Collected Short Fiction, page 808
Manneran, the city, must also have enjoyed special divine blessings. Its site is the finest natural harbor in all Velada Borthan, a deep-cut bay framed by two opposing fingers of land, jutting toward one another in such a way that no breakwaters are needed there and ships sit easily at anchor. This harbor is one mighty source of the province’s prosperity. It constitutes the chief link between the eastern and western provinces, for there is little landborne commerce across the continent by way of the Burnt Lowlands and, since our world lacks natural fuels, so far as we know, airborne traffic is never likely to amount to much here. So ships of the nine western provinces travel eastward through the Strait of Sumar to the port of Manneran and ships from Manneran make regular calls on the western coast. The Mannerangi then retail western goods to Salla, Glin and Krell in their own vessels, reaping the usual profits of go-betweens. The harbor of Manneran is the only place on our world where men of all thirteen flags may be seen at once; and this busy commerce spills an unending flow of wealth into the coffers of the Mannerangi. In addition, their inland districts are rich in fertility, even up to the Huishtor slopes, which in their latitudes are unfrozen except at the summits. The farms of Manneran have two or three harvests a year and, by way of Stroin Gap, the Mannerangi have access to the Wet Lowlands and all the strange and valuable fruits and spices produced there. Small wonder, then, that those who love luxuries seek their fortunes in Manneran.
As if all this good fortune were not enough, the Mannerangi have persuaded the world that they live in the holiest spot on Borthan and multiply their revenues by maintaining sacred shrines as magnets for pilgrims. One might think that Threish, on the western coast, where our ancestors first settled and the Covenant was drawn up, would put itself forward as a place of pilgrimage second to none. Indeed, there is some sort of shrine in Threish and westerners too poor to travel to Manneran visit it. But Manneran has established itself as the holy of holies. The youngest of all our provinces, too, except only the breakaway kingdom of Krell; yet by a show of inner conviction and energetic advertisement has Manneran managed to make itself sacred. There is irony in this, for the Mannerangi hold more loosely to the Covenant than any of us in the thirteen provinces; their tropical life has softened them somewhat and they open their souls to one another to a degree that would get them ostracized as selfbarers in Glin or Salla. Still, they have the Stone Chapel, where miracles are reliably reported to have occurred, where the gods supposedly came forth in the flesh only seven hundred years ago, and it is everyone’s hope to have his child receive his adult name in the Stone Chapel on Naming Day. From all over the continent they come for that festival, to the vast profit of the Mannerangi hostelkeepers. Why. I was named in the Stone Chapel myself.
WHEN we were docked in Manneran and the longshoremen were at work unloading our cargo I collected my pay and left ship to enter town. At the foot of the pier I paused to pick up a shore pass from the Mannerangi immigration officials. “How long will you be in town?” I was asked. Blandly I replied that I meant to stay among them for three days, although my real intent was to settle for the rest of my years in this place.
Twice before had I been in Manneran: once just out of my infancy, to be bonded to Halum, and once when I was seven, for my Naming Day. My memories of the city amounted to nothing more than vague and random patterns of colors: the pale pink, green and blue tones of the buildings, the dark green masses of the heavy vegetation, the black solemn interior of the Stone Chapel. As I walked away from the waterfront those colors bombarded me again and glowing images out of my childhood shimmered before my dazzled eyes. Manneran is not built of stone, as our northern cities are, but rather of a kind of artificial plaster, which they paint in light pastel hues, so that every wall and facade sings joyfully and billows like a curtain in the sunlight. The day was a bright one and the beams of light bounced gaily about, setting the streets ablaze and forcing me to shade my eyes. I was stunned also by the complexity of the streets. Mannerangi architects rely greatly on ornaments; the buildings are decked with ornate ironwork balconies, fanciful scrollings, flamboyant rooftiles, gaudy window-draperies, so that the northern eye beholds at first glance a monstrous baffling clutter, which resolves itself only gradually into a vista of elegance and grace and proportion. Everywhere, too, are plants: trees line both sides of each street, vines cascade from window-boxes, flowers burst into bloom in curbside gardens and the hint of lush vegetation is evident in the sheltered courtyards of the houses. The effect is refined and sophisticated, an interplay of jungle profusion and disciplined urban textures. Manneran is an extraordinary city, subtle, sensuous, languorous, overripe.
