Armada of Antares (7 page)

The answer came like a thunderbolt when I got him alone in the laboratory after all the others went back to the Chavonth Chamber to carry on the drinking and the discussions.

“My Prince! I am desolate!”

I saw — or thought I saw.

“You fixed it, Evold! The squish steam was not true cayferm so you used another silver box — a genuine one from Hamal!”

He shook his head, holding out his hands, palm up, and then he sneezed. Spluttering, he said, “Not so, Prince, not so.”

“Well, spit it out, Evold!”

“When the steam condensed I began to wonder if the water could have anything to do with the secret at all. What was left in the box apart from water? Air!”

“Ordinary air, from this damned laboratory of yours.”

He beckoned me over to an apparatus on a low lenken table.

Ornol, his assistant, hobbled in. Ornol had fallen into a Valkan canal and before they’d fished him out he’d drunk some of the canal water. He had not died, but he’d never be able to walk properly again. His left leg, in some mysterious reaction to the poison in the canal water, had shrunk and become almost useless. Now Ornol, a cheerful fellow with a shock of lank yellow hair that was pulled back from his forehead and streamed down over his shoulders, limped forward and set up the amphora, boxes, and tubing.

“See, Prince! With this tube I draw off what was left in the box after the steam condensed . . .”

I knew of this strange non-substance called vacuum, but I hesitated to mention it. I had an idea that the box would collapse, for it was of exceedingly thin metal, tinned, as I have said. I grunted and Evold went on, excited by his work.

“The next time I collected the steam in this amphora, inverted it, and drew off what was there through this pipe. It must, my Prince, be the true cayferm!”

In that he was wrong, but we were both engrossed now and so I sniffed. There was the scent of ripe squishes. He had been unable to get to me through all the ceremony and knowing the urgency of the work had gone ahead alone. I did not fault him in this. Instead I said, “So it does work!”

“Aye, my Prince. And yet there is a strange discrepancy in the action. It does not operate as the others do.”

I heard a shout from the long hall of the images.

“Dray! The Emperor is waiting.”

If I did not care for my skin, Seg Segutorio, the Kov of Falinur, most certainly did.

“Two murs, Seg, and I am with you.” Then, to Evold: “Explain!”

“I have placed the new boxes in their correct positions in the orbits taken from a flier.” These circles of sturm-wood, their bearings of balass and bronze, revolved intricately and so carried the silver boxes into different aspects with each other. By these movements the upward and forward directions of the flier were controlled, as the backward and downward.

“Hurry!”

“Their reactions are different. There is no directional control . . .”

I kept my face impassive. “You mean these boxes —
our
boxes — will only rise in the air? You cannot make them move forward?”

He nodded, and his lumpy nose glowed in the samphron-oil lamps’ gleam. “That is so, my Prince.”

“By the disgusting, worm-eaten kidneys of Makki-Grodno!” I was furious. All the work, all the pain, all the indignity — only to be rewarded with half the answer at the end!

“Very well. Have supplies made up. I will talk with Erdgar the Shipwright. We must change the plans again.”

“But, my Prince—”

“Dray!”

“Do it, Evold!”

“Yes, my Prince.”

I went out, my long white robe swirling, feeling thoroughly annoyed.

All my pretty schemes were falling in ruins around my head. There were a few farsighted men of Vallia who could see what the future portended, could understand that the insane ambitions of Queen Thyllis of Hamal would not be slaked when all of Pandahem lay under the sway of her iron legions. But for every such one there were a hundred, no, a thousand, who could not see. These proud men of Vallia put store in their great galleons, in the mercenaries their gold could buy. These men would never see — let alone acknowledge — that Vallia might be threatened by any other country or empire.

Now would not be the time to tell the Emperor the true situation. I would not tell him I could build fliers that would rise in the air but would not fly forward or backward!

Later, when I had him alone with Delia, then would be the time to broach the subject. Such were the powers of nepotism already swaying me. I have said earlier that nepotism in theory is loathsome, but in practice it often works. Without it and its concurrent corrupt practices of selection and advancement Nelson would never have risen to command at Trafalgar. That it had kept me as a mere lieutenant was the reverse of the coin.

