The Pharoah Contract

Denklar would have to live awhile, unfortunately. When the Uberfactorial met his end, there must be no associated violences for any investigators to find. They might question Denklar, but the innkeeper would be anxious to conceal Anstevic’s visit, lest they discover his contraband. And in a few months, Anstevic would return to Stegatum and snip off that loose thread.

The oil showed him pleasant visions — knives ripping soft bellies, garrotes sinking into soft throats, the innkeeper’s blackened face frozen in fear and disbelief. He enjoyed this satisfying picture for a few minutes, until his pipe had grown cold and stale.

Then he gathered his gear and went out to the stables.

Chapter 10

By midnight, Anstevic had reached the top of the mesa on which Brinslevos Keep was built, and hobbled his striderbeast in a small pocket among the rocks. He took a slipsuit from his saddlebag and exchanged his oil man rags for the near-invisibility of the suit. When he switched it on, he became no more than a flicker of shadow on the moonlit stone, and he walked boldly up to the mesa top sally port and picked the lock.

He gained entry without difficulty; the port was guarded only in times of siege, and since the League’s acquisition of Pharaoh some thirty generations past, no wars had been permitted to disrupt the smooth delivery of product to the League slave pens.

His knowledge of Brinslevos Keep was superficial, but in past visits he had left locator beacons in various parts of the Keep, and now he tuned his finder to the one in Brinslevos’s private chambers. He took an infrared safelight from his pocket and adjusted the slipsuit’s goggles, then set off through the red-gleaming darkness. He met no one else in the corridors.

Fifteen minutes later, he was opening the ark in which Brinslevos kept his pipes and his punkweed. The ark was a fanciful silver effigy of an arroyo lizard, all jaws and teeth, whose head split open to reveal a storage cavity. He lifted out Brinslevos’s humidor of punkweed.

From a pocket of the slipsuit, he drew an atomizer and sprayed the weed. He stirred it to distribute the poison evenly, then returned the humidor to its ark and closed the jaws. The ark made a tiny click, and Anstevic froze. From the Lord’s sleeping chamber came a mutter and a sigh. Silence.

Minutes passed while Anstevic waited, but he heard nothing further, and he finally drifted out of the Lord’s chambers.

When he was back among the rocks in which he had hidden his striderbeast, he pulled back the hood of the slipsuit and laughed with a pure and childish delight. It had been so easy. Brinslevos would insist on buying the Uberfactorial’s wares, and then Brinslevos would die. His guards would hang the Uberfactorial from the battlements immediately — following the odd Pharaohan religious dictum that a victim suffers a year in Hell for every hour that his assassin survives him — and then Anstevic could return to the reliable pleasures of Kobatum, mission accomplished. He would have to wait until that night to confirm the agent’s death, but no matter… the hard part was done. As the dawn washed the mesa top with pale color, Anstevic made himself comfortable under an overhang that would provide some shade at the hottest part of the Pharaohan afternoon.

* * *

In the morning the door slammed back and the hunchback ushered a grim-faced coercer into the cell. Ruiz sat up on his cot and was surprised to recognize Rontleses, from whom he’d bought water his first morning on Pharaoh.

“Greetings, noble coercer,” Ruiz said politely.

“Stand when you speak to me,” answered Rontleses.

Ruiz scrambled from the cot. “As you command.”

Rontleses looked dusty and tired, as though he had just arrived from the catapple plantations. “I’m required to instruct you. Tonight you’ll attend the Lord. He’ll sample your oils, and you’ll accompany him on his journey. Be very careful what you allow him to take. If he becomes ill, he will assume you have poisoned him, and you will suffer a terrible death. The Lord’s executioner is an imaginative man.”

“I’ll bear your instruction in mind at all times,” Ruiz said sincerely.

“See that you do.”

The coercer spun on his heel and left. The hunchback brought in breakfast, which if anything was more unappetizing than supper had been. The rest of the day passed slowly, unenlivened by anything more entertaining than mild gastric distress. Finally Ruiz dozed.

* * *

The rattle of the key in his door woke Ruiz, and he sat up abruptly. His head swam for an instant; then he was ready. The ray of sunlight was gone and the room was dark. He sensed that many hours had passed, that it was very late. Ruiz slid from the bed and over to the wall, poised to deal with any enemies that might appear.

But it was only the hunchback steward, who poked his unlovely head through the doorway. He said nothing, but he grinned and made gestures with his smoky lamp, indicating that Ruiz was to follow.