My childhood recollections did not prepare me for the heat. A steamy haze hung over the streets. The air was wet and heavy. I felt I could almost touch the heat, could seize it and grasp it, could wring it like water from the atmosphere. It was raining heat and I was drenched in it. I was clad in a coarse, heavy gray uniform, the usual wintertime issue aboard a Glinish merchant ship, and this was a sweltering spring morning in Manneran; two dozen paces in that stifling humidity and I was ready to rip off my chafing clothes and go naked.
A TELEPHONE directory gave me the address of Segvord Helalam, my bondsister’s father. I hired a taxi and went there. Helalam lived just outside the city, in a cool, leafy suburb of grand homes and glistening lakes; a high brick wall shielded his house from the view of passersby. I rang at the gate and wailed to be scanned. A voice within the house, some butler, no doubt, queried me over the scanner line and I replied, “Kinnall Darival of Salla, bondbrother to the daughter of the High Justice Helalam, wishes to call upon the father of his bondsister.”
“The Lord Kinnall is dead,” I was informed coldly, “and so you are some impostor.”
I rang again. “Scan this and judge if he be dead,” I said, holding up to the machine’s eye my royal passport, which I had kept so long concealed. “This is Kinnall Darival before you and it will not go well with you if you deny him access to the High Justice!”
“Passports may be stolen. Passports may be forged.”
“Open the gate!”
There was no reply. A third time I rang and this time the unseen butler told me that the police would be summoned unless I departed at once. I had not reckoned on any of this. Would I have to go back to town, take lodgings, write Segvord Helalam for an appointment and offer evidence that I still lived?
By good fortune I was spared those bothers. A sumptuous black groundcar drew up. of a kind used generally only by the highest aristocracy, and from it stepped Segvord Helalam, High Justice of the Port of Manneran. He was then at the height of his career and he carried himself with kingly grace: a short man but well constructed, with a fine head, a florid face, a noble mane of while hair, a look of strength and purpose. His eyes, an intense blue, were capable of flashing fire and his nose was an imperial beak, but he canceled all his look of ferocity with a warm, ready smile. He was recognized in Manneran as a man of wisdom and temperance. I went immediately toward him, with a glad cry of “Bondfather!” Swinging about, he stared at me in bewilderment and two large young men who had been with him in his groundcar placed themselves between the High Justice and myself as though they believed me to be an assassin.
“Your bodyguard may relax,” I said. “Are you unable to recognize Kinnall of Salla?”
“The Lord Kinnall died last year,” Segvord replied quickly.
“That comes as grievous news to Kinnall himself,” I said. I drew myself tall, resuming princely mien for the first time since my sad exit from the city of Glain, and gestured at the High Justice’s protectors with such fury that they gave ground, slipping off to the side. Segvord studied me carefully. He had last seen me at my brother’s coronation; two years had gone by since then and the last softness of childhood had been stripped from me. My year of felling logs showed in the contours of my frame, my winter among the farmers had weathered my face and my weeks as a sailor had left me grimy and unkempt, with tangled hair and a shaggy beard. Segvord’s gaze cut gradually through these transformations until he was convinced of my identity; then suddenly he rushed at me, embracing me with such fervor that I nearly lost my footing in surprise. He cried my name and I cried his; then the gate was opening and he was hurrying me within. The lofty cream-colored mansion loomed before me, the goal of all my wanderings and turmoil.
