FRANK PAUSED IN FRONT of the dark glass of a shop window to straighten his wig and his shirt collar. He grinned at himself and walked on, swinging his leather case jauntily, his rubber-soled shoes silent on the damp cobblestones.
Cochran Street, a tunnel bigger, wider and brighter than any he’d yet seen understreet, lay ahead, and he turned left onto its uncracked sidewalk. The sixth door down wore a polished brass plate on which, boldly engraved, was the single name “Blanchard.” Frank could feel eyes on him, and realized that he had probably been under several hidden guards’ scrutiny ever since he’d turned onto Cochran.
He tucked his light-but-bulky leather case under his arm and knocked at the door. After a moment it was opened by a frail-looking old man with wispy ice-white hair, who raised one snowy eyebrow.
“My name is Francisco Rovzar,” Frank said. “I believe… uh, his highness is expecting me.” The old man nodded and waved Frank inside.
The floor was of red ceramic tiles, and the starkness of the whitewashed stucco walls was relieved by a dozen huge, age-blackened portraits. Torches were thrust into wrought-iron chandeliers that hung by chains from the ceiling.
The old man led Frank down a hallway to a bigger room, high-ceilinged and lined with bookcases. Standing in the center of the room, hands behind his back, stood Blanchard. He wore light leather boots, and his bushy white beard hid the collar of his tunic.
“Rovzar?”
“At your service, sire,” said Frank with a courtly bow.
“Glad you could make it. I hear the Transports are interested in you. You know Sam Orcrist, don’t you? Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, I do, and yes I would.”
“I’m drinking daiquiris. How’s that sound?”
“Fine.”
Frank leaned his sword case against a wall. “Sit down,” Blanchard said, waving at a stout wooden chair in front of a low table. “I’ll be back in a second.” He left the room and then reappeared immediately, carrying two tall, frosted glasses.
“There you are,” he said, taking the chair across from Frank and setting the drinks on the table. “You know, Rovzar, I’m glad you’re on our side. Yessir. Our boys were tending to get too smug about their swordsmanship, and now they find out there’s a twenty-year-old kitchen boy who can beat ’em—and give ’em lessons, too.” Blanchard took a deep sip of his daiquiri. “Damn, that’s good. The thing is, you’ve got to be sharp these days.”
“That’s true, sir.”
“You bet it is. I tell you, Rovzar, it’s doggy-dog out there.”
“How’s that?”
“I say it’s doggy-dog out there. The peaceful times are over. Peaceful times never last, anyway. And a good thing, too. They give a man a… rosy view of life. Hell, you know how I became King of the Subterranean Companions?”
“How?”
“I killed the previous king, old Stockton. I exercised the ius gladii, the right of the sword. It’s a tradition—any member who invokes that right can challenge the king to a duel. The winner becomes, or remains, king. But don’t get any ideas, Rovzar.”
“Oh, no, I—”
“Hah! I’m kidding you, boy. I wish you could have met Stockton, though. A more repulsive man, I think, never lived. Do you play chess?”
“Yes,” answered Frank, a little puzzled by Blanchard’s topic-hopping style.
“Fine!” Blanchard reached under the table and pulled out a chessboard and a box of chessmen. He turned the box upside down on the table before sliding its cover out from under it. “Which side?” he asked.
“Left,” said Frank.
Blanchard lifted the box and chessmen rolled out of it in two side-by-side piles; and the left pile was black.
“Set ’em up,” said Blanchard.
Two hours and six daiquiris later Frank was checkmated, but not before he managed to capture Blanchard’s queen in a deft king-queen fork.
“Good game, Rovzar.” The old king smiled, sitting back. “I’ve got to be leaving now, but I’ll send you another note sometime. Hope you’ll be able to drop by again.”
“Sure,” said Frank, standing up. It was only when he picked up his case that he remembered he’d come to discuss fencing.
That night Frank, wearing a false beard, plied the oars of a rowboat while Orcrist sat in the bow with a lantern and gave instructions.
“Okay, Frank, sharp to port and we’ll be in the harbor.”
