Triplet (7 page)

The crowd stirred, clearly unsure of what to do. Ravagin gritted his teeth, his full attention by necessity on the two men cautiously moving in on him. Snapping the whip out again, he held it extended in a stiff z-shape between him and his attackers. One of them slashed at it; he pulled it back slightly and the blow missed.
At least they've only got regular swords,
he thought, counting one of the few blessings available at the moment. A spark-sword would cut through a scorpion glove whip with ease if it connected; with ordinary swords it would take half a dozen solid blows to do the same.

Which gave him an idea …

Easing the defensive line back toward himself, he took a slow couple of steps to the right. His opponents shifted in response, the sword tips easing closer toward him as the whip withdrew. Almost in position … and as one of them started to lunge, Ravagin braced his feet and snapped the whip out in a converging helix around both swords.

One of the men yelped as the tightening coil slammed the two blades—and their sword hands—together, but it was already too late for either to fight back. Bracing his palms together, Ravagin yanked hard, and an instant later both swords stood at his feet, securely tangled in four meters of whip, their points grounded against the stones.

For a long minute all three of the disarmed men just stood or crouched there, looking dumfounded at Ravagin. “Now,” Ravagin said softly, “the noblelady and I will be on our way.”

“Not quite yet, outlander,” an authoritative voice came from the crowd. Ravagin turned to see an old man dressed in purple and gold step forward, the half-scepter of a justice official held before him. Beside him, a similarly garbed younger man held a sword at the ready position, its vaguely indistinct blade pointed in Ravagin's direction.

A spark-sword.

T
HE KELAINE CITY WAY
house was one of a couple of dozen that the government of the Twenty Worlds had quietly set up in Triplet, their purpose to provide both travelers' aid and relatively permanent centers for a handful of continuing studies. A large house situated in the northwest part of the city, it had a permanent staff of four and could provide overnight lodging for a party of up to six more. Ravagin hadn't planned to stay that long; but under the circumstances, he'd had little choice in the matter.

“So what did our esteemed justice officials say?” Pornish Essen asked as his two visitors settled into chairs in the way house's spacious conversation area.

Ravagin shrugged, automatically taking an estimate of the way house's director. He'd never met Essen before—way house directors generally served terms of one to two years in a given location, but Ravagin had seldom visited Kelaine City in the past few years. Still, the man seemed at first impression to be competent enough. “Fortunately, one of them had seen a scorpion glove before and could confirm that it wasn't black sorcery,” he continued. “There was some question about whether I'd attacked first—the official hadn't gotten there in time for his half-scepter to record how things started—but they apparently knew the three
carhrats
well enough to believe my story.”

“The woman wouldn't testify for you?”

Ravagin glanced over at Danae, noting the lines of barely concealed anger still in evidence on her face. “The woman apparently cut out on her own sometime after Danae and I took the center of attention away from her.”

Essen shrugged. “I can't say I'm surprised.”

“I'm not, either, but it could have made things damned awkward. But as I said, the city seems to have tangled with those idiots before. Anyway, they dithered around for awhile trying to find her and probably consulting the town's crystal eye for anything other cities or protectorates might have on us. Finally decided they wouldn't lay any punishment against us if we would agree to leave the city.

“So you came here instead?” Essen's eyebrows went up politely. “Wonderful.”

“Relax—I talked them into letting us spend the night since it was getting so late. We're to meet one of the officials at a sky-plane landing area a few streets north of here tomorrow and he'll watch us leave. Until then, we're your guests.”

“And honored am I to have you, too,” the other replied, the sarcasm of the words blunted by the twinkle in his eye. “This assignment is certainly turning out to be a caseload of thrills—just last week we had a traveler come through with a case of ymaricc fever and had to petition to use the Dreya's Womb.”

“I thought Dreya's Wombs were supposed to be accessible to anyone,” Danae spoke up from deep in her chair.

