Assassins' Dawn (21 page)

Aldhelm’s voice was hesitant. “I spoke too quickly . . . I let my passion for Hoorka . . .” He shook his head. “Valdisa, Thane, you have my apology. My kin should feel sorrow for my outburst.”

“I appreciate your fervor,” said the Thane, “but if you say such a thing again in my hearing, you would do well to look to your blade.”

“I spoke without thinking, Thane, as Valdisa pointed out.” He nodded to her. “But I still hold by the rest. Thane, you’re floundering. You chastised Sartas and myself for failing to kill Gunnar, but you won’t listen to me when I suggest that your chastisement was right, and that we should indeed slay the man. Do you simply enjoy contradicting me, or don’t you know your own mind? We’ll have another contract for Gunnar, if we know Vingi at all. If we—you—choose wrongly, then the Hoorka will die and become lassari scum. You’ve had my counsel. Make your decision as you will.”

And with that, the Hoorka turned to bow to Valdisa—her face still contorted with anger—and walked from the council room.

The closing of the door reverberated in the caverns.

•   •   •

That night.

Sleep never really came to the Thane. He hovered in a twilight landscape between sleep and waking, worry and oblivion; drifting back and forth on some tidal flow he couldn’t control and prey to the misshapen creatures that lurked there. His thoughts were formless and chaotic, as elusive as the chimera of sleep that he chased: a gossamer wisp. The Hoorka lay on his bed, eyes closed to the gray roof of Underasgard, trying to keep his restlessness from waking Valdisa, who slept beside him.

Visitors from the formless dark came:

He saw the vibro arcing toward Aldhelm’s face, moving with an aching slowness and haloed with silver reflections as if seen through a flawed and cloudy glass. Though he tried, he couldn’t hold it back or turn it aside. The blade cut into flesh, leaving a gash that grinned white and bloodless for a moment before—like lava from a fault—the blood welled and flowed. He dropped the blade as the blood stained the side of Aldhelm’s face. He could only mutter, over and over, that he was sorry. Very sorry.

He was sorry that he remained so unsure, so uneasy in his role as Thane. The remainder of the Council meeting had gone badly, destroyed by the acrimony between Aldhelm and himself. The ghost of the younger Hoorka had remained in the room, casting a pall over the talking. Only Valdisa seemed sure of her stand; she defended the code against the hesitant questions of the others while the Thane half-listened, lost in selfish brooding. The others . . . they didn’t know how he felt. Could it be that it
is
necessary to sacrifice the principles that were their foundation? Could it be that survival depended on knowing when to set aside rules? No, please . . . no. If he felt he had a choice, he might choose to simply flee from it all.

The Thane, an ippicator, ran alongside a stream. Green foliage was crushed under his five hoofs, the earth turning black as they pitted the turf. He could sense it, deep within him: the Changing, the day the world would alter itself. The sky was heavy with feeling. Even as he raised his head to look, the clouds dropped the seedlings—the Breathers of Flame—and they descended to sit heavily on the hills above the river: the Change-bringers. He ran along the river, nostrils flaring as he breathed the scent of . . . something new, something fresh. He knew: this would change him, and his fellow ippicators knew it also; as he ran to the Change-bringers, others of his kind joined him. The thundering of their hooves shook the earth, sent birds into screaming flight, battered the trees. But the mud along the riverbank was treacherous. He fell, mewling his sorrow at not being able to see the Change. The muddy waters closed over his head as he bellowed in anger to the bright seedlings on the hill. Water filled his lungs, choking him . . .