Frank dragged the port oar in the water and the boat swung to the left, through a low brick arch and out into the Munson Harbor. A cold night wind ruffled their hair, and the stars glittered like flecks of silver thread in the vast black cloak of the sky. The boat rocked with the swells, and Frank was finding it harder to control.
“Bear north now,” Orcrist said. “It’ll be about half a mile.” He opened the lantern and blew out the flame, since the moonlight provided adequate light.
The cold breeze was drying the sweat on Frank’s face and shoulders, and he leaned more energetically into the rowing. Munson’s towers and walls passed by in silhouette to his right, lit here and there by window-lamps and street lights. It’s a beautiful city, he thought, at night and viewed from a distance.
“How’s Costa doing these days?” he asked, his voice only a little louder than the wavelets slapping against the hull. “Does he like being Duke?”
“He’s apparently trying to imitate his father, I hear,” Orcrist said. “Topo played tennis, so Costa does too, and his courtiers generally have the sense to lose to him.” Frank chuckled wearily. “And he’s been seducing, or trying to, anyway, all of the old Duke’s concubines. He pretends to savor the wines from Topo’s cellar, but hasn’t noticed that the wine steward is serving him vin ordinaire in fancy bottles, having decanted the good wine for himself. Oh, and this ought to interest you, Frank: he’s decided he wants his portrait done by the best artist alive, just as his father did.”
“Hah. It’s because of him that the best artist isn’t alive.”
“True. And apparently he’s not settling for second best, either.”
They were silent for a few oar-strokes. “What do you mean?” Frank asked.
“Well,” Orcrist said, “he’s let every artist on the planet try out for the privilege of doing the portrait, but so far he’s sent every one away in disgust once he sees their work. Your father seems to have set an impossibly high standard.”
“It doesn’t surprise me. Art, like a lot of things, is a lost art.”
Orcrist had no reply to that, and just said, “bear a little to starboard.” Frank could see the skeletal masts and reefed sails of a few docked merchant ships, and swung away from the shore a bit to pass well clear of them. Distantly from one of the farther ships he heard a deep-voiced man singing “Danny Boy,” and it lent the scene a wistful, melancholy air.
Just past the main basin Orcrist told Frank to head inshore, and in a minute their rowboat was bumping against the hull of a long, wide boat. It sat low in the water; they were able to climb aboard without paddling around to the back of the craft for the ladder.
“Moor the line to that…bumpy thing there,” Orcrist said, waving at a vaguely mushroom-shaped protrusion of metal that stood about a foot high on the deck. Frank tied a slip-knot in the rope and looped it over the mooring, before following Orcrist into the cabin. The older man had just put a match to two wall-hung lanterns.
“This is sort of the living room,” Orcrist explained; “and you can take that ridiculous beard off now.”
Frank peeled it off. “It pays to be cautious,” he said.
“No doubt. Through that door is your room—very comfortable, books, a well-stocked desk—and down those stairs is the dining room, another stateroom, and a storage room full of canned food and bottles of brandy. Don’t raise the anchor or cast off the lines until I find someone who can give you lessons on how to work the sails.”
“Right.”
“I guess that’s it. There are four good swords in your room—two sabres, an épée and a rapier. There’s a homemade pistol in the top desk drawer, but I’m not sure it’ll work, and it’s only a .22 calibre anyway.
“I’ll bring the rest of your things later in the week. If I can, I’ll bring the swords and masks and jackets from the school.” Orcrist took out his wallet and, after searching through it for a moment, handed Frank a folded slip of thin blue paper. “That’s the lease verification. Wave it at any cops that come prowling about. And here are the keys. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which lock each key fits.”
“Okay. Why don’t you… bring Kathrin along with you sometime?”
“I will.” They wandered out onto the deck again. The moon was sitting low on the northern horizon now, magnified and orange-colored by the atmosphere. “Morning isn’t far off,” Orcrist said. “You’d better get some sleep.” He lowered himself over the side into the rowboat. “Untie me there, will you, Frank? Thanks.”
