John Dalmas - The Lion Returns

"Right. We overlapped at the embassy in Duinarog for a couple years. When he was there; he pulled courier duty a lot."

That explains why Omara chose him, Idri told herself. It also gets rid of any doubt about where Varia's brats are being sent. "Ah!" she said. "Look, sweet pole, this evening I'll leave my garden door unlatched. When it's dark, come and see me. I'll have your mission instructions for you then; you'll be leaving the Cloister at dawn."

Rillor raised his eyebrows. "Mission instructions? Is that all you'll have for me? It's been too long."

Idri chuckled. "It's never too long. The longer the better."

He took a short step toward her, but she pressed him away. "This evening," she repeated. "Right now I need to get back. I have further arrangements to make."

They rode back separately, Rillor fantasizing the evening to come. Idri, however, was thinking about another captain-a Tiger captain. As far as she'd seen, Tigers had no scruples or reluctance about killing. They weren't even interested in the reasons. All they wanted was orders.

What they lacked was finesse, and not only in bed. Rillor was definitely the one for his role in this.

Before first dawn, Sergeant Arva quietly shut the door of his barracks behind him and looked eastward. He had an excellent mental clock, and much preferred being early to being late. There were no street lamps, nor any sign of dawn, only a slender crescent moon, still somewhat short of the meridian. Slinging his bag over a shoulder, he started toward the street.

Arva never heard the man step from behind an ornamental hedge, never heard the blackjack descend. He didn't even bleed, except slightly from ears and nose. His murderer dragged him behind some shrubbery, and quickly but systematically searched Arva's pockets, shirt front, and shoulder bag. Finding a large sealed envelope, he stuck it in his own shirt, then squatted beside his victim to wait.

Moments later a team and coach approached. Shouldering the corpse, the killer strode into the dark street. The coach slowed for him but did not stop. As it rolled by, he pulled its door open, heaved the body inside, then got in himself and pulled the door closed. The coach stopped a couple of hundred yards farther on, where tulip trees darkened the street even more. There the killer transferred the body to the coach's luggage boot, covering it with a tarp. That accomplished, he climbed to the driver's seat and showed him the envelope.

"Take me to Guards Barracks A, and hurry," he said. "I need to be waiting across the street before this Rillor gets there. And give him what I found on the carcass." He thumbed toward the back of the coach.

The driver grunted assent, and turned left at the next corner. Deliver the envelope, he rehearsed mentally, then out the north gate and north a mile, across the line into Asmehr. Deliver the body to the guy waiting with a rubbish wagon. Then back here and return the coach before the stars have faded.

He grinned. Nothing to it. He could develop an appetite for jobs like this. They'd keep life interesting.

16 Skin and Bones

In the design and construction of the Cloister, esthetics had been important but not primary. Cost, defensibility, and the efficient use of limited space set the constraints. Thus there was not much room between buildings-enough for narrow lawns, some flowerbeds and shrubs, and street trees. The residences-dormitories and barracks-mostly resembled each other. And of course, there were no street lights, nor any lights at this hour.

Captain Koslovi Rillor's barracks was adjacent to the Administration Building, at the center of the Cloister. Guards Barracks E, on the other hand, was on the East Wall Road. And like most of the Sisterhood, female or male, Rillor's night vision wasn't a lot better than human normal. But familiarity and the sickle moon told him exactly where he was.

Ahead, he recognized the building, and slowed to a walk, scanning about. The man he was watching for emerged from the shadow of a hedge, and stepped into the street to meet him. Rillor had never seen a Tiger out of uniform before, but he knew what he was by his demeanor-his sense of hardness and arrogance.

"Your name," the Tiger ordered.

"Rillor. Koslovi." He said it resentfully. He was, after all, a captain. The man before him might be, probably was noncommissioned. Arrogant!

The Tiger drew a large envelope from inside his shirt and handed it to the Guards officer, then loped off up the street.

Rillor tucked the envelope in his shoulder bag and angled toward the barracks' main entrance. He needed Omara's instructions to Arva, and the official offer to Varia and the Lion. Now, presumably, he had them. He wished he knew the oral instructions Omara had given Arva, and whether the two youths knew the identity of who was to pick them up. He couldn't pretend he was Arva. They might know the man.

You can't have everything, he told himself, stepping onto the stoop. Until he'd read the enclosures, he'd say no more than he had to.

Picking up the two young Guardsmen presented no problems. They were wide-awake and ready when he got there, and being well-trained, accepted his authority without questions. Together, the three had loped the half mile to the courier stable, where horses had been readied for them-three mounts, three remounts, and two packhorses.

Now they rode northward, the Cloister's defensive walls diminishing behind them in the faintly graying dawn. When it was light enough, Rillor intended to open the envelope and read the contents.

Ahead, a team and coach rolled toward the horsemen, and they guided their horses to one side, giving the rig abundant room to pass. Probably, Rillor thought, it carried some Outland trade representative.

Ordinarily, in the Sisterhood, newborns were named by their mother. That became their calling name. However, for routine records, breeding assignments and performance ratings, the breeding stock or lineage designation was used as a surname, and listed first.

But in conversation, the calling name was used almost exclusively, except as necessary to clarify which Rillor or Liiset or Jaloon was meant. Depending on how common it was, one's calling name might be all one's friends knew. In daily affairs, one's lineage was usually not significant.

Thus Macurdy's twin sons were not known as Macurdy. In the breeding record, their lineage was listed as Jesarion 2x5-Jesarion for short. And because of Varia's disgrace, she hadn't been allowed to provide their calling names. The only contact she'd had with them was during the first weeks of their lives, when she'd nursed them. She'd called them after her two Macurdy husbands: the firstborn Will, the second Curtis.

Sarkia had let Idri provide their official calling names. The names she'd listed for them were obscenities, and their nannies had objected to Sarkia in writing. Sarkia had chastised Idri for it, and renamed them Ohns and Dohns. In Old Ylvin, those meant first and second, but in Yuultal they were meaningless. And in any case unique.

Although Ohns and Dohns totally identified with the Sisterhood and the Guards, they'd grown up feeling different from other children, simply by being a two-member clone. Most clones numbered from four to six.

Given the nature of small boys, they'd early been made self-conscious of their peculiar calling names. Ohns? Dohns? What had they done to deserve names like those? Not surprisingly they were unusually close.

When they were ten years old, their clone aunt, Liiset, had told them about their mother: her strengths, her character, and that she'd gotten into trouble and run away. Liiset had not elaborated on the reasons. No less a tracker than the famed Tomm had failed to bring her back.