“Right,” I said. So far, this was fitting in perfectly. “Now I’ve always heard that centaurs never lie. Is that true?”
“Mm,” said Stan. “That’s the official truth. And you’ll never get a centaur telling you a direct lie, like saying black is white or anything like that. But they’re all of them quite capable of bending the truth, if they see the need. Like they’ll tell you two things that don’t go together and make it sound as if they do – or they’ll add in a little word you don’t specially notice, that makes what they really say into the exact opposite of what you think they say. I’ve been had by that a number of times. Smart people, centaurs. You should never forget that even a stupid centaur has more brain than most humans.”
“I won’t forget,” I said. “I’ll remember that when I talk to Rob – if he’s up to talking, that is.”
“He will be,” said Stan, “and up to bending the truth too. That’s another thing you should remember. Centaurs are tough. Stuff that would lay you and Nick here out for a fortnight, they get up and walk away from.”
“I’m beginning to wonder, after all this, why centaurs don’t rule the multiverse!” I said.
“Well, they can’t live for long in half of it,” Stan pointed out. “They need magic to survive. But mostly, they just don’t go in for ruling. It doesn’t strike them as sensible.”
“I thought that too,” I said. “But it’s odd. The next thing I want to ask you is, would a centaur ever want to be Emperor? There’s nothing in the laws of Koryfos to prevent it, as far as I can see.”
“Only if that centaur didn’t mind being on his own apart from all other centaurs anywhere,” Stan declared. “The strict ones would disapprove of him and the others would laugh and call him mad. They’d only obey him if he had their personal loyalty for family reasons.”
I thought of Knarros, who certainly seemed to be isolated from most other centaurs and who had, equally certainly, bent the truth to me, and I wondered. But Knarros was dead now. And I was fairly sure that Knarros had been loyal to the Emperor and then to the Emperor’s assassins for other reasons than the obvious human ones. One reason had to be that they all worshipped the same dreary bush-goddess. I must ask Stan about that. But the other reason was more pressing.
“Stan, can centaurs interbreed with humans at all?”
As I said this, I thought I heard a faint gasp from Nick – unless it was another murmur from Maree.
“That’s not thought terribly decent,” Stan said, “but it can happen. You get physical problems with it, of course. Most crossbreeds die stillborn, and you’d never get a human mother getting that far with a centaur’s child. They mostly miscarry fairly early on. If they do go to term, the foal’s too large, you see. But the other way round, human father, centaur mother: that does get to happen occasionally. I met the odd one or two. They tend to be a bit small. And the thoroughbred centaurs are painfully nice to them. Fall over backwards to make clear it’s not the foal’s fault – you know.”
That was it, I thought. We’re dealing with centaur sisters’ sons here. And their cousins, of course. “Thanks, Stan,” I said. “Nick.” Nick gave a startled, guilty movement beside me. “Nick, what’s your actual full name?”
“Nicholas,” Nick said. “Mallory.”
“Oh?” I said. “Not, for instance, Nickledes Timos something else?”
“Nichothodes,” Nick said irritably. “Actually.”
I nearly laughed. Everyone always hated you to get their name wrong. Stan did chuckle a bit as I asked, “And Maree’s?”
“She wouldn’t ever tell me properly,” Nick said sulkily, wretchedly. “But I know Maree’s short for Marina.”
Sempronia Marina Timosa, I thought, on a bloodstained handwritten scrap of a document clutched in a centaur’s hand. I wouldn’t have liked to admit to Sempronia either. “And what else?” I said.
“What do you mean what else?” Nick answered. “Nothing else.”
“Well for instance,” I said, “how you came to know about stripping people. You told me, quite accurately, that Maree had been stripped, but you didn’t get the word for it from me. I remember exactly what I said about cross-world transit to you, when I was trying to persuade you it was dangerous, and I know I never once used that term.”
No reply. Nick sat hunched forward, staring into the sodium gloom, to where the railings were now perceptibly growing thinner and beginning to lean outwards.
“For instance again,” I said, “I would very much like to know if you were really in the hedge, or whether you helped with the stripping.”
That galvanised him. He bounced round to face me, and his voice began booming, squeaking and blaring out of control as he shouted, “I did not! I was in the hedge! And I wouldn’t know how you strip someone anyway! I feel guilty as hell about it, damn you! But it all happened so quickly!” This last word, almost inevitably, came out as a high squeak. I could see Nick hear how silly he sounded and saw him try to get a grip on himself. He had my sympathy there. I hate being ridiculous too. “If you must know,” he said, in a careful monotone, “I was up on the other side of that hedge, like that soldier who came and talked to you was. We were arguing. I didn’t want to leave. It was all so interesting – those landcruisers, or whatever they were, and Jeffros had this assistant who showed us round, and he had wings. Honestly. And I wanted to know more. I was arguing with Maree about staying nearly all the time we were coming down the lane. And Maree said we’d been arrested once, and it was pretty clear we weren’t going to be able to go up the hill because something on the path stopped you. So she said we ought to go before someone told you we were here. And I said that Jeffros and his people had been perfectly nice to us… Anyway, I got into that vinefield and said I wasn’t coming, if you must know. And Maree said in that case I’d have to ask you for a lift home, and she hoped you tore lumps off me, and she stormed off down the lane to her car, waving her car keys. I sort of went along on the other side of the hedge, not saying anything and hoping she’d change her mind. But then – then Mum and Gram White suddenly came out round the car and Mum said something about ‘So you turned up at last, Maree!’ and they – they never even looked up at me. I don’t think they knew I was there. Honestly.”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I believe you. Getting into a hedge is the sort of damn fool thing one does when arguing with one’s elders. But what about all the rest?”
“We were lucky about the dust,” Nick said. “We nearly broke our necks getting to the car when we saw you were going in yours and Maree said you were bound to have seen us if you hadn’t been raising a duststorm behind you. When you turned towards the carriers, we sort of peeled off down another lane.”
“But what else?” I said.
“After we tried to go up the path on the hill and couldn’t, we walked to the carriers and soldiers came out and arrested us almost at once and—”
“No,” I said. “I mean all the rest.”
“What rest? Oh, you mean the centaur—” he began. I cut him off.