Joel Rosenberg - Hour of the Octopus

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Joel Rosenberg
Hour of the Octopus
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Ace edition / March 1994
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1994 by Joel Rosenberg.
Cover art by Darrell K. Sweet
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
ISBN: 0-441-16975-9
ACE®
Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
ACE and the "A" design are trademarks belonging to Charter Communications, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
this one is for Susan Allison
Acknowledgments
I'm grateful for the help I've gotten with this one from Bruce Bethke, Peg Kerr Ihinger, and Pat
Wrede; from Harry F. Leonard and Victor Raymond; from Beth Friedman, proofreadre, and Carol
Kennedy, copy editor.
I'd like to thank Ray Feist for the metal puz-zle Kami takes apart, but I spent far too many work
hours working it out, so I won't.
As always, special thanks to my agent, Eleanor "Darth" Wood, and to Felicia and Judy.
Part One
DEN OROSHTAI
PROLOGUE
The Hour of the Hare
"You may think of yourself as a master chef, in Bergeenen you may have actually been a master chef,
but this, my dear young cook, is Den Oroshtai, and this is your first morning in my kitchen, and as it is my
kitchen, you will learn; I trust you will find the experience pleasurable as we prepare breakfast for our
genial Lord Arefai and our somewhat more strict Lord Toshtai, a simple breakfast and a complex one.
"Don't think of time as a process. Think of it as a spice. You can no more measure it out as drops of
water from an hourglass than you would measure spoons of pepper for a sauce; you must add just a little,
tasting where possible, considering where not, until you have added just the right amount, no more, for
you can no more remove excess time from a dish than you can unsalt it.
"Ah: observe: the surface of the water gently roils; it is now ready. Cradle the egg in your palm, and
consider its temperature. Heat is just another manifestation of time— how long has the egg sat in the
bowl of cold well-water, and then, how long has it waited on the counter? Consider it all.
"Lower the egg gently into the water, and regard it. The objective is to coddle the egg, to indulge it, to
tease it at the simmer until the yolk has become thick without be-
coming hard, where it is still golden and languidly liquid rather than insipid yellow and tough, the white
gaining form and structure without becoming rubbery and chewy.
"Good. Oh? You wish to sit and stare at the boiling wa-ter until the egg is done. How very nice—and
who will prepare the rest of the simple breakfast?
"Oh. I talk too much, do I? I distract you from the bril-liance of your endeavors, is that so? Very well,
then; I will let you do it in your own fashion. What next? The apple, you say? Oh, good. Very good. Yes,
you slice the apple gently, delicately. Very nice. I very much like the rhythm of your knife against the
cutting board, and the slices are just of the right thinness to the taste of many, like that of a thin cracker.
"Your arrangement? Myself, I've always liked to snick out the pieces of core, reassemble the apple,
then set it upon a bed of mint leaves, a twist of caramelized sugar to replace the stem, but I am sure that
you have a better idea. Ah. Very pretty. Certainly: you've not done wrong to spread it out along the rim
of the plate, like a stack of fallen tiles. Very pleasing to the eye. Ah, and you brush the apple lightly with
the juice of a lemon. Very good; it will not turn brown in the air.
"And next, the oysters and sausage. A strange but inter-esting combination, I've always thought,
wonderful if han-dled properly, but ever-so-dependent on preparation, and—oh, I am sorry. I do talk
too much. Prepare it as you wish. Hmm… slicing off the top of a puff pastry, eh? Not my choice of a
presentation, mind, but an interesting one.
"Yes, I do always heat the pan before adding the dab of butter, a shaking of two peppers in the pan,
the barest scraping of horseradish. And then the oysters. They are fresh; this very hour, a runner arrived
with them from Bergeenen, carefully packed in ice. The oysters, oh wise one, not the runner.
"Hmm… I would probably have opened the shells with a different knife, but each to his own; the
blood will wash off, and you should be healed within the month.
