Masks of Scorpio (22 page)

A step at our backs brought me around sharpish. I relaxed. The Lady Dafni walked up. She wore a middle-length white gown, belted in gold, and there were flowers in her hair. Her face was composed, yet I detected an overbrightness there, a quivering sense of panic suppressed by sheer self-preservation.

Odd.

Pando walked with her, dignified and warlike in armor, carrying a naked sword. With them among the retainers came the Mytham twins, Pynsi and Poldo. Both were outfitted for battle, both carried bows.

Pando did not look pleased.

“We have gained the day,” he said, surly and vengeful. “But where is the rast Murgon? He hides away like a skulking pest of the sewers. Jikarna, I brand him, jikarna!”
[v]

“Not so!” The lady Dafni pointed aloft. “Look!”

Up there on the head of the grand staircase a brisk little fight finished with a couple of Rapas falling, and Strom Murgon, blood-bespattered, flushed, waving his sword in contempt at us clustered below.

Pando rushed out to get a better view, yelling that the cramph would escape. We followed.

Murgon brandished his blood-befouled sword at us. He looked magnificent, filled with elan and fighting spirit, defying us to the death.

Poldo Mytham did not hesitate.

He lifted his bow and on his face the shattering hatred filling him rendered him demonic. He loosed.

The shaft struck Murgon in the neck, above the corselet rim.

He stood for a moment, surprised.

He dropped his sword. He swayed. Then he pitched over the railing and fell headlong to the polished marble below.

Poldo lowered his bow. He loved Dafni with a hopeless longing. Perhaps he thought... Well, who knows what he thought?

With a horrified shriek, Dafni rushed forward. In a smother of white dress she collapsed onto her knees beside Murgon. His head was a ghastly red pudding. She took that hideous object in her arms and rested it in her lap and bent over him, her face stained with his blood as she kissed that crushed and ghastly face. She crooned hysterical words...

“Murgon! My only true love — my heart —
Murgon
!”

“So,” said Dayra softly, at my side, “so that was the way of it. It explains much.”

“Aye.”

From somewhere in the shadows — and to this day neither I nor anyone else knows who loosed — a crossbow bolt lanced the air, thudding into Dafni, smashing her forward. She collapsed over the shattered body of her lover. Together, blood mingling with blood, they lay in death.

No one spoke.

The part Dafni had played in this business now appeared plain. She and Murgon had loved each other —

and in furtherance of his plans he had used her to bedazzle Pando. The interview I had witnessed was now explained, and when we’d rescued Dafni — she had not wanted to be rescued. Pando had been the victim all along. Tilda of the Many Veils had seen much; but her intoxication as a way of life had precluded any clear statements to aid us. And the Mytham twins?

Poldo was distraught. And Pynsi — would she now be able to marry Pando? Only the future could answer that.

The immediate task was to ensure the loyalty of Pando’s people, and the army waiting outside Port Marsilus. Into that hush the sound of a man yelling in pain penetrated and Pompino appeared, brisk and bright and most foxy, dragging along a wight by one ear.

“Says he has a message for Strom Murgon which, I think, with a little persuasion, he might tell us!”

Pompino halted as he saw the two bodies, blood-befouled, sprawled together. He whistled.

“That takes care of
that
, then!”

The order of events had to be kept in a correct sequence. The cadade and his Fristle guards went off to secure the palace. Palace slaves and servants set about clearing away the detritus of battle — which is a way of saying that they collected up the corpses. Pando shouted passionately that they should treat Dafni with care and that she should be laid out in state in a bedroom. As for Murgon; he turned away and it was clear to us all that he didn’t give a damn if they bunged Murgon’s corpse on the dung heap.

Dayra went off to make sure that that didn’t happen. At least she knew how to treat a beaten adversary.

In all this bustle, Pompino’s capture stood sullenly waiting to be questioned. He was a Brokelsh, hairy and uncouth, and one eye was black and his face was cut.

I looked at Pando curious to know how he would react to the knowledge that Dafni had been beguiling him all the time, under orders from Murgon to secure Murgon’s desires to control the kovnate. For all her ceaseless chatter, Dafni proved herself to have been a lady of spirit.

