The Conscientious Citizen Ought To Give It A Rest At Some Point

Nobody afterward interested Dirant at all, class-wise. Soon enough the party spread itself among other diversions such as impromptu choirs singing to the improvisations of relentless drummers, beach tennis, and a group game involving two people who swung a rope while others jumped over it. Back in Dubwasef, the Drastlifars had resisted converting a sober Adaban custom into a scene of full frivolity, but there and then they did as they liked.

Dirant parted from the people he knew with a view toward increasing his opportunities to overhear conversations intentionally without the permission of the involved parties, to put it in a not particularly delicate way. As willing as he was to engage in disreputable behavior on account of the mystery which still held the potential to end in deaths, he still considered honesty important. Therefore he never denied to anyone that he crept up near Helsodenk Nifkleskir and Poiskops Bodan-Tin when the two separated from the greater crowd, and the statement he heard little of what they said was entirely true for all that his fear of discovery alone caused it.

He received an impression that Poiskops wished to figure out what lucrative endeavor bought Helsodenk back and how much of it he could take over. Helsodenk for his part deflected the inquiry by speaking of the general state of Drastlif and the gossip which surely did not interest a man more accustomed to cause scandal than wallow in it.

Soon Poiskops gave up, helpless against the lawyer's masterly evasions. Rather than relying on his non-existent stealth abilities, Dirant instead moved to a position so that he might greet the Stanops as if that had long been his plan, congratulate him on how charmingly his Koshat Dreivis partied, and offer to assist with anything whatsoever at any time from right then to the boundaries of eternity.

Th maneuver went well, since Poiskops wanted to talk. “Sajaitin. What may be done to rest us more pleasantly and please us till our rest? Conversation, the authorities say, on trivial things. Tell me, when you were in Dubwasef youthful and new, did you hear, or rather, what sort of rumors did you hear about my nephew? I mean the one who's visiting now.”

The sort that ostensibly gave Onkallant Paspaklest a motive for murdering the head of your nephew's family, as Dirant would never reply. Rather than that, provided he handled the conversation deftly, he might be able to spread the idea that Onkallant knew the rumors and considered there to be nothing untoward in the matter. That sounded a bit too requiring of deftness to Dirant, and so instead he sought some clues as to Keiminops's forthcoming commercial endeavor.

“As to that, Stanops, I did in Dubwasef try to become familiar with the talk of the day. I hope still to learn of, ah, ways to make more money.”

“That's how it should be, Sajaitin. Build your house first and then worry about filling it. Now let me in on the non-profitable gossip you have heard, and you can leave out the old stuff about the Stin-Ston debacle and the wrath of families spurned without malice or the slightest concern, an insult heavy to bear. I'm asking about something current.” The way he emphasized “current” made it sound like the least reputable word in the language, not only with his voice but also by drawing closer to Dirant so that they came close to sharing the same shoes.

Since that was the situation, Dirant leaned over and lowered his voice. “There is something, or was before I left Dubwasef, though I am in a position to know what was said is untrue.”

“If that mattered, the world would be easier to navigate. Who is the seifis in question?”

“Ah.” The situation disconcerted Dirant for a moment; not out of the effort of following a conversation amid the raucous celebration, but because things were going how he wanted without any deftness on his part. There was a bit of emptiness to the feeling. “She is Seifis Onerid Paspaklest.”

“Oho!”

“As you can see yourself, she behaves among Bodan-Tins the same as elsewhere, for she has met your nephew but twice and has never the rumors heard. Her brother is aware of the gossip and cares nothing about it.”

“That last, Sajaitin, matters. I feel like the sailor who walked into the palace prepared for his execution and left to take up residence in a mansion in gleaming Yean Defiafi, furnished and staffed already. Seifis Paspaklest. If he wants to make a run at her . . . Sajaitin, let's leave discredited rumors behind. You say you've talked to her brother? What would be the opinion of the Paspaklests, I'm asking for an opinion here and not a promise definitive, about a licit connection?”

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His deftness notwithstanding, Dirant considered himself too much of a sluggard simply to keep up with the conversation. At the present rate, Keiminops would be married by the end of it. “Answering with my opinion only, it is exceedingly unlikely there would be any objection whatsoever from her brother, and while I met her father but briefly, he appeared likely to belong to the category of aging men who are more interested in grandchildren than details.”

