Free The Chalice of Death by Robert Silverberg Page B

the Royal Purchase Officer.”
    â€œHmm. Well enough,” the guard grunted. “You can come in.”
    The burnished door hoisted. Navarre groaned complainingly and moved forward step by step, as if his legs were rotted by extreme age.
    â€œGet a move on, old man!”
    â€œI’m coming … patience, please! Patience!”
    The door clanged down hard behind him. He pulled his cowl down tighter around his ears. The Purchasing Office was on the third level, two flights upward, and the liftshaft was not far ahead.
    â€œI know the way,” he said to the guard. “You needn’t help me.”
    He tottered along the corridor until he reached the liftshaft, stepped in, and quickly pressed the stud labeled 2. A moment later he nudged the adjoining stud, the one marked 3.
    The liftshaft door slid noiselessly shut; the tube rose and stopped at the second level. Navarre stepped out, stepped back in, and pressed 7.
    Knowing the system was an immeasurable advantage to him. The stops of the liftshaft could be monitored from the first level; thus, if the old vendor were to claim to be going to 3 and should go to 7 instead—the Overlord’s floor—there would be cause for immediate suspicion. But he had carefully thrown confusion behind him, now. There was no certain way of knowing who it was who had seemed to enter the liftshaft on the second level.
    He waited patiently while the door opened and shut on the third level; then it went up to the seventh.
    Navarre emerged, shuffling wearily along the character of the old vendor. He knew precisely where Joroiran’s private study was located, and, more, he knew precisely how to get there. He counted his steps … eleven, twelve, thirteen. He paused thirteen steps from the liftshaft, leaned against the wall, waited.
    Counterweighted balances sighed softly and the wall swung open, offering a crevice perhaps wide enough for a cat to pass through. Navarre was taking no chances. He squeezed through and kicked the counterweight, sealing the corridor wall again.
    Now he found himself in an inner corridor. A televisor screen cast an invisible defensive web across the hall, but again Navarre had the considerable benefit of having devised the system himself. He neatly extracted a fuse from a concealed panel in the dark stone of the corridor wall, and walked ahead in confidence.
    Joroiran’s study door was unmarked by letter or number. Again, Navarre’s doing. He huddled deep into his robes, listened carefully for any sound of conversation coming from within, and, hearing none, knocked three times, then once, then once again. It was a signal he had used with the Overlord for years.
    Silence for a moment. Then: “Who’s there?” in the hesitant, high-pitched voice of the Overlord.
    â€œAre you alone, Majesty?”
    Through the door came the petulant reply: “Who are you to ask questions of me? Speak up or I’ll summon the guards to deal with you!”
    It was Joroiran in his most typically blustery mood. Speaking in his natural voice Navarre said, “Have you forgotten this knock, Majesty?”
    He knocked again.
    Suspiciously, from within: “Is this a joke?”
    â€œNo, Majesty. I have come back.” He threw back his hood and let Joroiran’s televisors pick up his face and shaven scalp.
    After a moment the door opened perhaps half an inch.
    â€œ Navarre !” came the whisper from within. The opening widened, and Navarre found himself face to face with his sovereign, Joroiran VII of Jorus.
    The year had changed Joroiran, Navarre saw. The Overlord wore a shabby gray lounging-robe instead of his garments of state; without the elaborate strutwork that puffed out his frame when he appeared in public, he looked vaguely rat-like, a little bit of a man who had been thrust into a vast job by some ironic accident of birth.
    His eyes were ringed with dark shadows; his cheeks were hollower than Navarre remembered