Part 17 (2/2)

”Marzo Opello,” said a voice in the middle of the glare. ”I'm Lusomai met'Oc.”

Oh G.o.d, Marzo thought. He blinked. There was a dark shape that could just be someone's head. ”Thank you for seeing me,” he mumbled.

”What can I do for you?”

The dark shape was sharpening up. He closed his eyes and opened them again. ”Would you mind bearing with me just a moment?” he said. ”I'm a bit...”

”Yes, sorry about that,” said the voice. It was light and clear, like honey, but sharp as well. ”New guard, a bit over-zealous. I'll have a word with him later. Would you like something to drink?”

”Yes, please,” Marzo said quickly. The voice made a sound like very distant laughter. A moment later, he felt a cup-no, a gla.s.s-pressed into his hand. He gobbled it down. It burnt his throat. Foul stuff, the worst kind of moons.h.i.+ne, made by someone who hadn't got a clue.

”Thanks,” he said.

”Better?”

He could see the face quite clearly. A strong face, young, handsome, topped with wavy golden hair. Bright blue eyes. And, of course, a marked family resemblance.

”How's my brother, by the way?” Luso asked. ”Seen anything of him lately?”

Marzo shook his head. ”He's not staying with us any more,” he said.

Luso nodded. ”Up to something in the savages' country, I gather,” he said, and sighed. ”You know, I've spent years keeping the peace between my brother and my father. This time, I'm not sure I know what to do. Still, I keep trying.” He looked away, snapped his fingers. The gla.s.s was taken from Marzo's hand, and came back a moment later, refilled. ”That's not why you're here.”

”No,” Marzo said.

”It's about young Heddo, I suppose.”

Marzo wished he had more time to think. ”I imagine so,” he replied. ”Maybe you can tell me. You see, we don't really know what happened. I'm guessing you might.”

Luso's eyes opened wide, then he grinned. ”I see,” he said. ”But I guess the Heddo boy's being here's told you what you need to know. He did it-killed the farmer's wife, I mean.”

Marzo decided not to say anything.

”Naturally,” Luso went on, picking up a gla.s.s of his own, ”you won't have heard his side of it.”

”He's got a side?”

Luso laughed. ”Oh yes. He reckons the woman had been messing him around for ages: leading him on, teasing him, playing games. Boring for her, stuck in the house all day with her husband away in the fields, and she'd got used to having men sniffing round after her. Young Heddo reckons he'd had about as much as he could take, and he got mad and killed her. All very sad, but not entirely his fault.”

Marzo put his feelings into the fist he was clenching on his knee rather than his face or his voice. ”He cut off her head,” he said. ”Did he tell you that?”

Luso nodded. ”He said he made a rather feeble attempt at getting rid of the body,” he said. ”He has nightmares about it, apparently; keeps half the men in the bunkhouse awake.” He sipped his drink, appearing to savour it; he must have a tongue like saddle leather. ”I'm not going to pretend he's a lily-white innocent,” he said. ”Not many of them about in the best of circ.u.mstances. My people are a fairly rough lot or they wouldn't be here. But I think we ought to be practical. If I let you take him back, what are you planning to do with him?”

Marzo blinked. ”We haven't really given it any thought,” he said.

”Well, of course not, you've only just found out he did it. But you knew someone did it. What did you have in mind? A rope over the nearest tree?”

Marzo s.h.i.+vered. ”Hardly,” he said. ”I suppose we'd have to hold him in custody till the spring, then send him Home on the s.h.i.+p for trial.”

Luso shook his head. ”That's a lot of fuss and bother,” he said, ”and that's a.s.suming the s.h.i.+p's captain would agree. Big a.s.sumption. Fact is, you people aren't geared up for serious justice. No reason why you should be-you live quiet lives, which is a good thing.”

”Thank you,” Marzo said, because he felt he should.

”Justice,” Luso went on, ”is a fancy name for public revenge, as opposed to murder, which is what they call it when an individual does exactly the same thing. End result's the same: a dead man who was alive and healthy an hour or so ago, a dead body which is no earthly use to anybody, when he could be doing some useful work. Never could see the sense in it myself. But around here, justice simply isn't practical practical. Well, is it? You don't have a prison, you quite naturally baulk at playing executioner. Don't get me wrong, it does you credit. No, what matters isn't justice, or revenge, they're luxuries for city folk back Home. What matters here, where we are, is making sure it doesn't happen again. Practical, you see. Agreed?”