I WAS conducted to a pretty chamber and told that it was to be mine. Two servant girls came to me. Plucking off my sweaty seaman’s garb, they led me, giggling all the while, to a huge tiled tub, bathed and perfumed me, cropped my hair and beard somewhat and let me pinch and tumble them a bit. They brought me clothes of fine fabric, of a sort I had not worn since my days as royalty, all sheer and white and flowing and cool. And they offered me jewelry, a triple ring set with I later learned—a sliver of the Stone Chapel’s floor, and also a gleaming pendant, a tree crystal from the land of Threish, on a leather thong. At length, after several hours of polishing, I was deemed fit to present to the High Justice. Segvord received me in the room he called his study, which actually was a great hall worthy of a septarch’s palace, in which he sat enthroned even as a ruler would. I recall feeling some annoyance at his pretensions, for not only was he not royal, but he was of the lower aristocracy of Manneran. He had been of no stature whatever until his appointment to high office had put him on the road to fame and wealth.
I asked at once after my bondsister Halum.
“She fares well,” he said, “though her soul was darkened by the tidings of your supposed death.”
“Where is she now?”
“On holiday, in the Sumar Gulf, on an island where we have another home.”
I felt a chill. “Has she married?”
“To the regret of all who love her, she has not.”
“Is there anyone, though?”
“No,” Segvord said. “She seems to prefer chastity. Of course, she is very young. When she returns, Kinnall, perhaps you could speak to her, pointing out that she might think now about making a match, for now she might have some fair lord, while in a few years’ time there will be new maidens ahead of her in line.”
“How soon will she be back from this island?”
“At any moment,” said the High Justice. “How amazed she will be, to find you here!”
I ASKED him concerning my death. He replied that word had come two years earlier that I was mad and had wandered, helpless and deluded, into Glin. “Then,” he said, “there were reports that the Lord Stirron had sent agents into Glin after you, so that you could be brought back for treatment. And lastly, this summer past, one of your brother’s ministers gave it out that you had gone roaming in the Glinish Huishtors in the pit of winter and had been lost in the snows—in a blizzard no man could have survived.”
“But of course the Lord Kinnall’s body was not recovered in the warm months of the year gone by and was left to wither in the Huishtors, instead of being brought back to Salla for a proper burial.”
“There was no news of finding the body, no.”
“Then obviously,” I said, “the Lord Kinnall’s body awakened in the springtime, trekked about on a ghostly parade, went its way southward and now at last has presented itself on the doorstep of the High Justice of-the Port of Manneran.”
Segvord laughed. “A healthy ghost!”
“A weary one, as well.”
“What befell you in Glin?”
“A cold time in more ways than one.” I told him of my snubbing at the hands of my mother’s kin, of my stay in the mountains and all the rest. When he had heard that, he wished to know what my plans were in Manneran; to this I replied that I had no plans other than to find some honorable enterprise, succeed in it, marry and settle down, for Salla was closed to me and Glin held no temptations. Segvord nodded gravely. There was, he said, a clerkship open at this very moment in his office. The job carried little pay and less prestige and it was absurd to ask a prince of Salla’s royal line to accept it, but still it was clean work, with a fine chance of advancement, and it might serve to give me a foothold while I acclimated myself to the Mannerangi way of life. I told him at once that I would gladly enter his employ, with no heed to my royal blood, since all that was behind me now, done with and imaginary besides. “What one makes of himself here,” I said soberly, “will depend wholly on his merits, not on the circumstances of rank and influence.” Which was, of course, pure piffle: instead of trading on my high birth, I would instead here make capital out of being bondbrother to the High Justice of the Port’s daughter, a connection that had come to me because of my high birth alone—and where was the effect of merit in any of that?
THE searchers are getting closer to me all the time. Yesterday, while on a long walk through this zone of the Burnt Lowlands, I found well south of here the fresh track of a groundcar impressed deep in the dry and fragile crust of the red sand. And this morning, idly strolling in the place where the hornfowl gather drawn there by some suicidal impulse, maybe—I heard a droning in the sky and looked up to see a plane of the Sallan military passing overhead. One does not often see sky-vehicles here. It swooped and circled, hornfowl-fashion, but I huddled under a twisted erosion-knoll and I think I went unnoticed.