Pando just pushed all that aside. His choleric noble attitude just brushed away the implications. He rounded on Pompino. “Well, Khibil! Don’t just stand there! What is the message this rast has for Murgon?”

Pompino twisted a red whisker, and most mildly said: “Speak up, Bargal the Ley. Strom Murgon is dead and Kov Pando is your liege lord.”

“Yes, well—” began this Bargal the Ley, mumbling.

Pando roared: “Speak up or your hide will decorate the battlements!”

“Message from Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham, pantor!”

Dayra appeared at my side, silently, like a jungle predator. She touched me lightly on the arm.

“Oh? Yes?” bellowed Pando, incensed. “And?”

“He is ready for the great expedition against Vallia, pantor! He awaits word from you to finalize the date!

Send me back with this information and the two fleets can sail.”

“There is treachery here.” Pando fairly snarled in his bewilderment. “Mogper advances to attack Bormark!”

“Your pardon, pantor!” No one contradicts a great lord when he is incensed without peril. “Not so! The kov is in alliance with Bormark. The venture is against Vallia.”

His brows fairly writhing in indecision, Pando half-turned to look at us, all standing in a half-circle and watching in fascination. “That is certainly what I believed. That bastard Murgon at least had that right. But the grotesque, Duurn the Doomsayer — could he have been mistaken?”

Taking this as a direct question, everyone started off on a passionate braying of their own beliefs. Dayra and I remained quiet. I glanced at her.

The rustic hermit she’d found in the woods and from whom she’d borrowed the trappings of Duurn the Doomsayer had been rewarded with a handful of gold and seen safely on his way. As a powerful inducement to belief, the guise of the grotesque had seemed to me to be excellent. Not many other visitors could, I thought, have impressed Pando so strongly. But — was all that skill and artifice to go for nothing?

Then Pompino — my good comrade, my kregoinye companion, Scauro Pompino the Iarvin, stepped out and spoke.

“I believe what this messenger, Bargal the Ley, says. The army here and in Menaham is paid for in gold that can only be used for that purpose for which it was intended. Pay the army from Murgon’s treasury.

Set them forward in the venture against Vallia. For, kov, if you leave them idle around here they will prove a permanent and costly threat.”

“Aye,” rumbled Pando. “That is sooth.”

At my side, Dayra whispered: “Nice friends you have.”

“Pompino is a Pandaheem. He is right. If the army out there contains very many officers loyal to Murgon they can walk in here and we’ll never stop ’em. Pando’s best bet is to pay ’em and ship ’em out—”

“Out — against Vallia!”

“Aye.”

“So much for your wonderful Duurn the Doomsayer!”

The movement among the throng indicated that Pando had made up his mind. Murgon’s treasure would be distributed to the army and the ship-masters. The armada would sail for Vallia. Win or lose for that army, Pando would come out ahead.

I looked out over that bright and busy bustle as folk ran to do Kov Pando’s bidding. Oh, yes, he’d come out all right, sweet and smelling of violets. But what of the country that was my home, what of Vallia?

“Very well,” I said, and although Dayra listened, I was really speaking to myself. “Sink me! If it’s got to be done it’s got to be done. And let Opaz take care of my conscience.”

Having made up his mind, Pando was all blaze and eagerness to get the thing done and over with.

Murgon’s treasure — that same hoard of wealth we in
Tuscurs Maiden
had seen melt and run fuming into the sea — being distributed to the army and the ship masters delighted all of them. There was no talk anywhere of pulling down Kov Pando in the name of the dead Strom Murgon. Kovs, after all, are kovs.

Pompino and the crew went about looking over their shoulders in momentary expectation of the ghastly apparition of the white-haired witch. Had she turned up and blasted us all no one would have been vastly surprised.

From a dusty and hidden portion of the palace a figure that was surprising emerged, blinking in the suns’

radiance. Cap’n Murkizon, axe aslant, sent immediately for Larghos the Flatch.

Stumbling, her clothes in ruins, her face streaked with dirt and tears, the Lady Nalfi was caught up and clasped close to Larghos. He could hardly believe his good fortune.

We left them to their reunions, and later Larghos and Nalfi joined us where she was able to tell her story.

Dayra watched, a comically quizzical little frown denting in between her eyebrows.

