CHAPTER 54

At dawn a vivino was singing in the garden. The bird perched on a chestnut branch right outside their open bedroom window; at first, his sad melodic trills seemed to Tangorn to be threads plucked out of the fabric of his dreams. He slipped out of bed (carefully so as not to disturb Alviss) and stole up to the window. The tiny singer put up his head so high that the yellow throat feathers formed a frothy collar around his neck, and finished with an excellent resounding note; then he turned his head in mock modesty and expectantly glanced at the baron: did you like it? Thank you, little friend! I know that vivinos are forest dwellers that hate the city. Did you fly here to say good bye?

Right! the bird winked mockingly and flitted into the garden; the vivino was a true Umbarian, stranger to Nordic sentimentality.

Bare feet pattered almost noiselessly, and warm Alviss clung to him from behind, brushing her lips across his shoulder blades.

“What did you see out there?”

“A vivino was singing – a real vivino in the city, can you imagine?”

“Oh, that’s my vivino. He’s been here for almost a month.”

“I see…” Tangorn drawled, feeling, funnily enough, something like a pang of jealousy.

“And here I thought that he came here for me…”

“Listen, maybe he really is yours? He showed up in my garden the same time you did…

Yes, right around the first of the month!”

“In any event, it’s the best goodbye one can wish from Umbar… Hey, Aly, look – there’s another goodbye!” he laughed, pointing at a gloomy sleepy policeman stationed across the street beside Chakti-Vari’s jewelry shop. “The Secret Service politely reminds me to tread carefully until I leave… All right. Have you changed your mind about going today?

Maybe you want to settle your affairs here first?”

“No way!” she responded curtly. “I’m coming with you. That caravan has two available bactrians – isn’t that a sign? My lawyer will have to settle my affairs anyway, it’s a job for weeks. I suppose everything should be converted to gold, can’t be much of a market for securities up North.”

“Nobody there would know what they are,” he nodded, watching Alviss dress with a smile.

“Aren’t we quite a sight, girl? A bankrupt aristocrat with nothing but a sword and a moth-eaten title is marrying the money of a successful widow of the merchant class…”

“…said widow having made her start by selling her body left and right,” Alviss concluded in the same vein. “A total misalliance no matter how you look at it, a gold mine for gossips from both classes.”

“That’s for sure…” He had a sudden thought and started figuring something. “Listen, I just thought… there’s plenty of time until noon. Want to get married right away? Choose any rite.”

“Yes, darling, certainly… I don’t care which rite, either. Let’s go Aritanian – their temple is nearby.”

“Aly, what’s the problem? You seem unhappy.”

“No, of course not! I just had a real bad premonition when you started talking marriage.”

“Nonsense,” he said firmly. “Let’s get dressed and go. Aritanian is fine. By the way, your stone is sapphire, right?”

“Yes, why?”

“While you pretty up, I’ll have enough time to visit the honorable Chakti-Vari across the street and buy a wedding present. It’s early, but for this kind of money,” he picked up the bag with the remainder of Sharya-Rana’s gold, “the old man will fly out of bed like a startled pheasant and…”

He cut himself short at the sight of Alviss’ face: she paled and her eyes turned from blue to black with widened pupils.

“No!! Tan, dearest, don’t go, I pray you!”

“Baby, what’s the matter? Another premonition?” She nodded vigorously, unable to speak.

“There’s no danger – I’m out of the game, nobody wants me.”

She had already gotten hold of herself. “All right, but let’s go together, all right? I’ll be ready in five minutes. Promise you won’t leave the house without me!”

“Yes, mommy!”

“Good boy!”

Alviss pecked him on the cheek and slipped into the corridor; Tangorn could hear her give orders to grumbling Tina. Congratulations, Baron, he thought gruffly, your beloved will walk you over by the hand to provide security, since you’re incapable of even that much.