The Thane looked into the waters of the river and saw that he wore the face of his true-father. The face was young—and
he
was young once more, just dismissed from the task force that had gleefully joined in the rebellion that followed the suicide-death of the dictator Huard. All his life he’d been trained and honed for that one task—to assassinate that hated despot—and now the madman had taken that life purpose away from him with one stroke of his knife. Chaos, his mentors had always said, is to be preferred to ordered tyranny, to routine tortures, to the rape and plundering of worlds for the satisfaction of one man’s twisted whims. If chaos must follow Huard’s death, then let there be chaos. But Huard had given no one that choice between order and chaos. He’d removed himself suddenly and without warning: the years, the indoctrination, the education, the training, the fanaticism—all were wasted, meaningless. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. He’d watched five of his teachers immolate themselves on a huge pyre, feeling that their earthly task was now finished. They, at least, had seemed pleased. Everyone with any power or ambition now greedily tried to snatch up their portion of Huard’s riches. Garbage pickers. He’d drifted, a trained killer with no reason to kill, a weapon without a target. And he’d eventually come to Neweden, a nowhere world. Yet still a world that could tolerate him only because he was unguilded, lassari, and Neweden would take no special notice of him for that reason. Young, sure, proud—filled with channeled arrogance. Pride that Neweden slowly leached from him. He lived with a lassari woman already cowed from birth, and they had a son. To that son, he gave the knowledge, the training he’d had. On Neweden, if nowhere else, that would be a boon beyond imagination.

The young man had become much like Aldhelm. Aldhelm wasn’t of the original Hoorka, who’d been little more than a motley set of half-criminal lassari. Most of those the Thane had originally gathered to him were gone now, dead or drifted away when they found that the code prevented them from grasping the power or riches they wanted. The Thane had been strong, he had been stubborn, he’d listened to no one but himself. Like Aldhelm.

(The Thane, restless, rubbed his eyes with knuckled hands. His movement stopped the dreams for a moment. He touched Valdisa, felt her breasts and idly stroked a nipple until it swelled and hardened. He drew his legs up, cuddling with her spoon-fashion. He closed his eyes: the dreams had waited in the dark for him.)

Chaos
had
followed Huard’s death, long decades in which worlds were sometimes out of reach, with no contact from the other worlds of humanity. Colonies were sometimes forgotten, sometimes lost. But the Alliance had come, loosely re-structuring the order of human space, allowing a proliferation of variety but placing the rein of order on chaos. Like all governments, it worked sometimes.

Sometime, he knew, he would have to retire and pass on the figurative scepter. But there had always been one more thing to do, one more minor crisis to settle that, when ended, had engendered another. Now came a major cusp, and he was left with uncertainty and the onus of leadership. He had even lost his name somewhere along that path he’d followed and he was left with nothing but a name/title that was heavy with responsibility and—yes—vanity: Thane. He wanted the burden. He didn’t want it.

He did.

Possibly.

In time, he slept, and the dreams left him.

•   •   •

And the next morning . . .

The annoying whine of the doorbuzzer woke the Thane. Valdisa, head pillowed against his arm, stirred next to him. “Yah?” he said, tasting the raw settlings of last night’s mead in his mouth. He kept his eyes closed.

“A new contract, Thane, with payment enclosed.” The doorshield muffled the voice. It sounded dark and distant.

“From whom?” He opened his eyes to see Valdisa staring at him with sleep-rimed eyes. She smiled, closed her eyes again, and snuggled next to him. From beyond the doorshield, he could hear the rustling of parchment, the tearing of a seal.

“It’s from the Li-Gallant Vingi, sirrah.”

“He’s giving us another chance at Gunnar, then?”

Silence freighted with affirmation.

•   •   •

“The Hoorka-thane is here, m’Dame.”

“Send him in.”

“Yes, Regent.”

The desk worker turned from the holo, glanced at the Thane, and pointed to a door across the lobby of the Center. In the high, vaulted ceiling, a glittering spheroid rotated slowly, sending winking lights across the walls and floor.

“Take that corridor, sirrah,” he said. “Then enter the third door on your left.” The Diplo, halfway through his directions, bent his head to sort through the microfiches on his desk. Varied lights from the receiver set into the desk swirled across his features. He didn’t look up again, seemingly forgetting the Thane as the Hoorka, his face set in a scowl, turned and walked to the indicated corridor.

As he walked, he felt resentment building. The cool, impersonal efficiency of the Alliance irritated him like an annoying sound just below the threshold of hearing, sandpapering the bone just behind the ear. Walking into the Diplo Center was to walk out of Neweden’s social structure and all that it implied. It took an effort to restrain himself from simply cursing and walking out again, except that he was afraid that such a grandiloquent gesture would be wasted on these people. They simply didn’t care.
Hoorka do not beg,
he thought, but he was here not to beg, only to ask advice. He—and his world—simply weren’t used to the cumbersome machinery that cocooned a sophisticated society: the words were Cranmer’s, from one of the innumerable long talks that had filled their time together. They struck truth. Neweden had been too long isolated from the mainstream of human culture. Enough generations had passed for them to become used to their slower pace, for customs to diverge. Enough time for them to feel resentment tinged with envy at having to confront that sophistication once more.