"They do plump up prettily, don't they? And they are tasty as they sit on top of the sausage.
"Pour the tea into the mug, and the tray is ready, you think. I can but bow and nod. Very well; you
may bring it in. Me? Don't be silly. When it is asked who is the fool boiled the egg to indigestibility, who
is the dolt who served the apple sliced far too thinly to be properly crunched between his teeth, who is
the blockhead who served the cooked oysters and undercooked sausage thick with congealed fat in a
stale puffery, the answer will not be that I did it, I can assure you of that.
"You had better run, now. It is already the hour of the hare, and Lord Toshtai will be expecting his
simple break-fast of egg, apple, and oysters with sausage right now. Oh, yes, the simple breakfast is for
Lord Toshtai; the more complex one is for Lord Arefai, who hunts this morning. Had I not mentioned
that? Oh.
'Timing is, after all, everything."
1
horning, Breakfast, an Invitation, and Other Petty Indignities
Timing is, as my father used to say, everything.
No, I'm getting it wrong, as usual. I mean, he probably still does say it—I have no reason to think
Gray Khuzud dead, and less to think he's changed his mind—but I haven't seen him for some time now.
He is right, of course; my father has always had that an-noying tendency. It doesn't apply just to
juggling, although that's one of the places.
Consider, if you will, the knife-and-apple act. After the drunk act, I'd say it was Gray Khuzud's best.
But if you put it at the head of the show, as an opener, not only will it not get the applause it should, but it
will rob the rest of the show of some of its own virtue.
Not good.
Which isn't to say that there is a right time for every-thing. For some things there is no correct time.
We all can agree that there's no good time for one's piles to act up; similarly—and contrary to what our
beloved ruling class believes—there is no such thing as a right time to be woken to go hunting.
He came for me in the hour of the dragon.
I was in the middle of a dream, although even sleeping
I had been vaguely aware of somebody sliding open the panel between my bedroom and the outer
room of my suite.
"Kami Khuzud—I mean, Kami Dan'Shir, wake up." Something large and stupid hit me between the
shoulder blades.
Even through the shattered remains of half-forgotten dreams of soaring silverhorns and fast-picked
zivvers, I could tell that the rasp was the voice of Bek De Bran, a dull and blocky soldier who had
recently been reassigned to protecting Arefai, whatever that portended.
It meant something; everything always means some-thing. The only problems are what and how
important is it? When you're mingling with members of our beloved ruling class, it's sometimes every bit
as hard to discover the import of supposedly minor events as it is important to know the significance of
major ones.
"Lord Arefai bids you join him at breakfast."
Arguably, for Lord Arefai to have sent a member of his personal guard to wake even a lesser noble,
much less a newly made bourgeois, was a signal honor. Unarguably, an invitation to join Arefai at
breakfast was a great favor, no matter what it felt like, and to have the favor delivered so gently…
The standard way to wake a member of a lower class would be to send a servitor to kick me awake,
or a soldier to poke a spear at my rumpled blankets. Sending Bek De Bran to shake me awake was a
decided favor, given my status.
I tried to voice my gratitude.
"Mrph," I said.
I was rewarded by a kick.
A kazuh Warrior would have come awake at the first touch, his sword in his hand, ready to block,
parry, or at-tack. A kazuh Acrobat like my father would have already rolled to his feet or tumbled to a
one-armed handstand.
I held up a hand. "Please be easy, Lord Bek De Bran," I said. "I wake."
I sat up on my sleeping pallet, rubbing at my eyes, then
tossed the blankets aside and went to the wardrobe for some clothes. My head and eyes were so
filled with sleep and muzziness that I didn't stop to marvel at it. It's hard for me to marvel at much in the
hour of the dragon, the hour before dawn.
I didn't take the kick as a personal affront, although the thought of juggling his internal organs had
appeal. A bour-geois can afford to be thin of skin only around middle class and peasants; cultivating a
leathery exterior is a ne-cessity if you're going to spend your time around nobility, and as a former
peasant, I'd long since taken up the habit.
