Inner City: that part of Dalar ken Halvar which lies west of the Yamoda River, south of Na Sashimoko, east of the Dead Mouth and north of Yon Yo. It takes in the rocky upthrusts of Cap Gargle, Cap Uba and Cap Foz Para Lash; the Grand Arena (otherwise known as the Great Arena); the administrative quarter of Bon Tray; the commercial center of Actus Dorum; and the slumlands of Spara Slank.
So there – one house -
The toenail with the pubic hair -
The larynx with the liver.
Flesh made flesh with separate faces,
With separate hearts which in pretense
Are said to sing in single beat -
To sing to the beat of a single blood.
With his audience with the High Priest Sesno Felvus satisfactorily concluded, but with some residual anger still remaining from his confrontation with Son'sholoma Gezira, the Frangoni warrior Asodo Hatch descended from the Frangoni rock. He made his way down Cap Uba toward Zambuk Street, the arrowline west-east avenue which ran from the Dead Mouth to the Yamoda, thus dividing the northern commercial area of Actus Dorum from the southern slumlands of Spara Slank.
As Hatch descended through the sunbeat heat, he considered deviating from his schedule to visit the Brick, the Free Corps headquarters which stood on the southern side of Zambuk Street.
There he might well find Lupus Lon Oliver – or Lupus's father, Manfred Gan Oliver. They could talk. Negotiate. Make a settlement.
But it might well be better to negotiate on neutral ground, or to find a third party to do the negotiating.
Besides – Before Hatch sought to win gold from the Brick, he would have to curb the madness of his sister's spending, otherwise any new wealth which he won for his family would be dissipated in very short order.
By the time Hatch gained the soft red dust of Zambuk Street, he had decided that negotiations were best postponed. So he set out east toward the Yamoda. But he had not taken so many as three steps when he was hailed from the Brick.
"Hey, Mister Purple!"
Hatch glanced at the Brick and saw messenger boys lounging outside, as usual. The one who had hailed him was – he could not be certain of this, but guessed with some confidence – the same boy who had accosted him earlier in the day with a cheating offer from Polk the Cash, who had sought to buy Hatch's chocolate for a veritable impoverishment of opium.
"You want to buy my sister?" cried the boy. "You sell me your dog, I sell you my sister."
Since there was no profit to be had from trying to discipline messenger boys, Asodo Hatch – who, for the record, was not then or ever the owner of any dog, though it must be admitted that his daughter Onica was in the possession of such a beast – chose to continue east along Zambuk Street in a mode of deafness. As he did so, he automatically checked the safety of the half-dozen opium balls he had bought from Shona, finding those packages of peace still safe in a tight-buttoned document-pocket inside his robes.
Initially he lengthened his stride, striving to put distance between himself and the insults of the Brick without actually seeming to hurry; but the sun's heat and the aching length of the dusty road soon persuaded him to a slower pace.
Zambuk Street was one of the major avenues created by the clearance orders issued by Plandruk Qinplaqus in the first enthusiasm of his rule, which enthusiasm was by now a matter of ancient history. The Silver Emperor had meant such avenues to function as firebreaks, and thereby lessen the frequency with which his bamboo city burnt to the ground. In this he had been only partially successful, for there had been two disastrous citywide fires in Hatch's lifetime alone.
Hatch was much-dusty with the redness of the Zambuk Street by the time he reached House Jodorunda, which stood on the northern side of the west-east avenue.
Though small, House Jodorunda was still a place of considerable pretensions, its walls built of a gray stone imported from quarries a hundred leagues distant, and its door made of solid timbers rather than the more customary bamboo weave.
However, of late the house had been looking much the worse for wear. The skeletal Guardian Gods atop the roof were lopsided, broken or missing, and the Ancestral Faces painted on the door were chipped, faded, or almost elided by sunbeat and weathering.
That door stood ajar.
Hatch pushed the door wide open then entered. The ceiling here was high, the room in shadows. It was a room crowded with furniture, most of it high-gloss laquerwork. Hatch knew the furniture, like the house, to be mortgaged already for more than its value.
