Delia said, “I think my son is nerving himself for a decision. It is useless to prod him. I think, Silda, Milsi and I are doing more harm than good here.”
“Delia!” burst out Silda. “That can’t be true!”
“I think it is. We are clearly supporting you. We are a pressure group. Poor Queen Lush, wounded, alone, with no one to urge her suit!”
So Silda had to stand and wave them good-bye and call the remberees. What they said was true; it hurt to see them go.
To stifle off that feeling she made up her mind to go and see the person she had promised herself to go see for longer than she cared for. She tried not to be ungrateful. There was, also, the question of gold to be accounted for...
At this time Drak made up his mind that as soon as Queen Lush was fit to travel they’d be off back to Vondium. With Katrin Rashumin returning, and Kapt Enwood and the army here, this corner of Vallia was safe.
Naghan Strandar told him that the Presidio had been divided over the fate of the traitor Alloran. The emperor had pointed out that the Prince Majister, as the man on the spot, was in the best position to judge. “They all acknowledged the truth of that, Drak. I can say I am mightily pleased at the respect they all hold you in.”
So to return to Vondium should not create problems.
He could not deny that he would be pleased to see his father again. He might be an old devil; but he represented to Drak a very great deal of what life was about. His father had always been honest with him, except for these mysterious disappearances, unexplained, and he had only once ever thought with any certitude that his father had lied to him.
One day in Esser Rarioch, seasons and seasons ago, Drak had spotted a wonderful golden and scarlet hunting bird and had called out in surprise at the gorgeous raptor. His father had denied that the bird existed. Yet Drak had seen it. Of course, he’d been very young at the time, and much smoke had blown with the wind since then and he’d grown up. Maybe that had something to do with it?
He pulled on light russet hunting leathers over a shirt of linked mesh and, dressing without thinking about it, strapped on rapier and left-hand dagger. Calling for Nath the Strict, he raked down the Krozair longsword, bellowing: “Nath!”
A footman, scarlet of face, hight Brindle, popped in hurriedly. “Nath has a demon in his guts, jis. Lon the Knees—”
“Send Nath my condolences. Lon the Knees will handle the zorcas.” He went out quickly, feeling stifled indoors, needing a breath of fresh air. He told the sentry to alert the Hikdar in command of this day’s duty squadron.
At the stables Lon was competence itself. A fine blood zorca was brought out, Stiffears, and Lon handled himself and the zorca splendidly. He assisted the prince to mount. No one could guess from his rubicund face that if the prince had turned up a glass later, disaster would have befallen Lon the Knees.
Silda walked into the courtyard, over the cobbles with the wisps of straw scattered about, and saw Drak astride the zorca.
Lon faded into the shadows of the nearest box. He hadn’t seen Lyss the Lone since all the excitement, and was enraptured to see her come visiting him now. He thought the prince wouldn’t mind; but you had to be careful when you held a responsible position in the Prince Majister’s Stables!
Silda was in a mood that sizzled like water dropped into hot fat.
“Off to see Queen Lush, I suppose?”
“I was going for a ride.” The stiffness of Drak’s tones made a pikeshaft look crooked. “Now you mention it, I think I will. Thank you for the suggestion.”
“Oh, you are most welcome.”
“The queen is wounded, you know, and—”
“Rubbish! There’s nothing wrong with the fat old madam now!”
“You forget yourself!”
“I don’t! But I wish I did!”
Drak, face like the base end of a marble statue, touched his spurless heels into the zorca’s flanks and Stiffears bounded away. Drak and Silda, both their heads seething with half-understood anger and anguish, parted.
Lon closed his mouth.
He made a slight movement and caused just a tiny chink of sound. Instantly the sharp point of a rapier pressed against his stomach. Silda stared into the shadows.
“Lon?”
“Aye, aye, Lyss, it’s me. What I can’t understand is why you’re still here and not lying with your body there and your head here! You spoke to the prince—”
“Forget him, the great onker! I came to see you.”
Lon felt convinced that the brightness in Lyss’s eyes was far greater than could be explained in any except one certain way. He swung about as the gang crept quietly into the stables. They had waited until the prince left. Now Crafty Kando, looking at Lyss, said, “We’re here. And so is the lady.”
