“It’s of little comfort to tell you that almost any people resent spying. But look at it in a different light. You go to root out evil. Make no mistake, Xurrhuk of the Curved Sword finds no favor in the hearts of the Chyyanists.”
Balass’s firmly muscled body glistened black and silver in the light of the suns streaming in through the high windows, for we met and talked in this small enclosed arena set up within our part of the palace. The silver-sanded floor slid and shushed to the quick scrape of feet as we foined and parried with wooden swords. Turko, I knew, had put in a good many burs of practice with his new parrying-stick, and he handled the klattar now with a sureness that pleased me. Mind you, I’d be the last to suggest it was but a small step to go on to handling a weapon very much like a parrying-stick with one blade and with sharp edges. Its name would be a sword. And Turko, the High Kham, would have none of them.
Oby came in, throwing off his tunic, getting ready to have a bout with anyone willing to stand against the liquid cunning of his long-knife. He left the lenken door partly open and Naghan, about to shout out about people being born in bars, stopped. A flunky sailed in through the door. He wore the fancy and immodestly ridiculous court dress for servitors, for we were forced to accept the services of other servants than our own from Valka. He was not a slave. His red and silver and yellow clothes billowed about him as he flew through the air.
I turned to make sure Turko really stood by me. If he had not been I’d have sworn he was the fellow outside thus casually hurling importunate servitors about.
But it was no man.
Through the pushed-open door strode a strappingly handsome girl. Her face was only lightly stained with a flush of blood under the tanned skin from her little exercise. She was clad in tights, with a body-hugging tan tunic strapped about with a lesten-hide belt from which swung rapier and dagger, buckled up in a way which showed she was ready to draw in a twinkling. Her weapons swung in that cunning way I had seen an infinitely more glorious girl scabbard her own rapier and dagger.
So, forewarned by the weaponry and the demeanor of this girl, I knew from whom she came.
She wore her light brown hair cut short. Her face held that open, frank look of the girl who knows she is a girl and is prepared to treat men as men because that is their misfortune. I liked the look of her. Over her heart an embroidered red rose, twined about with gold threads, resembled very much the little red and gold brooch, fashioned in the shape of a rose, Delia had given me in return for the brooch like a hubless spoked wheel I had given her.
“Llahal and Lahal, Prince Majister,” said this girl, marching straight up to me with a swing of the hips and a lithe and limber step. “You are well met. Here, my Prince.” And she hauled a letter from the small script at her waist.
The letter was written on yellow paper and carried a faint and fragrant perfume to my nostrils. The writing, firm and rounded and yet girlish, in that beautiful running Kregish script, is very dear to me.
My comrades stood back. The girl touched the rose embroidered upon her breast. “I have a letter for the Princess Katri. But yours, my Prince, I was instructed to deliver first.” She laughed, a clear tinkling sound. “And the letter for the emperor the last of the three.”
So I, being intoxicated on emotion, laughed too. “I cannot wait, for no reply is expected.” She turned to leave, her legs in the tights very long and lovely. “But there is one lie I shall no longer believe.”
With the letter burning my hands I said, “Will you not stop to take refreshment? And what is this lie?”
She halted at the door and smiled back. “I thank you, my Prince, but I must hurry. As to the lie, all women say the Prince Majister of Vallia never laughs.”
And she went out, swinging, jaunty, laughing, the rapier and dagger swinging at her sides. She was a woman, like my Delia, all woman.
I banished her from my mind and opened the letter. I know the words by heart, but many of them are private so I will simply say that Delia said all was well, she was in good health, Melow sent her love, the task was proving more difficult than she’d expected and she was like to be away longer than she had hoped. There was more, but that is for Delia and me. She finished by saying that the letter to Aunt Katri requested the emperor’s sister to go to Valka to see after Didi, and that the letters were being entrusted to Jikmer Sosie ti Drakanium.
The word jikmer had been crossed through, but Delia had been in a hurry and so I could read it beneath the quickly scrawled scribble. Jikmer. That would be the Sisters of the Rose equivalent to Jiktar. Hmm.
