Marketday crowds swept by the entrance, but a hush filled the interior of the shop of the merchant prince.
It was even cool—by the standards of southern sweatboxes like the port of Simplain. Brett, the underchamberlain, lowered the dampened linen kerchief with which he had been patting his face since an hour before sunrise.
D'Auber, the warrior who was both Brett's escort and his fellow envoy, continued to flap the throat of his tunic. The warrior insisted on wearing wool, no matter what the temperature was. Brett suspected that D'Auber would report the underchamberlain's switch to local materials as treason against Venkatna.
"Well, where's the guy with the slaves?" D'Auber demanded. "Where's Guest?"
The guards at the door were a pair of dark men wearing baggy white shirts and pantaloons. They carried broad-bladed halberds for show. Warriors in battlesuits stood in alcoves nearby where potted ferns discreetly camouflaged them.
Guest's entrance hall was a circular room whose high alabaster ceiling imitated the sag and folding of a tent roof. The clerestory level was a screen of filigreed stone. It and the vaguely-translucent ceiling provided adequate illumination, once the envoys' eyes had readapted from the dazzling blaze outside.
Water trickled down the steps of an artificial rill at the rear of the hall. It smoothed the raucous street cries from outside and contributed significantly to the room's coolness.
"Where's Guest?" D'Auber repeated, since everyone within hearing had ignored him the first time. "And what's the matter with that damned water? Does the place leak?"
Another white-suited servant entered the hall. This fellow was nearly two meters tall. "Lord Guest will join you now," the servant declaimed in a loud voice without looking at either of the envoys.
He stepped aside. A whole line of additional servants bustled in with an ivory stool, peacock-feather fans, and—incongruous within a masonry building—a parasol of either cloth-of-gold or gold foil on a thin backing.
Two servants ceremonially unfolded the stool. The man who sat on it seemed to appear from nowhere.
He was tall, almost as tall as his annunciator, but the gray silk he wore had been concealed behind his servants' shimmering garments. Fans waved, the parasol extended above his head, and the white-clad entourage made a formal bow to their master.
"So . . . ," said Guest. His voice was deep and powerful, that of a younger man than Brett had expected from the merchant prince's gray beard. "You are the couriers from the West Kingdom, responding to my offer."
"I'm a warrior," D'Auber rejoined harshly. "Not some messenger. And we've come from the Empire of Venkatna the First to escort back his slaves."
A train of heavy beasts passed in the street outside. They hooted at the city crowds and clanked the chains which some of them dragged to permit their mahouts to snub them up if they failed to respond to direction. The elephants of the region of Simplain had straight tusks and bare gray hides, unlike the black-wooled mammoths familiar to the northern envoys. The beasts, like the dark-skinned humans, were just close enough to familiar models that their wrongness was all the more disturbing.
Guest's complexion appeared to be as pale as Brett's own. It was hard to be certain as the fans moved in the dim light.
The merchant prince chuckled. "Ah, styles change faster than I can keep up with them. So long as your master's gold assays to the required purity, he has my leave to call himself whatever he pleases."
"The gold is of course being checked by your clerks, ah, Lord Guest," Brett said. "But there'll be no difficulty with its purity."
The underchamberlain had jumped in quickly because he was concerned about where D'Auber's temper was going to lead the conversation. It was all well and good to say in the privacy of your tent that Guest was nothing but a mere trader, of less account than a royal—than an imperial—slave.
In Simplain, though, Guest was a person of obvious importance. The battlesuits in which his guards watched from the edge of the hall were as good as the one which D'Auber had left perforce in the envoys' quarters. And Frekka was very far away . . .
"Even down in this hellhole," D'Auber said, mopping his face with the end of his sash, "you ought to be careful about what you say about the emperor. North the War God stands behind him, you know."
Perhaps the warrior was concerned about the risk also, because his neutral tone robbed his words of the threatening implications which they might otherwise have held.
"Ah, well," said Guest without obvious offense. "We in Simplain have many gods, and I fear that your North isn't widely worshipped here. Still, I wish Emperor Venkatna well, as I hope to do much business with him in the future."
"When may we hope to see the present merchandise?" Brett said brightly, another desperate attempt to turn the discussion into safer fields.
Guest clapped his left fingertips into his right palm. "At once, good sirs, at once," he said.
The curtains behind the merchant prince billowed again. Male servants entered, guiding a pair of women. To Brett's surprise, the females were not from the Simplain region at all. Both of them were pale and blond. They weren't fat, but they were larger than the local women—and indeed, larger than most of the local men.
"Step forward, girls," Guest said. "Give the gentlemen a good look at you."
He smiled as he added to the envoys, "They will meet your master's requirements perfectly, good sirs. In the lands where they come from, the use of such devices is well known and they are experts in it."
"They'd better be," D'Auber growled. "At what the emperor is paying for them."
"Half now," said Guest easily. "Half when they have proved their abilities. What could be more fair?"
Brett stepped closer to the new slaves. Something about them was—not right, though the underchamberlain couldn't put his finger on precisely what it was.
The expression with which they met his eyes was not so much cowed as resigned. Certainly there was no indication of rebelliousness or danger.
"It's only . . . ," D'Auber went on angrily, ". . . that some folk, I don't mean you, Gues—Lord Guest. Some folk down here to Simplain, that is—"
Brett turned. "D'Auber, stop it now," he hissed with as much authority as he could assert without making the situation worse than it already was.
"What's a palace flunky think he's doing," D'Auber snarled, "tryin' to give orders to a front-rank warrior, anyhow?"
Guest laughed with unexpected relish. "That's telling him, Lord D'Auber!" he said.
D'Auber, not in the least mollified by the support, snapped his attention back to the merchant prince. "Like I was saying," he said, "folk down here might think they could cheat us and not worry about it. Well, you can laugh at North if you like, but he's the chief of gods in Simplain as well—and before he's done, he'll have brought the whole world under the Peace of King Venkatna!"
Brett saw his chance. "Emperor Venkatna!" he said. "Now shut up, D'Auber, before you blurt more treason."
The warrior backed a step in shock. He opened his mouth like a gaffed fish. D'Auber had drunk enough of the local wine this morning to stain his tongue and palate dark.
"I envy your friend his certainty," Guest said to the underchamberlain in a conversational tone. "Few of us here in the southern lands are so sure of the gods' will."
Brett stepped to the side to put his body between D'Auber and the merchant prince. "The emperor looks forward to paying the remainder of the purchase price," he said. "If these are the experts you say, milord, there might well be a bonus."
Flummery, soap to lubricate the path of commerce—though it was by no means impossible that Venkatna would add a bonus. If the Web performed to its claimed capacity, the emperor could well afford to do so.
The underchamberlain frowned. He suddenly realized what was unusual about these slaves. They had calluses on all their visible joints, just as if they were warriors who practiced regularly in their battlesuits.
"I assure you," said Guest, "that this pair will be your master's most dutiful slaves. They will carry out his orders as though they were the injunctions of a god."
He laughed again.
Brett shivered despite himself. The particular sort of humor that suffused the sound was more disquieting than another man's rage.
"Do they have names?" he asked to break the spell.
"Race," said Guest, pointing, "and Julia."
Guest rose abruptly. Though the action was sudden, servants whisked the fans and parasol clear. He was scarcely upright before other servants were refolding the ivory stool.
"They will bring your master the fortune he deserves," Guest added before he vanished again through the curtains.
Until Guest stood up again, Brett had not noticed that the merchant prince had only one eye.