At once Silda was herself again. She fixed Lon with a look. So he felt obliged to explain. Kando had borrowed the two zorcas he’d requested, and the job had been completed. Now far greater game was afoot. The whole gang required zorcas.
“He is a fat slaver, Lyss! He still has slaves out there, hidden. He has gold! Rafak is a chicken ripe for the plucking! Ride with us!”
“If this Rafak continues as a slavemaster,” said Silda, “he breaks the law.”
“Exactly!” crowed Lon.
“Then he should be reported to the Watch, or the Prince—”
“We don’t have much truck with the Watch. And we value his gold, believing it should come to us—”
“What am I to do with you?” said Silda, thoroughly cheered up after that dismal encounter with Drak. “This sounds promising. A spot of mischief thrashing a slaver is just what I need.”
Swathed in dark hooded cloaks, riding a string of the Prince Majister’s blood zorcas, the gang rode out. Silda rode with them. Drak had needed to go for a ride to rid his head of cobwebs; Silda craved more than a simple ride to rid her brain of the festering agony and anguish there...
Lon the Knees gave up trying to puzzle out what he’d overheard. Perhaps he hadn’t heard all that at all. Perhaps he’d dreamed it, hiding in the zorca stall... He, too, felt that a spot of action would clear his head.
The petal shape of an airboat skimmed over the riders and swooped ahead to vanish beyond trees cloaking a rise.
Moving at a brisk pace, for there was a lot to be got through, Crafty Kando’s gang with Lon the Knees and Silda Segutoria, very much Lyss the Lone, rode for the criminal hideout of the slavemaster, the Rapa Rafak the Lash.
* * * *
Some time later with a great deal — but not all, by the Furnace Fires of Inshurfraz, not all! — of his ill humor jolted out of him by the ride, Drak cantered back. The duty half-squadron rode in rear, looking forward to a wet and the opportunity to relax in their various raucous, nefarious or slumbrous ways. A jurukker of the guard detailed to Queen Lush galloped frenziedly toward Drak.
“Prince! The queen! She is beset by Katakis!” The rider skidded his zorca around, spraying dust, still bellowing.
“The queen! Assassination! Hurry, jis, hurry!” Without hesitation Drak slammed his heels into Stiffears’ flanks. The zorca leaped ahead, responding at once, and in the same instant Drak hauled up on the reins, as a figure darted from the side to stand directly before him, one hand flung aloft.
“What the hell! Out of the way — or...” Drak was going to say he’d run the figure over; but he saw the long plain robe, the turban toppling over one ear, and so he guessed at once, with a distinct sensation of his heart turning over and lodging in his throat. He knew, did Drak, he knew.
“Drak! Silda! The Katakis attack her and her companions believing you to be there. She is sore beset... There is little time left for her...”
In which Lon the Knees witnesses the true joy
On the day Queen Lushfymi gave orders to have the captain of her bodyguard killed the girls had resisted the murderers in defense of Leone Starhammer. Since then nearly all of them had signed up with the Empress Delia. So it was that when the Katakis landed from their airboat to assassinate the queen they were met by the guard detailed by the Prince Majister to watch over the queen.
The guards sent a messenger and then barricaded themselves in the villa. No thought crossed Queen Lush’s mind that this was divine retribution. She saw no connection between her perfectly logical and legal order and this inspired assassination attempt.
One of the guards said that the leader of this cut-throat bunch of Katakis was Stromich Ranjal Yasi, twin brother to Strom Rosil Yasi. Accurate archery pinned the Katakis in the grounds, and two rushes were fronted and bested. The queen was perfectly composed. Hikdar Nervil remarked that they could hold out for some time yet, but that numbers were against them.
Queen Lush said, simply: “The Prince Majister will soon be here. He would melt the Ice Floes of Sicce to be at my side.”
“Assuredly, majestrix,” said Nervil, seconded to Drak’s PMSW from 3EYJ, and took himself off to the dangerous corner where the shrubbery grew altogether too close to the walls of the villa.
* * * *
For Silda, the ride to Cottmer’s Hollow knocked some of the bad humor out of her. The ride alone began to affect her. She shouldn’t really have spoken to poor Drak like that; after all, he was completely deceived by Queen Lush. She’d have to make it up to him, as soon as possible. All the same, he was so stubborn! If only she could knock some sense into him as the zorca between her knees was jolting the bad temper out of her!
