THE FAT BOY

S weat rolled off the fat boy. He sat in the dust and mutely cursed the Master. This was the season for the north, not the boiling, rain-plagued delta of the Roe. Necremnos had been bad in springtime, Throyes worse a month ago. Argon, in summer, was Hell. The old man was crazy.

He opened one dark eye, cocked his brown, moon-shaped face, studied the Master.

Was there ever such a wreck? The shadow of the Foreign Quarter Gate helped, but even midnight could no longer conceal his age and debility, nor his weakening mind, nor his blindness.

The old man was napping.

The fat boy's hand darted to a tattered leather bag, whipped back clutching a rocklike bun.

The Master's cane cracked dust. "Little ingrate! Damned thief! Steal from an old man... "

Yes, he was past it. Once getting food had been difficult. Just a year ago the problem had required total concentration.

The old man tried to rise. His legs betrayed him. He tumbled backward, cane flailing.

"I heard that! You snickered. You'll rue the day... "

Passersby ignored them. And that was a dire portent.

Once the Master had drawn them against their wills. With his tricks and banter he had stripped the smartest of their money.

Sing-song, the old man called, "Brush aside a veil, see through the eyes of time, penetrate the mists, unlock the doors of fate... " He attempted a sleight-of-hand involving a black cloth and crystal ball, bungled it.

The fat boy shook his head. The fool. He could not admit that he was past it.

The fat boy hated that old man. He had traveled with the itinerant charlatan all his life. Not once had the old man mouthed a kind word. Always he had strained his imagination to torment the child. He had never permitted the boy a name. Yet the fat boy had not run away. Till recently the very idea had been alien.

Sometimes, when he managed the price, the old man would surround prodigious quantities of wine. Then he would mumble of having been court jester to a powerful man. The fat boy, somehow, had been involved in their falling out. Now he paid the price, whether it had been his fault or not.

The old man had instilled a strong guilt in his companion.

He meant it to be his security in his declining years.

The fat boy, brown as the earthen street, sweated, swatted flies, and wrestled temptation. He knew he could survive on his own. He had the skills.

Sometimes, when the Master dozed, he performed himself. He was a superb ventriloquist. He spoke through the old man's props, usually the ape's skull or the stuffed owl. Occasionally he used the mangy, emaciated donkey that carried their gear. When feeling bold he would put words into the Master's mouth.

He had gotten caught once. The old man had beaten him half to death.

That old man wore a list of names, varying according to whom he thought was chasing him. Feager and Sajac were his favorites. The boy was sure both were false.

He chased the secret of a true name doggedly. It might be a clue to his own identity.

Finding out whom he was, now, was the main reason he did nothing to improve his condition.

He was unrelated to Sajac, that he knew. The old man was tall, lean, and pale. He had faded grey eyes and blondish hair. He was a westerner.

Yet the boy's earliest memories were of the far east. Of Matayanga. Escalon. The fabled cities of Janin, Nemic, Shoustal-Watka, and Tatarian. They had even penetrated the wild Segasture Range, where the Theon Sing Monasteries, from their high crags, overlooked the shadowed reaches of the Dread Empire.

Even then he had wondered why he and Sajac were together, and what drove the man to keep moving and moving.

Sajac appeared to be sleeping again.

Hunger clawed at the boy's belly. He could not remember not being hungry.

His hands darted.

Nothing. The sack was empty.

The old man did not react. This time he was asleep.

Time to do something about their naked larder.

Coming by money honestly was hard enough in the best of times...

He waddled along, looking incomparably clumsy and slow. And, though he was not fast, he was quick. Quick and subtle. And daring.

He took the guard captain's purse with a touch so deft that the man did not cry out till he had entered a sweltering tavern and asked for wine.

By then the fat boy was three blocks away, buying pastries.

His liability was that he was too memorable.

The guard captain, though, committed a tactical error. He shouted his promises of punishment before having his criminal in hand.

The fat boy squealed and took off. He could be enslaved, if not maimed or beheaded.

He made his escape, and returned to Sajac before the old man wakened.

His heart pounded on long after he had regained his breath. This was his third close call this week. The odds were turning long. People would start watching for a fat brown boy with quick hands. It was time to move on.

But the old man would not. He meant to put down roots this time.

Something had to be done.

Sajac wakened suddenly. "What have you been up to now?" he snapped. "Stealing my food again?" He seized his cane, probed the bun sack. "Eh?"

It was full.

The fat boy smiled. He always bought the hard rolls because the old man had bad teeth.

"Thieving, I'll warrant!" Sajac staggered up. "I'll teach you, you little pimple... "

The fat boy hadn't the strength to run. He whimpered. The old man plied his cane.

Something had to be done.

Once his persecutor tired, the fat boy whined, "Master, was man to see you hour passing."

The time had come.

"What man? I didn't see anyone."

"Came while Master meditated. Was great man of city. Offered obols thirty for guaranteed divination of chicken entrail, to choose between suitors of daughter. One poor, one rich. Man prefers rich, girl loves poor. To keep secret from daughter, same said come by midnight. Self, told same Master was in possession of sovereign specific to overcome love, same being available for obols twenty extra."

"Liar!" But the cane fell without force. "Twenty and thirty? At midnight?" That was a lot of wine, a lot of forgetfulness.

"Truth told, Master."

"Where?"

"On High Street. By Front Road, near Fadem. Will leave gate open."

"Fifty obols?" Sajac chuckled evilly. "Get me my potions. I'll mix him something fit to grow hair on a frog."

The fat boy, generally, could sleep under the worst conditions. But he could not doze while awaiting midnight.

The rains came, as always, an hour after nightfall. The old man huddled in his cloak, the fat boy in his rags. The time came to confess his lie or go on.

He went on.

He put the Master astride the mangy donkey, led the animal through silent streets, up hills and down, by back ways, making turns for confusion's sake. Neither robbers nor watchmen bothered them.

Their course took them past the seat of the Fadema's government, the Fadem. Still no one challenged them.

Finally they came to the place the fat boy had chosen.

Argon sits on a triangular island, connected to other delta islands by floating causeways. The apex of the triangle points upriver, and it is there that the girdling streams are narrowest. It is there that the ancient engineers built the walls their tallest, with their feet in the river itself.

A hundred feet below, and a quarter mile south, lay one of the pontoons. It linked Argon with suburbs on a neighboring island. Beyond, in the deeper darkness, lay fertile rice islands, the foundation of Argon's wealth.

The fat boy did not care. Economics meant nothing to him.

"Is necessary to walk from here," he said. "Great Lord say bring no beast to mess garden."