You’ve quit the game beaten – not exactly conducive to self-esteem – but if you really do obediently wait for Alviss now, you’ll simply lose the right to call yourself a man. And if her premonitions are true, then so much the worse for them. Maybe I’m not worth a copper as a spy, but I’m still the third sword of Gondor. I have the Slumber-maker  and the mithril coat, should you guys want to risk it. Let your heads be my consolation prize, I’m quite in the mood for that… Damn! He almost laughed. Looks like I’m beginning to treat female premonitions seriously…

He scanned the empty garden, which was in full view from the second floor, then the empty Jasper street with the DSD man in police uniform. Guard cobras in Chakti-Vari’s store – so what? Feet over the windowsill, he thought fleetingly that he’d better spring clear of the flower bed, lest Alviss chew his head off over her favorite nasturtiums.

Alviss was almost ready to go when she caught a movement in the garden in the corner of her eye. Her heart lurched; she sprang to the window and beheld Tangorn on the garden path. Blowing her a kiss, he went towards the door. Whispering a few choice expressions better fitting her port youth than current status, Alviss observed, with some relief, that the baron was armed and that his stance showed caution rather than undue attention to the beauty of the summer morning. He went through the door watchfully, crossed the street, exchanged a few words with the policeman and stretched his hand towards the brass knocker on the jewelry shop door…

“Ta-a-a-a-n!!!” Her desperate scream shattered the silence.

Too late.

The policeman raised a hand to his mouth, and the next moment the baron sagged to the ground, clutching his throat convulsively.

When she ran into the street the ‘policeman’ was long gone, and Tangorn was living the last seconds of his life. The poisoned thorn spat from an ulshitan – a small tube used by Far Harad pygmies – struck him in the neck, a finger’s width above the mithril mail; the third sword of Gondor had no time to even draw the Slumber-maker. Alviss tried to lift him; the baron clutched her arms in a death grip and breathed hoarsely: “Tell… Faramir… un…done…”; he tried to say something else, but lacked the air to do it: the alkaloids of the anchar tree on which the pygmies’ poison is based paralyze the respiratory muscles. The baron failed both to complete his mission and to let his friends know about it; he died with that thought.

A man nicknamed Ferryman, a ‘clean-up man’ from Elandar’s organization, observed the scene from a nearby attic through a cobwebbed hole in the roof. He put his crossbow down, at a loss to figure out who beat him to it so neatly. DSD? Too tidy for 12 Shore Street…

What if this is another of the baron’s tricks? Maybe he should plink him with a bolt, just to be sure?

By that time Mongoose had already shed his police uniform, becoming once again a duly accredited ambassador of His Majesty the Sultan Sagul the Fifth the Pious, the mighty ruler of non-existent Florissant Islands. He was moving briskly but without undue haste towards the port, where a previously chartered felucca named Trepang was waiting for him. The battle of the two lieutenants had ended the way it had to end, because a professional differs from an amateur in that he plays not until he has scored a beautiful goal or until he has a psychological crisis, but rather until the sixtieth second of the last minute of the game. By the way, that sixtieth second occurred at the port, where Mongoose had another chance to demonstrate his high degree of professionalism. He himself probably would have been unable to say exactly what it was about the Trepang’s crew that alerted him, but he turned to the skipper as the man stepped on the ramp after him, as if to ask a question, hit him in the throat with the edge of his palm and jumped into the rusty, oily water between the pier and the ship. The two seconds he gained thereby were enough to get a little green pill from behind his collar and swallow it, so Jacuzzi’s operatives only captured another unidentified corpse (the fourth that day). The game that the special command from Task Force Féanor played with the Umbarian Secret Service ended in a draw, nil-nil.

… Petrified with grief, Alviss held dying Tangorn in her arms. He would never find out the most important part: it was his death at the hands of the Secret Guard that settled Elandar’s last doubts, so that same evening his package started north, to Lórien, via routes unknown to any man. Nor was he to know that Alviss heard his last choking whisper as “tell Faramir: done!” and would do everything properly… And the certain Someone tirelessly knitting a gorgeous tapestry we call History out of invisible coincidences and rather visible human weaknesses immediately put the entire episode out of His mind: a gambit is a gambit, sacrifice a piece to win the game, and that’s all there is to it…