The River Wall (10 page)

“Boy,” he said at last, “you look like you just walked across the Strofaan.”

“Not this time,” I said. “I rode.”

His scarred face was unreadable as he took a long drink of faen. “‘Not this time?’” he quoted. “You make that a habit?”

“I’ve done it once or twice,” I said. “And only when I had no choice.”

He finished the faen and said quietly: “Well, son, that’s no more surprise to me than seeing you here at all, still breathing. I figured Worfit woulda collected that sword of yours a long time before now.”

“He’s tried hard enough,” I said. “Thanks for the reminder; I had almost forgotten about him.”

That finally shook the old man’s composure.

“Almost forgotten—” he began, then interrupted himself to wave away the server who was bringing him a refill. “Son, you got problems bigger’n Worfit, we got no business discussing ’em in public.” He stood up. “My place ain’t no Supervisors house, but it’ll sleep two people, as long as they’re friends. C’mon.”

Without waiting for me to agree, he started out of the diner. I took a little longer, and he was looking around impatiently when I finally stepped out into the street, a stoppered ceramic jug in one hand.

Ligor grinned widely enough to show that some of his back teeth were missing. “I like the way you think, son,” he said.

I had thought Ligor to be joking about the size of his home, but it
was
tiny—little more than a sitting room with an attached sleeping area, which was barely big enough for one sleeping mat. If I stayed, the floor of the sitting room would be my bed. The small house was one of several surrounding a larger building that contained, according to Ligor, the best bathhouse and the worst food in Krasa.

“So now you know why the folks at the diner know me so well,” he said. “I stay here because it’s clean and—ahem—Profa, the lady who owns the place, has other talents I value higher’n good cooking.”

Ligor started rummaging on a littered shelf, and finally turned back to me with two chipped clay bowls in his hands. His face darkened when he saw me smiling. I put up my hands to forestall whatever he might say.

“Ligor, I mean neither you nor the lady any disrespect, believe me. I’m only glad for you.”

“Not amazed that somebody would find this ugly face attractive?” he asked, still embarrassed.

“Not amazed at all,” I said sincerely. He waited a moment, and then nodded. He held out the drinking bowls; I pulled the wooden stopper out of the jug and poured faen into both bowls. We drank together, then sat down on the benches that jutted out from the wall in one corner. With two blocky chairs, they formed the seating accommodations for a dining-style table. It had once borne a smooth mosaic of small tiles, but now its surface was uneven and pocked where pieces had come loose. I noticed that although the room was understandably cluttered, it was clean. I set my bowl on the table and refilled it.

“I want you to tell me everything you know about Ferrathyn,” I told Ligor. He nearly dropped the bowl he was offering for a refill.

“Well now, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you? That’s probably the last thing I’d expect you to ask, son. ‘Where’s Worth?’ ‘I need money.’ ‘Send a message for me.’ Those I might expect. But Ferrathyn? What in Zanek’s name—”

“Please, Ligor,” I interrupted him. “I’ll explain later. Right now, I just need to know about him. When did he come to Raithskar? When did he become a Supervisor? Whom did he replace? When did he become the Chief Supervisor? I know you quit shortly after that. You’ve already told me that it was basically because of Ferrathyn. I want to know the details. I
need
to know—
before
I tell you what it’s all about.”

Smart move
, I scolded myself.
You’ve only been wondering for days whether to take Ligor into your confidence, and now you’re committed to it without thinking it through. Still
, I considered, looking at the rough man who had been Markasset’s friend and who had accepted the differences in me with an attitude of minding his own business,
I could do worse than trust Ligor. I would probably have decided to tell him, anyway.

Ligor shrugged, kicked one of the chairs around and put his feet up on it, and leaned back against the wall.

“All right, son—Rikardon, as you’re called now. First you gotta know about me. My daddy was a vlek handler, and I grew up hating the sight and sound and smell of the beasts, and knowin’ that was not the way I wanted to spend my life. Still, I was caravan-born, and the caravans were all I really knew.”

