Queen of Stars (16 page)

Rigel held out a hand. At least he wasn’t smirking.

“What?”

“The pink one, I think.”

Grumpily, Izar removed the stud and dropped it onto Rigel’s palm.

“It eavesdrops?”

Izar nodded.

“From Dschubba?”

Nod.

“That day you ran away? What did you give him in exchange?”

“Ride on a hippogriff.”

That rattled him. “
What?
Stars above, Izar, if you’d run into a male one, it would have bitten your head off!”

“It…we, I mean, didn’t.”

Rigel sighed. “I got suspicious in court this morning. The magical acoustics weren’t turned on, but I was pretty sure you were eavesdropping on us. Your mother trusts me with your life, Izar.”

“So?” It was humiliating for a starborn to be outsmarted by a mere tweenling who was barely older than he was, just more grown-up.

“So…do you? Do you really trust me, imp? You think I’d come to your rescue no matter what?”

“Of course! You did, remember, when Hadar had me locked up at Giauzar?”

Rigel nodded. “And just now I let you overhear my secret plans. So I’m trusting you with
my
life, Izar.”

Izar gulped, then said, “I won’t tell anyone, Rigel.”

“No one at all? Not Dschubba or Salm or Ukdah? Not Tyl or Thabit?”

“I swear!”

“Not even your mother?”

Shocked, Izar shook his head.

“Unless she asks you, I mean. Then tell her. You should never lie to her, but don’t offer the information otherwise. You know that I never tell you lies, right, Izar?”

“I know, Rigel.”

“I got mad at you last week for telling Avior that your mother and I were lovers.”

“Yes, Rigel. I don’t say that any more.”

“Just as well, because now it would be true.”

Izar’s stupid face gave him away by grinning.

“You knew that too?” Rigel asked.

Izar nodded. “I’m glad.”

Rigel’s smile was less convincing. “So are we, but now it’s even more important that you don’t tell anyone. If I get asked now, I can’t deny it on the Star any more.”

“No.” Izar shivered.

“So be careful.” Rigel held out the pink stone amulet. “Here.”

Izar grabbed. “You mean I can wear it?” he asked in disbelief.

The halfling shrugged. “If you want to. Personally, I think that spying on your friends and family is pretty
schmoory
behavior. I wouldn’t do that, but it’s up to you.” He rose and strode off down the path.

Izar clipped the gem on the waistband of his wrap and hurried after.

“Rigel?”

“Mm?”

“I know you don’t lie to me, but did you tell the truth to Halfling Avior?”

Rigel muttered something toxic under his breath. “I never tell you lies, imp. But sometimes I don’t tell everybody all the truth.”

Chapter 19

C
an you tell me anything about Vindemiatrix?” Rigel said. “The queen wants to move the court to Vindemiatrix soon, and even Saidak doesn’t know where that is. Not in the royal domain, obviously.”

One of the great blessings of the Starlands was the absence of committees, but Vildiar’s criminal conspiracy was a completely exceptional circumstance calling for extreme countermeasures, and thus Rigel had invented the Royal Security Committee. So far it had worked better in theory than in practice.

For one thing, it had to meet outside, because centaurs were never welcome indoors. For another, standard patio seats were shaped like earthly deck chairs, being roughly N-shaped, and the sitter had to lean back with knees raised, an awkward posture for those dressed in meager wraps. Moreover, providing a boardroom table for paws and talons would have been ridiculous. So here he was, on a terrace of the palace in Canopus, trying to do business in the heat of a sleepy afternoon. At least the palm trees drooping motionless overhead were date palms, which provided shade without dropping coconut bombs. The ambience would have been quite soporific without the raucous swarms of gulls, parrots, doves, cuckoos, kookaburras, and harpies.

Soporific did not mean that there was no tension. Recorder Matar, in the other chair, was making no effort to disguise her disgust at having to consort with a half-breed and a pack of animals. Commander Zozma and Squadron Leader Gianfar, crouching opposite each other with front paws and talons outstretched, were barely managing to cooperate professionally in the queen’s service, for sphinxes and griffins traditionally despised each other as freaks.

The fifth member of the group was Inspector Bellatrix, a centaur mare—huge and black and Menkent’s mother. She preferred to stand, so she towered over all the others, sometimes clumping a hoof on the marble and frequently swishing her tail, although flies were as rare as committees in the Starlands.

Matar pouted at Rigel’s question and fumbled with her collection of bracelets. “There are at least fifty starborn by that name.” She would get the answer eventually, for her amulets were the magical equivalent of search engines.

“I got the impression that it was more a place than a person,” Rigel said.

“I know of a mountain range called Vindemiatrix,” Gianfar said, in her usual harsh screech. “Very narrow passes. Bad headwinds.”