"Joma?" said Hatch, challenging the silence with his sister's official name.
He was answered by the silence of spiderwebs, the prophecy of stone.
But then, these days his sister was not answering to Joma.
Instead, she was insisting on being called by the ridiculous name which she had taken when she entered upon her brief-lived marriage: Penelope Flute.
A slight splash told Hatch where to look. He strode into the bathroom and there found his sister immersed in a tub of water.
This annoyed him intensely. Hatch had scant tolerance for folly, so the lunacy of his sister's bathing habits had long been a source of ireful exasperation.
"Joma," said Hatch, endeavoring to suppress his vexation as he looked down on his waterlogged sister. "We have to talk."
"Do you not think," said Penelope, looking up at him from the bathtub, "that there is a certain degree of impropriety involved in bearding your sister in her bathroom?"
This was a question to which there was no established answer, since the Frangoni did not usually have baths, let alone bathrooms. When they wanted to wash then they went to the river just like everyone else, which was by far and away the cheapest and most sensible method of resolving the hygienic question.
"I do not consider," said Hatch, "that there is any impropriety involved in seeing my sister at any time when she is fully dressed."
Penelope was so dressed, for she had been fully clothed when she had immersed herself in her tub of water. This immersion was a part of her religious praxis, for Penelope was an Evolutionist.
Since dawn, the purple-skinned Frangoni female had been steeping herself in the water – which was decidedly muddy – in order to encourage her transformation into a fish. At the moment of the Changing of Forms, her clothes would become scales, hence she was careful never to get wet unless she was wearing them.
Penelope believed her transformation to a piscatorial mode of existence to be imminent, for thus she had been advised by her Perfect Master, whom she believed to be infallible. The Perfect Master in question was Edgerley Eden, a centaur who dwelt in Hepko Cholo, an urban enclave to the east of the Yamoda River. Eden claimed his own transformation into centaur shape to be proof of the coming General Evolution, of which he had knowledge (or so he said) thanks to his studies under an alleged Hermit Crab of Untunchilamon, an improbable individual said to be a philosopher a billion years old.
Now it was a matter of record that anyone who cared to pay the entrance fee could penetrate the Temple of Change in Hepko Cholo and gaze therein upon the horseflesh-manflesh configuration which constituted Edgerley Eden's corporeal form. Hatch had never been, but knew several reliable witnesses who had, including his own elder brother (Oboro Bakendra) and the ever-reliable Shona of the Combat College. On occasion, Hatch had also seen Eden from a distance when the centaur was promenading in the open sunlight, or bathing in the Yamoda.
Yet if Eden had truly chosen this centaur form of his own free will – which was what he claimed – then his choice was illogical in the extreme. For if the world was truly to be inundated by a Great Flood – which was what Eden taught, and what all Evolutionists believed – then it was hard to see how the possession of a horse's legs, belly and tail would be conducive to either happiness or survival. Unfortunately, this note of illogic had yet to strike Penelope herself, even though she had personally decided to meet The End Of The World As We Know It in the form of a catfish.
For his part, Hatch thought the whole of evolutionary theory to be but a total nonsense.
As for this alleged Hermit Crab, enlightened philosopher and Evolutionist extraordinary – well, Hatch had seen the crabs of both land and sea in the course of his peregrinations round Parengarenga, and was convinced that your average crab is no more enlightened than a scorpion. To imagine an unaverage Crab that gave lofty lectures on the Victory of Mind over Form was quite beyond his capacity.
In search of confirmation of his own scepticism, Hatch had consulted with the Combat College, which to his great satisfaction had given him an absolute assurance that there was no such thing as an intelligent crab, let alone a talking crab. This the Combat College had proved out by an exhaustive search of every available database. Crabs were recorded on a great many of the billions of worlds known to humanity, but not a single such animal had yet advanced to the stage of needing to learn its table manners.
