Shadow looked at me a little reproachfully from the stall built for him in the aft body of the voller, and I flung him a few words of comfort.
Around me the pinnacles of the higher towers reached for the sky. The wind whispered across the open space where airboats were parked, with men working on them in the shadows of their hangars. Chulik guards ran out toward me, angry, intent, ready to do me a mischief. Up here there were usually the Crimson Bowmen on guard.
“Stand, cramph, for the emperor’s guards!” yelled their Deldar, a Chulik of mean aspect, with a golden tip to his portside tusk.
“Out of the way!”
I bundled into them, took the first three-grained staff that came handy, knocked three or four of the fellows over and went on, running, into the shadows under the portico.
Only two arrows splintered against the marble. The Chuliks had compound reflex bows of some power; but any skill I may possess at arrow-dodging was not required.
I knew the way.
Past a few slaves I hurried, along the sumptuous corridors well-lit by tall windows where the brocaded drapes barely stirred in the breeze, ignoring a party of Fristle guards who went stepping past smartly across an intersection. Their uniforms might be considered to indicate they were in the emperor’s service; but there was altogether too much green and brown about them, and not enough of the red and yellow.
Various doors were guarded by various guards. If they did not let me through I sent them to sleep without regret. After all, time was wasting.
My calculations told me there would be time for me to reach the penultimate corridor before the guards rallied sufficiently to come in a body to check this madman who had stormed into the palace. The front door, the front aerial door, had been easier than all the other ways. I went on, ignored a group of pretty girls in silks and bangles who shrank away, chattering, angled around the last ornate doorway.
Only four Chuliks stood there. I gave them no chance to speak.
Only one had a chance to shriek out, and then he, too, slumbered. I kicked a silly ornate golden helmet away and bashed the balass and silver door open. Straight ahead of me down a long and brilliantly lit corridor, filled with people waiting, talking, arguing, drinking, lay the folded doors of the emperor’s throne room. He was there. I knew that. These people were waiting audience of him. I walked on.
Someone yelled: “Hey, fambly! Wait your turn.” I walked on.
A man, he was a kov, a high colored, fleshy man — I knew him — took my arm with anger. I shook him off. I stalked on, and now I was recognized. The whisper ran around the tall room. “The Prince Majister!”
At the folded doors I came at last to the time when the guards would confront me in real earnest. From a narrow side door they boiled out, Chuliks, tusked, blankly fierce, not reasoning, ready instantly to kill to earn their hire. So far I had not drawn a weapon.
A voice lifted from the waiting brilliantly attired throng. “He is the Prince Majister! Treat him well—” The Jiktar at the head of the Chuliks said: “I do not know him. No man enters here without leave of Kov Layco Jhansi. Seize him up!”
I kicked the Jiktar betwixt wind and water, slid the rapid succession of blows, got a sword blade between my elbow and side and wrenched it away from its startled owner, belted a few more, toppling them over. They crashed into their fellows. I was at the doors. The fastenings were immense. I gripped the handles as big as spear blades, dragged the folding doors inward. The oiled panels picked up speed. I had to put my foot into one wight’s face to stop his head from being crashed. The massive doors thudded shut.
The bar fell almost of its own accord.
The dinning sound dimmed and faded from outside. The hush fell oddly, menacingly.
Slowly, with the closed doors at my back, I turned around.
The floor of polished marble glimmered in the lights from many samphron oil lamps and from the sparkling rays striking through the wide latticed windows in the curved roof. The distance down to the multiple dais was not great, for this was the third throne room, used for more personal requests. The crimson carpet and the zhantil pelt seatings were familiar, the gold ornaments, the idols, the trophies of battle, the small sacrificial fire and the altar. Beautiful girls waited to bring refreshments when bidden. The room was almost empty.
I started on down the marble floor, my Vallian boots clacking loudly.
The figure in the throne under the ritual canopy sat up. The people standing on the dais, lower down, but not on the floor, went rigid.
“So you return bearing words, son-in-law?”
“Not so, emperor!” I bellowed back. “See — I come empty-handed.”
And I held up my hands, palms outwards, as I marched.