“The third raven turned up with its neck wrung,” Zozma growled. He was a free-range creature who sniffed the wind, and could never understand the idea of following a linear agenda like a tracking dog. “Want to send more?”

“No.” Rigel wondered if he should ask about compensating the dead ravens’ mates and fledglings and decided to wait until he could discuss it with the commander in private. His scheme of sending talking ravens to spy on Prince Vildiar had never sounded promising. Rigel doubted that anyone could spy on a Naos mage undetected, except possibly another, like Prince Kurhah, who had shown no interest in joining the security committee or assisting in its work. Fomalhaut was a mage, but not Naos. Talitha was Naos but not a mage.

Vildiar and Hadar were terrorists, and the peaceful folk of the Starlands had no idea how to deal with terrorism. Rigel himself didn’t either, but at least he knew that mere wishful thinking would not make the problem go away.

“I’ve gone back a thousand years, halfling,” Matar grumbled. “Do you want me to continue?”

“Please do, my lady.”

“I have an appointment with the farrier,” Bellatrix remarked impatiently, “to pick out some new shoes.”

“I’m going hunting with my wives this afternoon,” said Zozma. “There’s nothing quite like a fresh haunch of ostrich still dripping blood.”

“I prefer cat, myself,” Gianfar countered, although her rear half was lion.

Rigel’s campaign against Vildiar was not going well. In fact, it was not going anywhere. Fortunately, the opposition had not been doing much either. The Hadar gang had been at least temporarily balked by the return of Naos Kurhah, whom the starfolk in general must have seen as a much more acceptable candidate for the throne than either Vildiar or Talitha. The terror would start up again when the enemy had adjusted to the new circumstances, but Rigel wanted to take advantage of the lull and strike first.

The trouble was that he still had no acceptable campaign plan. He had ideas, but they would not come together to form a strategy. Avior was still at Kraz, working on her sham Rigel corpse. The month she had requested had come and gone, and the last time he had gone to visit, she had still been assembling boiled pig bones to make the skeleton.

Fomalhaut had previously belonged to a secret lodge of mages that called itself Red Justice, formed to oppose Vildiar. He refused to discuss it, but it seemed to have fallen apart since Hadar murdered its leader, Starborn Cheleb.

Yesterday, Counselor Pleione had provided Rigel with a very interesting answer to a legal question he had posed, but he had not yet figured out how to apply it in practice. That was so often the problem with ideas: good ones were rarely practical and practical ones not much good.

The Hadar gang’s next move would very likely be an attempt on Kurhah’s life. Everybody knew that. Rigel would dearly love to set up a trap for the killers, using the Naos as bait, but Kurhah had rudely spurned all Talitha’s offers to provide him with sphinx or centaur bodyguards. Nor did he seem interested in joining forces against the common foe.

Apart from the frustrating stalemate, though, life was sweet. Elgomaisa escorted Talitha to social or political functions by day and tactfully vanished at night, leaving her free to enjoy her frantically passionate affair with Rigel. Even Izar had been behaving himself so perfectly that Rigel would have suspected he was sickening for something if elves ever got sick.

“Found it!” Matar announced triumphantly. “Vindemiatrix! Domain imagined by Starborn Ascella during the first decade of the reign of King Procyon. That would be about seventeen hundred and forty years ago.”

“Marvelous!” Rigel enthused. “I don’t know what we’d do without you. Do you know anything more about it, or about Starborn Ascella?”

“She’s Starborn Elgomaisa’s mother.”

“Good grief!” Elgomaisa was not yet sixty, Talitha had said, barely adult by elfin standards. But Rigel’s own mother had been almost two thousand years old when he was born, so why be surprised? “Does she still live there, or just lend it to him for parties?”

“You will have to ask her,” Matar said sourly. “Or him. I have no other information about the domain, except a comment that it’s of earthly mythic design and is notable for a dramatic entryway across a rainbow bridge.”

“Oh, sh…shinbones! Any mention of giant wolves or eight-legged horses?”

The others’ reactions varied from amusement, in the case of Zozma, to disgust from Bellatrix. The griffin merely opened her beak to display a long black tongue.

The centaur snorted. “Eight-legged horses? That’s absurd!”

“Probably a late addition based on a misunderstanding of artistic perspective,” Rigel agreed. His haphazard education in the School of Library Dumpsters paid curious dividends sometimes. If Vindemiatrix was older than both the prose and poetic
Edda
s—let alone Richard Wagner’s operas—it should provide an interesting insight into early Nordic myths, and specifically those featuring Valhalla, the home of the gods. This wasn’t the kind of information he needed, however.

“I’d like someone to inspect it from a security point of view.” He looked meaningfully at the griffin.

Gianfar nodded her great raptor head. “We can take care of that. What’s the address?”