”I suppose so,” Marzo said quietly.

”Well, of course,” Luso said. ”Now, I can't really let you take young Heddo back with you, because I've accepted him into my service so I'm obligated. The rest of the men would be furious, for one thing. What I can do, and I think this is the best solution all round, is to give you my personal guarantee that he won't be allowed to leave the Tabletop. If he does, I'll string him up myself. You have my word on that. Net result, more or less the same as if he's locked up in a cell somewhere, except that with me he'll have to make himself useful. Mucking out horses, carting water, scrubbing the tack-room floor: hard labour, for life.” He grinned. ”Justice, you might say. Well? What do you think?”

It felt as though the bright blue eyes were picking him apart, like a woman's fingernails unpicking st.i.tches. ”It's not really up to me,” Marzo heard himself say. ”But I can put it to the meeting.”

But Luso was shaking his head. ”Not what I heard,” he said. ”Extraordinary plenipotentiary powers for the duration of the crisis, isn't that right? Means it's most certainly up to you and n.o.body else.” He drank the rest of his drink and poured another from a tall stone bottle. ”Now, I'm suggesting to you that the course of action I've outlined is sensible, practical and reasonable in the prevailing circ.u.mstances. Always got to consider the circ.u.mstances. Very few people have the luxury of living their lives in a vacuum. Also, it's not as though you've got a choice, unless you were thinking of coming back here with a posse and trying to take him by force, which I really hope hadn't crossed your mind. Also, I'll throw in compensation, say a hundred ells of good cloth for the widower. Also, I'm asking you as a personal favour to me. Well?”

Marzo looked at him. It was like staring at the sun. He heard a voice that must have been his saying, ”Could you make that a hundred and fifty ells?” and cringed.

Luso laughed, a big noise, like hors.e.m.e.n crossing a bridge. ”I offered a hundred ells,” he said, ”because a hundred ells is all we've got to spare. I can't offer any more, so take it or leave it. Anything they may have told you about the unlimited wealth of the met'Oc is almost certainly wrong. Or I could write you a bill of credit on our bank back Home. Completely worthless, of course. Father says we've got millions there, but it's frozen. We can't touch it, neither can the government. Crazy.” He sat down on the edge of a table, indescribably elegant. How could a human being make a simple movement so beautiful? ”The thing is,” he went on, ”I'm a practical man. I keep the peace. No, don't laugh. It's what I do. I spend my life keeping the peace, that's my job. I keep the peace here between my father and the rest of us. I keep the peace in the colony as a whole.” Marzo must have lost control of his face for a moment because he frowned at Luso. ”You hadn't realised that,” Luso said, ”I'm disappointed. Still, I don't do it to be appreciated. Think about it, will you? By and large, there's no crime in the colony, no violence apart from the occasional domestic, hardly any petty theft, even. You know why? Because every no-good piece of rubbish in the colony comes up here, is why. I collect them, and I keep them in order. Once in a while I take them out raiding, and we steal a few head of cattle-no great loss, they belong to the Company, not real people. I have to do that, or they'd get fractious and out of hand. Also, my father reckons we need men-at-arms, guards, whatever you like to call them, to keep us safe from our enemies.” He shrugged, a big movement, a flow. ”I wouldn't know about that,” he said. ”Maybe we've got enemies at Home who might turn up one day and want to cut our throats. Maybe it's to protect us from your people in the town. Don't ask me. That's politics-my father handles that side of things. He just tells me we need men-at-arms, and I do as I'm told. And I keep the peace. You're looking at me as if I'm mad, but it happens to be true. There's peace, isn't there, by and large? Well?”

Marzo nodded.

