"Sire, see the three-circle brand on its thorax. And listen: it is said The Assassin has repurchased the necklace of his profession from the moneylenders. A very broad-shouldered Earthman masked in brass climbed the long path to The Assassin's crags two nights ago. No doubt he purchased your wife's life, enabling The Assassin to reclaim his necklace."
Jeff leaned wearily against the pillar. "Konrad."
Taen raised his kauri on its perch-staff in assent. "No doubt he retained clothing that had touched her body and with that The Assassin was able to train the skar." Taen whipped the hood from the kauri and it clattered its beak and hummed its incredibly small wings. "Are we in turn to purchase the death of Konrad?"
"No."
With the mismatched hands the doctor had fitted him from the Body Bank, Taen unsheathed his kauri's spurs. A year before, when Jeff found this mountain man lying with bleeding wrist stumps in the jungle he readily admitted he had killed without hiring The Assassin. Caught, he had been maimed and left to die in the jungle. Since only The Assassin could directly take life, since he was too expensive to be hired to execute any but the most aristocratic murderers, Taen had been merely maimed and deserted. Against his protests of the unthinkableness of it, the young doctor had saved his life and given him arms.
Taen rasped, "Then The Assassin shall not profit from my master. Though I again shatter tradition, though Konrad is Manager of the City and guarded by walking machines and ones of my people who love the imitation of power, I will do the job myself if you so wish, sire."
"You misunderstand," Jeff replied. "I would buy Konrad's life in the customary way if it would give me back my wife's. But while he lives there is a chance he will relent and leave us in peace."
"Peace is gone, sire. The bargain has been made. The honor of the countless generations of his clan demands The Assassin do his job. It has always been so. For him to fail or to accept a bribe is unthinkable. Only the purchasing party, Konrad, could cancel the agreement."
"You can't visualize Konrad doing that, can you."
"Sire, it is said that in this last year he has become a mad man of steel and poison."