‘I think the girl got the best of you, my friend,’ Belgarath said jovially as he moved quickly to help the inebriated juggler to right himself. ‘You really ought to straighten up, though. If you stand around bent over like that, you’ll tie your insides in knots.’ Garion saw his grandfather’s lips moving slightly as he whispered something to the tipsy entertainer. Then, so faint that it was barely discernible, he felt the surge of the old man’s will.
Feldegast straightened, his face buried in his hands. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ he said. ‘Have y’ poisoned me, me girl?’ he demanded of Vella. ‘I can’t remember ever bein’ taken by the drink so fast.’ He took his hands away. The splotches and distortion were gone from his face, and he looked as he had before.
‘Don’t ever try to drink with a Nadrak woman,’ Belgarath advised him, ‘particularly when she’s the one who brewed the liquor.’
‘It seems that I heard a snatch of conversation whilst I was entertainin’ the wench here. Is it Karanda ye be talkin’ about—and the woeful things happenin’ there?’
‘We were,’ Belgarath admitted.
‘I display me talents betimes in wayside inns and taverns—fer pennies and a drink or two, don’t y’ know—and a great deal of information comes into places like that. Sometimes if ye make a man laugh and be merry, ye kin draw more out of him than ye can with silver or strong drink. As it happened, I was in such a place not long ago—dazzlin’ the onlookers with the brilliance of me perfomance—and happens that whilst I was there, a wayfarer came in from the east. A great brute of a man he was—and he told us the distressful news from Karanda. And after he had eaten and finished more pots of good strong ale than was good for him, I sought him out and questioned him further. A man in me profession can’t never know too much about the places where he might be called upon to display his art, don’t y’know. This great brute of a man, who should not have feared anythin’ that walks, was shakin’ and tremblin’ like a frightened babe, and he tells me that I should stay out of Karanda as I valued me life. And then he tells me a very strange thing, which I have not yet put the meanin’ to. He tells me that the road between Calida and Mal Yaska is thick with messengers goin’ to and fro, hither and yon. Isn’t that an amazin’ thing? How could a man account fer it? But there be strange things goin’ on in the world, good masters, and wonders to behold that no man at all could ever begin to imagine.’
The juggler’s lilting brogue was almost hypnotic in its charm and liquidity, and Garion found himself somehow caught up in the really quite commonplace narrative. He felt a peculiar disappointment as the gaudy little man broke off his story.
‘I hope that me tale has brought ye some small entertainment an’ enlightenment, good masters,’ Feldegast said ingratiatingly, his grass-stained hand held out suggestively. ‘I make me way in the world with me wits and me talents, givin’ of them as free as the birds, but I’m always grateful fer little tokens of appreciation, don’t y’ know.’
‘Pay him,’ Belgarath said shortly to Garion.
‘What?’
‘Give him some money.’
Garion sighed and reached for the leather purse at his belt.
‘May the Gods all smile down on ye, young master,’ Feldegast thanked Garion effusively for the few small coins which changed hands. Then he looked slyly at Vella. ‘Tell me, me girl,’ he said, ‘have ye ever heard the story of the milkmaid and the peddler? I must give ye fair warnin’ that it’s a naughty little story, and I’d be covered with shame to bring a blush to yer fair cheeks.’
‘I haven’t blushed since I was fourteen,’ Vella said to him.
‘Well then, why don’t we go apart a ways, an’ I’ll see if I can’t remedy that? I’m told that blushin’ is good fer the complexion.’
Vella laughed and followed him back out onto the lawn.
‘Silk,’ Belgarath said brusquely, ‘I need that diversion—now.’
‘We don’t really have anything put together yet,’ Silk objected.
‘Make something up, then.’ The old man turned to Yarblek. ‘And I don’t want you to leave Mal Zeth until I give you the word. I might need you here.’
‘What’s the matter, Grandfather?’ Garion asked.
‘We have to leave here as quickly as possible.’
Out on the lawn, Vella stood wide-eyed and with the palms of her hands pressed to her flaming cheeks.
