Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

“Is the notification witnessed?” asked Zhardann.

“I witness,” said four or five voices scattered around the cloud, stepping on each other.

Zhardann raised his hand. The name-sound of the ball stopped and the shimmering faded almost to nothing, and the color of the ball lightened to the violet-blue of approaching dusk, but the ball itself remained hovering in place. It was clear some ritualized formula was being followed, at least in outline. I wondered how much of this Max knew about. I was sure he’d be interested; after all, he was curious about everything having to do with the gods. It was ironic, really, that I was the one who’d been getting to know the gods from the inside. Of course, it was apparent that there was more than one angle to “inside.” I was pretty sure my current perspective would have helped to round out Max’s, or if not I was being dragged through a lot of trouble for nothing, but unfortunately there was no immediate way to tell him about it.

For that matter, I’d gotten the impression that Max had his own inside sources; he knew too much already to have been relying purely on guesswork. Was one of his sources Phlinn Arol? I glanced around me and spotted Arol off to the right. Not entirely to my surprise, he was watching me. He held my eye long enough to make the point explicit. I gave him a small ambiguous nod and turned back to Zhardann.

“Your attendance is appreciated,” Zhardann was saying. “It should be gratifying to us all to see the level of concern such a group is demonstrating for the well-being and reputation of our community. Indeed -”

“Get to the point,” someone grumbled in an under-the-breath tone that was clearly intended to carry.

“I acknowledge your indulgence,” said Zhardann, using a harder voice of his own for a moment. “This is a serious matter; whatever our differences, we will all agree on that. None among us undertakes it lightly. Does anyone here present question the legitimacy of this forum?”

“Let us move forward,” Pasook murmured. I followed him toward the front of the cloud, steering around the clumps of listeners who were standing or reclining on cloud-tufts along the way. A fellow whose form showed not human features or the details of clothing but rather a vista of fields, lush with gently blowing prairie grass under a pleasant sky, as though he was a man-shaped lens punched through the local reality to focus on another world, had raised a question concerning the appropriate makeup of a quorum, and some brief discussion had ensued. To me, it had the sound of an argument that people had been over often enough to get sick of, without anyone having come up with anything new to add in a long time.

“We are a club without by-laws,” Pasook said to himself, or perhaps he was really saying it to me. “The only mandatory requirement is self-interest.”

The consensus, in line with someone else’s quoted precedent, was that the will to act provided the legitimacy. “We will proceed,” stated Zhardann. “To present the circumstance, I call Soaf Pasook.”

Pasook mounted the cliff-face. Actually, he did as much floating as outright climbing. The snow at his feet remained largely undisturbed, although a few artistically placed footprints did appear in his wake. Facing the crowd, he unreeled roughly the same story I’d heard before. This time, though, he was playing down the involvement of the ring, leading away from it as much as he could. He mentioned “this ring I had” but didn’t even allude to the dealings through which he had acquired it or to his connection with me, and certainly didn’t bring the name of Pod Dall into the story at all. Instead, he concentrated on his peaceful conduct of business, his responsible and limited revelation of himself to mortals, his attention to the local standards of conduct, and his commitment to the status quo, setting the stage for his sad tale of how this had all been shot to pieces by the unprovoked blunderbuss attack of Sapriel.

It was a reasonable performance, but I could tell that the crowd was only suffering through the exposition so they could get to the meat. I could understand their impatience. After all, stabbing each other in the back was their preferred sport. What would they care if one of their number pulled off a good fast move against somebody else? Pasook by his own admission had left himself exposed by failing to line up with a larger faction and the deterrent value it could provide. When he got to the details of Sapriel’s use of the banks, the way Sapriel had disrupted the Oolsmouth business community and the local politics, and especially his interaction with Dooglas, the crowd perked up.

Frankly, I didn’t think Sapriel had been all that blatant about his activities, with the glaring exception of his promises to Dooglas. I was willing to grant Pasook additional knowledge I didn’t have since he had been the one directly involved, and I’d thrown in a certain poetic license for hyperbole to boot, and of course there was his story of torture, which argued for an unmannerly lack of restraint on Sapriel’s part. By Pasook’s earlier account to us, Sapriel’s desire to get hold of the ring was the reason for the torture. Further, Pasook had told us he’d been about to start shopping the ring around when Sapriel had pounced. I didn’t think Pasook’s story made quite as much sense with the ring edited down to an incidental role as it had done when he’d told it to us. I’d made that point to the three of them when we’d met before coming here but I’d been out-voted. Zhardann in particular had thought that a full airing of the ring’s nature might make folks lose sight of Sapriel in the process since they’d realize that the ring was really the more important issue, and they might even start running out on the gathering to look for it. I didn’t think he was wrong, but I was concerned that his tribunal could get equally out of control if someone else brought the ring into the picture and started asking the right questions. Of course, if someone else did bring up the ring, that might be useful information in itself. Zhardann would have been even happier not to mention the ring’s existence at all. When Sapriel came in, though, he’d probably refer to it himself, and if the foundation had not been properly set down the ensuing discussion could drop our credibility through the floor. All of this worrying might actually have been moot. By the feel of the crowd, they were taking Pasook’s story more-or-less at face value, or even if they weren’t, there was enough in what he was saying to make them think something worth considering had been going on.

“Thank you, Soaf Pasook,” said Zhardann, when Pasook had capped off his explication by showing the onlookers his recent stigmata. Pasook left his shirt open while Zhardann continued. “Yet this is not the story of Soaf Pasook alone. I have made my own investigation, and I attest to the truth of Soaf Pasook’s telling.” Not the whole truth, I noted, but then I already knew Zhardann was a tricky customer. “Who else will attest?”

“I attest,” said Jill-tang. “I also have investigated, and have met with this Dooglas creature. He is clearly enraptured. He believes that Sapriel will elevate him to our own level as his reward.”

A hum of conversation rose; that had hit them, all right, as had been intended. Zhardann had thought I should attest, too. With my (or Gash’s) reputation for subterfuge, though, who would believe me? I couldn’t very well swear by the gods, now, could I? To my surprise, Jill had jumped in to make those points even before I could get my own mouth open. After kicking it back and forth for a bit, Zhardann had reluctantly acknowledged the problem and backed down. Of course, I could have confounded them all and got up to make a public statement anyway, but I was trying to keep a tighter grip on myself than I’d managed of late. The middle of a ballroom full of gods was not where I wanted to blow my luck with an obvious flub.