Crafty Kando organized the onslaught brilliantly. Silda could quite see why the gang needed zorcas; they could hit Rafak the Lash, free his slaves and steal his gold, and be back in town before anyone knew anything about it.
Rafak, his vulturine features convulsed, feathers bristling, his arrogant beak bent to one side, was not slain. The slaver with his assistants was bundled into one of the tumble-down shanties at the center of the hollow. Massy trees surrounded the place, which was gloomy and dank, and well named for Cottmer’s Caverns of horrific legend.
Silda realized she would have to fend for the slaves herself. She went around freeing them, and they set up a caterwauling, running about, wringing their hands in joy, overwhelmed by the tragedy and then the release. Lon the Knees, after a single thought, joined Silda in her work.
Crafty Kando and his cronies sought the gold chests.
So it was that when the flier landed and the Kataki Strom led his people into this vengeful attack upon the man who had authored his downfall, he was not aware that the Prince Majister was not in Cottmer’s Hollow. Yasi was convinced that the string of zorca riders from the prince’s stables escorted the Prince Majister. Now he would exact his revenge.
Shrieking shrill Kataki war cries, the Whiptails rushed in, weapons glittering.
Silda grasped the situation in a single all-encompassing glance and dragged Lon into the shanty where Kando and his people were ripping everything to pieces in their search for gold. Crossbow bolts thudded into the walls and ripped through the mean little windows. The consternation and uproar in the hut could not be allowed in any way to influence her.
Lon saw her switch the plain knapsack forward. She dived her left hand in, and he remembered what had happened to the spinlikl when he had done just that. Then he gasped.
Silda raised her left hand high and shouted at the rabble in the shanty.
Clothing that left hand, glittering, evil and magnificent, a Claw, a thing of oiled sliding steel, of cruel razor-sharp talons, turned Silda into a true Jikai Vuvushi of the Sisters of the Rose.
“Listen to me, you famblys! Those Katakis out there — all they’re after is slaves and gold — your gold! And you as slaves! They will not take me.”
Her Claw struck sparks of fire from the honed talons, turning, opening and closing, evil and beautiful...
She’d taken up the jikvar in the emergency quick-action grip and now as Kando’s people yelled and swirled around like a disturbed ant’s nest, Silda strapped up the Claw properly onto her left hand.
The opening moves from the Kataki side consisted in driving Kando’s people into the shanty, of rounding up the newly released and bewildered slaves, and then of sorting out the rest. Silda reasoned out this probable course of action and then gave vent to her feelings on certain subjects.
“You refused my offer of swords. How many of you retain the spears I provided? And not a bow among us! By Vox! It’s enough to make an honest Jikai Vuvushi take up knitting!”
“It’s enough to make an honest thief know when to keep his station,” pronounced Yolande the Gregarian, with a meaningful look at Kando. Some of the others started in slanging Kando, each other, themselves for their own stupidity, and Lon the Knees for providing the zorcas that got them into the mess. To Silda it seemed a bubble burst in her head. They made her laugh, these people and their thieving antics. Her ill-humor now had but one direction, one target. Katakis!
“If we just stay here and wait for them to attack when they are ready—” she spoke in a hard, clipped fashion Lon had heard her use once before “—they’ll chop us for sure. We must break for the zorcas, and ride. All of us, together.”
“These walls may not be much,” rapped out Kando. “But they stop the crossbow bolts. If we stay here they can’t shoot us, and if they try to break in, we will chop them.”
“Aye,” said Lop-eared Tobi, waving his knife about. “But I’ll go with Lyss the Lone. I trust her.”
“I’ll stay with Kando,” said Ob-eye Mantig, and he showed the spear he had kept.
The others started up for and against the plans.
Keeping watch out of a crack, Lon yelped: “You’ll have to make up your minds sharpish. Here they come.”
Silda recognized that these folk had little hope of escaping this imbroglio. If they were not killed out of hand they’d wind up as slaves. And that fate might include her...
Hissing shrieks of battle spitting from the Katakis heralded their attack that would finish off the people sheltering in the shanty. Silda swung to face the ramshackle door, Claw poised, drexer snouting, ready.
* * * *
The phantom form of Deb-Lu-Quienyin, glowing with a ghostly light, faded. He had used his kharrna to project his image mile after mile across Vallia to warn Drak. What effect this sorcery might have on his men did not concern Drak now.