The Sword of Skelos (19 page)

Akter Khan poured more wine. He did not see Zafra’s glance leave his face, yet in one continuous movement the mage’s hand shot out, wiped the fly off the table, and slapped it against his legging.

“I believe, Zafra,” Akter said thoughtfully, “that you have done me still another service. I believe you have saved me from making an error, in the blindness of my gratitude and my over-kind heart.” Akter Khan thought a moment on that, the purity and dangerous over-kindness of his heart. “Aye, and I have elevated Isparana overmuch, too. A well set-up wench though, isn’t she?”

A third voice spoke from the door, and Zafra was glad: “O Khan, the Vizir awaits with—”

Akter Khan turned angry eyes on the aide. “Out! He can wait! I am busy!”

When the poor startled fellow had withdrawn, Akter again drained his cup and looked at his wizard. “Aye. Best his unchecked career is bridled here in Zamboula, ere more city guardsmen, even my own Thorns, and more nobles fall to his impatience and his unquestionable prowess. Aye. Hmm… Zafra… and would you…
consent
to accept Isparana as a gift of your khan…” For Akter Khan had noted how Zafra looked upon her, and the khan was not yet totally a fool.

Zafra made a gesture…

“Of course you would. Hafar!
Hafar
! To me!”

After a few moments the vizir opened the door and his solemn face gazed questioningly at his ruler.

“Conan and Isparana are to be taken. Tell the Captain so, and that he is to take his orders from my excellent servant and adviser, Zafra.”

Hafar held his face emotionless, for such an ability made a man a good vizir to such a khan and kept him alive as well, and such a man was Hafar. “My lord,” he acknowledged, and it was enough.

“Then get rid of the rest of those damned fawning petitioners and supplicants and toadies, Hafar, and bring me those silly documents you want me to sign and seal.”

“My lord.”

Zafra and Hafar left side by side, though not together. Nodding wisely, congratulating himself on his perspicacity and his good judgment in taking unto him such a man as Zafra, Akter Khan reached for the wine.

The other patrons of the Royal Turan Inn were a well-bred or moneyed lot, or competent pretenders. Yet they made pause to stare at the man who entered and moved purposefully among the tables. A white kaffia concealed all his head save his young, bearded, desert-dark face. His leggings bloused loosely over the boots into which they were tucked. The leggings were crimson; his sleeved shirt was yellow and a piece of black cloth was pinned to its breast, in the shape of a star.

He went directly to the table of the Khan’s personal guest, while most watched.

“Hajimen!” Conan said in greeting. “I’d thought my friend had returned to the home of the Shanki.”

Hajimen, looking troubled or very solemn indeed, shook his head. “I did not.” He glanced at Isparana, seated across the small triangular table from the Cimmerian. She was revealingly attired, and Hajimen looked quickly away.

Conan signaled their host. “My friend Hajimen of the Shanki will join us. Come,” he said to the Shanki khan’s son; “join us.”

Hajimen sat. Around them, cups were lifted and conversations resumed. Many would love to meet this loutish man who had rendered some service so valuable to their khan, but approaching him was not within the code of the sort of clientele who frequented the Royal Turan’s tables.

“The son of the Khan of the Shanki looks troubled,” Conan said.

Hajimen looked at him and in his eyes sorrow seemed to vie with dread or perhaps rage. “I will tell my friend Conan and his woman. Some say that my sister did not die of a fever at all, but was… slain, Some say that she was not with child at all, as the Khan of the Zamboulans said, but was indeed still virginal, refusing his embraces.”

Conan sat silent while a cup was set before Hajimen, and a new tankard of beer. The tapmaster departed. The Cimmerian could sympathize with the emotions of the Shanki, and was hard put to find something to say. He pondered, too, the likelihood of it: a daughter of the desert, presented by her father to a great satrap of the Empire of Turan—refusing the satrap? He had seen only dutiful behavior on the part of Shanki women—and he remembered the obscene pendant worn by Hajimen’s other sister.