Not that there was anything particularly noble about the hulking creature looming above me in the
gray murk that was broken only by the flickering light of the lantern he had hung on the wall in my
workshop.
Bek De Bran was arrayed in full warrior's garb, from the twin peaks of the lacquered steel helmet that
topped his head, to the reticulated bone armor that covered his shoulders and chest, down to the skirt of
leather straps that hung about his thick waist, partly covering the kneezers and greaves, and the
brass-pointed boots on his feet. His armor's finger joints clicked like dice to keep time against the shaft of
his spear as he hummed a simple soldier's jig.
It seemed to me to that he wore a lot more gear than a warrior should need to go wake up a dan'shir,
but I didn't mention that. For one thing, most of them seem to like dressing up in their outfits almost as
much as they like singing, or beating members of the lower classes. But mainly, it's that most of them
seem to like beating mem-bers of the lower classes.
I stepped into my trousers—both feet at once, the way an acrobat dresses—then pulled a nappy
cotton tunic over my head. I belted it tightly across my waist with a broad black sash.
He shifted his right hand to his spear, and idly poked at me with its rounded butt end.
"Be quicker, whether it pleases you or not. The hunt awaits Lord Arefai, and Lord Arefai awaits
you." Typical
of a member of our beloved ruling class to be impatient to start a morning of killing things.
"Shoes," I said. "I need shoes."
"Just be quick about it."
The donjon was quiet in the predawn light as we padded (well, / padded; Bek De Bran clomped and
clicked and clacked) down the corridor, past a hallstand where a Klen vase sat, filled with an
arrangement of wildflowers, a clas-sic concentric arrangement of thorny, blood-red bantam roses
surrounding an explosion of yellow daisies. As we passed, when my body blocked his view, I snatched
one of the roses and tucked it into my belt, pricking my thumb on one of its sharp thorns.
As usual, my timing was faulty. Just at that moment, Lord Crosta Natthan rounded a corner.
Despite the obscenely early hour, the donjon's chief ser-vitor was completely ready for the day, the
creases in his gray silk tunic and the pleats in the matching pantaloons fully pressed, the twin points of his
goatee combed and oiled, and the rest of his lined face freshly shaved, his hair pulled back and bound
with a bone clip. Despite his age, his step was brisk, and his glare was sharp and alert.
Despite it all, I enjoyed the moment. I've always liked matching wits with Crosta Natthan, no matter
what the risk.
"Good morning, Lord Crosta Natthan," I said, coming to an abrupt halt.
Bek De Bran probably would have chivied me along if I'd stopped for my own reasons, but not when
I was hav-ing words with the chief servitor.
"And a good morning to you, too, Kami Dan'Shir," he said, with equal lack of sincerity. "I trust you
didn't prick yourself too badly?"
"No, although I thank you for the concern," I said, tak-ing the rose from my belt and tucking it
through a button loop on my tunic.
When in doubt, brazen it out.
He thought about it for a moment. There is only one
punishment for theft in D'Shai; we may be hypocritical folks, but we are simple and direct in some
things. The only question in his mind was whether or not my taking the rose constituted theft, in which
case it was his duty to report it to Lord Toshtai. On the other hand, if I had a right to take the rose, then
his reporting the matter would simply serve to annoy the lord of Den Oroshtai, and he wouldn't want to
do that. Annoying Lord Toshtai was nei-ther part of his job nor likely to lengthen his life.
I bent my head to sniff at the rose. "Part of the Way of the Dan'Shir," I said. "We appreciate beauty."
Well, the use of the plural was my right; as the only known Dan'Shir it was proper for me to speak for all
of us, er, for all of me.
His sniff had nothing to do with smelling a rose. "I wonder how far you will get with this Way of the
Dan'Shir," he said, as he turned to rearrange the flowers, hiding the absence of the rose.