Thus Edgerley Eden's Hermit Crab was confirmed as an impossibility.
As for Eden himself, a centaur in the flesh – why, there was no great mystery about that, since centaurs were common in the Permissive Dimensions. Indeed, on some worlds known to the Combat College databases, centaurs were almost as common as dragons. All in all, it was quite reasonable to presume that Eden had been born into a small population of centaurs existing somewhere within a lifetime's traveling distance of Dalar ken Halvar, for all that Eden claimed to have been born as a human on the Ebrell Islands, and to have ventured to Untunchilamon as a humanformed pirate.
Be that as it may, Penelope was certainly enraptured by Eden and his teachings, and donations consequent upon her devotion had led her into debt. There was also the cost of the bath and deliveries of bathwater to bear in mind. Outside of the Combat College, there was no such thing as running water in Dalar ken Halvar, so every drop used for every purpose had to be lugged from the Yamoda River, and such lugging was expensive if done in any great quantity.
"Joma," said Hatch, again challenging his sister with her lawful birthname.
"My name," said Penelope, with that studied female insolence which she had brought to such a pitch of perfection, "is Penelope.
That's my name. If you want to speak to me, then use it."
Hatch brought his wrist to his mouth then kissed it in the Frangoni manner, seeking thereby to moderate his anger.
"Penelope, then," said Hatch, still struggling to control the rage which threatened to upset his judgment as he looked down on the woman in the bathtub. "Penelope. We must talk."
Penelope closed her eyes. She had perfected this manoeuvre during a previous spasm of religious enthusiasm. Her last Perfect Master had believed (or had claimed to believe) that sleep is the better part of life, and that wakefulness is at best a necessary evil. One of his sidelines had been organizing orgies, since he had held orgiastic excess to be the best available soporific. (Hatch had argued about this, claiming that there was nothing to beat a good solid blow on the head for ensuring unconsciousness, but he had lost that argument, or at least Penelope had claimed he had lost it).
"Laa-mo," hummed Penelope.
It was the going-to-sleep mantra taught to her by her previous Perfect Master.
Hatch fished a sodden sponge out of the foot-bowl by the bath. He kissed it, then let it fall. Obedient to the basic laws of physics, the sponge accelerated under the gravitational pull of the planet, and, like a meteorite dragged in from the cold and vacuumous wastelands of outer space, it went hurtling down through the atmosphere until it slammed into Penelope's face.
"Wah!" said Penelope, waking up in great hurry.
"Don't fool around," said Hatch, allowing a hint of his anger to show, "because I'm not in the mood. You're in debt to the tune of half a hundred scorpions, which is just a fraction less than the worth of your flesh."
A scorpion was a gold coin issued by the Silver Emperor. It was exactly equivalent in value to the zeal issued by the Bralsh.
The zeal, however, was a small ring of nine-carat gold bearing interior and exterior banker's marks, whereas the scorpion was a thin coin with a milled edge, with a crown imaged on the face and, on the obverse, the pincer-wielding arachnid for which it was named.
"Half a hundred!" said Penelope. "I'm worth more than that."
"No you're not," said Hatch. "Polk the Cash has had a valuer take a look at you."
"He's done no such thing," said Penelope. "I'd have known."
"You wouldn't have known," said Hatch. "They're very discreet."
"How can he tell what I'm worth when he never saw me with my clothes off?"
"Female, Frangoni, age 25, tall, big-breasted," said Hatch.
"Value, 49 crowns and a fraction. I saw the report myself. You're worth just less than the money you owe."
"So what do you expect me to do about it?" said Penelope.
"You'd better do something," said Hatch. "Because Polk is threatening to claim you as his slave."
"Then let him threaten," said Penelope.
She was either carefree or thoughtfree, one or the other.
Certainly she had never got to grips with the management of money, for this is part of that greater discipline of managing oneself, and Penelope had lived largely unmanaged either by herself or by anyone else.
"He's got a buyer already," said Hatch, striving to make the woman see sense, though he suspected there was no more profit to be had from arguing with Penelope than in arguing with a goldfish.
