The Crystal Seas

Chapter SIX

Svera wasn't home when Blade finished his wanderings through the Cities and reached Captain Foyn's little house. Neither was Captain Foyn himself.

«No doubt he still be at t' ship,» said the elderly maidservant.

«No doubt,» said Blade. He couldn't tell the maid why he needed to see Svera. He didn't know to whom she might pass on anything he said to her. He had nearly got himself killed once by trusting the wrong person, on a mission in Turkey. The lesson had stayed with him. But it was maddening to think that Svera was probably out there in the Cities with her Conciliator friends, busily planning their moves, like lambs marching on the slaughterhouse. One more frustration, on a mission that seemed to be producing more than its fair share of them.

However, there wasn't much he could do about this or any other frustration at the moment, except sleep on it. Considering how long the day had been and how much he might need all his strength and wits tomorrow, that was also the best thing to do. He asked the maid to show him to the guest room Captain Foyn had promised. She did, and Blade was asleep almost before he could unfold the blankets and crawl under them onto the seaweed-stuffed mattress. He didn't even bother to close the curtains on the small window.

He was awakened by sunlight streaming through the window. He climbed out of bed and began rinsing out his mouth with water from the jug by the bed.

As the maid came in, there was a sudden uproar of shouting and running feet in the street outside. A good many men were pounding past at a dead run.

«What's going on?»

«Ah, sor-nathin' t' bother ye, not at all. Y'see, them Conciliators, Goddess curse them, w' our boys not yet restin' in the sea-are agoin' to do suthin' at Council House.»

Blade took a deep breath. «What?»

«Dunno, sor,» said the maid, shrugging. «But a good many o' the captains be leadin' their menservants and crews t' Council House. They be hopin' the Conciliators to come, and then they swear by the Holy Silver Goddess herself they'll have them all for good. And then we can go out and smash them Fishmen w'out any traitors in our midst.»

Blade managed to make his voice sound almost completely calm. «Is Svera at home yet?»

The maid shook her head. «And a sad disgrace to a good house it be, w' her father doubtless needin' her. She's naught but — «

She might as well have been talking to a yulon. Blade was pulling on the rest of his clothes with one hand and snatching up his sword and dagger with the other. The door of the house slammed behind him as he tore out into the street.

A group of half a dozen sailors was jogging past as he came out. They shouted and waved greetings with heavy clubs. «Coming to join us, man?» one of them shouted.

Blade almost answered «No,» then realized he had no idea where Council House was. He nodded without speaking and fell in step behind the sailors.

They did not head for the bridge to the City of the Merchants, but instead turned into a street that ran away from that bridge. As they tramped along that street, more and more men joined them, and some women. All seemed to be armed, if only with kitchen knives, frying pans, or lengths of wood. All seemed to be grimly determined to cover as much ground as possible as fast as possible. It was as though a moment's delay in reaching the Council House might sink the Cities to the bottom of the sea. There was an ugly feeling in the air that came to Blade as clearly as the smell of the sea. The people beside him might be good or at least sensible people most of the time. But now they were part of a mob, and what they might never think of doing by themselves they might easily do now. Blade would have broken into a run, except that he didn't dare stand out too much from the crowd.

At the end of the street, the swelling mob had to turn again. By this time there were so many people trotting along that they filled the street solidly from side to side. At the corner they jammed into a pushing, shoving, cursing mass. Blade used knees and elbows and occasionally fists to keep from being flattened against a wall or accidentally jabbed by somebody's spear.

Then a voice that roared like surf on a rocky shore rose above the crowd noises. «All right, ye stupid bastards. Sort yerselves out, there! People in the lead, get movin'! The rest of you, stop the shovin'! Save it for the Conciliators!»

The voice sounded vaguely familiar. Blade peered over the heads of the crowd and saw the huge sailor he had drunk with the night before, standing in the street and bellowing. Gradually he got the crowd sorted out. As it broke up and began to move along its new path, Blade joined the sailor. The man's eyes widened, and his weatherbeaten face split in a gap-toothed grin.

«Well, by the Goddess, if it don't be Foyn's armsmaster. You be goin' to help us smash the Conciliators?»

«If they show up, yes,» said Blade cautiously.

«Don't worry 'bout that. They've already got a good dozen or so outside the Council House. You'll be seein' plenty o' Conciliator heads broken today, that you can be sure. And it'll be Gershon Dund's son who'll be doin' the greater part o' the breakin'!»

«My name is Richard Blade.»