The drinking and argument were well underway when I returned to the Chavonth Chamber, but my heart was not in them.

And now I must tell you of an occurrence which at the time struck me as singular, and the answer to which was not vouchsafed me for many a long season. I will keep the account brief. Suffice it to say that it began with Jiktar Exand informing me that he had unearthed a certain man who swore by Diproo the Nimble-Fingered.

Those of you who remember Nath the Thief from Zenicce, who had assisted my wonderful clansmen in the rain, and ever since swaggered a little as he remembered those golden days, will recall that Diproo the Nimble-Fingered was that saint or deity revered by the fraternity of thieves. Where there is portable property not chained down there will be thieves, I think, until the spirit in men is changed.

Here one must draw a distinction between those of the fraternity who pocket portable property and those who reive away a whole community and those who, like Korf Aighos of the Blue Mountains, look upon legitimate loot as their property anyway. So, excusing myself and telling Delia this was to do with the stikitches and to inform her father as discreetly as possible why I absented myself from his august presence, I went down with Jiktar Exand.

Seg Segutorio, the Kov of Falinur, accompanied me.

He, too, had not welcomed Erithor’s rendering of
The Lament for Valinur Fallen,
although conceding the greatness of the song and its content, and notwithstanding that his Kovnate of Falinur lies in Vallia, whereas Valinur is a ruggedly beautiful area of northern Valka south of the stretch of ocean containing the Penal Islands. As well, further north, rises the island of Jynaratha where once I had been taken up in a blue radiance by the Scorpion,taken away from all this grandeur and pomp and power and brought to a proper understanding of my role on Kregen. And, too, north of Jynaratha lies the island of Zamra, of which I am Kov.

Trouble over slaves plagued me in Zamra; but that it a story for another time.

Expecting perhaps another Nath or Naghan, I went down with Exand to see the thief. He was a fat and oily fellow, all smiling and hand-washing, a far cry from the lean and hungry villain I had expected. He was no Nath or Naghan, either, being a soberly named Kornan, and very willing and lubricious with it.

What he had to say may be summed up as: Yes, there had been strangers in the city, frequenting the taverns and dopa dens, hard, edgy men, with faces scarred and seamed from experiences most men might shudder away from. In the taverns they had asked questions, mainly of the guards of the fortress. Some had given them dusty answers, carelessly, others had drunk enough to tell more than they should. Here Jiktar Exand swelled. His face turned that purplish plum color and I fancied later this Kornan would remember a few names and faces for Exand. Well, that was his province. I admit I felt an unease at the simplicity with which the guards of Valka had been culled. The tavern at which these strangers had put up was named the Admiral Constanto and I halted Exand with a word as he prepared to storm off.

“Hold, Exand. There is more to tell yet.”

“Aye, Prince,” he said, with that sullen fury boiling away in him. I felt that since I had escaped with my life I could therefore scrape some comfort from the improvements in fortress discipline that would follow. My men of Valka are the very devil in a fight; this intrigue among simple swods came as altogether fresh. I did not blame Exand. But I would blame him if the same thing occurred again. This he knew.

“Old Naghan the Hook tried to dip one of these men,” said Kornan. He belched and afterward covered his mouth with his hand, being in polite society. “They cut off his hand.”

“I was not informed of this.”

“No. The reasons would be obvious, Prince. Naghan the Hook prefers to take his chances with one flapper.”

There were no names to be had. No, Kornan had never heard of any Traga. No, these men did not wear black, only decent Vallian buff. The thieves steered well clear of them, and the sequence of events was all too obvious. Seg said, “I will go down to this Admiral Constanto tavern and ferret them out.”

“Aye,” I said. “And tread carefully.”

He went off, taking with him a party of guards clad in civilian clothes, a mere party of roisterers out for a night’s airing. Kornan the Thief swallowed and licked his lips. “May I ask what—?” he began.

“No, Kornan,” said I, very friendly and cheerful. “It is best for your state of health you do not ask.”

His lubriciousness congealed a little, but he nodded and mumbled that he knew nothing, by Diproo the Nimble-Fingered. As soon as he spoke, he cursed himself.