He leaned into the oars, and soon Frank could neither see nor hear him. Frank went below and checked the swords for flexibility and balance—the best one, the rapier, he laid on the desk within easy reach—and then went to bed.
The next few weeks passed very comfortably. Frank read the books in the excellent ship’s library, gave more expensive fencing lessons to many of the thief-lords (although Lord Emsley, by mutual consent, was no longer one of Frank’s students) and frequently, wrapped in a heavy coat and muffler against the autumn chill, fished off the boat’s bow. He often spent the gray afternoons sitting in a canvas chair, smoking his pipe and watching the ships sail in and out of the harbor. He had twice more played chess and consumed daiquiris with Blanchard, and been assured that it was “doggy-dog” out there. Orcrist was a frequent visitor, and Kathrin Figaro came with him several times. She found Frank’s exile exciting, and had him explain to her how he would repel piratical boarders if any chanced to appear.
“You should have a cannon,” she said, sipping hot coffee as they sat on the deck watching the tame little gray waves wobble past.
“Probably so,” agreed Frank lazily. “Then raise anchor, let down the sails and embark on a voyage to Samarkand.” His pipe had gone out, so he set it down next to his chair.
“I hear you’ve become good friends with King Blanchard,” Kathrin said.
“Oh… I know him. I’ve played chess with him.”
“Maybe when he dies you’ll be the King of the Subterranean Companions.”
“Yeah, maybe so.” Frank was nearly asleep. “Where’s Sam?”
“Down in the galley, he said. He’s looking for a corkscrew.”
“Well, I hope he finds one. Want to go for a swim?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
Three miles away, in the low-roofed dimness of Huselor’s, two men sat at a back table over glasses of dark beer.
“The thing is, dammit, we’ve got to keep it in the family. This kid’s a stranger, untried, inexperienced.”
“I’m not arguing, Tolley,” said the other. “I just don’t see what can be done about it right now. You could kill him, I suppose, but he’s made a lot of powerful friends; maybe if you made it look like the Transports had done it…”
“Yeah, maybe. I’ve got to get this… Rovzar kid out of the picture one way or another, though. What you heard can’t be true—but if Blanchard is thinking of naming Rovzar as his successor, then the kid’s got to go. I’ve spent years paving my way to that damned subterranean crown, and no kitchen-boy art-forger is going to take it from me.”
“You said it, Tolley,” nodded Lord Emsley. “This kid is the fly in the ointment.”
Lord Tolley Christensen stared at Lord Emsley with scarcely-veiled contempt. “Yeah, that’s it, all right,” he said, reaching for his beer.
Orcrist stepped onto the deck, a corkscrew in one hand and a bottle of rosé in the other. He dropped into a chair next to Kathrin and began twisting the corkscrew into the top of the bottle.
“What have you got there?” demanded Frank.
“Vin rosé,” Orcrist said. “A simple, wholesome wine, fermented from unpretentious grapes harvested by great, sturdy peasant women.” He popped out the cork and pulled three long-stemmed glasses out of his coat pocket. When he had filled them he handed one to Kathrin and one to Frank. All three took a long, appreciative sip.
“Ah,” sighed Orcrist. “The workingman’s friend.”
“The salvation of the… abused,” put in Frank.
“The comforter of the humiliated.”
“The mother to the unattractive.”
“The… reassurer of the maladjusted.”
“Oh, stop it,” said Kathrin impatiently. “You’re both idiots.”
For a few minutes they all sat silently, sipping the wine and watching a fishing boat make its steady way toward the jetty and the outer sea.
“The guide of the lurching,” said Frank. Orcrist laughed, and Kathrin threw her glass into the sea and stormed into the cabin.
“The girl’s got a horrible temper,” Orcrist observed.
“Only when she’s upset,” objected Frank.
Orcrist and Kathrin left late in the afternoon. Frank waved until their skiff disappeared behind the headland to the south, then went below and fixed himself dinner. He heated up some tomato soup and took it on deck to eat, and then lit his pipe and watched the seagulls hopping about on the few rock-tops exposed by the low tide. When the sun had slid by stages all the way under the horizon he went below to read. He sat down at his desk and picked up a book of Ashbless’s poems.