A small quick gesture from the emperor halted the reflex action of the bodyguard lining out each side of the throne. These guards, too, were Chuliks. I did not like the look of this at all. I have employed Chuliks as mercenaries, for they are powerful fighters; but the numbers of them, the positions they occupied, argued some calamity had befallen the Crimson Bowmen, or some other deviltry was at work.
“You are banished from Vondium, son-in-law. Tell me why I should not order you cast down to the deepest dungeons?”
“Because you know that will not serve you.” I looked about, for the moment ignoring the few men and women in attendance on him, looking for certain faces I hungered to see.
“Where is Delia? Where are Drak and Jaidur?”
“Well may you ask, Dray Prescot. Since I am well again I have seen nothing of—”
I held onto my roaring senses. Didn’t the buffoon know what had happened? Probably not. He’d been on the point of death in his imperial bed, and then he’d been dumped down in his palace full of life. Probably he had no memory of what had intervened, or of that moment of lucidity in the Pool.
“You remember your request to your daughter?”
“I have made many requests of her. She usually refuses.”
“And damned sensible, too! So you don’t remember.”
“Enough of this—” he started to say, getting his temper up, which with him was deplorably easy.
“I want to see Delia and the children!” I stopped at the foot of the dais and my left hand rested on the hilt of the Krozair longsword, which I wore angled out almost parallel with the ground, jutting, arrogant, I confess, very boastfully. The rapier hanging from its baldric looked thin and puny in contrast.
“And I would like to see some of these people you tell me are my friends. I was near unto death — and what happened to you and your friends?”
“I was banished — or have you forgotten?”
His dark, heavy face flushed. He was back to full health, all right. Why, the old devil had never felt better in his life.
“This Seg Segutorio, this Inch of the Black Mountains, kovs, both of them, because I gave you the gifting. I have my loyal men about me now.” His powerful face showed an intensity of belief. “I have made a winnowing of my enemies. Now I have loyal friends and an impregnable bodyguard of Chuliks—”
I laughed. I, Dray Prescot, laughed. The laugh was filled with scorn, contemptuous.
“Impregnable?”
He swallowed down bile for a space. But he was not beaten by mere words; he was emperor. “I let you live. One word from me and you die.”
“And your daughter?”
That nettled him sorely.
It did more than that. I fancied I knew what had happened. No matter where Delia had landed back in Vallia, she had swiftly organized fliers, men and weapons, supplies. Then she had gone haring off back to the forbidden island of Ba-Domek. She had gone to find me. And, no doubt, everyone else of our company she could find had gone with her.
That was an eventuality I had hoped to forestall. But I was too late. So, since the emperor was safe, I had no more business with him.
One more fact remained to be established.
“Of these people you stigmatize by calling them my friends.” I named the people I meant, the brave company who had flown with me to Aphrasöe carrying the dying body of this emperor with us. He knew them and of their loyalty to me. “Are there any in Vondium now?”
“No, son-in-law. Not one. Not a single person of those you champion so loudly. I tell you, I have friends, and I know where to look for succor.”
He started to shake with anger, working himself up. A further thought occurred to me. I was aware of a small side door opening and of the guards springing to assist the people who entered; but I wanted to ask the emperor one last question before I retired.
“You were nearly dying, emperor. Now you are well. Do you know how that was accomplished?”
“Of course. Need you ask?”
His reply astonished me. He was looking off to the side, to the group of people who had entered and who now came up to the foot of the dais, bowing with the air of those who had power and authority at the emperor’s hand.
“Here, Dray Prescot, are those who saved me. Loyal subjects all. To them, I owe my life and Vallia. They should be the lesson you so sorely need.”
He gestured, raising them up from their postures of reverence. I looked.
Oh, I looked, like an idiot, like an onker, like the stupid simpleton I am.
These were the people Delia’s father put his trust in, these the folk he had given power, and chief among them Doctor Charboi, and hard, bright, cutting, Ashti Melekhi, the Vadnicha of Venga.
“There Stands the Notorious Dray Prescot!”
“Why is this man allowed to wear swords in the presence of the emperor? Disarm him, instantly!”
