Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

The captain cocked his head to one side, while still watching the approach of the barge. “Might be one at the Hall of the People, but if I don’t mistake my own memory she works straight for the politicians, not free-lance or for hire. I do have to say I never did trust that Gazoont fellow. Nothing you could put your thumb on, mind you, but you’ll be knowing how it is.”

“Communicators do have guild associations to consider,” commented Shaa, “and the endorsement of their guild requires an upstanding record of appropriate loyalty and honorable behavior, but when it comes right down to it I suppose they’re as much subject to bribes or suborning as anyone else.”

Cupping his hands around his mouth, the captain took aim at the barge and let loose with tremendous volume. “Ahoy, Pilodar .’”

A much fainter reply came back. “Ahoy, Profit ! Have you heard you’re under new ownership?”

“What was that? New ownership, did you say?”

“Aye, most likely! You’re a ship of Groot’s, aren’t you?”

“Aye, that we are!”

“Groot’s run hard aground!” said the man on the Pilodar . The barge was now close enough for the captain to quit flaying his larynx. Shaa tentatively released the muffling palm he was holding over his ear. “On what shoal’?” called Captain Luff.

“The Powers-that-Be,” the Pilodar said ominously. Captain Luff exchanged a glance with Karlini and Shaa.

Shaa shrugged. “I thought Groot was one of the powers-that-be,” he said.

“Aye,” said the captain. He cupped his hands again. “What more can you tell us?”

“It be wiser not to be discussing this at all!”

“Captain Moore, is it? When we’re in port together, I’ll stand you a round!”

The two captains exchanged pleasantries, but soon the ships had begun to draw apart and there was clearly nothing to be gained by continuing. “The Pile-o’-Dough , that’s what she’s called on the river,” the captain said, watching the barge retreat.

“The contrast between the high-technology of modern sorcery and the low-tech ways of the world is always remarkable, don’t you think?” said Shaa. “On the other hand, hollering back and forth may be crude, but there’s no denying it works.”

“Just because I couldn’t find out what was happening is no reason to -” Karlini began.

“Just so you know,” Shaa told him, “I am not pleased to find my earlier vague suspicions confirmed.”

“There’s deviltry afoot, sure enough,” said Captain Luff.

“Aye, there is,” agreed Shaa. “Perhaps we should consider bypassing the Oolsmouth port altogether.”

“Oolsmouth docks and levees control all passage south to the sea,” the captain pointed out, “The several channels of the Oolvaan delta don’t start until the other side of Oolsmouth.”

“Are there any turnoffs between our current position and Oolsmouth? Any side channels?”

“Not a one, Doctor Shaa, not a one.”

“Hmm,” said Shaa. “We could turn around and return to Roosing Oolvaya, or anchor in place here and wait for things to play out in Oolsmouth, or disembark passengers for an overland trip. However, all these options would waste time and, more significantly, wouldn’t necessarily solve anything.”

“Meester Groot’s troubles could travel toward us on the river,” the captain suggested. “If these Powers-that-Be decide to send forces after us, if indeed for some reason someone is looking for this very ship -” he directed a hard gaze at Shaa, which Shaa returned with a pleasant and guileless one of his own “- aye, as I say, a writ of seizure from Oolsmouth might very well be honored in Roosing Oolvaya.”

“Or even if it wasn’t we might still be impounded until things settle themselves out,” added Karlini.

“One could consider the old plague-on-the-ship trick,” Shaa said.

“Do you know,” said the captain, “I myself have seen plague ships burnt to the waterline by dock wardens, or blasted completely to smithereens. Plague ships, aye, and even one that had only the rumor of it without the slightest boil or fever in a single man jack aboard. Perhaps the legalities were consulted afterward, perhaps not.”

“It may be reasonable to leave that particular stratagem in reserve for a later time,” agreed Shaa.

“We could just turn ourselves over,” the captain said. “Perhaps Meester Groot has the wrong of it, and this new owner Captain Moore spoke of has the right.”

Shaa raised a skeptical eyebrow, Karlini resorted to goggling his eyes, and Tildy dropped her jaw disbelievingly.

“ ‘Twas only a suggestion,” said the captain, eyeing them. “I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“We thus return by the process of elimination to our central course,” Shaa said, “which is to continue on in to Oolsmouth, handling problems as they arise in the manner we have evolved through long practice. After all, we are at least forewarned, and forewarned is forearmed, which brings one halfway to octopod status, not an unhelpful place to be at all.”

“Yeah,” said Karlini, making a sour face, “but it sounds like we may have to face one of the worst menaces in the civilized world - a bureaucrat armed with some official document.”

“Ah,” Shaa said mysteriously, “but we are not without useful documents of our own. Nor would this be all the preparation available to us. Come, let us reason together craftily.

The power of a strong arm, Haalsen Groot had always thought, is less than that of a strong mind. Like all aphorisms, this one had situations where it was likely to fail, such as the one where the strong arm was facing down the strong mind in close quarters in the same room, with the strong mind’s mouth gagged and its arms lashed behind its back. Things are rarely perfect. Nevertheless, in the past he’d taken the attitude that he’d rather fail while trying a stratagem than succeed through a coup de main . Groot thought it did put things in perspective, though, to remember that his previous philosophy had been adopted in the abstract, without any foreseeable expectation of actually having to test its validity, rather than from the vantage point of a thick-walled cell in a jail with his leg chained to the floor.

Which was not to say that Groot had a philosophical objection to empirical methods. He was keeping the candle on the far side of the cell from him in case the door began to open suddenly and he needed to take advantage of the additional gloom to try to quickly conceal his work, which meant he was operating as much by touch as sight; on the whole, he thought the final effect would be much superior if he wasn’t interrupted before all the pieces were in place. He finished spreading the first coat of solvent across the face of the concrete block of variant composition he had spotted earlier; the newer, more crumbly one at the junction of ceiling and outer wall. Julio’s reconnaissance and a bit of triangulation had revealed that Groot’s guess concerning the nature of that particular block had been more or less correct. Barred ventilation holes that had been part of the original construction in many of the cells had indeed been subsequently blocked off. As Groot had estimated, these now-vanished windows had opened onto the outside air, that much was true, but the openings had not emerged at ground level, or not exactly, anyway. The prison section of the Hall of the People was surrounded by a deep trench dug into the ground around the footings of the building, as a sort of a dry moat. Unlike the more usual objective served by moat-building, that of keeping unwanted visitors out, this one had, of course, been designed to help keep unwilling visitors in. Although there would have been a two-story drop from the window to the bottom of the trench, some prisoner had apparently managed to navigate the hazard at some heroic time in the past, for the openings had all been obliterated by rock fill and new concrete and the top of the trench had been closed off as well by a grating of iron grillwork.