The Honorable Barbarian Read Free

may celebrate with excessive enthusiasm. Moreover, elections to the Chamber of Burgesses will occur six days hence, and the candidates are campaigning. Disturbances sometimes ensue when rival partisans meet."
    The passengers reentered the coach, which rolled on into the city. Compared to respectable, staid Kortoli, Vindium seemed livelier and more colorful. Some were already celebrating the sporting triumph, weaving along the pavement shouting and waving mugs.
    On buildings fronting the street, posters had been put up here and there. They bore such legends as "Frithugis, the people's choice!" or "Vote for Beonnus, friend of the downtrodden!" or "Victron—experience—integrity!" or "Ithmar, foe of the establishment!" Similar slogans had been painted on many walls.
    The coach passed a man with a paintbrush and pail, interrupted while painting a slogan by two members of the civic guard. With these he was engaged in a furious argument. As Kerin craned his neck to watch, the slogan painter hurled his pail at a guardsman, drenching him with butter-yellow paint. The three ran off, the guardsmen after the painter, waving their truncheons and yelling.
    As the parting rays of the setting sun touched spires and domes with ruddy gold, the vehicle halted at the principal square, flanked by the Senate House, the Magistracy, and other public buildings. In these structures, the austere plainness of classical Novarian style was adulterated by a touch of florid, fanciful Mulvani ornateness. From the square, Republic Avenue sloped gently down to the waterfront, where Kerin glimpsed a thicket of masts and yards. Across the square, a man harangued a crowd from a wooden box.
    Kerin was reared on tales of Vindine corruption and public scandals. A traveling Vindine had given him the other side of the story:
    "The difference, Master Kerin, lies not in you Kortolians' superior virtue but in the fact that, under our system, misdeeds are more easily brought to light. I daresay there be quite as much wrongdoing amongst the popinjays of your royal family, and amongst the hangers-on of the Royal Council, as with us. But your rulers, not having freedom of speech and publication to contend with, are in a stronger position to smother news of transgressions."

    Kerin sat over a mug of ale, on the end of a bench in the common room of the inn to which Jorian had referred him. As his first task in Vindium, his brother had told him, he should find the harbor master to ascertain what ships were sailing when and whither. But, by the time Kerin had alighted in the square, the sun was out of sight behind the buildings. Sure he would find the harbor master's office closed, Kerin had gone instead to the inn.
    Sounds of revelry wafted in from the street. Kerin kept repeating Jorian's advice: to keep his eyes and ears open and his mouth shut. He suppressed a small resentment that his brother possessed a more imposing façade than he. When someone cheated Jorian, all the latter had to do was loom upon the man, beard a-bristle, and quietly ask for a correction. Being smaller in all directions, Kerin did not feel he could manage that.
    He tried to pick up snatches of talk among the Vindines in the room. But the few words he caught were of little import: comments on the weather and the speakers' trades, family problems, and aches and pains. Besides, his ear was not fully attuned to the Vindine dialect of Novarian.
    The door banged open, and in came revelers three. They were stout, rough-looking men, led by one as big and brawny as Jorian. They carried little flags of the Republic of Vindium, showing a golden torch on an azure field; the leader had the staff of his flag stuck in the band of his hat.
    "Ho, Chundo!" roared the leader. "Flagons of your best beer, to celebrate the glorious victory! And none of that horse piss you serve your ordinary customers!"
    Kerin stared, for he belatedly recognized Garic, his odorous roommate on the first night of the journey. Garic stared