I cannot convey to you the impact of that last bolt of transferred experience, brief and incandescent. I had taken the drug with the bank director not very long before, and I had seen nothing in his soul, then, of his taste for his own sex. It was not the kind of thing I would overlook. Either I had manufactured this vision gratuitously, or he had somehow shielded that part of his self from me, keeping his predilections sealed until this instant of breaking through. Was such a partial sealing possible? I had thought one’s mind lay fully open. I was not upset by the nature of his lusts, only by my inability to reconcile what I had just experienced with what had come to me from him on the day of our drug-sharing. But I had little time to ponder the problem, for, as I stood gaping outside the spice-shop, a thin hand fell on mine and a guarded voice said, “I must talk to you secretly, Kinnall.” I. The word jolted me from my dreaming.
Androg Mihan, keeper of the archives of Manneran’s prime septarch, stood beside me. He was a small man, sharp-featured and gray, the last you would think to seek illegal pleasures; the Duke of Sumar, one of my early conquests, had led him to me. “Where shall we go?” I asked, and Mihan indicated a disreputable-looking lower-class godhouse across the street. Its drainer lounged outside, trying to stir up business. I could not see how we could talk secretly in a godhouse, but I followed the archivist anyway; we entered the godhouse and Mihan told the drainer to fetch his contract forms. The moment the man was gone, Mihan leaned close to me and said, “The police are on their way to your house. When you return home this evening you will be arrested and taken to prison on one of the Sumar Gulfs isles.”
“Where do you learn this?”
“The decree was verified this morning and has passed to me for filing.”
“What charge?” I asked.
“Selfbaring,” Mihan said. “Accusation filed by agents of the Stone Chapel. There is also a secular charge: use and distribution of illegal drugs. They have you, Kinnall.”
“Who is the informer?”
“A certain Jidd, said to be a drainer in the Stone Chapel. Did you let the tale of the drug be drained from you?”
“I did. In my innocence. The sanctity of the godhouse—”
“The sanctity of the dunghouse!” Androg Mihan said vehemently. “Now you must flee! The full force of the government is mustered against you.”
“Where shall I go?”
“The Duke of Sumar will shelter you tonight,” said Mihan. “After that—I do not know.”
The drainer now returned, bearing a set of contracts. He gave us a proprietary smile and said, “Well, gentlemen, which of you is to be first?”
“One has remembered another appointment,” Mihan said.
“One feels suddenly unwell,” I said.
I tossed the startled drainer a fat coin and we left the godhouse. Outside, Mihan pretended not to know me, and we went our separate ways without a word. Not for a moment did I doubt the truth of his warning. I had to take flight; Loimel would have to purchase her own spices. I hailed a car and went at once to the mansion of the Duke of Sumar.
FIFTY-EIGHT
THIS DUKE IS ONE of the wealthiest in Manneran, with sprawling estates along the Gulf and in the Huishtor foothills, and a splendid home at the capital set amidst a park worthy of an emperor’s palace. He is hereditary customs-keeper of Stroin Gap, which is the source of his family’s opulence, since for centuries they have skimmed a share of all that is brought forth to market out of the Wet Lowlands. In his person this duke is a man of great ugliness or remarkable beauty, I am not sure which: he has a large flat triangular head, thin lips, a powerful nose, and strange dense tightly curled hair that clings like a carpet to his skull. His hair is entirely white, yet his face is unlined. His eyes are huge and dark and intense. His cheeks are hollow. It is an ascetic face, which to me always seemed alternately saintly and monstrous, and sometimes the both at once. I had been close with him almost since my arrival in Manneran so many years before; he had helped Segvord Helalam into power, and he had stood soulbinder to Loimel at our wedding ceremony. When I took up the use of the Sumaran drug, he divined it as