New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers Read Online Free PDF Page A

apart by separate fur patterns. Scholars were a solid brown. Peasants were gray, often shading to olive on the head. Soldiers were black striped on a base of white. That didn’t quite fit with the knowledge of Trogs that he had and he lifted his head to think and to check his direction.
    As he looked up, he got the barest glimpse of a strangely appareled figure as it disappeared around a corner some distance ahead in the hall. It was dressed neither in clothes of fashion nor servant’s livery nor even ordinary day wear such as any common man might wear. What it most resembled was the clothing that might be worn for taking part in active field sport, a suit cut close to the body without frills, flaps, flounces, or furbelows. The color was solid black. Odd garb, admit it, for a place such as this that did not lay claim to as much as a gymnasium.
    Private gymnasium, perhaps? Did Shirabi work out in his basement to keep his figure trim? If it were a matter of figure trimming, Godwin might be a likelier candidate.
    On impulse, Villiers decided to follow. He snapped the book closed in his left hand and set out at a brisk pace for the cross-corridor into which the figure had disappeared. He reached it and turned. No one was in sight, but after the slightest of hesitations, he moved after.
    The corridor was narrow and not well-lit. Its ceiling and walls and floor were cut as smoothly as any in Star Well, but here no one had bothered to polish the rock after the cutting was done. This was some sort of minor connecting link between more major lanes. The next large corridor was not far distant and the man in black tights must have turned there.
    At the next corner, Villiers looked left, then right, and saw his man again. He was definitely familiar. He was young Norman Adams and what he was doing would definitely have to be described as sneaking. And lurking. And tippy-toeing.
    Adams passed the door to a stair and started to look behind him. Villiers pulled his head back, and almost automatically looked behind himself to see if he were being observed. He saw nothing. After a second, he looked again and saw the stair door closing.
    When he got to the door, he opened it carefully and listened. Yes, sneaky footfalls down the stairs.
    When he was a small boy, Villiers had played this very same game in a dozen variations, and played it again at school. It was a damned shame that in growing up you had to leave such pure, pristine pleasures in exchange for more serious pursuits. There is something elemental about trying to follow tippy-toeing figures in black without being observed. So down the stairs Villiers went, doing his best to match step for step, stopping when Adams did, then starting again. It wasn’t easy, but it was fun.
    He passed several doors going down, but still the footsteps continued. Then he heard a door swing and abandoning caution he took the stairs in threes and fours.
    He reached the door he thought Adams had passed through and opened it. No one was visible and Villiers slipped through and eased it closed behind him.
    He was in a large corridor much like the one he had entered the stair from. He cast around for sign of Adams and found none. He ranged up the corridor, then down, and finally settled on the nearest side-passage. He almost found himself wishing he had a hunting gorf, or a pack of dogs, the bases of the mature man’s version of this game, but then discarded the thought as unworthy. Self-reliance was the thing. Sniffers and pointers took away the essential nature of the pursuit.
    So, book still in hand, Villiers poked around. After a time, however, it became clear that he had mislaid Adams. Perhaps he hadn’t, after all, passed through this particular door. Or perhaps he had hidden and doubled back through while Villiers was in another corridor. Or perhaps he knew his way well enough to have gone so surely to his destination that Villiers had simply gotten left behind. In any case, Adams wasn’t to be