“In a city of men such as these,” Conan said carefully, “there are three rumors for every fact.”

Hajimen poured, quaffed deeply; poured. “I know. I have not said that I believe the story I have heard. I only told my friend of the Cimmerians, for Theba has said that a man troubled is a man alone, and too it is said that no man should be alone.”

Isparana asked, “Why would the daughter of Akhimen Khan of the Shanki have been slain, in Zamboula?”

Hajimen peered into his red-glazed cup and addressed himself to its contents. “There is no honor in it. Because she was virgin, and dishonored herself and her people by choosing to remain so.”

“Ah.” Conan saw additional reason for Hajimen’s mental torture. If the tale he’d heard was true, the girl had disgraced herself and her father—and of course her brother and indeed all her people. So would the Shanki think, for they were a small and old and custom-bound tribe. Thus it were best that the story never came out; it would shame her father and his people. No matter that others saw in it no cause for shame; the Shanki lived for the Shanki, not for others. From what Conan had seen, it was not easy, being Shanki. On the other hand, she’d been gift of a khan to a khan. Had that been dishonored and she murdered—could such be countenanced? Surely Akter’s was the greater sin. Yet for all Conan knew, that might not be true, to Hajimen… and perhaps penalty for such behavior as a maiden-gift turning down the man chosen for her was death. Certainly it would not be the Zamboulan lord’s place to carry out the sentence. Yet…

Aye, Conan could sympathize with Hajimen’s emotions, and his dilemma, if he could not fully understand.

With care Conan said, “The story—this rumor. It is that she rebuffed Akter Khan and he slew her in a fit of pique?”

“The story is that she was not slain so passionately. That she… she did what you said, aye—but was slain later, in cold blood.”

In cold bl—oh; yes, Conan knew that to these people that meant “without passion.” He touched the custom-ruled young man of the desert, fleetingly, for he was unsure of all that was done and not to be done among the Shanki. He had no wish to offend one of whom he thought so highly. To the Cimmerian they were a good and honorable and pathetic people.

“So the khanson of the Shanki has not returned among the tents of his people,” he said, impatient with the necessity of such wordy circumlocution. “What will he do?”

“Remain among the Zamboulans,” Hajimen said, tight of lips. He gazed at the table. “And attempt to learn what may be learned.”

“To seek truth.”

“Aye.”

“And if this ugly rumor is true, my friend has still a dilemma and a decision to make.”’

“Aye,” Hajimen said, without looking up.

“Hajimen.”

The Shanki looked at Conan, stiffly, and he blinked.

“Yes, I speak directly and use your name. While I have respected the ways of the Shanki, we are not among them. Their ways are not the ways of my people. We speak the names of our friends. Hajimen: I am Conan. And you have friends in Zamboula.”

After a time Hajimen said, “Conan is favored by the Khan of the Zamboulans.”

“Yes.”

“For the present,” Isparana said, who knew her ruler better than did Conan.

Hajimen gazed at him a little longer He nodded shortly, and drained his mug. He started to rise.

“I will be offended not to provide you drink, while you are in this my temporary home,” Conan said, deliberately twice employing the direct pronoun.

Again Hajimen turned those so-solemn eyes on him. After a time, he spoke.

“Does Akter Khan supply this beer?”

“Aye…”

Hajimen nodded, left a coin on the table, and departed.

“A man of pride,” Conan said. “And still he never spoke me direct.”

“I think you did not offend him,” Isparana said.

“I hope not. I chafe under the rigors of their way of speaking. I’ve no formal bones in me, ‘sparana. Yet I have no wish to offend him, or any of the Shanki. Do you think the story of his sister is believable?”

“Yes. You do not know Akter Khan, Conan. You have seen only a grateful monarch.”

Conan shrugged. “I have known rulers. I wouldn’t care to hold out my bare arm while any of them held a sword! But it is the other part of the story that’s harder to believe, ‘sparana: that a daughter of Akhimen Khan turned down Akter—or any man she’d been
given
to.”

