Harry Turtledove - Down in The Bottomlands (and Other Places)

“Oh, rubbish!” Lofosa scooped up the codex and carried it back to her cubicle, rolling her hips at every step as if to contradict Peggol without another word.

The Eyes and Ears brought out nothing more from her sleep cubicle or Evillia’s for their chief to inspect. That surprised Radnal; the two women had carried in everything but the donkey they’d ridden. He shrugged — they’d probably filled their saddlebags with feminine fripperies and junk that could have stayed behind in their Tarteshan hostel if not in Krepalga.

Then he stopped thinking about them — the Eye and Ear who’d gone into Dokhnor’s cubicle whistled. Peggol vez Menk dashed in there. He came out with his fist tightly closed around something. He opened it. Radnal saw two six-pointed gold stars: Morgaffo rank badges.

“So he was a spy,” Fer vez Canthal exclaimed.

“He may have been,” Peggol said. But when he got on the radiophone to Tarteshem, he found Dokhnor of Kellef had declared his battalion leader’s rank when he entered the Tyranny. The Eye and Ear scowled. “A soldier, yes, but not a spy after all, it would appear.”

Benter vez Maprab broke in: “I wish you’d finish your pawing and let us get on with our tour. I haven’t that many days left, so I hate to squander one.”

“Peace, freeman,” Peggol said. “A man is dead.”

“Which means he’ll not complain if I see the much-talked-about wonders of Trench Park.” Benter glared as if he were the Hereditary Tyrant dressing down some churlish underling.

Radnal, seeing how Benter reacted when thwarted, wondered if he’d broken Dokhnor’s neck for no better reason than losing a game of war. Benter might be old, but he wasn’t feeble. And he was sure to be a veteran of the last war with Morgaf, or the one before that against Morgaf and the Krepalgan Unity both. He would know how to kill.

Radnal shook his head. If things kept on like this, he’d start suspecting Fer and Zosel next, or his own shadow. He wished he hadn’t lost the tour guides’ draw. He would sooner have been studying the metabolism of the fat sand rat than trying to figure out which of his charges had just committed murder.

Peggol vez Menk said, “We shall have to search the outbuildings before we begin. Freeman vez Krobir already told you we’d go out tomorrow. My professional opinion is that no court would sustain a suit over one day’s delay when compensational time is guaranteed.”

“Bah!” Benter stomped off. Radnal caught Toglo zev Pamdal’s eye. She raised one eyebrow slightly, shook her head. He shifted his shoulders in a tiny shrug. They both smiled. In every group, someone turned out to be a pain in the backside. Radnal let his smile expand, glad Toglo wasn’t holding his sport with Lofosa and Evillia against him.

“Speaking of outbuildings, freeman vez Krobir,” Peggol said, “there’s just the stables, am I right?”

“That and the privy, yes,” Radnal said.

“Oh, yes, the privy.” The Eye and Ear wrinkled his nose. It was even more prominent than Radnal’s. Most Strongbrows had big noses, as if to counterbalance their long skulls. Lissonese, whose noses were usually flattish, sometimes called Tarteshans Snouts on account of that. The name would start a brawl in any port on the Western Ocean.

Fer vez Canthal accompanied one of Peggol’s men to the stables; the Eye and Ear obviously needed support against the ferocious, blood-crazed donkeys inside — that was what his body language said, anyhow. When Peggol ordered him out, he’d flinched as if told to invade Morgaf and bring back the king’s ears.

“You Eyes and Ears don’t often deal with matters outside the big cities, do you?” Radnal asked.

“You noticed that?” Peggol vez Menk raised a wry eyebrow. “You’re right; we’re urbanites to the core. Threats to the realm usually come among crowds of masking people. Most that don’t are a matter for the army, not us.”

Moblay Sopsirk’s son went over to the shelf where the war board was stored. “If we can’t go out today, Radnal, care for the game we didn’t have last night?”

“Maybe another time, freeman vez Sopsirk,” the tour guide said, turning Moblay’s name into its nearest Tarteshan equivalent. Maybe the brown man would take the hint and speak a bit more formally to him. But Moblay didn’t seem good at catching hints, as witness his advances toward Evillia and this even more poorly timed suggestion of a game. The Eye and Ear returned from the stable without the solution to Dokhnor’s death. By his low-voiced comments to his friends, he was glad he’d escaped the den of vicious beasts with his life. The Trench Park staffers tried to hide their sniggers. Even a few of the tourists, only two days better acquainted with donkeys than the Eye and Ear, chuckled at his alarm.

Something on the roof said hig-hig-hig! in a loud, strident voice. The Eye and Ear who’d braved the stables started nervously. Peggol vez Menk raised his eyebrow again. “What’s that, freeman vez Krobir?”

“A koprit bird,” Radnal said. “They hardly impale people on thornbushes.”

“No, eh? That’s good to hear.” Peggol’s dry cough served him for a laugh.

The midday meal was ration packs. Radnal sent Liem vez Steries a worried look: the extra mouths at the lodge would make supplies run out faster than he’d planned for. Understanding the look, Liem said, “We’ll fly in more from the militia outpost if we have to.”

“Good.”

Between them, Peggol vez Menk and Liem vez Steries spent most of the afternoon on the radiophone. Radnal worried about power, but not as much. Even if the generator ran out of fuel, solar cells would take up most of the slack. Trench Park had plenty of sunshine.

After supper, the militiamen and Eyes and Ears scattered sleepsacks on the common room floor. Peggol set up a watch schedule that gave each of his and Liem’s men about half a daytenth each. Radnal volunteered to stand a watch himself.

“No,” Peggol answered. “While I do not doubt your innocence, freeman vez Krobir, you and your colleagues formally remain under suspicion here. The Morgaffo plenipo could protest were you given a post which might let you somehow take advantage of us.”

Though that made some sense, it miffed Radnal. He retired to his sleeping cubicle in medium dudgeon, lay down, and discovered he could not sleep. The last two nights, he’d been on the edge of dropping off when Evillia and Lofosa called. Now he was awake, and they stayed away.

He wondered why. They’d already shown they didn’t care who watched them when they made love. Maybe they thought he was too shy to do anything with militiamen and Eyes and Ears outside the entrance. A few days before, they would have been right. Now he wondered. They took fornication so much for granted that they made any other view of it seem foolish.

Whatever their reasons, they stayed away. Radnal tossed and turned on his sleepsack. He thought about going out to chat with the fellow on watch, but decided not to: Peggol vez Menk would suspect he was up to something nefarious if he tried. That annoyed him all over again, and drove sleep further away than ever. So did the Martoisi’s furious row over how one of them — Eltsac said Nocso, Nocso said Eltsac — had managed to lose their only currycomb.

The tour guide eventually dozed off, for he woke with a start when the men in the common room turned up the lights just before sunrise. For a heartbeat or two, he wondered why they were there. Then he remembered.

Yawning, he grabbed his cap, tied the belt on his robe, and headed out of the cubicle. Zosel vez Glesir and a couple of tourists were already in the common room, talking with the militiamen and the Eyes and Ears. Conversation flagged when Lofosa emerged from her sleeping cubicle without dressing first.