So do /, old man, I didn't say.
He had a point, of course. I didn't know how far I should—or could—push things. There are
fifty-three known kazuhin, including that of the Dan'Shir. The origins of many of them—Warrior, Peasant,
Deilist, others— vanish off into prehistory, when the Powers walked openly across the face of D'Shai.
Quite possibly, some of the an-cient kazuhin were originated by the Powers, although who can say?
But each of the historical professions traces its origin to a historical master, a historical originator,
from the kazuh of the Ruler, created by the ancient Scion of the Sky Him-self, to that of the Cook.
If you accept that the Way of the Dan'Shir, the Way of the Discoverer-of-Truths, is truly a Way, truly
a kazuh, then that makes me the historical master of the Way, with all rights and privileges of a historical
master.
Which, as we'll all recall, included the right or privilege of Veren Del Gergen, the first Painter, to lose
his head from a single sword stroke when ancient Lord Egware was offended by the classic if not entirely
complimentary study
"Kindly Lord Egware at His Leisure." Which only goes to show, I guess, that being a historical master
doesn't neces-sarily give someone sense enough to stay away from mem-bers of our beloved ruling class.
I nodded as I walked on. "And a good day to you, Lord Crosta Natthan."
His breakfast had barely arrived, but Arefai hadn't waited for me before beginning. It wasn't that he
was being im-polite, but it wouldn't have occurred to him to wait, any more than he would have offered
me a taste from his plate.
The breakfast cook had prepared for him a classic ar-rangement of the seven flavors. To the right of
Arefai's plate, a steaming ceramic mug of elderbark tea provided both the hot and the bitter, while a flask
of crushed fundleberries in its bowl of shaved ice to the left of the plate stood in cold, sweet contrast. An
arc of melon slices had been artfully spread across the top rim of the plate, each slice separated from the
next in salty opposition by a paper-thin medallion of highly spiced Patricien ham.
An even dozen oysters on sausage circled the plate, in-terspersed with crispy morsels of
bacon-wrapped quail, rice cups brimming with salted pout roe, and some oily white fish wrapped in
chumpa leaves and sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds.
The center of the plate was occupied by four ramekins, which looked to be the locally traditional four
sauces: a peppery cheese sauce, so overripe I could smell the ammo-nia; a pale mayonnaise with dill and
lemon; a thick com-pote of peppers, onions, and tomatoes, heavily sprinkled with basil; and a grainy
brown mustard.
Delicately, Arefai extended an eating prong and speared a chumpa-leaf packet, elegantly tipping one
end into the compote and another end into the dill sauce before bring-ing it up to his lips. He managed to
take a bite out of each end without dripping sauce on his short-cropped beard or on his doeskin hunting
tunic.
He finally noticed that I was just standing there, and waved me to a seat.
"Good morning to you, Kami Dan'Shir," he said. "A fine morning for hunting, is it not?"
I looked up at the sky, which was busy deciding what light shade of gray to menace me with, and out
at the hori-zon, where dark clouds loomed threateningly—-something dark clouds always do—and then
decided that theatrical ges-tures were neither called for nor entirely safe. An occasional, very carefully
chosen bit of presumption tended to charm the likes of Lord Arefai; but it was best not to make a habit
of it.
"I would presume so, Lord Arefai," I said. "Certainly I wouldn't argue with your assertion."
After all, you overdressed if generally kindly idiot, I've always thought that my head is much
prettier as an adorn-ment to my shoulders than it would be rolling around on the ground and
getting all dirty.
He smiled and took a bite of quail; the bird was juicy enough that he had to dab at the corner of his
lips. The smell made my mouth water.
A white-clad servitor, her face holding that expression just between disdain and indifference that
makes service folk think they're invisible, brought out a tray with my breakfast on it. The cook had
perhaps spent less time with my breakfast than he had with Arefai's.