“Some of us,” Isparana said, “do not care to be
given
to anyone, by anyone!”

“Isparana, you are a woman indeed. And you are different; you were
not
raised among the Shanki, by their very khan.”

“True. Gods be thanked. I see what you mean, though. Suppose she was always rebellious at heart— like me—and never dared show it or take any action while she was among Shanki tents. Here… maybe she decided to try.”

“Possible, I suppose,” Conan said. He stared at the man entering the inn, without seeing him. “Best we say nothing about this, I think. But I will seek a way to find out.”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“The knowledge won’t disturb me, Isparana. If the rumor is true, it’s Hajimen who is better off going right home before he finds out!”

She smiled and touched his hand, recognizing some empathy in this so-stern young man; then she looked up and half around, following his gaze. The Cimmerian had learned, and made vow though without formality: he sat in no inn with his back to the door.

Thus he watched the approach of the pouch-cheeked, very ordinary-looking man in the long, drawn-together cloak of very ordinary dun-hued russet.

“Your pardon. A man outside wishes to talk with Conan, the Cimmerian.”

With his hand still wrapped about the excellently crafted cup, Conan remained seated and impassive of face while he studied this man who had come to him so quietly. Isparana, too, looked at the nondescript fellow. Around them, the other patrons were true to birth, or money, or pretensions; they took no note.

“You know me,” Conan said. “Bid him come in and join me in a cup.”

“A busy evening,” Isparana said sourly, and crimped her chin to peer into the cleavage of her deeply cut halter of wine-red silk. She wore the pendant given her by Akter Khan; its lower curve just brushed the upper ones of her bosom.
This evening was to be ours alone
, she thought, but did not say it out.

“He would talk with you outside this inn,” the man told Conan.

“Doesn’t want to be seen in public?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps you do not want to be seen with him.”

Conan smiled. “Well said. But then why should I wish to talk with him at all?”

“Do not do it, Conan!”

“Talk hurts no one,” the cloaked man said, and Conan was minded of Hajimen, and knew the statement was false. Yet…

He studied the man. He did not look particularly dangerous. He did not look dangerous at all. There was no look of the doer about him, or of strength. Now who, the Cimmerian wondered, wanted to hold privy converse with him. And his large bump of Cimmerian curiosity said, Why not?

He leaned back from the table. “Open your cloak.”

The fellow gave him a brief questioning look. He complied. Under the long cloak of dun he wore a fringed tunic, just to the knee. Its belt was not wide, and supported no sword scabbard. Conan relaxed a bit, though not completely.

“I would have you take out your dagger with your left hand and leave it here with my companion.”

After a moment, the man nodded. “We do not mean to kill you, Conan of Cimmeria. We wish you no harm at all.” He laid his dagger on the table. It was as plain and utilitarian as his cloak; an eating utensil.

Isparana asked, “Who is ‘we’?”

“I and he who wishes to speak—only speak—with your companion, Isparana.”

“Is his name Balad?”

“It is not.”

“Do not go, Conan.”

“You know us both,” Conan observed to the messenger, and to Isparana: “I have my sword and my dagger, and this one is unarmed. I shall go to meet his master.” He glanced at the man to observe reaction to that last word. He saw none.

“I would not,” Isparana said, and showed her worry.

Conan rose. “Don’t run off, ‘sparana—or get too far ahead in the drinking! I’ll be back to examine your pendant, very closely.” He went to the tapmaster, of whom he wangled an apricot. He returned to the messenger, who had considerable brown, wavy hair and who was a foot shorter than the Cimmerian. “I follow.”

Conan was a personage. The other patrons of the inn took note of his apricot-munching departure without seeming to do. Behind the slender man in the long dull cloak, he disappeared through the doorway.

“You know,” the frugivorous Conan said on the street, as if conversationally, “I enjoy wearing a sword. It feels good against my leg.”

“I hear you, and I understand. You have nothing to fear.”