‘Emmy!’ Althalus overrode her usurpation of his voice.
‘Stay out of this, Althalus. This is between the boy and me. Now then, Eliar, we’ll be meeting priests over there. I want you to show the Knife to every one of them we meet. Can you pretend to be stupid?’
Eliar made a rueful kind of face. ‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘I’m a country boy from the highlands of Arum. We invented stupid.’
‘I’d really prefer it if you called me “Emmy”, Eliar; we don’t have to be so formal. This is the way I want you to do this: when we talk to a priest, put on your best Arum expression and hold the Knife out for him to see. Then you say, “Excuse me, yer priestship, but kin you tell me what’s wrote on this here Knife?”’
‘Probably not with a straight face, Emmy,’ Eliar said, laughing. ‘Is there really anybody in the whole world who’s that simple-minded?’
‘You’d be surprised, Eliar. Practice saying it until you can do it without coming down with the giggles. Now, most of the priests won’t be able to make any sense out of what’s written on the Knife. They’ll either admit that they can’t read it, or they’ll pretend to be too busy to take the time. The one we’re looking for will read it in exactly the same way you did when you read it, and the Knife will sing to you as soon as he reads it aloud.’
‘I sort of thought that was what was going to happen, Emmy. What’s this got to do with enemies, though?’
‘If you do happen to show the Knife to an enemy, he’ll scream and try to cover his eyes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the sight of the Knife will hurt him – probably more than anything has hurt him in his entire life. As soon as somebody does that, drive the Knife right into his heart.’
‘All right, Emmy.’
‘No problems? No questions?’
‘No, Emmy, none at all. You’re in charge of things. If you tell me to do something, I’ll do it. Sergeant Khalor always told us that we’re supposed to obey orders immediately without asking any stupid questions, and your orders are really very simple. If somebody screams when I show him the Knife, he’ll be dead before the echo fades away.’
Emmy reached up one soft paw and stroked his cheek. ‘You’re such a good boy, Eliar,’ she purred.
‘Thank you, Emmy. I try my best.’
‘I hope you’ve been listening very carefully, Althalus. Maybe you should have taken some notes for future reference. It saves so much time when people know how to follow orders without all the endless discussion I get from some people I know.’
‘Can I have my voice back now?’
‘Yes, pet, you may. I’m done with it – at least for right now. I’ll let you know when I need it again.’
The barge took them across the west fork of the River Medyo, and they rode on into the ruins of the city. The priests who lived there wore cowled robes, for the most part, and they had built crude hovels among the ruins. There were some noticeable differences between the various groups of priests. Those who lived in the northern part of the ruins wore black robes, the ones in central Awes were robed in white, and the ones closest to the river fork wore brown. Althalus noted that they tended not to talk to each other very much – except to argue.
‘No, you’ve got it all wrong,’ a black-robed priest from the northern end of town was saying to a fat priest in a white robe. ‘The Wolf was in the ninth house when that happened, not the tenth.’
‘My charts don’t lie,’ the chubby priest replied hotly. ‘The sun had moved to the fourth house by then, and that definitely moved the Wolf to the tenth.’
‘What are they talking about?’ Althalus silently demanded of Emmy.
‘Astrology. It’s one of the cornerstones of religion.’
‘Which religion?’
‘Most of them, actually. Religion’s based on a desire to know what’s going to happen in the future. Astrologers believe that the stars control that.’
‘Are they right?’
‘Why would the stars care what happens here? Besides, most of the stars the priests argue about don’t actually exist any more.’
‘I think that one missed me, Em.’
‘The stars are fire, and fires eventually burn out.’
‘If they’re burned out, why are the priests still arguing about them?’
‘Because they don’t know that they’ve burned out.’
‘All they have to do is look, Em.’
‘It doesn’t quite work that way, Althalus. The stars are a lot farther away than people realize, and it takes a long time for their light to reach us. Probably about half of what you see when you look up at night isn’t really there any more. To put it another way, the priests are trying to predict the future by looking at the ghosts of dead stars.’
Althalus shrugged. ‘It gives them something to do, I suppose.’ He looked around at the ruined buildings and rubble-strewn streets. The robed and cowled priests were moving about singly or in small groups, but there were more conventionally dressed men in Awes as well. He saw one man who’d set up what appeared to be a shop next to a partially collapsed wall. The man had a rough table with pots, pans and kettles on it.
‘Welcome friends,’ the fellow said hopefully, rubbing his hands together. ‘Look and buy. Look and buy. I have the best pots and kettles in all of Awes, and my prices are the lowest you’ll find in any shop here.’
‘Be careful, Althalus,’ Emmy murmured. ‘That’s Khnom. He works for Ghend.’
‘Then Ghend knew that we were coming here?’
‘Maybe not. He might have just spread his agents out to watch for us. Fix Khnom’s face in your mind. We’ll probably run across him again.’
‘Was there anything in particular you were looking for, friend?’ the ostensible merchant asked. He was a small-sized man, and he seemed to be very careful not to look Althalus in the eye.
‘Actually, I need some information, neighbor,’ Althalus replied. ‘I’m not familiar with the proprieties here in Awes. Can I just set up shop in any ruined building that’s empty?’
‘That wouldn’t be a good idea,’ the merchant advised. ‘Most of the business that goes on here in Awes takes place in this middle part of town, and the white-robes who control it sort of expect a “donation” from you before you open for business.’
‘A bribe, you mean?’
I wouldn’t use that word to their faces. Pretend to be some religious simpleton. All priests love feeble-minded parishioners.’ Khnom cast a sly, sidelong glance at Althalus to see how his somewhat sacrilegious remark had gone over.
Althalus kept his face bland. ‘What are their feelings about us pitching our tents at the back of the shop?’ he asked.
‘They’d rather that we didn’t – and you probably wouldn’t want to. They pray a lot, and they’re noisy about it. The rest of us businessmen have a sort of community over by what’s left of the east wall of the city.’
‘How do these priests get the money to buy anything?’
‘They sell horoscopes to gullible people who believe in that nonsense, and they charge a fairly steep price.’
‘Good. They swindle their parishioners, and then we swindle them. I love doing business with a man who devoutly believes he’s more clever than I am. Thanks for the information.’
‘Glad I could help.