Free Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams Page A

dangling ball.
    “It seems harmless,” she said.
    “I imagine it is. Now.” He rose, took a cloth from his pocket, and wrapped the ball carefully before returning it to his pocket. He looked up.
    The battle was over. Overexcited convoy guards rode furiously over the grove, kicking up dust and looking for someone to slaughter. Aristide went looking for whoever was in charge.
    Grax’s deputy, Vidal the Archer, was trying to properly organize the looting.
    “Where’s the plunder?” he demanded, arms akimbo as he glared at the field. He was a dark-skinned man with short, bandy, horseman’s legs and a long, broad trunk, perfect for drawing his bow. He gave a bandit corpse a kick. “All we can find is their tents and their spare trousers.”
    “I’d look behind the waterfall,” Aristide said. “If memory serves, it’s a traditional place for fabulous treasure.”
    Vidal turned his horse and galloped to the waterfall. Aristide followed on foot. By the time he arrived, Vidal had checked behind the fall of water and found the bandits’ cache.
    “Grax promised me a double share,” Aristide said.
    Vidal gave him a narrow, impatient look. “You’ll get it,” he said.
    “I don’t want it,” Aristide said. “What I want is the three fastest animals you have here, and a bag of silver coin for remounts and supplies.”
    Vidal looked at him with more interest. “You have an urgent errand?”
    “Yes. I need to take the news of these priests to the College. The scholars there might be able to understand what they are, and what they represent.”
    Vidal nodded. “Very well,” he said. “You may have what you ask.”
    “I would like a few other things as well,” Aristide said. “I would like the heads of the priests, their right hands, and the balls they used to make your troopers vanish.”
    Vidal gave him a curious look. “Do you think you can get our people back?”
    Aristide considered this. “It might be possible. I doubt it, though.”
    Vidal made a pious sign. “May their next incarnations give them wisdom.”
    “Indeed.”
    Some of Vidal’s guard turned up with improvised torches, and they and their commander ventured behind the waterfall. As Aristide walked away he heard exclamations of delight and avarice at the riches found there.
    He collected the hands, the heads, the clay balls, then retrieved his barb and fed her some of the sultan’s grain. He took off the saddle and laid out his sleeping rug in the palm plantation, as far from the sight and smell of bodies as possible. There he drank water, ate some dried fruit, and reclined with the tail of his turban drawn across his eyes. He reckoned it had been eighty turns of the glass since he had last slept.
    When he awoke the camp was still, most of the guards asleep after celebrating their victory and their newfound fortune. He found Vidal, who had not yet slept, and greeted him. Vidal gave him his bag of silver and led him to the corral, where he chose his three mounts. Vidal offered him food for himself and grain for the animals—any grass or bushes had already been grazed out by the bandits’ beasts—and then Aristide mounted the first of the horses he planned to ride that day.
    “If you hear of any more of these priests operating in the world,” he said, “find out as many details as you can, and send word to the College.”
    “I will,” Vidal said simply.
    Bitsy sprang to her nest behind the swordsman’s saddle. Aristide rode away, leading his horses down the side canyon that led to the Cashdan and the route back across the desert to the Womb of the World.
    It had taken him eight months to walk the route that had taken him to the Vale and the Venger’s Temple.
    He would return in three, if he had to kill a hundred horses to do it.

04
     
    The wall was transparent and looked out at the great metropolis beyond. No one had ever imposed any kind of architectural uniformity on the city, and the result was a skyline of fabulous