These girls had their chukmers, their jikmers, their hikmers and their delmers too, without doubt. The notion charmed me. It all added up, without the shadow of a doubt, to a powerful and secret organization of women who, from my knowledge of Delia, were dedicated to philanthropic and chivalrous ends. What the mysticism might be I, of course, could not know.
I think it was the delivery of this letter with its evidence of an efficient organization of women devoted to purposes with which, from the little I knew of them, I could sympathize, that made me finally put into practice a scheme I had been harboring for some long time. As the scheme developed — and I worked on it with some intensity — I will tell you as it impinges on my story. For now, I would have to wait for the first fruits until Seg and Inch were available.
Also, I must make it clear that I am concentrating here very much on the Chyyanists. A great deal happened in Vondium during this time. Instead of being an idle layabout, I found myself hard at work. As the Prince Majister in the capital with the emperor absent I had many official functions to perform. I performed them. Most were very little of a laugh. I sat in the courts for a time and handed down judgments. I canceled work on a new slave bagnio, letting the slave masters see my scathing contempt, and set the laborers and masons into constructing a building to plans I laid out for them. They couldn’t really understand what the building was for. A visit to anywhere in Kregen where men and women flew saddle-birds through the air would have told them. It was accommodation for a thousand flyers. One day, and alarmingly soon, I fancied, Vallia would have need of them.
So life was not all dressing up inconspicuously and sliding off as Nath the Gnat. Often one or another of my boon companions would accompany me, but we made a compact that we kept apart. Turko, as usual, grumbled. But he saw the sense of it. My cover, if it was to be kept, would not be served by my suddenly appearing with friends. In a tavern, Turko could sit drinking quietly and keep an eye on me. We all chuckled over the episode of Rafik rescuing me.
That was a strange time. Here I was in Vondium, the capital of the puissant Empire of Vallia, and my Delia not with me. By Zair! I had fought and struggled to reach this place, and had been dragged here in chains, and never had I thought I’d live here without Delia. It was unnerving.
I had all preparations made for the society I formed. There are many secret societies on Kregen. This seems to be a part and parcel of the makeup of all cultures. In the most simple terms, I wanted to instill some of the superb qualities in the teachings of the Krozairs of Zy into Valka and Vallia. But I had no intention of limiting the new order to the island of Vallia. If I could bring Pandahem in and Zenicce and the Hoboling Islands, perhaps even Seg’s Erthyrdrin, that would be even better. I would find men I could trust, men of good heart, of good character yet lusty rogues withal, men who could see evil and stare back at it unflinchingly and do what they might to root out evil and plant the good. Of course, these terms are all relative. Good to one man is a mere matter of decency to another; evil to one man is normal human behavior to another. But there are basics on which men of goodwill may agree. The women had found them, it seemed. Of the various secret societies of Vallia none had asked me to join up. I had felt vast relief at this, for I had taken a firm vow to join none, assuming that the others would regard me as an enemy or, at the best, cold toward them. As the Prince Majister I had to remain aloof, if I could.
So do not think I organized the new order out of pique. If they don’t want me to join I’ll start my own club — no. That was not the case. This I believe. I had heard of no order in Vallia that sought to do what I sought. . .
As a starting point the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan would serve.
Balass reported back that the drunk — muttering darkly that when the Black Day dawned the Black Feathers would tear down the koters of Vallia and take all their goods — was a newly arrived trader, due to return to Xuntal. Balass looked worried. Perhaps Xuntal was already infected? I said, “I think not. If it is Hamal behind this, then their quarrel is with Vallia. If it is Phu-Si-Yantong, then—”
“Then,” said Balass, very grimly, “it is very possible.”
I could not argue. Yantong sought his maniacal ambition’s culmination in the domination of all Paz. The man was mad. Anyone who wanted to take on trying to rule these wayward folk must be mad. I’d had a bellyful, I knew, of just a very few of them.
“The ship he traveled in,” I said,
Balass nodded. “I will ask.”
Again I said nothing to indicate that Balass should have already asked. He was a hyr-kaidur, used to the arena; spying would have to be taught him.
