The Busiest Life, The Happiest Life, And The Most Respectable Life Are All Three Identical

“There has to be a lot wrong with what you just said, but I haven't figured it out yet. Oh, it's Onerid! Onerid, would you agree with me that— oh, she's talking to someone. We shouldn't interrupt, Ressi.”

Compliance came easily to Dirant, and a desire to intrude failed to manifest when he saw the Drastlifar with her. If a lack of grandchildren was the doom threatening Delaosant Paspaklest, that fellow looked to have been outfitted by nature as a deliberate instrument to avert it. He was of that category someone might call perfectly formed in figure and feature, most likely as a complaint. Though a hair shorter than Dirant, in every other area he excelled, from his mesmerizing green eyes as opposed to the non-mesmerizing type Dirant possessed to the beard he cultivated after a finer fashion than his countrymen who valued size over shape. Probably he had a deep and melodious voice as well, Dirant surmised, because fairness exists only within company pay scales, and there for newer hires alone. While watching those two drift out of sight, Dirant wondered if Drastlif's conventions considered the current celebration to be private, or the reenactment for that matter. He supposed Onerid knew, as did the man with her whose name he presumed he never would learn.

“Either that was Eizesl Bodan-Tin or the sun escaped too quickly to give us a proper look.”

“Not Eizesl Keiminops Bodan-Tin, you must mean?”

Hearing that, Dirant turned around and at last realized why Takki had been looking backward: the keen battle awareness of her class. Why, he might have been dead already if those people had been chatty assassins rather than a bevy of young Drastlifan ladies flitting about Onkallant Paspaklest's athletic form. Everyone was a friend at the fair, after all.

Onkallant never waited for fairs to be friendly. If anything, he acted with more circumspection than usual. “Suppose he is. It isn't a matter that should bring us to bother Mr. Dirant and his friend.” The specified gentleman never longed for Onkallant's presence, but he always appreciated his incisive words. “There's something. Was it not asked who would bear arms in the GE should we take up heraldry? Surely this man's family. I can tell you how wealthy this man's father is only if you let me call upon all your fingers and toes. And who will volunteer to go first?” Words like those, for example.

The girls giggled, though the first Dirant had heard persisted in her identification efforts. “But was it the light or not, and if the second, that terrible second, were it not advised by justice for someone to warn that beauty of the eizesl's reputation?”

Onkallant laughed at that. “A beauty! Onerid! I see my forefathers before me! They wait for me to join them in the fortless lands! Aha! Ah, no, that was my sister. She is wary as a habit and big-eared as a profession. Your worry is charming and unnecessary at once together.”

“I'm a little worried,” Takki confessed. “When I heard about Keiminops Bodan-Tin, people refused to define half the words.”

“Onerid knows them,” Onkallant assured her.

“You're right.”

That calmed Takki, but not the Drastlifars. “There's textual support by the foot and the mile for older brothers to take action, Eizesl.”

“We're often the villain in such stories.”

“But what if he resorts to . . . measures?” The lady fretted as she said even that much.

“Well, what of it? She's a very Myrmidon. That eizesl, is what, a Visionary or so? The measures he might take! Proposed plans for a new model of granary I suppose!”

“But . . .”

“Excuse me. It is so very rude to ask, and yet I must know. Will you take part in the beach race, Mr. Onkallant?” Dirant assayed a bold gambit. For one thing, no beach race had been planned. For another, his short acquaintance gave him small grounds to judge if Onkallant's responses were growing as testy as he thought. Conjecturing that Onkallant's displeasure came from the tension between his desire to take actions which might improve Loigwin's chances and his understanding that they would fail to do anything but make his sister mad was entirely unreasonable, but Dirant did it anyway. Afterward, if he judged himself correct, he could get to working out whether Onerid really was a Myrmidon or if her brother meant that figuratively.

Onkallant's ready agreement had undeniable relief in it, which taught Dirant the important lesson that guesses are better than sure knowledge. The girls also consented with enthusiasm. That solved all present problems except the one Dirant had in organizing a spontaneous beach race, but the ready cooperation of still-sober party attendees reduced the difficulty to a mere pebble among thousands. With that accomplished, Dirant was able to relax, enjoy praise for thinking to enliven the event with a race, and theorize whether, if senior ambassador Derisht Fogillad's claims were true, a tragedy more meaningful than a sparsely attended family reunion yet menaced former ambassador Delaosant Paspaklest.

Break-ins and ritual security aside, had the main office forgotten its Itinerant Ritualist? Did no Ritualists of the normal sort require training? Probably not. Rituals spread like plagues, which was the sort of simile Dirant's mind began to produce a few days later with nothing on his hands but to do odd jobs and be receptive to gossip. Even that was less fun after seeing the shortcomings of lazy Rumor firsthand. People were talking up how often Keiminops Bodan-Tin of the illustrious Bodan-Tin family was meeting the daughter of the venerable ambassador from Greater Enloffenkir, Delaosant Paspaklest. Since Dirant could testify from his personal knowledge that Onerid was spending her time rating every restaurant in the city along with Takki, practicing calligraphy, and preparing for the grand opening of a new Stadeskosken warehouse furnished for walk-in shoppers, he knew placidity had reduced society to inventing titillating scenarios, and worse, it failed even at that. Surely Drastlif's gossips could make up something a bit spicier.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Boredom compelled Dirant to compose prayers simply as a way to keep busy. “Holzd of many occupations . . . task-giving Holzd . . . busy-handed Holzd . . . That last is appropriate for the god of thievery, perhaps. Is there such?” His religious studies had reached that nebulous region where no longer did everything he heard about the gods surprise him, but neither did he believe himself an authority. Worse, he considered there to be no authorities, since much of what he read conflicted with what he saw. His god had stated for certain that epithets pleased him, and therefore he acted upon that without imagining he understood anything else.

