The Last Ring-bearer - Kirill Yeskov [121]
these games and returned to the bosom of their families, from which they have been totally estranged over the course of the previous year. Their explanations did not vary much – from "devils made me do it" to "whoever is not a revolutionary when young has no heart; whoever is not a conservative when old has no brain" – but what family cares for elaborate explanations when they have their dear child back at the dinner table? All of the above could have been written off as nonsense that deserved no special attention (youth fads are legion) if not for a peculiar circumstance – all of the 'returnees,' including the offspring of the most prominent families of the Republic, have suddenly acquired an unusual penchant for government service, which was something previously unheard of among the elite youth. A transformation of a semi-bohemian dreamer or society playboy into a model public official looks weird in general; when such cases number in the dozens and hundreds, they make a disturbing pattern. Add to that the fact that all these youngsters have made brilliant careers in the past two years (while exhibiting an amazing degree of unity and mutual assistance – better than any zamorro), advancing quite far up the administrative ladder, and the picture turns really scary. There was no doubt that in seven or eight years precisely those boys will be in charge of all key government positions – from the Foreign Ministry to the Admiralty and from the Treasury to the Secret Service – and then they will have acquired all the levers of real power in the Republic without firing a shot. The most fantastic part was that no one in Umbar seemed to care about it, other than some old minor bureaucrats mumbling sentimentally: "We really shouldn't castigate our young men! Look at them working for the good of the Motherland!" …Tangorn put down Alviss' list of about three dozen 'returnees' and was now watching a seagull trailing the Flying Fish, deep in thought. The bird seemed to hang motionlessly in the windy blue expanse, resembling a checkmark in a margin – the checkmark that he should now make next to the name of his next contact. The problem was not the difficulty of this particular choice; the sad part was that he felt a genuine affinity to these boys, based on what little he knew about them. Money-shunning idealists whose honesty could compare only to their naiveté… Unfortunately, he had no chance to explain to them that the real Lórien (rather than the one created by their youthful imaginations) had not a trace of either freedom or classless equality, as far as he could tell, or that the 'rotten selfish pseudodemocracy' that had reared them had certain advantages over theocratic dictatorship.
So: he is looking for the most likeable and maybe even kindred-spirited people in Umbar.
He is looking for them in order to kill them.
What was that Haladdin used to say? "Do the ends justify the means? Stated generally, the problem lacks a solution."
Chapter 45
Umbar, Lamp Street
Night of June 14, 3019
The Umbarians all say that whoever has not seen the Big Carnival has not seen anything worthwhile in his life. Arrogant as it sounds, there are solid grounds for saying so. It is not the beauty of the fireworks and costumed processions, although they are magnificent. The most important part is that on the second Sunday of June all societal barriers crumble into dust: streetwalkers turn into highborn damsels and the damsels turn into streetwalkers, while a couple of comedians performing a skit making fun of famously slow-witted inhabitants of the Peninsula may turn out to be a senator and a member of the paupers' guild. It is a day when time runs backward and everyone can reclaim their wonderfully reckless youth, like the warm gentle lips of some girl in a black mask you just stole from her previous partner; it is a day when profiting is sinful and stealing is just déclassé. On that day everyone is allowed to do anything except breach another's incognito…
In that sense the actions of two noble sirs who had fallen behind a bead-strung