So my days passed, gathering scraps of information, working at being Prince Majister, organizing the new order. Among the many pantheons of Kregen there is a plethora of minor godlings and spirits. One minor spirit of deviltry had, with assistance from others of his ilk, plagued me in Djanduin. I had allowed the miasmic presence of Khokkak the Meddler to influence me out of boredom and screaming helpless frustration to make myself King of Djanduin. Although, as I say, I do not think Sly the Ambitious or Gleen the Envious had a hand, there were undoubted traces of Hoko the Amusingly Malicious and Yurncra the Mischievous. These devils plague a man. There was no time during that period in Vondium without Delia for them to gain a lodgment in my thick old vosk skull. I was just too busy.
One very good reason for my adopting the disguise of Nath the Gnat was to escape unpleasantness from those who sought to oust me. There were more than just the racters. Although Rafik Avandil had said, “You have come up in the world, dom, since first we met,” and I had replied casually that I’d come into money, he provided me with a useful cloak. As Nath the Gnat I could wander freely in the city and mingle with all kinds of people in the taverns. By doing this I know I escaped many an unwanted brawl or duel. And I was learning.
So the day dawned in Opaz-brilliance when the emperor would return to Vondium. He would arrive in his imposing procession of narrow boats, drawn along the canals and through the water gate into the city. On that day I had to dress myself up and be the Prince Majister, and go down to the canal to welcome him.
Among a glittering group of high nobles and koters, all of whom — or nearly all — hated my guts, I stood, glittering in the suns-shine, watching as the haulers guided the emperor’s narrow state boat into the jetty. When all was ready and the trumpets pealed and the guard snapped to attention, he stepped ashore onto the crimson carpet. There was, as usual, a little undignified shoving to get forward — and to hell with protocol! I hung back, my left hand on my rapier hilt, watching.
How the men with the white and black favors fawned about him! Yet each one would sooner see him floating facedown in the canal. The factions vied to be seen in his company. I waited as they advanced down the jetty toward the zorca chariot that would carry him through the streets so the people might see him there as well as along the canals. I saw the woman at his side. This was the fabled Queen of Lome. Banners flew, birds screeched up from the water, zorcas and totrixes scraped their hooves, officers barked orders, the crack and smash of sword and rapier as the drills were gone through, the tramp of marching feet — and over all the high shrilling yells of the crowd, welcoming their emperor back to his capital. Yes, this was a day to remember!
He saw me, standing alone, isolated, shunned by the nobles. Oh, yes, there were many nobles loyal to him, but these had gone pushing down with the rest to show that their loyalty, at any rate, was not feigned.
Standing there in all my foppish finery, for I had dressed up with the explicit intention of demonstrating my feelings for this kind of occasion, I refused to budge. Let the old devil walk past me and offer his hand, and then I would welcome him. He and I had had our moments.
Slave girls sprinkled flower petals before the feet of the emperor and this Queen of Lome. She walked with a swaying, gliding gait and she was heavily veiled, whereat a groan of dismay went up from all the assembly. I looked at her. I’d find out about her, that was for sure.
So the emperor, the most powerful man in this part of Kregen, walked past on the crimson carpets. He was between me and the queen. He turned his head. He looked just the same, big and tough with that powerful head, that merciless and demanding expression. He stared at me.
“Lahal, Dray Prescot. And where is my daughter?”
“She is not here, Emperor.”
He frowned. He didn’t like me calling him emperor. “I have heard stories concerning your misdeeds. Attend me tonight. I shall demand a strict accounting from you, by Vox!”
I displease the Emperor of Vallia
The interview with Delia’s father was short and sharp.
“Where is my daughter?”
“She has gone about her own affairs for a space.”
“That will be the Sisters of the Rose. She’s worse than her mother. I shall have this monstrosity you are building torn down. It means nothing and wastes resources and slaves. The new bagnios will be built.”
“More slaves!” I shouted at him.
“Aye, son-in-law! You have served me well in the past, I own that. I don’t damned well like you, at least not much, and—”
“And you can believe that sentiment returned!”
“Do you forget I am emperor?”