The Thane counted doors: one, two (with the image of a mother reaching out loving hands toward him—Nordic model, indeterminate features, and not well-crafted), three—there a doorshield dilated, and he turned to stride through.

The Regent’s office was not the mirror of his dream image. No, the room was too spartan, an arid oasis in the verdant desert of the Center. The ostentatious splendor was missing—the lack of it caused him disappointment rather than satisfaction, for it made it more difficult to maintain his scorn for Alliance practices. There was an animo-painting on one wall and a soundsculpture in a corner. The desk (from behind which the Regent motioned for him to enter) was stripped of any bureaucratic clutter. An inverted d’Embry stared from the varnished surface. She waved a yellow-tinted hand at the only other piece of furniture in the room, a hump-chair extruded from the floor.

“Please be seated, Thane.”

He took the chair, feeling it move beneath him as it adjusted to his size. D’Embry folded her hands and rested her chin on them. “What can I do for Hoorka?” she asked, her voice as antiseptic as the room. The Thane realized now, having seen the environment in which she chose to live, that what he had taken for haughtiness was simply the manner of a busy and rather reclusive person. This office wasn’t built for visitors, wasn’t designed to accommodate anyone other than the woman who normally occupied it. The knowledge didn’t relieve him. It was easier to dislike a cultural set than an individual.

“I assume you’re aware of the new contract for Gunnar,” he said without preamble.

A faint smile ghosted across the Regent’s face. “My sources
have
mentioned it to me—and they’ve told me who signed that contract. Since there is no one else present but you and me, I don’t feel any compunction to have it remain a pretended secret between us. I’m afraid I find the Li-Gallant rather unimaginative. I’d expected—and, I confess, hoped for—a more devious form of testing the Hoorka. I certainly could have devised a better method.”

The Thane ignored the last sentence. If it were an attempt at humor, he didn’t find it amusing; if it were the truth, he didn’t care for her honesty. “Gunnar hasn’t the finances to void this contract, no matter who has signed it.”

“So you won’t admit that the Li-Gallant is the signer? Ah, well. I do realize that what you say about Gunnar’s finances is true. His guild is growing in popularity, but popularity, even on Neweden, doesn’t guarantee wealth. He’s not backed by the right guilds yet, especially since Ricia Cuscratti was killed and her guild withdrew their proxy vote from him. And that reminds me to ask a question. Does it bother the Hoorka that you are essentially working for the rich? It’s a point of interest to myself and the Alliance.”

The Thane forced his face to show nothing. He made his words sound as icily removed as the Regent’s. “In most societies, wealth is a sign of power, real or acquired through other means. Those endowed with survival traits will survive, and money makes survival easier. That’s one answer. And remember that we only attempt the assassination. Gunnar can—and did, in fact—escape us. And that’s also survival, in a rude and perhaps crueler form. It’s real, nonetheless. We’ve no desire to anger the gods concerned with the timing of a person’s life. We are not images of Hag Death, and Dame Fate is our mentor.”

“You don’t find that philosophy rather simplistic?”

“I leave judgment on such things to scholars like Sondall-Cadhurst Cranmer. The code works, and Neweden accepts it as fitting into their structure. Surely you’ll read Cranmer’s treatise on the Hoorka, when he finishes it.”

“I will.” Flatly. Her chin rose from her clasped hands and sank again. Her tunic folded around her neck as she moved, and the Thane caught a glimpse of the ippicator medallion in the hollow of her throat. “It seems cruel,” she said.

“The 45th code-line states that the Hoorka will not accept more than two contracts for the life of any one individual.”

“Ahh, a change in the code?”

The Thane searched the voice for sarcasm and found none. “An addendum to the code, m’Dame.” He spoke carefully, choosing his words. “The code is a growing entity. We’ve no intention of serving as a policing force for the rich
or
the poor. We endeavor only to be fair—and to survive.”
There. Is that what the bitch wants to hear?