Down the street they went, windows opening with bangs above them and shouted questions floating from doorways. Eventually they reached the end of the street and the bridge that led to the City of the Guilds and the Council House.

The thousand-foot pontoon bridge swayed and lurched ominously under Blade's feet as the mob poured out onto it. Slave porters carrying loads crowded back against the railings of the bridge as the thousands filled the bridge from side to side. Blade saw some of the porters driven back over the railings and into the sea. Some sank at once, dragged down by their loads. Others were lucky enough to be rescued by the boats that carried the heavier loads back and forth between the Cities and the island of Talgar.

Then they were off the bridge. Blade could see a cluster of six gilded spires around a green dome ahead. «The Council House,» Gershon said. Blade nodded.

In front of the Council House was the largest open space Blade had seen in the Sea Cities. Everywhere else he had been, buildings jostled each other like rush-hour riders in a subway, to get as much living space as possible in the smallest area. But the Council House fronted on a square nearly two hundred feet on a side.

The square was already half-filled when Gershon and Blade led their crowd into it. Directly in front of the Council House was a small cluster of people all dressed in white and green. There were no more than thirty of them. They were carrying banners with green lettering on white cloth. As Blade got closer, he could make out the banners:

LET THERE BE PEACE

A WARNING FROM THE GODDESS

CONCILIATION NOT VENGEANCE

As he got still closer, he could make out Svera, holding one end of the LET THERE BE PEACE banner. Blade grimaced. There was such a thing as being right at the wrong time.

As the rest of Gershon's mob poured into the square, the circle around the Conciliators tightened. There were now a good three thousand people facing the thirty-odd demonstrators, most of them armed. They weren't in quite such an explosively ugly mood as they had been, fortunately. The long run had taken the wind out of a good many of them. If the Conciliators would just have the sense to quietly fade away and not say anything, the whole affair might blow over.

Moments later Blade's hopes were smashed. Svera herself gave her pole to someone else, sprang lightly up on the railing of the front steps to the Council House, and waved her arms at the crowd. There was an angry growl, but it faded away quickly. Perhaps Svera's beauty and courage would give her a peaceful hearing? Blade hoped so, but realized he was grasping at straws. A step at a time, he inched his way forward, until he was in the front row of the mob, only a few feet from the demonstrators.

Svera raised her arms again and called out, «People of the Sea Cities! Listen to me! We have suffered greatly from the Fishmen's attack. This is true. I grieve with all those who have lost husbands, wives, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters! Only by the grace of the Goddess and a strong man's courage was my own father's ship not lost! Do not think my heart is hard.»

«Maybe it isn't,» bellowed Gershon. «But your head sure seems to be pretty damned soft. Soft as those pretty tits of yours!»

Blade could see Svera blush. But she didn't lose her nerve or stop. «My heart is not hard, I said. But I cannot see what we will get from vengeance, from hurling ourselves on the Fishmen's homes and works the way they have on ours!»

«Teach the damned slime-skins a lesson!» bellowed someone from behind Blade. He felt a shiver go through the crowd, and stiffened. His hand drifted down to the hilt of his sword.

«What lesson will it teach them, my friend?» replied Svera. «I think-we Conciliators think-it will only teach them that we are as bad as they are. It will teach them that we will never give them peace. It will-«

«It will teach them we won't let them kill our men and get away with it!» came a shrill scream from off to the right. A woman stepped forward from the crowd. She was poorly dressed, her dark hair hanging down in a ragged mess. On one arm she carried a baby, and with the other hand led a girl of about three. «Look at my children! Look at them! My man was a soldier who fought to defend the city. One of those filthy monsters bit his leg off, and he died when all the blood went out of him. There's nobody left to take care of me or my children. I want the Fishmen women to feel the same way! I don't want anybody in Talgar saying anything else. Smash the Conciliators, people, smash them the way you're going to smash the Fishmen!»

A quiver ran through the whole crowd as if the woman's words had been an electric shock-or an order to march. Blade had long since made up his mind what he would do if matters came to this point. Now he did it.

One arm snaked out and plucked Gershon's ax from the sailor's hand. Before the big man could even turn around, Blade burst through into the open space around the Conciliators, waving the ax.

«Run!» he shouted at them. «Into the Council House! I'll guard the door. Run, I tell you!» He pushed the nearest Conciliator hard enough to nearly send him flying up the steps like a soccer ball. The young man stared at Blade for a second, then bolted for the door. The rest of the Conciliators dropped their banners and scrambled up the steps after the first one. Svera lingered a last second to stare wonderingly at Blade, then she too hiked up her skirts and ran.

