Free The Burning City by Jerry Pournelle Page B

gently. He liked Lady Siresee.
    â€œKill them.”
    â€œNot easy,” Qirinty laughed. “There are a lot of them, and after all they won last time.”
    â€œSqueeze the kinless much harder and you’ll get another war,” Jerreff said. “Some of them are getting desperate.”
    â€œYes,” Samorty said. “But they’d really be in bad shape after a Burning.”
    â€œThere are stories,” Jerreff said. “Whole city burned down. Even our town.”
    â€œWhere did you hear that?” Samorty asked.
    â€œAt the Memory Guild. Yangin-Atep used to be more powerful,” Jerreff said. “He could seize everyone, Lordkin and Lords too. Burnings were really bad in those days. Didn’t your father tell you that, Samorty?”
    â€œYangin-Atep has no power in here.” Samorty waved at the sculpted gardens and too-perfect houses. “And damned little in town.”
    â€œSure, and you know why,” Qirinty said. “We can fence him out, but we can’t control him.”
    â€œGods have gone mythical,” Jerreff said.
    â€œDon’t be a fool,” Samorty said. “You heard what Morth said. And suppose we
could
send Yangin-Atep into myth—what happens then?”
    â€œNo more Burnings,” Jerreff said.
    â€œAt what cost?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Qirinty said.
    â€œNeither do I, and that’s the point,” Samorty said. “Right now we’ve got things under control—”
    â€œSort of,” Jerreff said.
    â€œEnough.” Samorty clapped his hands. The kinless servants brought in new trays of mugs. “We have a performance tonight.”
    â€œOh, what?” Qirinty’s wife asked.
    â€œJispomnos.”
    â€œNo, no, that’s long,” Quintana said.
    â€œNot all of it—scenes from part one,” Rawanda said. “Nobody does the whole thing.”
    â€œEven so,” Quintana said. “I’ll be back…” He went off toward the small room under the stairs.

C HAPTER
7

    Performance
was a way of telling a story. Several people acted out lives that weren’t theirs, on a platform with moveable furniture. A man with a booming voice spoke as storyteller. Whandall had never seen anything like it.
    The performance was long, and Whandall didn’t understand a lot of the words. Jispomnos had beaten his woman, had tracked her down after she fled from him, had killed her and the man he found with her. Whandall understood that well enough. Whandall’s uncle Napthefit had killed Aunt Ralloop when he found her with a Water Devil. He’d tried to kill the man too, but the Water Devil had run to his kin.
    But Jispomnos’s woman was kinless!
    The killing wasn’t shown.
    Guards took Jispomnos away. He walked away when they turned their backs. The guards chased Jispomnos around and around the stage in excruciating slow motion and all sang in a harmony that Whandall found beautiful, but they sang so
slowly!
—in time to somnolent music that ran on forever….
    Shanda pulled his ear to wake him. “You were snoring.”
    â€œWhat’s going on now?”
    â€œTrial.”
    He watched for a time. “I don’t understand anything at all! What’s the trial about?”
    She looked at him with wide eyes. “There was a murder,” she rebuked him. “It’s about whether he did it or not.”
    â€œJispomnos is a Lordkin, isn’t he?” Or was the
actor
a Lordkin
playing
Jispomnos?
    But Shanda only looked at him strangely.
    Whandall swallowed what he was about to say. Shanda wasn’t Lordkin. Instead he pointed and said, “The kinless woman and the two men, who are they? They’re doing all the talking.”
    â€œThe men, they speak for Jispomnos. Clarata speaks for the court.”
    â€œJispomnos won’t speak for himself?” Cowardice or pride? “Why
two
men?”
    â€œI don’t know.