Poiskops was nodding. “How many pages have been filled with explorations after causes for the close relations between Drastlif and the GE, when the answer is simple alignment of sentiment? Now, Sajaitin, I go to try to make something happen, and may your next year be smiles and whispers, young man!” He strolled away.

What poem or epigraph birthed that line Dirant would inquire later in order to understand its meaning. It was probably benevolent, but the chance of the opposite prevented him from using it himself when he merged back into the general revelry with more investigation as his intention. Nobody he came across wanted to confess to the plot within hearing, but everybody was willing to explain how beach tennis worked. “You're incontestably correct that the ball won't bounce very well, Sajaitin. We adjust for that by designating the area around the net as a fault zone to force the players to hit it long and low.”

“Thank you, Eizesl. The lines are hard for me to discern.”

That particular Drastlifar laughed. “Well, what would you, Sajaitin? We want to play, not shift aside the tumbling pebbles for hour upon hour!”

Another said, “A vague awareness of the space is for sport sound enough.”

Such complacency at other times would not have bothered Dirant, but after getting away with spying on an oligarch and perhaps ruining a villainous plan to substitute an innocent countryman in place of a wicked assassin, the elation of realized potential moved him to demonstrate to the inhabitants of Koshat Dreivis what radiant possibilities they might grab if only they reached.

He had another reason to act: Posmeterin Igwodan-Tin. The veteran Ritualist was giving out indications he might abandon the party, saying he was older than he used to be and his stomach smaller. That type of excuse. Whatever the effect on his health would have been to enter his house and find a Sivoslofer Battler dumping the contents of his drawers on the presumably tidy floor, Dirant thought it better avoided.

“Sajaitin,” he hailed Posmeterin. “Beach tennis must be played on courts, and when I see those rude things I wonder if laymen ever learned how to draw a line. They prefer to guess if a ball landed fairly or otherwise. More than that, they set up but two courts on all this beach despite the obvious popularity of the sport.” Dirant swept his arm to encompass all the townspeople and guests present, many of whom pressed upon the courts in a manner more akin to hogs searching for a spot at the trough than a respectful audience summoned by the prospect of feats of athleticism. “A Ritualist of level 2 could do better as a training exercise.”

The implication did not escape Posmeterin, who beckoned various of his probable children, grandchildren, and other relatives over, not to mention non-Igwodan-Tins. As Dirant surmised, he had raised and was training enough Ritualists to keep Bodan-Tin operations supplied for the next two generations. Likely his charges also included those assistants no longer much employed in Greater Enloffenkir on account of the increased competence and avarice of its Ritualists.

Some histories claimed that in previous eras, Ritualists relied entirely upon liners, as Adabans called them, to prepare their designs and did not themselves bother to learn the necessary lines. The historians responsible for those books and essays inevitably received letters across a range of polite to unreadable from Ritualists who wished to remind the writer that the Ritual Memory ability made that impossible; they could not forget the details of a completed ritual even if they desired to do so. A correction was always desired and often received, though at times the historian instead responded with an aggressive refusal or even suggested that the matter might be taken as evidence for the theory that class abilities have not always been the same, a proposal which caused arguments among the members of every class without exception whenever it appeared.

The number of beach courts multiplied and their quality rose noticeably under the staves, rakes, and delicate fingers of the Ritualist clique. Not only did the lines become deeper, wider, and sloped to prevent cave-ins, the outer edges, formerly straight, became waves among which dolphins played and pilots steered while monsters roamed the fault areas in search of illegal balls, the tastiest kind. Doubles became possible as well on expanded courts, not to mention the chaotic but fascinating six vs. six variant even then winning attention among sports enthusiasts accepting of novelty. They needed only nets to complete them, and in Koshat Dreivis, like many other towns near the coast, that was the same as being done.

Under Dirant's suggestions and Posmeterin's guidance, the troupe followed that up with a race track that ran a good way along the beach complete with staggered starting marks, designated jump rope areas with places assigned for the cat and the scorpion as the Drastlifars called the two holding the rope for some reason too obscure for the foreigner to guess (not that many locals knew either), and a zone for measuring the longest jump so long as the competitors' landings did not mar the marks too much, which deeper into the night they certainly would.