“Anyone who's a citizen, yes,” Essen told her. “But outlanders don't have any such automatic rights. Fortunately, Kelaine is fairly relaxed about such things and we basically just had to go through the motions to get permission.”

Ravagin nodded. Outside, it was becoming dark enough for the first faint stars to appear; in a few minutes the globe atop the Giantsword to the southeast would begin to glow, supplementing the pale moonlight overhead.

Essen had apparently followed his gaze. “Could I interest either of you in sampling Kelaine's night life?” he asked.

“Not me,” Danae said before Ravagin could reply. “I've had my fill of Kelaine for one day, thank you. I'd rather just go to bed early and get started for Karyx as soon as possible in the morning.”

“Ah.” Essen shrugged. “To each their own, I suppose. Personally, I find Shamsheer a much more fascinating and potentially useful world than Karyx. However … Ravagin, if you'd be interested in accompanying me there'll be others here to look after Ms. Panya.”

“Thanks, but I'll pass, too,” Ravagin shook his head. Shamsheer's entertainment facilities showed the same sharp contrast as everything else on the world, and while it could be interesting and sometimes even fun, it had a tendency to depress him. “As Ms. Panya said, we want to get an early start tomorrow. I think we'll just get some dinner and settle in.”

“Up to you,” Essen said, levering himself out of his chair. “If you'll excuse me, then, I need to go get ready for the evening's festivities. I'll leave instructions about dinner, and I'll try to get up in time to see you off in the morning.” Nodding at each of them in turn, he strode from the room.

For a moment Ravagin and Danae sat in silence. Out the window, the Giantsword light was beginning to glow; a city's traditional demarcation between the work of day and the relaxation of evening.

“Certainly doesn't seem to be a hardship post, does it?” Danae muttered. “Housesit all day, party all night.”

Ravagin shrugged. “He's new here. Give him a few more months and he'll be as frustrated as every other person from the Twenty Worlds that spends much time on Shamsheer.”

“Frustrated how? By the laws?”

He shook his head. “By the technology.”

“Come again?”

Abruptly, Ravagin stood up and headed for the stairs. “Come on, let's go sit outside on the balcony.”

Danae's face was suddenly wary. “Why?”

“Why not? It's a nice night … and besides, it'll give you a good chance to see part of the answer to your question.”

She followed silently as he climbed the steps to the second floor and found the doors leading out to the wide balcony facing out onto the street. Essen and his staff clearly spent a good deal of time here themselves: the furniture included both stuffed chairs and meal-size tables, and the guardrail was equipped with a spindly sort of device that Ravagin recognized as a minor bit of magic called a rainstopper. Choosing a chair near the rail, he sat down.

“Well?” Danae asked, looking around.

“Have a little patience,” Ravagin advised her. “The pace of life on Shamsheer is slower than you're probably used to. Sit down and listen to the sounds of Kelaine at night.”

“I said I wasn't interested in Kelaine at night,” she grumbled, but pulled a second chair up to the rail anyway and sank into it. From somewhere down the street the sounds of musicians warming up could be heard, as well as the rising rumble of conversation as the locals began gathering.

“What's that, a bar or something down the street?” Danae asked, craning her neck to look toward the sound.

“That, or a private party. Though ‘private party' is something of a misnomer—most of them are open to anyone who wants to drop in.”

“Sounds like a typical university party.”

“Mm. I think you'd find one of them interesting, but if you really don't want to go—there,” he interrupted himself, pointing southward into the sky.

“What?” Danae asked, turning to look.

“The sky-planes—see them?”

“Yes. Huh. Where are they all going at this time of night?”

“Eastward, to Forj Tower. Carrying all the gadgets that broke in Kelaine City today.”

“The—? Oh.
Oh.
” She watched in silence for another minute, until the aerial caravan was out of sight, then turned back to Ravagin. “I counted at least twenty sky-planes. And all the stuff they're carrying will be repaired overnight?”