And then, as we stood there by the lower guard gate, with the frowning walls of Esser Rarioch rising above and the watch fires burning, with all the stars of Kregen spread above and She of the Veils swimming in her golden haze, Kov Lykon descended the narrow stone steps to us. He walked with the dainty and yet heavy tread of authority picking its way. With him he had two Chail Sheom, poor girls scantily clad and in silver chains, after the debased fashion of Hamal or Hyrklana or any of those nations which feel a woman in chains gives pleasure to a man. I had spoken to the Emperor about this; he had merely replied that this had been a custom in the long ago and there were no laws of Vallia proscribing the custom.

With Lykon Crimahan and the two girls came down also a young Numim, very thick of arm and leg, very bull-like of neck, with the small round head of the fighter, dressed in leather clothes of supple cut. A rapier and dagger swung at his sides from golden chains. His nose was broken and set quite well, except that it lent his whole hard lion-face an aura of savageness much in keeping with his attitude of overweening pride.

“What goes on here, you cramphs?” demanded the Kov before he came fully into the torchlight, obviously before he had seen that I stood there, also.

“A mere matter of routine, Kov,” said Jiktar Exand.

“A mere matter, eh? You all look confounded glum.”

“Some business over a wench,” said the thick-necked muscular young Numim, switching his rapier up. “The foul rasts waste their time instead of guarding us. I’d have them flogged jikaider, every last mother’s son of them!”

This was Ortyg Handon, a young Jen
[1]
of Crimahan’s retinue. We all knew what he was: a professional bully, a man kept to provide sport for the Kov, a man who delighted in thrashing other men who lacked his strength and his skill at arms. I had to tolerate him in my home for the sake of his Kov, who was high in the councils of my father-in-law.

Balass the Hawk, a hyr-kaidur, had marked this Handon and mentioned him to me with a few belittling words. I had had to say most sternly to Balass, that fierce man: “Do not cross swords with him, Balass! I don’t want a corpse spouting blood over my carpets of Walfarg weave.”

So Balass had kept out of his way, and I had given the word to my chamberlain, old Panshi, to pass along to Kov Lykon’s chamberlain that the professional swaggerer, Ortyg Handon, must behave himself or else he would be guested in the dungeons for his visit here. I meant it, too.

I was about to step forward and make myself known when I saw a shadow cast in the pool of torchlight above the last step leading up from the great Kyro of the Tridents. A black, deformed shadow leaped the steps, and then a young man appeared, walking forward into the lights. I looked at him and felt a strange — a weird! — sensation in my throat. I had never seen him before. I knew this to be so and it was true. I did not know this young man.

But something about him — the way he held his head, the way his open, ruddy, handsome features broke into a genuine smile as he advanced, all the clean limber strength of him — caught at me. I was in shadow and I remained there, staring at the young man, feeling this uncanny sensation and not liking it one little bit.

“Lahal!” called the stranger in greeting. He wore a beard, which I thought heavy for him, and mustaches which jutted arrogantly above his upper lip. He wore a rapier and a dagger, and his clothes were clean although poor and patched, the decent Vallian buff. He wore sandals, not boots.

The effect of what I call his open and handsome features, as I have recounted it, was purely subjective. For he wore the usual Vallian hat with the wide brim and the two slots over the eyes. There were no feathers in the hat.

“Lahal,” said Jiktar Exand, no doubt experiencing relief at this excuse not to talk further to the bully and rapier-rattler Handon.

“I have business in the fortress,” said this young man.

“Your name?”

“I am called Zando—”

Before he could speak further Kov Lykon burst in with anger trembling his voice.

“We are talking about your dereliction of duty, Jiktar! Tell this scum to clear off before he is treated as his sort deserves.”

Still I did not intervene. There are uses for lengths of rope if allowed to lie around.

“But my business is pressing,” persisted Zando. His face, as I have indicated, lay mostly in the shadows of his hat and the beard concealed the rest; yet I clearly received the impression of a genuine smile. “I must speak with the Prince Majister.”

“Ho!” said Exand. But he knew me and knew I would speak with anyone, given the correct procedures. “I think we have had enough of strangers seeking to speak to the Prince this day. Your business?” The last lashed out like a risslaca tongue.