"The buyer is from the Stepping Stone Islands. He'll take you north, never to be seen again."
"That's a nonsense," said Penelope.
"What do you mean, a nonsense?" said Hatch.
"Just that. I can't be sold, because I'm someone's slave already."
"Whose?" said Hatch.
"The Silver Emperor's, of course."
"What are you talking about?" said Hatch, intensely irritated by this nonsense.
"We're all his slaves," said Penelope. "We Frangoni, I mean."
"No!" said Hatch, dismayed by the immensity of this error.
"You're not his slave at all. Only the men are his slaves."
"What do you mean, only the men?"
"Just that," said Hatch, wondering if his sister really was this ignorant or if this was her idea of a joke. "Only the men are his slaves. The women are free. That's the law."
"Why do the men always get the good things?" said Penelope.
"Because that's how the world was made," said Hatch. "So you're free, and because you're free, you can be bought and sold, which means – Penelope, you've really gone too far this time. Polk can come in here and claim you. Which is exactly what he's going to do. Then he'll sell you to this foreigner, and that man, that man can rape you at will or – or cut off your hair and sell it!"
Hatch hoped to terrify Penelope into a realization of the precariousness of her own position, and thereby to curb the increasing recklessness of her spending. It was possible that, by doing a deal with Lupus Lon Oliver in accordance with the wisdom of Sesno Felvus, Hatch would shortly be in a position to pay off Penelope's debts. But that would bring no joy to anyone if she simply went out and mortgaged herself all over again.
Yet in his attempt to terrify, Hatch proved less than adequate.
"Rape me!" said Penelope scornfully. "Is that what he'll do?"
"Yes," said Hatch, who truthfully thought that there was a strong probability that anyone who bought Penelope as a slave would do exactly that.
"So what do you care?" said Penelope.
"I'm your brother," said Hatch. "Of course I care. I don't want to see you taken, kidnapped, stolen, sold."
"So what do you want?" said Penelope, with surprising bitterness.
"Why," said Hatch, "I want what any brother would want for his sister. To see you married and pregnant."
Hatch was trying hard. Amongst the Frangoni, fecundity was highly valued, and one of the politest things one could say to a woman was "May you soon be pregnant". Hatch seldom said any such thing to his sister, for such formal politesse was not commonly required between brother and sister. But he felt that the stress of the moment called for an extra effort.
"Married!" said Penelope. "Pregnant! Since when have you wanted me either? It was because of you I had to murder my husband."
"Grief of a dog!" said Hatch. "We're not going to go into that again, are we?"
"Why not?" said Penelope. "This is my husband we're talking about. Not a – a flowerpot!"
"Oh come on," said Hatch, annoyed by Penelope's quibbling pettishness. "A fine young woman like you can always get another husband."
"That's not the point," said Penelope. "I had one, and now he's dead."
"Of course he's dead," said Hatch, infuriated by Penelope's obtuseness. "That was the whole point of getting him married. You knew that before you went into it."
"Yes, yes, but you're my brother, so what could I do? You made me a murderer!"
"As I recall," said Hatch, making a heroic attempt to govern the passion of his mounting rage, "it was me who did the killing.
All you had to do was step outside."
"That's all!?"
"Well, yes," said Hatch, who thought he had now won this argument, and that Penelope should acknowledge as much. "Stop making such a fuss! I mean, you weren't in love with him or anything. Were you?"
"What would you know about it?"
"Well of course you weren't. You never even met him till you were married, and then – "
"Then you killed him!" said Penelope.
"If it hadn't been for me," said Hatch, deeply vexed by this continued onslaught, "you'd never have married him in the first place. You'd never even have met him. I found him for you, so it was thanks to me – "
"Yes. You found him. So you're responsible!"
"Responsible?," said Hatch, baffled by this display of female irrationality. "Responsible for what?"
