Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

“Hmph,” I said, hoping for a menacing tone. Why hadn’t they asked me all this stuff? Well, actually, they had, sort of, only I’d squirmed out of answering because I wouldn’t have known what I was talking about. Pasook, though, was being forthcoming to the point of exsanguination. Why lecture us on stuff we all presumably knew?

He had to buy his way in, that could be part of it. I’d come into the game on my own terms. At least that was how they’d interpreted it; even so, I’d made them treat me as an equal rather than relying on their favor. Pasook, on the other hand, was a supplicant. He wanted their help, although Zhardann was willing to treat it as a two-way street when it suited him. He would also presumably want their protection from my wrath; after all, he had double-crossed me, or so the story went. Now that I was hearing it from someone else, maybe even I’d start to believe it.

“I came down here to Oolsmouth,” Pasook went on, “and thought that would be the end of it. Then -”

“Why?” said Jill. “Why did you think that would be the end of it? Why didn’t you think he’d come after you?”

Pasook looked straight at me and said, “He’s not what he was. He has gone soft. He’s due for retirement.”

That rocked them back in their chairs. Me, too, even though I’d been expecting something of the sort eventually. All heads swiveled toward me again. “That may have been the case at the time,” I said in a steady, almost pleasant tone, an almost-genial smile on my lips, “but softness is not an irreversible condition.”

Perhaps they saw the suggestion of something hard and noxious cross my face then; I certainly tried hard enough to send it there. I thought of adding a line about ignoring the implications at their peril, but it would have been less than subtle and, more than that, gratuitous. Instead, I contented myself with saying. “Jill-tang can attest to my present temperament.”

The heads swung toward Jill. She merely screwed up one corner of her mouth and scowled out at nothing in particular, and let the heads ultimately drift back to fix on Pasook.

“That was the situation then,” he said finally. “The strong deal with the weak, that is the way things go. If the weak become strong, well, that is a different matter.” That was probably as much of an apology as I would ever get out of him, especially considering that none of it had ever actually happened. “When I arrived in Oolsmouth, there were certain matters requiring my attention at the bank, so -”

“The Oolvaan Mutual Bank?” said Zhardann.

“Yes. Quite. After attending to business and after a judicious interval, I turned my consideration again to the ring.”

“This ‘business’ you mentioned,” I said. “What was its nature?”

“Loans,” said Pasook. “Capitalization. Strictly questions of mortal commerce. I understand you’ve been interesting yourself in my customer Groot - yes, some of this activity concerned him, but not to any degree out of the ordinary; issues of extending credit for new trade voyages, that sort of thing. It was not until -”

“Did he learn about the ring?” I asked. “ Could he have learned about the ring?”

Pasook tipped his head to one side and seemed to consider the proposal seriously. “No,” he said. “No. Even when I began to deploy feelers, gingerly of course, which was later, and even from looking at it from the current vantage point, I don’t see Groot’s direct hand in what transpired. Why do you ask?”

“Confirmation, that’s all. Groot’s reverses seemed to be a byproduct of the thing between Sapriel and you, not a deliberate stab directed at him by Sapriel. A direct stab, yes, but by Sapriel’s stooge.”

“What is this?” said Zhardann.

“Let’s hear my old friend out,” I suggested. “If the question remains unanswered, I will address it myself. Please proceed, my old friend.”

“Yes,” said Pasook, swallowing. He was certainly playing his role all the way through. “As I said, I began to carefully send out word about the ring, about Dall. The first I realized Sapriel was even in Oolsmouth was when he attacked. That time, where he was strong, I was weak. My precautions were insufficient. In retrospect, I was mistaken to try to do this thing on my own. At that moment, though, I found myself Sapriel’s prisoner.”

“And the ring?” I said.

“The ring, yes, the ring, well that was another matter. I didn’t have the ring with me, of course, you understand. To pressure me, Sapriel began to dismantle my operations; in particular, the Oolvaan Mutual Bank. He had recruited a local agent -”

“Dooglas,” inserted Jill .

“- yes, quite, Dooglas, which of course complicated matters, since Dooglas had his own ends to satisfy as well. Among those of us in this room, that pressure probably would have been enough, but Sapriel chose to additionally apply more direct force.” He raised the edge of his tunic. Scabbed welts punctuated by jagged flayed strips and the spot-punctures of thorns covered his skin. He had been holding himself rather stiffly in the chair, now that I thought about it. Gingerly, he eased the fabric back down. “Ultimately I capitulated. The ring was hidden some distance out from the city. While Sapriel was engaged in collecting it, I was able to win free. And so here I am.”

What was his game? To my way of thinking, he was playing to the story I’d established too obviously for any element of chance. Pasook had to know more than he was letting on. But why, what were his motives? To get back at Sapriel for raiding Pasook’s own bank, for one; that was a no-charge given. To toy with Gashanatantra? That possibility was more interesting. If Pasook really had been Gash’s associate in the ring bit, if that much had been accurate deduction rather than invention, he could have had a plan in mind where he would show up here, encounter the real Gash, and horn in on his new action. Surely Pasook could tell that I wasn’t him. Jill, Gash’s wife, hadn’t known the difference, but then she hadn’t seen him in a long time; Pasook, though, would have been hanging around with Gash much more recently.

But Pasook was obviously a sneaky customer in his own right. If he’d been surprised to find me instead of Gash, he could have smoothly rolled with it and decided to play along, at least until he could get me alone and find out why Jill and Zhardann thought I was Gash, and where the real Gash really was. He’d have enough threat hanging over my head to back me into a corner and make me his tool. I could see him thinking that way, in any case.

What if Pasook hadn’t been Gash’s associate, though? What if we’d all guessed wrong? Still, there was a Pasook, who could have heard about our speculations and decided to live up to them, fitting himself into our ongoing plot. Again, in that scenario he could be out to get a piece of the action against Sapriel, or to use us to help him get back at Sapriel for raiding his bank. Also again, if he knew I wasn’t Gash, he’d figure I was in no position to contradict him. Under this construction, though, where Pasook hadn’t been in partnership with Gash, he might have no reason not to think I wasn’t Gash after all.

There was another outside possibility, but I figured it was so loopy that it couldn’t be true, even in the middle of an admittedly loopy state of affairs. He couldn’t be that devious, could he?

Downside risks and all, I dearly wanted to get Pasook alone for a one-on-one. I doubted that was in the offing, or that it would have been a good idea even if I could arrange it, but it was entirely possible that here was someone who actually knew the answer to something .