

“I’ve got to keep an eye on things here,” he said. “You serve the dinner.”

“Me?!
don’t know anything about it! I can’t serve the damned dinner!”

“Keep your voice down. Of course you can serve it. I’m giving you a chance to … prove yourself under fire, you might say. Here’s the wine. Go!”

Frank swung through the kitchen doors into the dining room, carrying a silver tray on which were perched two decanters of Chablis and eight glasses, all clinking dangerously. He had to set the tray down carefully on the tablecloth before he dared raise his eyes to the assembled company.