"For killing him!" screamed Penelope. "For killing my husband! Murder, bloody murder, killing him, cutting his throat, stabbing him, slashing him, blood, blood, blood everywhere, you killed him, and he was mine, and – and – and I – I loved him!"
With those final words, her hysteria stammered into irreconcilable grief, and she burst into tears.
Hatch still had no clear conception of what, if anything, he might have done to upset her. True, he had killed her husband, but it should be pure pleasure for a Frangoni girl to help her brother encompass a necessary murder. And even supposing the experience did not prove to be an unalloyed pleasure, it was still a duty for a sister to thus help a brother. But… well, if marriage really meant so much to her | | "If marriage really means so much to you," said Hatch, "you could always marry me."
This was a very great-hearted and self-sacrificing gesture, for Hatch did not by any means want to marry his sister. She knew him well, very well indeed, and he was a true Frangoni male in that he was ever uneasy in the presence of any female who knew too much about him. The Frangoni consider it best to bed with strangers, for to bed with someone is to be emotionally vulnerable, and a stranger is more likely to be ignorant of one's weak points. Consequently, amongst the Frangoni a brother will rarely marry his sister except under the compulsion of a compelling duty.
Penelope squeezed the tears out of her eyes, mastered her sobs, then said:
"You? You're offering to marry me?"
"Yes," said Hatch, already regretting the offer, but putting a good face on it. "It might stall Polk for a month or two."
"Stall Polk!" said Penelope, sorrow turning to outrage. "I should marry you for that? You! Marry you!?"
"Why, yes," said Hatch, starting to feel offended. "Why shouldn't you marry me?"
Asodo Hatch did not consider himself thin-skinned.
Nevertheless, when a man invites a woman to marry him, he is apt to be disconcerted if her reaction is one of baleful fury, and Hatch, being in many ways a very average and conventional man, was so disconcerted.
"Marry you?" screamed Penelope. "You with your wife in drugs and dying? You with your fancy whore on the top of the hill?"
"The Lady Iro Murasaki," said Hatch coldly, "is not a whore."
"She's a whore! A whore, a bitching whore! But I'm no whore, I'm smarter than her, I know you through and through, I'm your sister, I won't be fooled or whored!"
With that, Penelope hurled the wet sponge at Hatch, or tried to. But she underestimated the difficulty of hurling something whilst fully clothed and recumbent in a wooden bathtub half full of water. She banged her elbow painfully – and howled.
Hatch looked down on the woestruck woman with dismay.
Howling broke to sobbing, and in her sobbing Penelope choked out a heartbroken accusation.
"You killed him to rape. To rape me. That's why. You wanted me, wanted me, that's why you killed him. Rapist!"
The situation was painfully difficult, particularly as Hatch felt duty-bound to question his own heart. Had he truly cut down Darius Flute simply so he could take possession of his own sister?
Hatch decided the claim was fatuous. He had absolutely no desire for his sister, even though she bore upon her nose the ceremonial blue and green tattoos which denote a woman who has killed and castrated a would-be rapist. Several ethnologists have written that Frangoni males are inevitably aroused by the implicit challenge posed by such tattoos, but Hatch was not aroused at all.
Even though he knew those tattoos to be true to their boast, he found them distinctly unproductive of desire – an unpleasant reminder of a squalid episode which he would much sooner forget.
"I don't want you," said Hatch. "I never have. I never will."
"Never!" said Penelope.
And, unable to bear such a brutal rejection of her womanly charms, she started to howl again.
Hatch was glad to hear someone at the door, which gave him an excuse to escape from the bathroom, back to the crowded lacquerwork luxury of the outer room. But on venturing to that outer room he was somewhat dismayed to find that the interloper was his elder brother, Oboro Bakendra Hatch. The black-bearded Oboro Bakendra was three years his senior, and was a fanatical priest of the Great God Mokaragash. Relations between the brothers had deteriorated markedly since Oboro Bakendra had joined the priesthood three years earlier, on quitting the Combat College.