I understood what he meant. During the short stint Tarani and I had spent working as vlek handlers, we had encountered almost an elite spirit among them, and something of the parent-to-child tradition maintained in most of Gandalara’s other skill areas. But even knowing that it was often true, it was entirely beyond my capacity to envision a kid growing up with
ambition
to be a vlek handler.

“I was bigger’n some,” Ligor said, “and not afraid of a fight. I started working as a guard, I was young, and cocky, and I guess you see where that led. The other guards taught me
how
to fight—the hard way.” He stretched. “All the time my dad and I had been working caravans, we never crossed the Chizan passage. Well, I took it into my head to see the other side of the world for a change. We heard the stories, you know—about how every caravan hired hundreds of guards to see them through past the Sharith.” He snorted. “Hogwash, of course. But jobs were scarce just about then, and I was young. I was downright fed up with doin’ nothing most of the time. When I did catch some sneakthief tryin’ to make off with part of the goods, half the time the thief was one of my folk.”

I noticed his phrasing and thought:
I guess your beginnings are always with you.

“So I waited for a caravan going to Chizan, then caught one in Chizan going to Raithskar.” He shook his head, pulled his torso forward, and poured some more faen. “When I saw Raithskar, so shiny and clean and cool, I knew I had to stay. There’s no prettier place in this world, son. I know; I’ve been near everywhere you can go.”

“You won’t get any argument from me,” I said, and we drank together in a toast to Raithskar.

“There was only one thing I could do well, so I went to the Chief of Peace and Security and asked him to hire me. He laughed in my face, and put me in a clerks job. Best thing ever happened to me. I learned more about the job in that one year than I’d have gotten out of five years of standard guard duty. Oh, I got to do that after a while, too—old Yolim must have felt sorry for me or somethin’, because he kinda took charge of my training himself.”

“He recognized potential when he saw it,” I said.

“Well, anyway, by the time he retired, I’d been working for him some fifteen years, and I knew his job inside out. He had a lot of respect in that city, especially from the people who worked for him. Everybody knew I was supposed to take his place. Everybody but one Supervisor, that is.”

Ligor paused, so I said what he expected me to say: “Ferrathyn.”

Ligor nodded.

“Then your—um—disagreement with him after he became Chief Supervisor wasn’t the first one you’d had.”

“Hardly. First, I could not stand to be around the man; just standing next to him made the fur on the back of my neck crawl up. Never understood that reaction—everybody else seemed to like him. He kind of reminded me of the people who travel
with
a caravan. They always kinda think they’re better than the folks who belong there….” He paused, searching for more words.

“I know what you mean, Ligor. Was that the only reason you didn’t like Ferrathyn?”

“Not on your life,” he said. “Like I said, being around him kinda scared me. And I didn’t like what I saw him doin’ to other people. The man has an absolute genius for persuasion, son,” Ligor said, shaking his head. “And I fell for it just like everybody else. Until one time he came into our office wanting something that was downright illegal. I started to do it, too—but all of a sudden it dawned on me that this little guy was pushin’ me around, just as if he were one of the big guards on the caravan. I’d come to Raithskar to get out of that, and I was fleabitten if I’d stand for it!”

He sipped his faen.

“I told Supervisor Ferrathyn what he could do with his special request. He was mad—so mad his eyes kinda glowed. But he left, and he never asked me for that kind of thing again.” Ligor stared at the wall. “Made me wonder if Yolim woulda done it.”

“Done what?” I asked, and Ligor laughed bitterly.

“Now, there’s another reason the man spooked me. When he walked out of the office, I was furious. I was ready to go to Yolim and tell him what had happened. I wanted to know if ‘special favors’ for Ferrathyn were so common that he had expected me to go along with him.

“I went to Yolim’s house, practically busted the door down, and when we were face-to-face …

“I couldn’t remember what Ferrathyn had asked me to do.”

“You don’t have
any
idea?” I prompted.

Ligor shrugged. “It needed writing, that’s all I remember—and
that
only because I still had the writing brush in my hand.” He looked at me sharply. “Do
you
know, son?”

“We may be able to figure it out,” I said, “but right now, let’s get back to when you became Chief of Peace and Security. What reason did Ferrathyn give for not wanting to follow Yolim’s wishes?”