An hour later he had lost interest in the book and had begun writing a sonnet to Kathrin. He painstakingly constructed six awkward lines, then gave it up as a bad idea and crumpled the paper.
“Not much of a poet, eh?” came a voice from the doorway at his left. Frank jumped as if he’d been stabbed. He whirled toward the door and then laughed with relief to see Pons standing there.
“Good God, Pons! You just about stopped my heart.” It occurred to Frank to became angry. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
Pons took his left hand out of his coat pocket—he was holding Orcrist’s silver pistol. “I followed Sam here,” he said in a toneless voice. “I’m going to kill you.”
Just what I needed, thought Frank, a maniac. He wondered if the gun was loaded—Orcrist had fired it during that ambush a few weeks ago, and he might not have reloaded it. Of course Pons wouldn’t know it had been fired.
“You’re going to kill me? Why?” Frank furtively slid open the top drawer of the desk.
“It’s because of you that I’ve got to kill myself.”
“Well, that’s real sharp reasoning,” said Frank, gently feeling around in the drawer with his right hand. “It wasn’t me that put your wife in a second-rate asylum with cheap ceilings.”
“It was a good asylum!” Pons said loudly. “Your bomb killed her.”
No point in using logic with this guy, Frank told himself. He’s gone round the bend. At that moment the fingers of his right hand closed on the grip of the small pistol Orcrist had told him would be there. He curled his first finger around the trigger and slowly raised the barrel until it touched the underside of the desktop. He moved it minutely back and forth until he figured it was pointed at Pons’s chest.
“And you’ve got to die for it,” Pons said, raising the silver gun.
Frank pulled the trigger of his own gun. There was a muffled bang and smoke spurted out of the drawer, but the bullet failed to penetrate the thick desktop. Pons convulsively squeezed the trigger of his gun, and the hammer clicked into an empty chamber. For a moment both men stared at each other tensely.
Frank started laughing. “You idiot,” he gasped. “Sam fired that gun a long time ago.”
Tears welled in Pons’s eyes and spilled down his left cheek. He flung his useless gun onto the floor and ran out of the room. Frank heard him dash up the stairs and out of the cabin; there were footsteps on the deck and then, faintly, he heard the sound of oars clacking in oarlocks.
Perhaps I wasn’t as sympathetic as I ought to have been, Frank thought. Oh well; at least I didn’t kill him. I’m glad it worked out as painlessly as it did. He thoughtfully closed the still-smoking drawer and picked up his book again.
The sun had climbed midway to noon when Frank’s first pupil arrived the next day. Frank sat smoking in a canvas chair by the rail and watched Lord Gilbert’s body-servant maneuver the skiff alongside Frank’s boat.
Lord Gilbert was a good-natured, very fat man, whose most sophisticated fencing style consisted of taking great, ponderous hops toward his opponent and flailing his sword like a maniac with a fly-swatter. Thirty seconds of this always reduced him to a sweating, panting wreck, and Frank was trying to teach him to relax and wait for his opponent to attack.
“What ho, Lord Gilbert!” called Frank cheerfully. “How goes life in the rabbit warrens?”
“Most distressing, Rovzar,” Gilbert puffed, clambering over the gunwale. “Transports keep coming understreet, and getting killed, and are in turn followed by meaner and more vengeful Transports.”
“Well, doubtless they’ll run out of them eventually.”
“Doubtless. And now hundreds of homeless Goriot Valley farmers have settled, or tried to, understreet, and you know how crowded we were even before.”
“True. What you ought to be doing, though, is training all those farmers in the arts of warfare, and then you should weld them and the understreet citizenry into an army to wipe out the Transports with.”
“Yes, you’ve been advising that for some time, haven’t you? But a farmer is only a farmer, Rovzar, and you can’t really beat a plowshare into much of a sword.”
“Oh well. Speaking of swords, let’s go below and see how your parries are coming along.”