The tray held an apple—uncut, unpeeled, although ap-parently washed—accompanied by a large
chunk of dark brown bread, supporting a dubious hill of butter. An un-adorned chunk of pink ham lay on
the plate next to the bread.
Arefai looked at it with distaste, then put an expression of polite concern on his face.
"Please," he said, "Kami Dan'Shir. You have been in-vited to break your fast with me; you need not
await my specific invitation to begin your meal."
The way I normally began the day with breakfast was by skipping it. Later on in the morning, partway
into the hour of the hare, Madame Lastret's Two Dog Inn would open on Ankersa Way, just at the edge
of the Bankstreets in the town of Den Oroshtai, and I tended to take my first
meal there, or at Madame Rupon's. While the pay of Lord Toshtai's dan'shir was moderately
generous, hour-by-hour duties had not been assigned; as long as a runner or Run-ner from the castle
could reach me, I was unlikely to be in trouble.
I guess I should have worked out an arrangement with whoever in the kitchen cooked breakfast,
instead of with Madame Lastret and Madame Rupon.
What I wished for was the old company, the juggling and foolery that always went along with meals in
the Troupe of Gray Khuzud. What I wanted was my little sis-ter, Enki Duzun, showering five eggs and an
apple, while Fhilt took two spoons and kept three dollops of jam in the air until one of the Eresthais
would snatch the dollops away, one by one, with slices of bread.
Well, at least this was more than peasant food. Bread and onion would have been the local peasant
breakfast in Den Oroshtai, and if I'd still been a peasant, that would have been all I would have been
offered by the castle ser-vitors, most likely; certainly nothing more than dirt-food. Had I been only middle
class, that might have been sup-plemented by a tree-fruit, an apple or a pear. As a true he-reditary
bourgeois—albeit, granted, the first of my line—I'd been honored with not only butter but meat. No tea,
of course, nor sauce, nor game. But I wasn't a member of our beloved ruling class, after all.
Me, I prefer rooming houses, where what one eats de-pends more on what one can pay than upon
the status of the buttocks against which one's mother once drummed her heels.
The ham was edible, although it could have stood a proper soaking; then again, perhaps salted ham
with salt is a taste I've simply not acquired. I left it on my plate. The apple wasn't bad, just a bit mealy
around the edges. But the bread was good and solid and still warm, and the but-ter was cold and smooth
and rich and creamy, and that would do—for the time being. Wheedling a snack out of a cook is a skill
that I'd picked up many years before.
"You don't seem excited by the idea of hunting, Kami Dan'Shir," Arefai said. "And on such a fine
day."
"Hunting is a noble pursuit, Lord," I said. You know, like pronging away at unwilling peasant girls
. I probably felt more adventurous than I should, but perhaps I was flushed with my victory over Crosta
Natthan. I went on: "Perhaps if I was raised to the nobility, Lord Arefai, I'd feel differently."
"You've been a bourgeois how long?"
"Almost a month, lord."
He chuckled. "I think perhaps you might consider wait-ing some years before broaching the matter to
my father; he has no sense of humor." He tapped himself lightly on the chest. "I, on the other hand, do.
You have dined with me; you will now hunt with me."
One of the guards started, stilled instantly by a glare from the more senior.
Arefai took a final sip of tea and tossed his eating sticks aside; with a quick, beckoning flick of his
fingers, he rose, not waiting to see if I was following.
We headed out of the garden, and down the path into a fine day. Two pairs of bodyguards walked in
front of us, while the trio behind us kept up a marching song, the bari-tone taking up the verse and
melody, the tenor gracing the end of each phrase with a high harmony that soared above like a bird, while
the bass sang a slow countermelody that still managed to keep perfect time.
"A perfect day for a hunt, eh, Kami Dan'Shir?" Arefai gestured with a vague but possessive wave.
Nobles own the day, it seemed.
Again, I agreed with him. "Of course."