The rearmost of the Conciliators was halfway up the stairs before anyone in the crowd recovered from his surprise enough to act. Then it was Gershon himself who sprang forward, drawing his dagger, eyes blazing into Blade's face.

«Why you rotten-«he growled. Apparently he couldn't think of anything bad enough to call Blade.

Blade waved the ax in Gershon's face, stopping his forward rush. Then he took two quick steps backward and sprang up on the railing of the stairs, where Svera had been.

«People of Talgar! There's been enough bloodshed in your Cities already. Don't add to-«

«By the Goddess, we'll add yours to it!» roared Gershon. He stormed forward. But his rush was as furious and as blind as that of a mad bull. Blade sprang lightly down from the railing, sidestepped Gershon's lunge with his dagger, then brought the flat of the ax head down across the sailor's knife hand. Gershon bellowed in pain and flexed numb fingers, reaching out with the other hand for Blade.

He almost got a hold. Blade felt the sailor's thick fingers close in his hair and start to pull. He pulled hard in the opposite direction. He winced as he felt a handful of his hair pull out by the roots. Then he was free, pivoting to drive one heel hard into Gershon's stomach. The huge sailor folded up with a whoof of escaping air and sat down on nothing. He rolled down the stairs, knocking half a dozen of his followers off their feet, to land with a dull thump in the square.

For a moment no one in the square moved or spoke. Blade sensed that his repelling Gershon's attack had frozen the rest of the mob. For a moment he had the normal advantage of one man over a mob. That one man can always take somebody with him, and nobody in a mob usually wants, to risk being that somebody.

He used that moment to take a quick look up the stairs behind him. The last of the Conciliators was just vanishing into the Council House. Angry voices from inside suggested someone there wasn't too happy about their sudden arrival. Without turning his back on the crowd, Blade slowly began backing up the stairs, one at a time. He held the long ax ready to use either as a club or as a short quarterstaff. He was an expert with the latter. He did not want to kill or even seriously injure anybody if possible. That would excite the mob to bloodthirsty fury and probably lead to civil war in Talgar, with him as the first victim.

He reached the top step and looked about him. He was a good twenty feet above the level of the square now. No one could come at him except up the stairs. But the stairs themselves were a good fifteen feet wide. That could let far too many people up at him together. If they tried a rush-

The crowd continued to stand in motionless silence. Blade began to be aware of the smells rising from them as they stood packed together under the swelling heat of the sun-fish, sweat, other less identifiable ones. He began to feel sweat dripping down his own forehead.

Another flurry of movement in the crowd. Six brawny young men pushed through the crowd, shouldering people aside like Home Dimension gang members. That was probably what they were here, too. Tough young men, or at least young men who thought they were tough. With six of them, teaching them otherwise was going to be a risky business.

They came up the stairs in a wide line, flourishing clubs and daggers. Their plan was obvious-hold Blade in place on the front while a couple of them got around to his side. And they looked as if they would kill. So Blade launched his attack first.

He took four steps in a single bound, landing squarely in front of the two young toughs on the right. He swung the ax single-handed and flat headed into the first one's hip. That stopped him dead. Blade drove his left arm through the gap that had suddenly opened up and into the second man's jaw. Bone cracked and the man toppled backward. As he felt himself going over, he clutched at the third man. They both went down the stairs together, rolling over and over in a tangle of flying arms and legs. From the way they cursed each other when they hit bottom, Blade guessed they weren't seriously hurt.

There was a slight pause, which Blade used to tap the first man gently alongside the head with the ax handle. He reeled and clutched at the railing as though it were a beautiful woman. Then the remaining three young men got up their courage to rush Blade all together.

For a few seconds Blade faced a bad situation. One of the men was a knife fighter and a good one too. He came in low, knife reaching upward to tear into Blade's stomach. Blade had to give ground and kick the man hard in the knee, not worrying about how much damage he did. He must have done a good deal, because the knifeman dropped his weapon and dropped to the stairs. He moaned and clasped both hands around a smashed and blood-dripping kneecap.

Before his cries had died away, Blade was moving in on the other two. One raised a club to smash down on Blade's head. Blade ducked in under the club and drove the end of the ax handle hard up under the man's chin. His teeth slammed together with an explosive click and his eyes rolled up in his head. Before he could even start falling, Blade was turning to meet the last of the six.