I might be mistaken about these intrusions: the groundcar just some hunting party casually passing through the region, the plane merely out on a training flight. But I think not. If there are hunters here, I am the prey they hunt. The net will close about me. I must try to write more quickly and be more concise; too much of what I need to say is yet untold and I fear being interrupted before I am done. Stirron, let me be for just a few more weeks!
VIII
THE High Justice of the Port is one of Manneran’s supreme officials. He holds jurisdiction over all commercial affairs in the capital. If there are disputes between merchants they are tried in his court and by treaty he has authority over the nationals of every province, so that a seacaptain of Glin or Krell, a Sallan or a westerner, when hailed before the High Justice, is subject to his verdicts with no rights of appeal to the courts of his homeland. This is the High Justice’s ancient function, but if he were nothing but an arbiter of mercantile squabbles he would hardly have the grandeur that he possesses. However, over the centuries other responsibilities have fallen to him. He alone regulates the flow of foreign shipping into the harbor of Manneran, granting trade permits for so many Glinish vessels a year, so many from Threish, so many from Salla. The prosperity of a dozen provinces is subject to his decisions. Therefore he is courted by septarchs, flooded with gifts, buried in kindnesses and praise, in the hope that he will allow this land or that an extra ship in the year to come. The High Justice, then, is the economic filter of Velada Borthan, opening and closing commercial outlets as he pleases; he does this not by whim but by consideration of the ebb and flow of wealth across the continent.
The office is not hereditary, but the appointment is for life. A High Justice can be removed only through intricate and well-nigh impracticable impeachment procedures. Thus it comes to pass that a vigorous High Justice, such as Segvord Helalam, can become more powerful in Manneran than the prime septarch himself. The septarchy of Manneran is in decay in any case; two of the seven seats have gone unfilled for the past hundred years or more and the occupants of the remaining five have ceded so much of their authority to civil servants that they are little more than ceremonial figures. The prime septarch still has some shreds of majesty, but he must consult with the High Justice of the Port on all matters of economic concern. And the High Justice has entangled himself so inextricably in the machinery of Manneran’s government that it is difficult to say truly who is the ruler and who the civil servant.
On my third day in Manneran, Segvord took me to his courthouse to contract me into my job. I, who was raised in a palace, was awed to see the headquarters of the Port Justiciary; what amazed me was not its opulence (for it had none) but its great size. I beheld a broad yellow-colored brick structure, four stories high, squat and massive, that seemed to run the entire length of the waterfront, two blocks inland from the piers. Within it at worn desks in high-ceilinged offices were armies of drudging clerks, shuffling papers and stamping receipts. Segvord led me on an endless march through the building, receiving the homage of the workers as he passed their dank and sweaty offices; he paused here and there to greet someone, to glance casually at some half-written report, to study a board on which, apparently, the movements of every vessel within three days’ journey of Manneran were being charted. At length we entered a noble suite of rooms, far from the bustle and hurry I had just seen. Here the High Justice himself presided. Showing me a cool and splendidly furnished room adjoining his own chamber, Segvord told me that this was where I would work.
The contract I signed was like a drainer’s: I pledged myself to reveal nothing of what I might learn in the course of my duties, on pain of terrible penalties. For its part the Port Justiciary promised me lifetime employment, steady increases of salary and various other privileges of a kind princes do not normally worry about.
Quickly I discovered that I was to be no humble inkstained clerk. As Segvord had warned me, my pay was low and my rank in the bureaucracy almost nonexistent, but my responsibilities proved to be great ones; in effect, I was his private secretary. All confidential reports intended for the High Justice’s eyes would cross my desk first. My task was to discard those that were of no importance and to prepare abridgements of the others, all but those I deemed to be of the highest pertinence, which went to him complete. If the High Justice is the economic filter of Velada Borthan, I was to be the filter’s filter, for he would read only what I wished him to read and make his decisions on the basis of what I gave him Once this was clear to me I knew that Segvord had placed me on the path to great power in Manneran.