On joining the priesthood, Oboro Bakendra had demanded that Hatch cut short his studies in the Combat College and join likewise. Hatch had protested his devotion to the Silver Emperor, the great Plandruk Qinplaqus, whose obedient slave he was.
Whereupon Oboro Bakendra had obtained from the great Qinplaqus a dispensation permitting Hatch to quit his military studies in favor of a religious career if he so chose.
Upon which Hatch had been forced to acknowledge to himself that any career in the service of the Great God Mokaragash would be intolerable if it took place in the shadow of his elder brother Oboro Bakendra, who had inherited the stubbornness, the overbearing arrogance and the explosive anger of their father Lamjuk Dakoto Hatch.
Hatch's decision to remain in the Combat College had led to something of a breach between the two brothers.
As far as Oboro Bakendra was concerned, his younger brother Asodo was polluting himself by his intimate relations with Outsiders. Asodo Hatch was working with the unclean, he was eating with the unclean, and it was an open secret that he was even sleeping with one of the unclean in the manner of lust. Oboro Bakendra had continued to insist that Hatch should abort his Combat College training, and had become more and more insistent as it started to become obvious that Hatch had a good chance of landing a permanent position in that College.
"Hatch!" said Oboro Bakendra, as Hatch emerged from the bathroom and entered upon the outer room.
"I was just leaving," said Hatch. "Penelope is all yours.
She's in the bath."
From the bathroom there came a crash, followed by a scream of female rage. Penelope had started throwing things. As a small girl, she had once knocked out her grandfather with a watermelon, and her temper had not mellowed since.
"It's not her I'm looking for," said Oboro Bakendra. "It's you!"
Oboro Bakendra had come to discipline his younger brother, and he had not come alone. Hatch was conspicuously large, and one of the problems of being a big man is that anyone minded to pick a quarrel with you is going to be forewarned of the need for adequate preparations.
The strength of Oboro Bakendra's preparations became clear as others came crowding into House Jodorunda behind him – his sidekicks and backkicks, a group of like-minded fanatics all armed with sticks. These were not snake-breaking sticks or rods for the chastisement of dogs. Rather, they were knurled and knubbly hardwood clubs built for the breaking of men – or the battery of elephants. And Hatch knew at once that he was in trouble. Nexus battle doctrine holds that one can fight six, but not if the six have each been trained to fight six – and no adult Frangoni male was innocent of the means of slaughter. Hatch started to think he might be better off back in the bathroom with Penelope.
"Well, gentlemen," said Hatch. "What can I do for you?"
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," said Oboro Bakendra. "Flattery, is it? The Age of Flattery is an age long gone, brother mine. This is an Age of Righteousness, an age of punishing wrath."
Hatch was alarmed by the underlying note of womanly hysteria in his brother's histrionics. Oboro Bakendra was winding himself up through rhetoric, which vice, amongst the Frangoni, has ever been one of the preludes to war. Oboro Bakendra's sidekicks and backkicks were sweaty, tight-knuckled, over-focused, fastbreathing. And suddenly Hatch was afraid, afraid of the wood and the iron, the tight-wound sinews and the bunched muscle-backed bone. Vividly he felt – He fought his imagination but he felt – He felt for a moment his teeth snapped back, his jaw clipped to a gurgling crackle as bones in their breakage – "Answer me!"
Oboro Bakendra was shouting, and Hatch in his fear had lost the thread of Oboro Bakendra's rhetoric.
Hatch was so badly frightened that his reaction was anger. He felt the emotions of muscle tightening his focus, gearing him up for battle or breakage, for beserker destruction in the Frangoni battle-mode.
"Answer you," said Hatch, in defiance. Then he caught himself abruptly, and then said – forcing his voice to be soft, to be tender, to be cadenced as a woman's comforting is cadenced – "Answer you? Why, brother mine, you're the one with the answers.
You're older, hence wiser. You have the answers. I need but hear them, for to hear – my brother, to hear is necessarily to obey."
"What speaks?" said Oboro Bakendra, his anger not one whit diminished. "Hatch speaks, or fear speaks?"