“He made up a new rule that the Chief had to be a native of Raithskar. I—uh—think he had his own idea of who to appoint. The rest of the Council didn’t support him then, but by the time I quit two years later, they had come around to his way of thinking.”

“Ferrathyn was
pushing
for Zaddorn?” I asked, thinking of the conflict I had seen between the two men.

Could that all be just an act?
I wondered.

Ligor must have noticed my alarm, but he answered calmly. “Yeah, he wanted Zaddorn in that spot. I remember thinking—” He frowned.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I just put some things together for the first time, that’s all. When I heard Zaddorn was going to be Chief, I remember thinking he was being repaid for past favors.”

“And?” I prompted.

“The day Ferrathyn tried to make me do something to our records, I was just filling in. The regular clerk, who was out that day, was Zaddorn.”

“Are you saying that Zaddorn
did
whatever Ferrathyn had wanted you to do?” I demanded. “That he owes his position as Chief to that one thing?”

Could Zaddorn be so easily controlled?
I thought.
No,I won’t believe it. Ferrathyn was clumsy enough to try to control Ligor; he might have installed Zaddorn on the assumption that the younger man would be easier to manipulate.

He might have been surprised, too—and finally wise enough to stick with that mistake instead of trying out a new one.

Ligor slammed his bowl down on the table, chipping its bottom yet again on the sharp, uneven marble mosaic.

“Fleas, man,” he said. “I’m saying that whole incident is like an itch I can’t scratch. I’ve been worrying at it for ten years or more, now. I didn’t know half of what I just told you, right after it happened. I’ve been digging it out, little by little—but the final piece still will not come. What
was
it Ferrathyn wanted me to do?”

His eyes narrowed. “And when are you gonna tell me what this is all about?”

“As soon as you tell me why you quit your job,” I said.

“I quit because I couldn’t get anything done,” he said. “Everything I did was criticized by Ferrathyn before the Council. They supported me—I suppose they knew how little we liked each other—but I expect they were relieved when I submitted my resignation.

“Now,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “its your turn.”

“This story, too, starts outside of Raithskar. In fact,” I said, and took a deep breath, “it begins half a lifetime ago, in Eddarta …”

By the time I had finished telling Ligor the truth about the Ra’ira, Ligor was on his feet, pacing and angry.

“All right,” he said, “all right. I don’t wanna seem unconcerned about the state of things in Raithskar now—to tell you the truth, it’s gonna take me a little while to absorb that—but I wanna know what this means to that fleabitten itch. Are you saying that Ferrathyn used his mindpower on me?”

“Twice,” I agreed. “Once to try to make you
do
—whatever it was. Again to make you
forget
—whatever it was.”

“Why didn’t I do it?” he asked me.

“How can you be sure you
didn’t
do it?”

Ligor said, “Now, just a minute—” He stopped, staring at me. He started to pace the tiny room again, muttering to himself. After a while, he sank back down on the bench beside the table.

“I guess,” he said with a sigh, “there’s no way to believe only half of this. You’re right, son—if he could make me forget, he could make me believe anything. I’m fleabitten, though, if I can figure any reason for him to do it that way.”

“I have the same question,” I said. “I don’t think I have it clear about the timing. Was Ferrathyn already a Supervisor when this happened?”

“No, but he was already well known to the Supervisors. Even before I arrived in Raithskar, Ferrathyn had volunteered for service to the Council. By the time that—thing—happened, he was kind of a general assistant. He worked in the Council building, and everything. Most folks gave him what he wanted just because he generally represented the wishes of the Council.”

I rubbed my headfur, remembering Zaddorn’s scroll-laden desk. “What kinds of records does your office keep?”

Ligor shrugged. “Work histories of the officers, details of anything we get involved in—”

“What is it?” I asked when he paused. “Have you remembered something?”

“Yeah,” he said excitedly. “It seems to me that I had just filed a decision with the Council on the death of a Supervisor.”

“Decision?” I echoed.

“When somebody dies suddenly, the Peace division gets notified. If it was a violent death, we try to find out what happened.”