”You don't think it just happens,” Luso said. ”It doesn't grow up out of the ground, and the stork doesn't bring it.” He leaned forward a little. Marzo wanted to move, but couldn't. ”All I'm asking is that you do a little bit to help me do my job. You go back to town, tell them the matter's been dealt with and there won't be any more trouble. You're the smartest man in the colony, everybody knows that, and if you say it, they'll listen. I'll do my part and keep young Scarpedino on a tight leash, where he belongs. And if it works out, I can guarantee there won't be any more cattle raids for a good long while. You can give them your word on that, and when it comes true they'll remember who fixed it. They respect you, and with reason. You're better than them, because you're smart.” He smiled, spread his hands in an attractive gesture. ”I think it's a blessing in disguise, what's happened. It's about time we opened a dialogue, and I'm glad to have had a chance to get to know you and establish a working relations.h.i.+p. The main thing is that basically we're on the same side. We want to keep the peace. That's what matters, isn't it?”

Marzo couldn't help remembering the old story about the king who tried to negotiate with the sea. He won: the tide went out. Then it came back in again. ”Of course,” he said.

”And you'll make them see it that way?”

”I'll do my best.”

”Of course you will.” Luso stood up suddenly; the interview was over. ”Now,” he said, ”I expect you'll want to be getting back. The store doesn't run itself. I appreciate you taking the time to come here, and if there are any more problems in the future, you come and see me. And I'd like you to accept this”-he put his hand in his pocket, drew it out and opened it-”as a small token of appreciation.”

Lying on his palm was a large brooch for a man's cloak: gold filigree, with a lump of amber the size of a thumbnail. Marzo tried very hard not to think what it must be worth. Slowly he reached out and let Luso drop it into his hand. ”Thank you,” he said, in a very small voice.

”Pleasure doing business with you,” Luso said. ”If you see my brother, give him my love.”

When Marzo eventually got back to the cart (bag over his head all the way, but at least it was downhill this time) he found the donkey munching contentedly out of a fat nosebag. Say what you like about the met'Oc, he thought, they know how to treat a guest. And it's not every day an ordinary man finds himself being terrified, threatened, outmanoeuvred, reasoned with, beguiled, convinced, flattered and bought, all in the s.p.a.ce of an hour or so.

He pinned the brooch to his coat before he drove home-on the inside, where n.o.body could see it.

When he got home, they told him what had happened.

Ciro Gabelo, the dead woman's husband, had taken his wife's death badly. For several days he stayed in the house drinking his way through the winter supply of beer and cider. When it ran out, he asked the neighbours who were looking after him for some more. They told him they thought he'd probably had enough, which sent him into a rage. He chased them out of the house with a knife, which they interpreted as absolving them from their duty to the bereaved. They went home and barred the door.

Ciro stayed indoors for a day, and left the house very early the next morning. He went to the Heddo farm. From the toolshed he took a muckfork and a beanhook, then kicked his way into the barn, where the six oarsmen were staying. They weren't there. So he went to the house (which the Heddo family had abandoned when the oarsmen came looking for food, after the Heddos cut off supplies) and found them in the kitchen, playing draughts. It seems likely that none of the oarsmen had any idea who he was. He killed the man who opened the door to him with a single thrust of the fork. Its tines got stuck in the man's ribcage and he couldn't pull it out, so he let go of it and went for two men sitting at the kitchen table. He killed one of them with a blow to the head; the other one warded off his attack with his left hand, losing two fingers. Two of the survivors ran out by the back door. The third, who'd been slicing bacon with a folding knife, took a lunge at Ciro, who dodged, kicked him in the back of the knee and hooked him through the shoulder as he fell. He then tried to finish off the man whose fingers he'd just severed, but he slid under the table where Ciro couldn't reach him. This made him furiously angry. He finished off the man who'd tried to knife him, then crossed to the fireplace, flicked a couple of burning logs out of the grate and kicked them under the table where the last survivor was hiding. It was probably at this point that he realised two of the oarsmen were missing. He abandoned the man under the table and ran out of the back door, yelling at the top of his voice. Presumably he searched the farmyard and the outbuildings, but the men were long gone. They had in fact run out into the orchard and hidden in an overgrown lime kiln at the far end. Eventually, Ciro went back to his house, where he was later found hanging from a rafter.

Marzo was silent for a long time after he'd heard all this. Then he said, ”Where are they now?”

”The oarsmen?” Ra.s.so the liveryman looked mildly guilty. ”They're here, in the cellar, tied up. That niece of yours insisted on patching up the man's hand. We told her not to bother-”

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