He had moved on to contemplating what new ritual he might try to devise when, like an omen from the god, a man walked in, a Drastlifar of no mean appearance. He spoke to receptionist Renlimed Tellanstisk. “It isn't that I have any request myself, but a man who has no ear for the request of a friend is deaf indeed. Stanops Bodan-Tin had this thought that it might be possible to have prepared for his use a certain novelty in which your bustling company specializes.”

Stanops Bodan-Tin. That all sounded like a name to the naive Adaban back home, but the experienced world traveler possessed of deep cultural knowledge understood “stanops” to mean “fewman,” or “the word 'few' put into the masculine singular form” if one wished to be unpleasant about it, and further that it functioned as an honorific reserved for those famed oligarchs who ruled the country from their honor-cushioned seats on the Permissive and Restricted Councils. How many stories were told in Greater Enloffenkir, in Yean Defiafi, in every country of the opulence of those oligarchs? How many more were told of their cunning? Then there were the ones in which somebody managed to dupe a clownish oligarch, the primary interest of which came from the reversal of expectations.

“Ah!” The receptionist adopted a look of appropriate awe. “If you, sir, are a messenger from Stanops Bodan-Tin—”

The visitor hurried to correct her. “No, not that, only a friend, anyone would say.”

“Lickspittle.” Onerid happened to be passing by the popcorn counter and leaned over to whisper that to Dirant, who at that moment was closer to her than the younger, non-oligarch Bodan-Tin had ever been. He resisted a laugh, but if the customer had looked over then, he would have seen an unprofessional countenance.

“Then you must speak with Mr. Hadolt Herafoken, the manager here, sir. Please come this way.” Renlimed Tellanstisk led the messenger, or rather one of the numerous people who depended on the Bodan-Tins and kept themselves ready at all the times to run errands, accompany their benefactors in public, or get into a wild street brawl over news articles that failed to display total obsequiousness. Men like Poiskops Bodan-Tin employed many servants but needed none; even the salaries they paid were in the nature of charity.

That visit for once did not end with a staff meeting, but Mr. Hadolt did call four employees to his office afterward. “He wishes to have a popcorn stand set up in the village of Koshat Dreivis,” the manager told them in tones of no less wonder than a father might have when greeting his first infant, or the pious caretaker of a temple if a stranger restored a statue thought lost. “What amazes me the most is that we have guidelines from the home office dealing with exactly this work category. I am instructed to require that the installation be performed by Stadeskosken Ritualists without oversight from the client, and of course schedules of payment are specified for different intended uses. As the oligarch evidently has no plans to sell the resulting product, there will be only a fee for labor and an agreement to purchase the necessary corn exclusively from our company. But how did they know?”

All those provisions emerged from the licensing negotiations because of lawyerly thoroughness, but Dirant interpreted the question as rhetorical. He was not mistaken. The manager moved directly to the specifics of the assignment. Since travel was required, naturally Itinerant Ritualist Dirant Rikelta would fulfill the Stadeskosken Ritualist condition. He would have Onerid Paspaklest with him to translate as well to ensure everything was done according to the agreement, that the outcome pleased the client, and that the client further had an opportunity to learn of everything else Stadeskosken could do for him, his friends, and anyone he knew. The part about spreading the word indicated Onerid over Onkallant given the avenues of communication maintained by Drastlif's ladies. To assist those two and not admit to guarding them, Stansolt Gaomat and Ibir Doteniksta had been picked.

“Though how necessary is that?” On the top of Hadolt's desk were strewn schedules at which he liked to glare as sort of a hobby. “Mr. Dirant, you have your own guard, do you not? We must satisfy the license requirements, but one will suffice for that. I might remove Mr. Stansolt from the assignment.”

Hearing that, Dirant doubted whether the home office had informed the branch that he himself was one of the license holders. Scheming ways to get out of the terms in front of one of the parties must be the result of ignorance, he thought, before he realized the other possibility: Hadolt was asking his permission without disclosing his position to the others. Dirant was inclined to give it.

“Essentially so,” he said. Takki did what she liked, being on vacation, and surely the Dvanjchtlivan agents tailing him would be recalled after some time of his doing nothing suspicious, but Dirant considered himself protected for the present.

Someone disagreed. “That all may be so, but is there not something worrying in the timing of this request?” It was Stansolt Gaomat, an expert in both violence and skulduggery and therefore someone unwise to ignore. “So soon after an alleged assassination target fled with this company's help, the portions of my brain that question coincidences shout loudly enough to draw the attention of those doctors who even now attempt to determine which bit does what. Seeing as Mr. Dirant was the substitute . . .”

“How do you know that?” Hadolt would have sprung from his chair if he had been sitting. Unfortunately he lacked a humorous temperament, or else he might have sat down and then stood back up.

“It was my job to be observant, I understood. Was that incorrect? Either way, the ultimate purpose of this invitation may be interrogation.”

The manager frowned. “That's jumping across more than one rock.”