Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

instance—from killing him over possession of the blade.
    Grax looked at him. “How did you find out what it does?”
    “That’s rather tragic actually. I’d rather not talk about it.”
    “When your enemies… disappear,” Grax said. “Do you know where they go?”
    Bitsy paused in her grooming and looked at him with green eyes.
    “I’ve no idea,” the swordsman lied.
    Grax hitched up his wide belt. His chain skirts rang. “The captains are going to meet to decide what to do next. They all want to hunt for the loot and the Venger’s Temple, but some are still going to have to guard the convoy on its way to Gundapur.”
    “This should be entertaining,” Aristide said. “I’ll attend, if I may.” He rose to his feet and prodded his prisoners with his scabbard. “Up, you two,” he said. The prisoners rose and, without their bound hands to aid them, picked their way carefully down the steep slope. Aristide rested his sword on his shoulder and followed.
    As the party moved off, Bitsy rose to her feet, yawned, stretched, and joined the party.
    The argument that followed was not unpredictable. Nadeer wanted to lead his little army to the Venger’s Temple. Others pointed out that Nadeer was captain of the convoy guards charged with escorting the caravans to Gundapur, not the leader of a group of freebooters on their own account. Nadeer protested at first, but was finally brought to admit that he had accepted the responsibility of escort.
    With Nadeer thus out of the running, the other captains all proposed themselves as leaders of the expedition to the Temple, and were in the process of arguing this when the actual caravan masters, their employers, demanded that all the guards accompany them all the way to Gundapur—or, failing that, surrender a share in any loot.
    The argument was brisk and prolonged. Aristide, perched nearby atop a boulder that had fallen from the cliffs above and come to rest on the edge of the river, ate hard bread and dried fruit, and enjoyed the rush and flow and scent of the Cashdan with the pleasure that only thirty-odd days in the desert would bring. He smiled to himself as he listened to the arguments. Bitsy, less entertained, found a warm place on the rock and curled up to sleep. It was only when the captains’ wrangle had grown repetitious that Aristide interrupted.
    “My friends,” he said, “may I point out that this debate is bootless?”
    They looked at him. He stood on his rock and smiled down at them.
    “At the Venger’s Temple lies the loot of over a dozen caravans!” he pointed out. “Plus a sizeable hoard of plunder gathered elsewhere. Even if every convoy guard among you marched to the Temple and captured the treasure, how would they get all the treasure away? Even if they took every beast of burden in our combined caravans, they could only move a fraction of the total.”
    The captains looked at each other, their eyes glittering not with surprise, but with calculation. Perhaps , they seemed to be thinking, we could only take the absolute best …
    “Therefore,” said Aristide, “Nadeer and at least half the guards should take the caravans to Gundapur as quickly as they can, because they will have a vital role—to search the city in order to round up every horse, every camel, every ox, and every dinosaur-of-burden, and to bring them back to the Vale of Cashdan to carry away the greatest treasure in the history of the sultanate!”
    The captains raised a cheer at this. But Masoud the Infirm raised an objection.
    “If we take the treasure to Gundapur,” he wheezed, “the sultan will want a percentage.”
    “No doubt,” Aristide said. “But if you take the treasure anywhere else, the local ruler will also require a tax. And it must be admitted that your ordinary guards and camel drivers will want to be paid as soon as possible, so that they may spend their earnings in the city’s pleasure-domes. Gundapur is your best bet.
    “And since that is the case,”