Matar consulted her bracelets again. “Ascella’s overlord is Starborn Menkalinan, whose overlord is…” Addresses were personal. After ten or so names, she reached Naos Vildiar, underling of the queen.

That was no great surprise. Vildiar had inherited almost as many domains and underlings as the monarch herself, so no one but Rigel would see anything sinister in the relationship between Vildiar and Elgomaisa. Before he could comment, he heard himself called.

“Half-breed! Hey, by-blow! Bucket-head!”

He turned his head to scowl at the harpy perched on the marble balustrade. “Well?”

“Fomalhaut wants you right away. It’s urgent, he says. I think he stepped in something nasty and wants to wipe his feet on you.”

“Very likely. Go away.” Rigel heaved himself to his feet. “Committee adjourned! Please do check on Vindemiatrix for me, Squadron Leader.”

He ran for the nearest portal. Talitha was visiting a thousand-year-old cousin somewhere in the royal domain, so
Saidak
should still be anchored at Segin—unless Elgomaisa had borrowed the barge for his own purposes. The starborn had many flying vehicles, but all required more magic than Rigel could muster. His best bet was to portal to Mabsuthat and ask Kitalphar for a ride.

The Time of Life continued its endless swing, while around it pools bubbled and tendrils writhed. The mage’s workshop was just as before, except that Rigel’s friend Achird was waiting to greet him as he stooped in through the low doorway. He was the only adult male starborn who ever welcomed Rigel with a smile, usually a wry grin that did not show too many shark teeth. Also his sandy hair and eyes made him seem closer to human than the customary poster-paint coloring.

“Guess what? You were right,” he said. “There is treason brewing at Alathfar.”

The mage strode off across the great courtyard at a pace Rigel was hard put to match.

“So seancing within the Starlands is possible after all?”

The grin grew wryer. “It is much harder than seancing Earth, though. On Earth they have no portals and have to move their fat asses around on wheels. When subjects portal, you can’t follow them. You have to guess where they’ve gone.”

Their shadows raced over the bright floor, under midnight stars above. A bronze tiger bared its teeth at them when they went too close, but they arrived safely at the seance court, where Mizar stood with hands and forehead against the great crystal ball. Fomalhaut was there too, one hand on the other mage’s shoulder.

“Any change?” Achird asked.

Fomalhaut opened his eyes. “Chancellor Celaeno just walked in,” he said glumly. “They’ve closed the door, so that must be everybody.”

By that time Rigel was there to grab hold of Mizar’s arm and join in the seance. Instantly he found himself back in the big hunting lodge at Alathfar, and a moment’s reflection told him he was seeing it from the corner that held the grand piano. He recognized blue-haired Shaula standing by the fireplace, seemingly acting as hostess. Several mudlings in turbans and eastern robes were passing among the guests, offering trays of refreshment, but it was the guests who interested Rigel.

And appalled him. About thirty starfolk, males and females, were sitting or standing around the big room, chatting quietly in small groups. Chancellor Celaeno was there, and so were at least half a dozen other members of the queen’s council. Rigel recognized few of the rest. There was no way to judge elves’ age from their appearance, and wealth was a meaningless concept in the Starlands, but judging from the few he recognized, he could guess that the rest were also respected, senior people. He did not need a mage to tell him that there was a conspiracy brewing.

The latest arrival had been shown to a seat. Shaula was scanning the assembly, counting heads. Then she nodded a signal to nowhere in particular.

An interior door opened to admit the host, Naos Kurhah. Silence closed in around him like a fog. Smiling, nodding to friends, he began winding his way through the crowd to the fireplace. Then a green-haired female rose, a couple of males copied her, and soon almost everyone was standing. It was a royal tribute, although in this case it might be dismissed as an appropriate welcome for a long-lost friend—not quite treasonable but close. With some relief, Rigel noted that the chancellor and several others had remained seated.

The prince reached the fireplace and turned to smile at the company at large, holding his hands out in greeting.

“Friends, my friends! Please be seated. My thanks to all of you for coming on such short notice. I will get directly to the point so that those of you with other commitments can leave.”

And so that so many absences would not be noticed, if the Naos’s intent was as treasonable as Rigel suspected…

“My purpose in inviting you here was twofold. First, it has been far too long since I saw you all, and I hope many of you will stay on so that we can dine and rummage over old times together. Secondly, I want to draw your attention to the serious political situation here—”

A male with flaming scarlet hair sprang up and shouted, “Naos!”

“Yes, Starborn Yildun?”

“I will not be part of any seditious conspiracy!”

“I should hope not, starborn. You are free to leave at any time. Or you may remain and hear what I have to say and then go straight to the queen and report it to her. And perhaps her ‘head of security’?” He smirked to invite a laugh. “The distinguished marshal of Canopus, I mean.”