‘Ye’ll have to admit that I warned ye, me girl,’ Feldegast chortled triumphantly. ‘Which is more than I can say about the deceitful way ye slipped yer dreadful brew into me craw.’ He looked at her admiringly. ‘I must say, though, that ye bloom like a red, red rose when ye blush like that, and yer a joy to behold in yer maidenlike confusion. Tell me, have ye by chance heard the one about the shepherdess and the knight-errant?’
Vella fled.
That afternoon, Silk, who normally avoided anything remotely resembling physical exertion, spent several hours in the leafy atrium in the center of the east wing, busily piling stones across the mouth of the tiny rivulet of fresh, sparkling water which fed the pool at the center of the little garden. Garion watched curiously from the window of his sitting room until he could stand it no longer. He went out into the atrium to confront the sweating little Drasnian. ‘Are you taking up landscaping as a hobby?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Silk replied, mopping his forehead, ‘just taking a little precaution, is all.’
‘Precaution against what?’
Silk held up one finger. ‘Wait,’ he said gauging the level of the water rising behind his improvised dam. After a moment, the water began to spill over into the pool with a loud gurgling and splashing. ‘Noisy, isn’t it?’ he said proudly.
‘Won’t that make sleeping in these surrounding rooms a little hard?’ Garion asked.
‘It’s also going to make listening almost impossible,’ the little man said smugly. ‘As soon as it gets dark, why don’t you and I and Sadi and Liselle gather here. We need to talk, and my cheerful little waterfall should cover what we say to each other.’
‘Why after dark?’
Silk slyly laid one finger alongside his long, pointed nose. ‘So that the night will hide our lips from those police who don’t use their ears to listen with.’
‘That’s clever,’ Garion said.
‘Why, yes. I thought so myself.’ Then Silk made a sour face. ‘Actually, it was Liselle’s idea,’ he confessed.
Garion smiled. ‘But she let you do the work.’
Silk grunted. ‘She claimed that she didn’t want to break any of her fingernails. I was going to refuse, but she threw her dimples at me, and I gave in.’
‘She uses those very well, doesn’t she? They’re more dangerous than your knives.’
‘Are you trying to be funny, Garion?’
‘Would I do that, old friend?’
As the soft spring evening descended over Mal Zeth, Garion joined his three friends in the dim atrium beside Silk’s splashing waterfall.
‘Very nice work, Kheldar,’ Velvet complimented the little man.
‘Oh, shut up.’
‘Why, Kheldar!’
‘All right,’ Garion said, by way of calling the meeting to order, ‘what have we got that we can work with? Belgarath wants us out of Mal Zeth almost immediately.’
‘I’ve been following your advice, Belgarion,’ Sadi murmured, ‘and I’ve been concentrating my attention on Baron Vasca. He’s a man of eminent corruption, and he has his fingers in so many pies that he sometimes loses track of just who’s bribing him at any given moment.’
‘Exactly what’s he up to right now?’ Garion asked.
‘He’s still trying to take over the Bureau of Military Procurement,’ Velvet reported. ‘That bureau is controlled by the General Staff, however. It’s mostly composed of colonels, but there’s a General Bregar serving as Bureau Chief. The colonels aren’t too greedy, but Bregar has a large payroll. He has to spread quite a bit of money around among his fellow generals to keep Vasca
in check.’
Garion thought about that. ‘Aren’t you bribing Vasca as well?’ he asked Silk.
Silk nodded glumly. ‘The price is going up, though. The consortium of Melcene merchant barons is laying a lot of money in his path, trying to get him to restrict Yarblek and me to the west coast.’
‘Can he raise any sort of force? Fighting men, I mean?’
‘He has contacts with a fair number of robber chiefs,’ Sadi replied, ‘and they have some pretty rough and ready fellows working for them.’
‘Is there any band operating out of Mal Zeth right now?’
Sadi coughed rather delicately. ‘I just brought a string of wagons down from Camat,’ he admitted. ‘Agricultual products for the most part.’
Garion gave him a hard look. ‘I thought I asked you not to do that any more.’
‘The crop had already been harvested, Belgarion,’ the eunuch protested. ‘It doesn’t make sense to just let it rot in the fields, does it?’
‘That’s sound business thinking, Garion,’ Silk interceded.