He didn't quite turn fast enough. The last man's club slammed down on his left shoulder hard enough to break his left hand's grip on the ax. It swung down and twisted out of his arms, to clatter on the wooden stairs.

The man promptly made the mistake of thinking Blade had become easy meat. He swung the club in a spectacular but badly aimed blow that left him wide open. Blade's right fist drove into the man's stomach, then his left foot struck squarely in the groin. The man quivered all over like a bowl of jelly and dropped in his tracks, then rolled down the stairs to join his friends.

Blade reached over to prod his left shoulder and winced at the pain. He was going to be one-armed and one-handed for the rest of this fight. He hoped nobody would notice it.

Once more, it seemed that Blade's deadly fighting had stunned the mob. Watching six men going down this fast was something they had never seen before, or perhaps even imagined. Blade suspected that it would take a while before somebody screwed up the courage to risk being part of the next act.

But somebody would, that he was sure. And all it would need was one lucky blow. Then he would be down and the way opened into Council House.

He listened for sounds from inside the House. The angry voices had died away. Apparently whoever was inside had given up objecting to the Conciliators. But it was hard to imagine anybody in there who would be willing and able to protect the Conciliators from three thousand furious people. If those people got past him-

Then he heard the sound of the door behind him opening, with only the faintest whisper as it swung on well-oiled hinges. A ripple of surprised movement ran through the crowd, and Blade heard gasps of surprise and amazement. He risked turning his head enough to look behind him.

A man as undersized as Gershon was oversized stood there. Only five feet tall at most, he still radiated an almost majestic dignity and authority. His childlike limbs were draped in shimmering green and gold, and on his large bald head he wore a broad-brimmed gold hat with a green band.

«This is an abomination,» he said, in a severe voice that somehow carried over the entire crowd. Silence fell in the square. «I do not know what these people in the Council House have done. For now I do not care. If they have committed any crimes, they will be punished.»

His voice rose. «But you will not attack the Council House itself and slay them in its chambers and halls as though they were Fishmen. You will not.

«But you would have, without this man.» He pointed at Blade. «This man I am told is new in the Sea Cities of Talgar, an escaped slave from Nurn. But he is also a mighty warrior, trusted as such by one of our most honored Brothers, Captain Foyn. And he has proved his war skills and his trust again today. Though new in Talgar, he yet seems to understand what is fitting under its laws better than you, citizens of the Sea Cities.

«But for this Blade you would have violated the House of the Council of Autocrats. But for this Blade you would have slain men and women in its halls and drenched its floors with blood. You would have sown internal violence through the Sea Cities, at a moment when all our strength must be united to hurl against the Fishmen. You would have committed an abomination and been damned forever for it in the eyes of the Holy Silver Goddess, Mother-Patron of the Sea Cities of Talgar. On your knees, people of the Sea Cities! Do honor to the Council of Autocrats, and also do honor to this man Blade who has saved you from the price of your own anger and folly!»

There was a long, tense moment of silence. Blade was not sure if the Autocrat's words hadn't been too harsh, his manner too overbearing. He might have calmed the mob. Or he might have stung them into still greater fury. In that case, Blade knew that he and the Autocrat had very little time left, and the Conciliators inside the Council House not much more.

Then the mob's mood changed, as suddenly as an earthquake. Some sailors down in front began shouting, «Long Live the Council! Long live Krodrus!» The little Autocrat smiled and bowed as he heard those cheers. His smile widened further as he heard other people begin to shout, «Long live Blade! Long live a hero of Talgar! He saved our honor! He saved our peace! Long live Blade!»

Blade looked down the stairs and saw that one of the loudest shouters of «Long live Blade!» was Gershon, now back on his feet. Blade laughed, releasing some of his own tension. Gershon was one of those powerful men who needs a still more powerful master. He will follow no man weaker than himself. But if he finds one stronger, then he will follow that man to the death.

Now the mob was beginning to break up. The people at the rear were drifting away into the streets around the square. But others were flowing up the stairs, waving and shouting. Blade saw the faces of some of the Counciliators peering nervously out of the Council House windows-

Then the crowd was at the top of the stairs. They lifted Blade off his feet and set him down on Gershon's shoulders. Balanced precariously on the huge sailor, Blade was carried around the square amid continuous deafening cheering from people who had only minutes before wanted his blood.

He felt relieved as he rode. But he couldn't help wondering whether being a hero of Talgar was really such a good thing to be.