He eyed me carefully; the implied reproach in the short answer hadn't escaped him.
Smiling agreeably, I ignored his look, or at least tried to look like I was ignoring his look.
I had to be careful around Arefai; since he was in some contexts such a pleasant dolt, it was
important for me to remind myself that he was a blooded warrior, and worldly in the ways of statement
and understatement, the form of
speech called shtoi in Old Shai. It's never been safe to dis-agree with members of our beloved ruling
class, even if you're a member of our beloved ruling class, and an al-most formal mode of overstatement
and understatement had grown up, passed on with indirectness from parent to child, from husband to
wife and wife to husband, becom-ing more indirect, more ambiguous, and less precise as time went on,
because directness, clarity, and precision could lead to trouble.
Trouble in D'Shai is often fatal.
"You seem to lack some… enthusiasm, Kami Dan'Shir," he said.
I had been hoping he would let it drop. I would have been happy to.
"Not at all, Lord Arefai," I said. "I'm honored that you would give me such a—" I put in the slightest
of hesita-tions, just a moment of robbed time "—unique opportu-nity."
"You've never hunted?"
I weighed the odds, and decided that Arefai was not going to take violent offense at something that
had hap-pened more than half D'Shai away, so I decided that being truthful was, at least for once, the
safest thing to do, and put on my most engaging smile.
"Well, no, Lord. But accidents happen. When you're walking through the roads high in the mountains
of Helgramyth, it often happens that the innocent bits of wet twine you have set out the night before—"
"Snares?"
I spread my hands. "Oh, no, Lord. Simply to dry. The weather is often damp high in the mountains of
Helgramyth." Of course, the need to tie the twine into a noose was not apparent, nor the need to set up a
bent sap-ling and a carved trigger for the noose, so I didn't mention it.
He nodded. "I see."
"Well, it sometimes happens that when you're drying your twine, as the saying goes, a rabbit will on
occasion tangle itself in your twine and be dead by morning. Now,
even a peasant is allowed to eat dead animals he finds; that's hardly hunting."
I didn't go into how the rabbits are quickly skinned and roasted, the skin, bones, and offal buried
before you swing out on the day's march, lest anybody walking along the path misunderstand and think
that you'd been snaring rab-bits.
"This happens often?"
"Rarely, Lord. And never within the domain of Lord Toshtai, of course." I tried on my most sincere
voice.
His nod accepted me at my word.
Horses were saddled and hitched to the viny hitching trellis at the stables. Beyond, half a dozen or so
matched brown horses pranced, their riders, the guards, already in the saddle.
Arefai's horse stood waiting for him, a coal-black mare, its hooves lacquered to a high gloss and
crimson and yel-low flowers woven into its long mane. A dull, almost taupe gelding stood listlessly
waiting for me.
I didn't know whether to be jealous of Lord Arefai's fine animal and resentful I'd been given such a
drab mount, or happy that I wasn't going to be bouncing on the back of an animal I'd be decidedly
unable to control. The dull little gelding suited me, I decided as I climbed up the trellis and gingerly
lowered myself into the saddle. While richer peasants have draft horses, horses as riding animals are
permitted only to the bourgeois and members of our beloved ruling class—it would be a shame to have
the head of a peasant sit higher than that of a lord—and both horses and saddles were a relatively new
thing to my tender bottom.
This was the third—no, fourth—time that I had been on a horse—each time to accompany
Arefai—and it was no better than the first. With every step, the saddle would try to jerk my hips
forward; when the horse broke into a faster pace (a canter, they call it; I call it a personal assault) it
would try to bounce my buttocks up around my ears.
Personally, I would rather have walked. That I can do well.
Thankfully, Arefai wasn't in a hurry this morning, so he kept his mare at a slow walk, the smaller
gelding briskly stepping to keep up, prodded with a sheathed lance by one of the trailing bodyguards
when it lagged.
Well, at least they weren't prodding me; I take what good fortune I can get.