We gathered in a little outdoor arbor furnished with cane chairs and striped awnings and wobbly-legged tables. In a siege the place could be converted to take a catapult. Nalfi professed to bewilderment, loss of memory, misery, fear. Yes, she remembered the flying boat and watching Lisa and Ros Delphor leaving her alone. She had been terrified.

Here Dayra pursed up her lips.

Nalfi had hidden somewhere within the voller and only hunger had been enough to conquer her terror.

She had crept out to find herself back in the Zhantil Palace, and had somehow slunk out of the airboat and found a succession of hiding places. That part was easy enough to believe, on Kregen where most of the palaces are stuffed to bursting with slaves and retainers and very few people know all the souls under the same roof.

Pompino expressed our general pleasure at seeing the Lady Nalfi alive and well. He congratulated her on her courage in adversity.

Dayra said to me, sotto voce, “Huh!”

“It is true, though. Nalfi possesses great courage, and resourcefulness.”

Dayra glanced at me as though I had straw sticking out of my hair.

Looking out over the sea the eye was caught instantly by the assemblage of shipping. Seabirds wheeled and cawed amid the forest of masts. Nalfi expressed herself as most pleased that Menaham and Tomboram were cooperating. For two countries of Pandahem to act in this way was a fine augury for the future. I’d have been more inclined to agree with these pious sentiments had the target of the cooperation not been my home of Vallia.

The departure of the fleet could not now be long delayed. To no one’s surprise, Pompino and the crew decided to sign on for the expedition. As Pompino said, twirling up his right whisker and gripping his sword hilt with his left fist: “Those rasts of Vallians are bound to worship Lem and their evil land be teeming with temples to burn.”

Dayra said, a trifle too sharply, “The cult of Lem was once brought to Vallia. I hear the emperor was most severe with them—”

“I wonder,” sniffed Pompino. Then: “This is sooth?”

“So I heard.”

Making some excuse, I managed to drag Dayra off. We spoke alone out on the battlements.

“All right, father — I know!”

“Forget that. We have to try something interesting before... Duurn the Doomsayer failed. I think we have a more sure tool to our hands.”

She was a true daughter to Delia, Empress of Vallia. Quick, by Zair! Sharp and devious and intelligent and altogether lovely. “Yes. You have seen how Larghos the Flatch goes about these days since Nalfi returned? Like a puppy that has lost his favorite chewing slipper.”

“You were quite right when you said she had no affection for him. I think that was the key that unlocked the rest of it for me.”

We had regaled Dayra with the tale of how Nalfi had joined our company back in Peminswopt along the coast. We’d cleared out the Devil’s Academy where they trained up the priests to torture and butcher children to the greater glory of Lem, and Nalfi, all naked and alone and held captive by a Chulik, had calmly taken his dagger from his belt and slit his throat. He had been standing in front of her, ready to fight Larghos and Cap’n Murkizon as they broke in. Dayra saw.

“So she slew the Chulik who was trying to protect her.”

“What better recommendation?”

“So she’s a Brown and Silver, then.”

“A most courageous and resourceful Lemmite, as I said. She saw she’d be for the chop; she joined us and ever since has been a spy in our midst. When we rescued Dafni — Murgon knew. Nalfi was missing, and joined us with some excuse — and more than once.”

“And the scrap of brown and silver ribbon that would have betrayed our escape, down in the sewers—”

“As I said. Courageous and resourceful.”

“Maybe I should have a word with her with my Claw.”

“Perhaps over the matter of Larghos, at some later time. Right now, Dayra my tiger-girl, we must go in for some theater.”

I admit it with great pleasure — we arranged this little piece of live theater exquisitely.

Fortune favored us to the extent that Larghos and Nalfi indulged in a real row in a small room, almost a broom cupboard, off the snug withdrawing chamber where Dayra and I sat. They exchanged wearily familiar accusations and disclaimers. The truth is, like marital infidelities, one side seems to wander around as though struck blind. Larghos stormed off in the opposite direction without seeing us, and before Nalfi could follow, Dayra spoke up in her clear voice.

“I feel for poor Larghos; but he will cheer up wonderfully when we reach Menaham. When he takes his part in the sack of Memguin — and that’s just for starters! — he’ll have so much gold—”

“Ros Delphor! Careful! You speak of secrets, and you do not know who may be listening.”