“Another thing happened, last night,” said Gilbert, stopping short. “Orcrist’s servant, Pons, died.”
Frank stopped also. “He did? How?”
“He walked into one of the methane pits near the southern tunnels and struck a match. I just heard about it this morning.”
“Poor bastard. He never was a very pleasant person, but…”
“You knew him, I see!” grinned Gilbert. “Come on, show me those parries.”
Frank worked for two hours with Gilbert, to almost no avail. Finally he advised the lord to carry a shotgun and sent him on his way. Cheerful always, the lord shook Frank’s hand and promised to practice up on everything and come back soon.
At about two in the afternoon another boat, wearing the insignia of the harbor patrol, pulled alongside. A tall blond man in a blue uniform climbed onto Frank’s deck. “Afternoon,” he said to Frank. “Are you the owner of this craft?”
“No sir,” said Frank. “I’m leasing it.”
“And what’s your name?” The man was leafing through papers on a clipboard he carried.
“John Pine,” said Frank, using the name he and Orcrist had agreed on.
“I have a Samuel Brendan Orcrist listed as the owner.”
“That’s right. He’s leased it to me. Wait here and I’ll get the papers for you.” Frank hurried below, found the blue slip and brought it to the man.
The officer looked at it closely and then handed it back.
“Looks okay,” he said. “Just checking. Thanks for your time. Be seeing you!” He climbed back into his own boat, got the small steam engine puffing, and with a casual salute motored away across the basin.
When Orcrist visited Frank again, late one afternoon, he brought an ornate envelope with “Francisco Rovzar, Esq.” written in a florid script across the front.
“What is it?” Frank asked.
“It’s an invitation to a party George Tyler is giving in two weeks. It’s in honor of his book being published, I guess. He’s invited all kinds of artists and writers, he tells me. More importantly, there’ll be a lot of good food and drink.”
“Do you think it’d be safe for me to attend? Where’s it being held?”
“In George’s new place, a big house about fifteen levels below the surface, near the Tartarus district. Yes, it ought to be safe enough; the Transports never venture that deep, and no informers will be specifically looking for you, I don’t think. Just call yourself John Pine and all will be well.” Orcrist poked two holes in a beer can and handed the foaming thing to Frank. “I’d say you could even bring a young lady if you cared to.”
“Good idea. Would you convey my invitation to Kathrin?”
“Consider it conveyed.”
It was windy, so they took their beers into the cabin. “Oh, I’ve got something of yours, Sam,” Frank said. He went into his room and came back with the silver pistol. “Here.”
Orcrist took it and looked up at Frank curiously. “I noticed it was gone. Where did you get it?”
“Pons brought it here, the night he blew himself up. He tried to shoot me, but there was no bullet in it.”
“Poor old Pons. Then he went straight from here to the methane pits, eh?”
“I guess so.” Frank sat down and picked up his beer. “He said it was ‘my’ bomb that killed his wife.”
Orcrist nodded. “Did I ever tell you about the time I took him along on a robbery?”
“No. You said you… gave him a chance to prove himself under fire, and that he didn’t do well.”
“That’s right. It was about a year before you came bobbing like Moses down the Leethee. Beatrice, his wife, had already cracked up and been committed by that time, of course. Anyway, I decided to take him along on a raid on the palace arsenal; several of the understreet tunnels, you know, connect with palace sewers. Pons was extremely nervous and kept inventing reasons why we should turn back. Finally he worked himself into a rage and turned on me. He accused me of being in love with Beatrice, and of blaming him for her crack-up.”
“What made him think that?”
“Oh, it was absolutely true, Frank. I was in love with her. I don’t know why it was him she married—sometimes I think women secretly, unspokenly prefer stupid, mean men. But all this is beside the point. I called off the robbery then; it was clear that we couldn’t work together. And that’s the entirety of Pons’s criminal career.”
“How did he become your doorman?”
“He had no money or friends, so I offered him the job and he took it. He and I had been friends before, you see.” Orcrist’s beer was gone, and he got up to fetch two more cans.