2
The Joy of the Chase, the Thrill of the Hunt, and Other Blatant Falsehoods
The hunting preserve lay most of an hour's ride to morningwise of the keep: a fan-shaped expanse of
forest, fields, and three lakes, some of it as carefully trimmed and maintained as the gardens in the inner
court, other parts al-lowed to go wild.
We talked as we rode past square fields of wheat and rice—each one a standard one peden in area;
Lord Toshtai divides land neatly—to where a forested ridge of low hill was broken only by our road.
More accurately, Arefai talked and I listened; his wed-ding with Lady ViKay of Glen Derenai was
coming up in a few weeks, although it had yet to be formally an-nounced, and he was having to take time
from his other activities to supervise the preparation of her quarters, ad-joining his.
I had spent a few moments in Arefai's rooms, once. His tastes were simple and really quite good. I
understood ViKay's to be other than simple, and perhaps not entirely possible. If I understood Arefai
correctly, it seemed she wanted her rooms floored with warm green marble; she needed privacy screens
that wouldn't interfere with the air flow fitted tightly over the windows; she simply must have ancient
Mesthai artwork newly carved for the headboard
of her sleeping pallet; and she fully expected Arefai to su-pervise the installation of all of that.
I didn't voice my limited sympathy at how this was such a dreadful imposition on his time. It appeared
he was forced to cut back to what sounded like a mere one full af-ternoon of massage, two evenings
pronging peasant girls and no more than that with his concubines, and perhaps as few as three morning
hunts. It's important that those of us of the lower classes show proper sympathy with the bur-dens of our
beloved ruling class.
Lord Toshtai's chief huntsman, Garvi Denten, and his gamekeeper, Deroy Rawn, were waiting for us
outside the hunting shelter, where open wooden cages and leather har-nesses stood stacked neatly on the
bare dirt.
I had seen the two of them only from a distance. Neither acrobats nor dan'shirs spend much time
around huntsmen; this was my first chance to examine them closely.
Most men who spend their lives outdoors develop a tan to their skins, but Garvi Denten was red as a
brick, and shaped like one, blocky and solid, from the thick, scarred neck where his studded collar hung
loosely, to the splayed toes at the end of his massive feet. Dressed in a burlap overshirt and drawstring
muslin pantaloons, he looked rather more like a peasant than a hereditary bourgeois, and a pretty
disreputable peasant, at that.
Deroy Rawn, on the other hand, was dark and smooth where his master was red and rough. His skin
was the color of urmon tea, his face freshly shaven beneath the well-oiled mustache that decorated his
upper lip. The fin-gers of his hands, as he gestured at the darkness of the hunting lodge, were long and
aristrocratic, the nails clean and unbitten.
A conclusion that I didn't have to raise kazuh for: Deroy Rawn was a pompous ass, despite the
meaning of his name. Huntsmen are bourgeois; gamekeepers are only middle class. It's an anomaly, and if
I were the Scion I'd reclassify gamekeeping as a bourgeois profession. After
all, head gamekeeper is almost as common a route to chief huntsman as assistant huntsman is.
But Deroy Rawn was trying to make it look as though he were the bourgeois, and that spoke of a
self-important view of his position and himself.
They both bowed deeply at Arefai as the lord dis-mounted.
Arefai dropped easily to the dirt and walked smoothly to the two men, while I climbed painfully down
out of the saddle and staggered behind.
Well, the upper classes have to have tougher bottoms than the rest of us; they spend most of their
time sitting down while somebody else does something for them, whether it's a cook feeding them, a
troupe of acrobats and musicians entertaining them, or a horse carrying them. It's surprising that their
women don't tend to grow immensely broad of beam.
I didn't like the sneer on Deroy Rawn's lip, so I made a calculated bow to the two huntsmen—not
terribly deep, and a bit perfunctory: a bow of equals, or perhaps of a gra-cious senior.