‘Anyway,’ Sadi hurried on, ‘the band that’s handling the harvesting and transport for me is one of the largest in this part of Mallorea—two or three hundred anyway, and I have a goodly number of stout fellows involved in local distribution.’
‘You did all this in just a few weeks?’ Garion was incredulous.
‘One makes very little profit by allowing the grass to grow under one’s feet,’ Sadi stated piously.
‘Well put,’ Silk approved.
‘Thank you, Prince Kheldar.’
Garion shook his head in defeat. ‘Is there any way you can get your bandits into the palace grounds?’
‘Bandits?’ Sadi sounded injured.
‘Isn’t that what they are?’
‘I prefer to think of them as entrepreneurs.’
‘Whatever. Can you get them in?’
‘I sort of doubt it, Belgarion. What did you have in mind?’
‘I thought we might offer their services to Baron Vasca to help in his forthcoming confrontation with the General Staff.’
‘Is there going to be a confrontation?’ Sadi looked surprised. ‘I hadn’t heard about that.’
‘That’s because we haven’t arranged it yet. Vasca’s going to find out—probably tomorrow—that his activities have irritated the General Staff, and that they’re going to send troops into his offices to arrest him and to dig through his records to find enough incriminating evidence to take to the Emperor.’
‘That’s brilliant,’ Silk said.
‘I liked it—but it won’t work unless Vasca’s got enough men to hold off a fair number of troops.’
‘It can still work,’ Sadi said. ‘At about the same time that Vasca finds out about his impending arrest, I’ll offer him the use of my men. He can bring them into the palace complex under the guise of workmen. All the Bureau Chiefs are continually renovating their offices. It has to do with status, I think.’
‘What’s the plan here, Garion?’ Silk asked.
‘I want open fighting right here in the halls of the palace. That should attract the attention of Brador’s policemen.’
‘He was born to be a King, wasn’t he?’ Velvet approved. ‘Only royalty has the ability to devise a deception of that scale.’
‘Thanks,’ Garion said dryly. ‘It’s not going to work, though, if Vasca just takes up defensive positions in his bureau offices. We also have to persuade him to strike first. The soldiers won’t really be coming after him, so we’re going to have to make him start the fight himself. What kind of man is Vasca?’
‘Deceitful, greedy, and not really all that bright,’ Silk replied.
‘Can he be pressured into any kind of rashness?’
‘Probably not. Bureaucrats tend to be cowardly. I don’t think he’d make a move until he sees the soldiers coming.’
‘I believe I can make him bolder,’ Sadi said. ‘I have something very nice in a green vial that would make a mouse attack a lion.’
Garion made a face. ‘I don’t much care for that way,’ he said.
‘It’s the results that count, Belgarion,’ Sadi pointed out. ‘If things are that urgent right now, delicate feelings might be a luxury we can’t afford.’
‘All right,’ Garion decided. ‘Do whatever you have to.’
‘Once things are in motion, I might be able to throw in just a bit of additional confusion,’ Velvet said. ‘The King of Pallia and the Prince Regent of Delchin both have sizable retinues, and they’re on the verge of open war anyway. There’s also the King of Veresebo, who’s so senile that he distrusts everybody. I could probably persuade each of them that any turmoil in the halls is directed at them personally. They’d put their men-at-arms into the corridors at the first sound of fighting.’
‘Now that’s got some interesting possibilities,’ Silk said, rubbing his hands together gleefully. ‘A five-way brawl in the palace ought to give us all the opportunity we need to leave town.’
‘And it wouldn’t necessarily have to be confined to the palace,’ Sadi added thoughtfully. ‘A bit of judicious misdirection could probably spread it out into the city itself. A general riot in the streets would attract quite a bit of attention, wouldn’t you say?’
‘How long would it take to set it up?’ Garion asked.
Silk looked at his partners in crime. ‘Three days?’ he asked them, ‘Maybe four?’
They both considered it, then nodded.
‘That’s it then, Garion,’ Silk said. ‘Three or four days.’
‘All right. Do it.’
They all turned and started back toward the entrance to the atrium. ‘Margravine Liselle,’ Sadi said firmly.
