Throy Read Free Page A

feet. Why had the woman herself not learned to swim before venturing out upon the dangerous water? In any event, the lady’s conduct was no concern of theirs; they were talking and paying no attention to her activities. Scharde, unconvinced, pressed his questions until the Yips became sullen and silent, and he had no choice but to desist and send them back to Yipton.
    Had the drowning been something other than accident? Someday, Scharde told himself, he would learn the truth.
     
----

Chapter 1
----
    Chapter 1, Part I
     
    The terrace of the Utward Inn at Stroma extended thirty feet out from the cliff into a great region of sunny air, with the cold blue-green waters of the fjord eight hundred feet below. At a table beside the outer rail sat a party of four men. Torq Tump and Farganger were off-worlders; they drank ale from stoneware mugs. Sir Denzel Attabus had been served a gill of herbal spirits in a pewter minikin, while Roby Mavil, the other resident of Stroma, drank green Araminta wine from a goblet. Sir Denzel and Roby Mavil wore garments currently in fashion at Stroma: sedate jackets of rich black serge, flouncing at the hips over narrow dark red trousers. Roby Mavil, younger of the two, was somewhat fleshy, with a round face, softly waving black hair, limpid grey eyes, a black brush of a mustache. He sat slouched back in his chair, glowering down at the wine goblet; events were not going to suit him.
    Sir Denzel had only recently arrived at the table. He sat stiff and erect: an elderly gentleman with a ruff of gray hair, a notable nose, narrow blue eyes under shaggy eyebrows. He had thrust his drink of herbal spirits to the side.
    The off-worlders were men of totally different stripe. They wore the ordinary garments of the Gaean Reach: loose shirts and trousers of dark blue twill, ankleboots with buckles at the instep. Torq Tump was short, barrel-chested, almost bald, with a heavy hard face. Farganger was gaunt, all bone and dry sinew, with a narrow head, a high-bridged broken nose, a gray mouth like a downward slash across flat cheeks. Both sat impassively but for flickers of contemptuous amusement at the interchanges between Sir Denzel and Roby Mavil.
    After a single glance toward the two off-worlders, Sir Denzel dismissed them from his attention, and turned to Roby Mavil. “I am not only dissatisfied, I am shocked and disheartened!”
    Roby Mavil attempted a smile of hope and good cheer. “Surely, sir, the picture is not all so grim! In fact, I can only believe -”
    Sir Denzel’s gesture cut him short. “Can you not grasp an elemental principle? Our covenant was solemn, and certified by the entire directorate.”
    “Exactly so! Nothing has changed except now we are able to support our cause more decisively.”
    “Then why was I not consulted?”
    Roby Mavil shrugged and looked off across the gulf of air. “I really can’t say.”
    “But I can! This is a deviation from the Source Dogma, which is not just a verbalization, but a pattern for day-to-day, minute-by-minute conduct!”
    Roby Mavil turned back from his contemplation of the void. “May I ask where you obtained your information? Was it Rufo Kathcar?”
    “That is irrelevant.”
    “Not altogether. Kathcar, excellent fellow though he may be, is something of a weathervane and is not above malicious exaggeration.”
    “How can he exaggerate what I see with my own eyes?”
    “That is not all there is to it!”
    “There is more?”
    Roby Mavil spoke with a flushed face. “I mean that, when the need was recognized, the executive council acted with appropriate flexibility.”
    “Ha! And you apply the word ‘weathervane’ to Kathcar, when it is he who remained loyal and who lifted the veil upon this astonishing development.” Sir Denzel took notice of his drink. He lifted the pewter pot and swallowed the contents at a gulp. “The words ‘integrity’ and ‘faith’ are unknown to the fellows of your cabal.”
    For a moment Roby Mavil sat in