"I am Eldest Son Discoverer-of-Truths," I said, intro-ducing myself formally. Old Shai is formal for
everything but names; we introduce ourselves in modern language on formal occasions, or when we are
battering each other about with inappropriate formality.
Deroy Rawn was holding a bow and a packet of arrows for Arefai, and had to spread a cloth and set
them down— carefully; he didn't want to let either touch the ground—on top of one of the cages in order
to return my bow. His face was smooth and impassive, but I already had the idea we weren't going to
become fast friends.
His return bow was a bit too shallow. The smart thing to do was ignore it, but Arefai had noticed me
notice, and was watching to see what I would do.
So was I, actually. I went on, as though I hadn't finished introducing myself: "—kazuh Dan'Shir, and
historical master of truth-discovery."
Garvi Denten muffled a smile as he bowed deeply, only
a hair less than he would have done before a noble. "I am Eats Chicken," he said, "Huntsman to the
third genera-tion."
Deroy Rawn had to bow even more deeply than his master. "I am Passes Wind," he said.
/ take it you have not gotten permission to change your name, I didn't quite say. I could see how
Garvi Denten might well want to put the gamekeeper in his place by ad-dressing him formally when he
got impertinent. Which probably meant that he had always served somebody who didn't care for him, or
who he suspected didn't care for him.
Arefai had finished removing his sandals, and stood barefoot in his snowy hunting tunic and the silk
pantaloons that were shirred tight at knee and ankles, but blousy above and below. They rippled in the
wind, like the grasses at his feet.
He slapped his hands together. "The hunt, good Garvi Denten, the hunt. What are we hunting today?"
Garvi Denten bowed again. "Lord Arefai specified some light hunting, so I thought perhaps some
quail, a fish or two, and then game of some sort." He eyed the spears leaning up against the wall of the
shelter. "Boar might be possible, but—"
"One would hardly call boar hunting light, eh?" Arefai nodded. He accepted a short bow and a bundle
of perhaps half a dozen arrows, the bundle secured with two twists of silver wire, while Garvi Denten
belted a silver-trimmed quiver about his waist.
I unlaced my own sandals and tossed them aside as Deroy Rawn handed me a bow, bundle, and
quiver, and awkwardly belted the quiver around me. What I was going to be able to do with all this was
not exactly clear to me. I'd never so much as held a bow in my hands, and sus-pected that there was
some serious sleight to its use.
Arefai set one end of his bow between his ankles and levered it against the inside of his knee to bend
it into a curve, snapping the bowstring into place as he did.
That appeared easier to do than it was. When I tried it, the end slipped out and sent the bow tumbling
to the grass.
With a superior smirk, Deroy Rawn strung the bow and handed it to me. "Good hunting, Kami
Dan'Shir," he said.
Arefai was watching me impatiently; we set off.
The hunting trail, barely wide enough for the two of us to walk side by side, was a stone footpath
leading off down the slope toward where the carefully manicured brush broke on freshly scythed grass.
Each stone, individually shaped and polished to a gentle convexity, was smooth and damp beneath my
feet, although it had not rained the night before.
I could almost see the huntsmen with their pails and brushes, cleaning it for the delectation of Arefai's
feet.
The trail bent, then straightened. Above, huge elms tow-ered, their arcing branches turning the path
into a leafy tunnel of dark green. Off in the distance, a hairy owl tarooed, and something small scampered
from branch to branch. I would have thought that a hunt ought to be con-ducted in silence—my own
摘要：

JoelRosenbergHouroftheOctopusAnAceBook/publishedbyarrangementwiththeauthorPRINTINGHISTORYAceedition/March1994Allrightsreserved.Copyright©1994byJoelRosenberg.CoverartbyDarrellK.SweetThisbookmaynotbereproducedinwholeorinpart,bymimeographoranyothermeans,withoutpermission.Forinformationaddress:TheBerkle...

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