This was an accusation of cowardice. Hatch was incensed. He shook with a shuddering fury. He had been born and bred to be strong, valorous, war-glorious and victorious in courage. He had been to war and had proved his blood a hundred times over. But now, now in the shadows of a debt-ridden house, his pride was being smirched, his self-image assaulted, and he did not think he could bear it any longer.
He made as if to move his hand to his lips to kiss it, and thus placate his own anger with ritual. Yet he restrained himself.
When man confronts man, such a gesture is ever construed as an admission of weakness.
– The hand.
In extremis, Hatch remembered a Nexus exercise taught in the Combat College as a measure for controlling rage. He extended his hand, making the fingers light, making them sensitive antennae, conduits of energy. He rested his hand lightly, lightly on the nearest object of convenience – a lacquerwork table, its top richly designed with eels and fish. He let his fingers rest upon the tabletop, stressing their lightness, and imagined his anger running out through those fingers, dissipating, vanishing.
His anger eased.
"Is my brother a coward?" said Oboro Bakendra.
"Tell him your challenge," said Hatch, realizing that mere surrender was not going to get him out of this in one piece. "Tell him your challenge, then you will know him in his nature."
"The challenge is this," said Oboro Bakendra. "You will call your dog to heel. Or else!"
"My dog?" said Hatch.
What was the man riddling about?
Hatch presumed that no actual member of the canine tribe was being referred to, for certainly (it has been stated once above, and let it be stated her a second time in confirmation of the proof of the fact) he owned none such. In fact, his entire household was dog-free but for the mutt which his daughter Onica had got from the Lady Murasaki, and that small and tender animal had never been any trouble to anyone. But after all literal dogs had been examined and discounted, Hatch still had no idea what his dear brother Oboro Bakendra might be referring to.
"Your dog Gezira!" said Oboro Bakendra.
"Son'sholoma?" said Hatch.
"The same," said Oboro Bakendra. "He's been preaching the Nexus, preaching the Nu. Borboth, Borboth, Motsu Kazuka. Bring him to heel, Hatch! It's blasphemy, and it's your dog which speaks it."
"That reckless apostate fool is no dog of mine, nor cat neither," said Hatch. "Still, I've already called him to order as best I can, and there's an end to it."
"Oh no, oh no," said Oboro Bakendra. "He's on the loose, not him but six of them, this Nu, this chala, and all from your thesis. He told me! The blasphemy of gods, you wrote it down. They say – "
"I know what they say," said Hatch. "Or can guess."
"Then do something about it!"
"What can I do?" said Hatch. "I am but the emperor's slave.
It's not for me to give law in Dalar ken Halvar, not to Son'sholoma, no, nor to any other. I'm a slave, even as you are.
What I can do, you can do."
"I've not been within knifestrike of the emperor since my father's funeral," said Oboro Bakendra. "Nor am I likely to be within this month or next. I've not set foot on Cap Ogo Boch for months, whereas you – you're in and out of Na Sashimoko as if it were your second home."
"If I'm diligent in service," said Hatch, "then what of it?
Naturally I'm in and out of the imperial palace. On occasion. But so what? Does that make me rich? Powerful? I doubt either. If visiting palaces brings power, then the man who daily searches the nightsoil from Na Sashimoko should be emperor himself by now! But for all the wealth of his buckets he's nothing, and I likewise."
"Don't lie to me!" said Oboro Bakendra, thumping his fist on a lacquerwork table.
Hatch took a half-step back. Since his earliest youth, he had ever feared his elder brother's temper. And certainly Oboro Bakendra had cause to be angry, for Hatch had certainly been lying. While it was most doubtful that the Silver Emperor would do so much as raise his little finger to help sort out religious disputes on the Frangoni rock, he would still in all probability give Hatch an authorization to resolve this little religious uprising as he saw fit.
Which would mean that Hatch would be free to discretely murder the apostate Son'sholoma Gezira and his followers at a time and place of his choosing. But frankly – "Frankly," said Hatch, "I've no more belly for blood."
