Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

In the City of Sun

In the sun of the Season:

Two swords and two shadows -

You know the story.

Lupus Lon Oliver saluted Asodo Hatch when that Frangoni warrior ventured from the shelter of House Jodorunda; and Hatch for a moment was positively glad to see this enemy of his, so tense had been the confrontation with Oboro Bakendra.

Though Lupus Lon Oliver had seemed considerably upset by someone or something when Hatch had seen him last in Scuffling Road, the Ebrell Islander had by now recovered his usual confident composure, and boldly informed Hatch that he was wanted at the Brick.

"My father wishes you to invoke yours demonic features in the Brick," said Lupus, attempting by this jocular elaboration of his message to deny the obviously embarrassing fact, which was that he was being used as a messenger boy.

Lupus Lon Oliver spoke of course in Code Seven, that dialect of the Nexus Ninetongue which served as the Nexus Commonspeech.

Since Lupus was an Ebrell Islander, the language of his birth was Dub; but in his daily dealings he ever favored the Commonspeech.

"Since the Brick lies on my homeward path," said Hatch, "I am agreeable to – to – " Here Hatch pause while he struggled against temptation. Asodo Hatch was direly tempted to say that he was ready "to see the thog", since the day's earlier dealings with the wit of beggars had left him with an indelible awareness of Manfred Gan Oliver's essential thoggishness. But he controlled himself, and concluded: "I am agreeable to granting him an audience."

With that, the pair set off down Zambuk Street, heading west into the bloodlight of the evening. At certain times of the year, anyone traveling west along Zambuk Street could see the sun set directly between Cap Uba and Cap Foz Para Lash, but in this season the setting sun was invisible behind one or the other of those great rocks.

But which?

Hatch did not know. He should have known, but had long since forgotten. This was itself a measure of his profound estrangement from his own city, his own times, his own place, his own people.

He saw the suns of the worlds of the Nexus more often than he saw the local star of his own planet.

"Were you in there with your sister?" said Lupus, as the two men headed toward the Brick.

"With my brother," said Hatch. "With Oboro Bakendra. He was talking about Son'sholoma."

Lupus absorbed that in silence.

An odd couple they made, Hatch and Oliver. For Asodo Hatch was a Frangoni built over-large; his hair, uncut from birth, was tied in a complex knot on top of his head, and thus made him look taller yet; his sweeping robe was of unbroken purple, and the inevitably effect of the flowing lines of such a one-piece garment is to increase the apparent height of the wearer. In short, Hatch looked a veritable giant, and had exacerbated his bigness by doing so much body-building with weights that the upper half of his body looked as if it had been pumped up with air.

Hatch, then, bestrode the earth like a veritable collosus, his big feet tromping over the dust, his big meaty hands swinging by his sides like a couple of lethal weapons. Whereas Lupus Lon Oliver was so under-sized that he had to positively scuttle to keep pace with the Frangoni warrior.

Lupus wore a big wide midriff belt of a leather colored the same red as his Ebrell Island skin, and in a sheath suspended from that belt he carried a big heavyweighted disembowelling knife.

Hatch maintained a wary awareness of that knife, for he by no means underestimated the young man Lupus. After all, as the Frangoni saying has it: "The smaller the rat, the sharper the teeth."

As the two men went westward along Zambuk Street, the sun set. They continued in the darkness, not hurrying, but still overhauling the lumbering buffalo carts which labored through the rutted darkness of the dust, the presence of each cart marked by the red-star glimmer of the oil lamp which the law required from every vehicle which chose to travel the city streets after dark.

The oil which burnt in those lamps was that of the slunk, the notorious grease-eel of the Yamoda River, and as it burnt it gave off a stench like that of burning hair.

"Lupus," said Hatch, when after a long walk they neared the Brick, "I have a… a… "

How should he put it? How did one go about this business of soliciting a bribe?

"A proposition?" said Lupus.

There was a note of not-quite-repressed hope and expectation in Lupus Lon Oliver's voice. Earlier in the day, the young Ebrell Islander had hoped and expected to see the high-muscled Asodo Hatch assassinated by Dog Java, but the cowardly Dog had failed in his task in a truly disgraceful fashion, collapsing in a dead faint at Hatch's feet. As Lupus had been quite unable to nerve Dog to a fresh attempt at murder, and as Lupus deemed it too risky to strike down Asodo Hatch with his own hand, Lupus was quite ready to countenance the possibility of making some kind of bargain with his enemy.

"A proposition, yes" said Hatch, feeling a slight but inescapable gratitude for the nimbleness with which the Ebrell Islander had divined the nature of his approach. "Precisely."

"Then," said Lupus, leapfrogging a dozen steps in the bargaining process, "what's your price?"

"My price?" said Hatch. He had thought to begin by outlining the nature of the offer, but Lupus had already quickfooted his way through all that without a word being spoken. It took more than a moment for Hatch to grasp what had happened, but then he recovered himself and said: "Oh, the price, yes, yes, the price. Scorpions, of course. Gold, in advance. Three hundred scorpions, that should cover it."

"Fifty," said Lupus promptly.

"Lupus, Lupus," said Hatch, feeling something of the same exasperation he had felt when he confronted his sister. "Are we two merchants to be haggling over details?"

"You're right," said Lupus. "It's wrong for us to haggle. So take my fifty and be done with it."

Here was all the traditional arrogance and impudence of the Ebrell Islanders, the self-styled master race, a breed of men forever cocky and over-sure of themselves.

"It's clear to me," said Hatch, "that you're in no mood to deal this out seriously. So if you can't clinch a deal here and now, I'll talk it out with your father."

The lights of the Brick were but a hundred paces ahead, which left very little time for them to talk. But Lupus grabbed Hatch by the robes and pulled him to a halt.

"Three hundred, then," said Lupus.

"Done," said Hatch.

"But only – "

"You're haggling!"

"No, no," said Lupus. "This isn't haggling. Haggling is details, a hundred scorpions, fifty, who cares. But this isn't details, this is important. I want your sister."

"Joma?"

"She calls herself Penelope," said Lupus.

"Penelope, then," said Hatch, conceding the point readily in the fullness of his relief. "You want her? Very well! Take her!

But I warn you, she's killed and castrated one already. A camel driver, she was thirteen, and underneath Yon Yo – "

"I know the story," said Lupus, cutting short the flow of Hatch's relief. "Don't worry, I can handle her. But. But there's a problem."

"What?" said Hatch suspiciously.

"My father. He doesn't like the idea."

"You – you've talked this out with your father already?"

"I've told him, yes," said Lupus. "I've told him I want to marry your sister, and he – "

"Marry her!" said Hatch in amazement.

"Why, yes, yes," said Lupus, impatiently. "When one loves a woman, when one – "

"Love!" said Hatch, in further amazement.

The idea of the rat-sized Lupus being in love with the mass, bulk and obstinance of the heroically-proportioned Penelope was so ludicrous that Hatch burst out into frank and open laughter. He could not help himself.