“That, or else replacements will be sent back before morning. We're not quite sure which, or whether it's the same in all cases.”

“Why don't you try marking one of them?” she asked. “Or better yet, why not get someone inside the—did you call it
Forj
?”

“It's the local Dark Tower,” Ravagin explained. “ ‘Forj' comes from the initials of the four protectorates surrounding it. Actually, we
have
tried marking some of the repair jobs—the results have been inconclusive. As for getting into Forj—” He shrugged. “Well, the getting in part is possible, or so say the legends. The problem is that all the actual repair work is done in sealed modules within the Tower itself, and trying to break into one gets you escorted out by a set of trolls in double-quick time.”

“And
that's
what frustrates everyone? The fact that you can't watch the magic technology being repaired?”

“
And
can't seem to disassemble any of it without ruining it;
and
can't find any equipment outside the Dark Towers to analyze it with anyway;
and
therefore can't bring a single scrap of this technology out to the Twenty Worlds. And for most people, the more they see of Shamsheer, the more the fact that this stuffs beyond their reach gnaws the hell out of them.”

She snorted gently. “Pure, unadulterated greed.”

Ravagin flicked an irritated glance at her. “Greed, yes. Unadulterated, no.”

“Perhaps.”

They sat in silence for a few more minutes. From the other end of the street a second party added counterpoint to the sounds of the first, and pedestrian traffic in front of the way house picked up as people began traveling back and forth between the two foci of entertainment. One of the fascinations this culture held for sociologists, Ravagin knew, was that of a still largely medieval setting where even the peasant class had real quantities of leisure time.

“Would you really have let that jerkface hit me?”

Ravagin brought his mind back. “Yes,” he told her honestly. “If he'd chosen to exercise that right it would have been the simplest and safest way out of that mess. And don't think it wasn't a mess—we could have gotten into serious trouble out there.”

Danae's face twisted into an irritated grimace as she stared straight out over the rail. “And since I'd gotten us into it in the first place I needed the lesson anyway?” she growled. “Maybe; but I'm not sorry I did it. Maybe you could sit by and watch that woman get hurt, but I couldn't.”

“Which proves all by itself you didn't really understand what was going on,” Ravagin countered, fighting against his own irritation. “If they'd gone so far as to actually hurt her,
they
would have been the ones in trouble. And they knew it. Shamsheer law is strongly set up along the eye-for-an-eye philosophy, applied evenly to all people. Especially in the Tween cities, which are generally at least a little more democratic than the protectorates.”

Danae pondered that for a moment in silence. “Well … maybe I did go off a little prematurely,” she admitted.

“Prematurely, hell,” he told her bluntly. “You could have gotten us both killed out there. And it is
not
going to happen again, or I'll abort this trip and take you straight back to Threshold. Understood?”

She glared at him. “You don't have to beat it to death,” she said icily. “I was wrong, I admit it, and I promise to stay fully on track from now on. Happy?”

“Ecstatically.” He hadn't really intended to bring this up quite so soon, but after that thickheaded play this afternoon the more caution he could plant in her the better. “I'd be even happier if you'd explain why you've got a professional bodyguard trailing along behind you.”

She jerked, actually spinning to look over her shoulder. “What—?
Damn
him. It's Hart, right? Where is he?” she growled, facing Ravagin again.

“If my instructions have been listened to, he's still back on Threshold. But some of my colleagues may have more trouble than I did turning down the cash dripping off his fingers.”

“Damn. But he can't find us here … can he?”

“Not as far as I know. Are you saying he's a danger to you?”

“Not a danger, no. But definitely an annoyance.” She sighed and seemed to slump in her chair. “He's been dogging my every move ever since I left home, watching out for nonexistent danger and smoothing my road for me whenever he could.”

“So why don't you send him away?”

“Because I'm not the one paying his salary. That comes from my father—and Daddy Dear sees monsters underneath every bush.”

“Maybe he knows something you don't,” Ravagin grunted.