"You bitched your sister's husband good and quick," said Oboro Bakendra. "Why not Gezira, then? He's a fighter, perhaps?
Is that it? Is that your nature, Hatch? A killer of the unkilling, a coward in the face of killers – that's you. If it's fear, well, we'll give you something else to fear if you – "
"Brother," said Hatch, again with the grace of a woman, "brother, you came for the family good, for the good of the tribe.
Whatever speaks, it speaks for the good which you sought. Speak, that I may know your wish, that I may know your will."
"You're in a very ready mood today," said Oboro Bakendra, who was searching for a fight rather than for reconciliation.
"I have been too long away from my family," said Hatch, lapsing into ritualistic formality. "I have been feeling my want."
"So," said Oboro Bakendra. He clicked his tongue, and his hand went tap-slap-tap against his thigh – both gestures to which he habitually resorted to in moments of indecision, though Hatch doubted that he was aware of his own mannerisms. "So," said Oboro Bakendra. "So. You take instruction, do you?"
Now Hatch was calm. He had lived through his anger, had accepted that anger, and had dissipated it. In the aftermath of his anger, he felt as if he was floating. He felt very calm. Very clear. He thought for a moment to say: I am yours to command. Then checked himself. That was something a citizen of the Nexus might say, but this was not the Nexus. This was Dalar ken Halvar, and Oboro Bakendra was of the Frangoni rock.
Hatch could simply surrender to Oboro Bakendra and agree to everything Oboro said, but Oboro might think such surrender insincere, or a proof of cowardice. So Hatch decided to again invoke the Frangoni family, the Frangoni blood, the Frangoni nation – and attempt to surrender to that.
"You are ever the eldest," said Hatch. "So the family has been much your concern. Still, as I am grown to a man's estate, it is fitting that I too should meet the concerns of the family."
"You say," said Oboro Bakendra.
Oboro Bakendra was reluctant to concede a truce. Hatch knew what the problem was. The anticipation of conflict is so stressful that one's every resource goes toward gearing for battle. This is why it is very, very difficult to argue an angry man out of his rage: because his rage demands all his resources, and there is no part of him free to consider the possibility of conciliation.
"I was born to the blood," said Hatch. "Can I unblood myself, unbirth myself, or make myself unmothered? This is my sister's house, my brother's shadow. I am of the family, and you speak for the family."
"This I should have heard earlier," said Oboro Bakendra.
And Hatch knew that he had won, or at least was starting to win. This crisis could still end in violence, but Hatch believed he had almost defused it.
In argument, the natural temptation was always to justify oneself, and the need for self-justification was so much a part of Frangoni culture that it sometimes outranked the organic imperatives of physical survival. But in a yes-no conflict, to justify oneself was necessarily to unjustify one's opponent.
Hatch had found a third way, yielding to the higher good of the Frangoni family, and leaving his own dignity at least partially intact both in his own eyes and those of his brother.
As Asodo Hatch and Oboro Bakendra Hatch confronted each other, the pair of them almost but not quite having reached the stage of reconciliation, they heard a voice outside.
"Hatch!" said the voice. "Asodo Hatch! Are you in there?"
Hatch knew that voice. It was Lupus Lon Oliver, the brightsharp Free Corps warrior who would shortly be fighting him for the Combat College's instructorship – unless they could make alternative arrangements for the disposition of the job.
"I'm in here," said Hatch.
"Then come out! Or may I come in? I need to talk to you. I need to talk to you about Gezira, Son'sholoma Gezira."
Hatch looked at Oboro Bakendra, who said, roughly:
"Go to him, then. You see? I'm not alone in thinking your dog needs a beating!"
So Hatch went outside to meet with Lupus Lon Oliver, wondering exactly how much trouble Son'sholoma had managed to cause by his blasphemous preachings, and wondering yet again whether he would truly be forced to kill Son'sholoma before this thing was through.