The vicious words of Ashti Melekhi spattered into the bright radiance of the throne room.
The guard Chulik — he was an ord-Jiktar and therefore very high in the guard, probably the third in command — stepped down from the dais heading for me, and he half-drew his rapier.
“Wait, wait, my dear Ashti!” called the emperor.
I felt nausea at his way of addressing her.
Down in Djanduin my warrior Djangs would feel naked and dishonored to appear in the presence of their king without a ceremonial djangir buckled up to their harness. But this was Vallia, and only on special occasions would the court wear anything other than fancy smallswords for decorative purposes. Vallia was a civilized country.
“This man, Ashti, is the Prince Majister.” He relished his power. “There stands the notorious Dray Prescot! He is my son-in-law, I am afraid. I do not care for him overmuch; but he has served me well on occasion. He is a man of swords, a man of blood, a man of violence.”
I felt the outrage, “I am not a man of blood!” I bellowed. “I am a man of peace!”
“That is as may be. But you may keep your swords.”
The Chulik Jiktar slapped his rapier back. He looked annoyed, as though denied a pleasure. But the emperor knew me better than this yellow-faced, tusked, malevolent Chulik.
The emperor knew I was more malevolent on occasion than any Chulik born — and this, too, was for my sins.
Melekhi stared at me. Charboi had the grace to shuffle away, eyes cast down, and stand nervously some distance off. Ashti Melekhi! A long cool gown of green she wore, with golden motifs, and the strigicaw seizing the korf, her badge, emblazoned upon breast and arm and thigh. She stared challengingly at me and I sensed she had an inkling that I had taken the emperor away, following his gasped instructions, and was not yet prepared to take up that particular challenge. The emperor believed she and Charboi had cured him. To challenge me now, openly, would raise awkward questions, and she wanted to choose her time and place for the confrontation.
I said: “Twelve friends of yours paid me a call. I hope they spoke well of me.”
She started, and controlled herself, her thin cheeks pinching in. I noticed she wore a small sword that was, in reality, a strong and cunning dagger, emblazoned with gems.
“Oh,” she says, very sure of herself. “No doubt you will meet some more of my — friends — very soon.”
“I welcome it. Let them come swiftly. The canals are cooling in the hot weather.”
The emperor made a sign and a beautiful girl ran across to give him a drink of parclear. He drank, thirstily. “I don’t know what foolery this is; but anyone knows the canals of Vallia are deadly to those not of the canalfolk. Now, Dray Prescot, say what you have to say and go.”
“The banishment upon me is lifted?”
Melekhi gasped at this; but the emperor, after another insolent drink, and having his mouth wiped by a Fristle fifi, nodded. “Yes. But if you err again, son-in-law—”
“Only time will tell that. For there are things you must know. And you will not relish the telling of them.”
“And will the word onker come into it?”
“Only if an onker listens, instead of an emperor.”
His face swelled up again, and he thundered out: “You try my patience sorely! Have a care. You had best go while your head is still on your shoulders.”
Considering it redundant once more to point out what that order had come to in the past, I nodded stiffly to him. I faced Ashti Melekhi. I did not smile, as is my wont, and I kept my face as naturally molded into its ugly old lineaments as I could. All the same, something showed, for her eyes narrowed and the tip of a red tongue flicked her lips.
Nath the Iarvin started at this, and stilled. All the time his bulky form towered at Ashti Melekhi’s shoulder, silent, unspeaking, his small dark eyes watchful. He still wore the brown leather tunic and buff breeches, with the wide, black, silver-studded belt girt up around his gut. The lockets for his rapier swung empty; but he carried a twin to the dagger worn by Melekhi. The sheer ferocity of that lowering face impressed me once again. This man had been bought body and soul by Melekhi, he would fight and kill and die for her and joy in the doing of it.
I walked out with my shoulders held braced, my boots clacking on the polished marble floor. At the door where Womoxes hoisted up the bar and swung it away, folding the panels open, I turned back. The emperor sat forward on his throne, watching, and the others remained still in the postures I had left them.
“I give you Remberee, emperor. We shall meet again—”