‘Yes, Sadi?’
‘I’ll take my snake back now, if you don’t mind.’
‘Oh, of course, Sadi.’ She reached into her bodice for Zith.
Silk’s face blanched, and he stepped back quickly.
‘Something wrong, Kheldar?’ she asked innocently.
‘Never mind.’ The little man turned on his heel and went on through the green-smelling evening gesticulating and talking to himself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
His name was Balsca. He was a rheumy-eyed seafaring man with bad habits and mediocre skills who hailed from Kaduz, a fish-reeking town on one of the northern Melcene Islands. He had signed on as a common deck hand for the past six years aboard a leaky merchantman grandiosely named The Star of Jarot, commanded by an irascible peg-leg captain from Celanta who called himself ‘Woodfoot,’ a colorful name which Balsca privately suspected was designed to conceal the captain’s true identity from the maritime authorities.
Balsca did not like Captain Woodfoot. Balsca had not liked any ships’ officers since he had been summarily flogged ten years back for pilfering grog from ship’s stores aboard a ship of the line in the Mallorean navy. Balsca had nursed his grievance from that incident until he had found an opportunity to jump ship, and then he had gone in search of kindlier masters and more understanding officers in the merchant marine.
He had not found them aboard The Star of Jarot.
His most recent disillusionment had come about as the result of a difference of views with the ship’s bosun, a heavy-fisted rascal from Pannor in Rengel. That altercation had left Balsca without his front teeth, and his vigorous protest to the captain had evoked jeering laughter followed by his being unceremoniously kicked off the quarterdeck by a nail-studded leg constructed of solid oak. The humiliation and the bruises were bad enough, but the splinters which festered for weeks in Balsca’s behind made it almost impossible for him to sit down, and sitting down was Balsca’s favorite position.
He brooded about it, leaning on the starboard rail well out of Captain Woodfoot’s view and staring out at the lead-gray swells surging through the straits of Perivor as The Star of Jarot beat her way northwesterly past the swampy coast of the southwestern Dalasian Protectorates and on around the savage breakers engulfing the Turim Reef. By the time they had
cleared the reef and turned due north along the desolate coast of Finda, Balsca had concluded that life was going out of its way to treat him unfairly, and that he might be far better off seeking his fortune ashore.
He spent several nights prowling through the cargo hold with a well-shielded lantern until he found the concealed compartment where Woodfoot had hidden a number of small, valuable items that he didn’t want to trouble the customs people with. Balsca’s patched canvas sea bag picked up a fair amount of weight rather quickly that night.
When The Star of Jarot dropped anchor in the harbor of Mal Gemila, Balsca feigned illness and refused his shipmates’ suggestion that he go ashore with them for the customary end-of-voyage carouse. He lay instead in his hammock, moaning theatrically. Late during the dog watch, he pulled on his tarred canvas sea coat, the only thing of any value that he owned, picked up his sea bag and went on silent feet up on deck. The solitary watch, as Balsca had anticipated, lay snoring in the scuppers, snuggled up to an earthenware jug; there were no lights in the aft cabins, where Woodfoot and his officers lived in idle luxury; and the moon had already set. A small ship’s boat swung on a painter on the starboard side, and Balsca deftly dropped his sea bag into it, swung over the rail, and silently left The Star of Jarot forever. He felt no particular regret about that. He did not even pause to mutter a curse at the vessel which had been his home for the past six years. Balsca was a philosophical sort of fellow. Once he had escaped from an unpleasant situation, he no longer held any grudges.
When he reached the docks, he sold the small ship’s boat to a beady-eyed man with a missing right hand. Balsca feigned drunkenness during the transaction, and the maimed man—who had undoubtedly had his hand chopped off as punishment for theft—paid him quite a bit more for the boat than would have been the case had the sale taken place in broad daylight. Balsca immediately knew what that meant. He shouldered his sea bag, staggered up the wharf, and began to climb the steep cobblestone street from the harbor. At the first corner, he made a sudden turn to the left and ran like a deer, leaving the surprised press gang the beady-eyed man had sent after him floundering far behind. Balsca was stupid, certainly, but he was no fool.