No one spoke a word. Seg and Inch and Turko, Balass, Vomanus, Hap and Oby.
We left the carriages concealed beneath the end arch of a colonnade where moonblooms opened their petals to the drenching moonlight. We crept upon the sentry like leems. We did not kill him, for he was a Rapa, and merely earning his hire. That he was a Rapa guarding the palace in Vondium itself clearly indicated that times had changed. His vulturine face with the fierce warrior eyes either side of his beak stared blankly up at the moon. Soon She of the Veils would be joined by the Twins, and then there would be too much light for nefarious purposes.
So, we respectable citizens of Vallia crept along in the shadows like assassins, spies, drikingers. Sharp left inside the narrow wicket I turned past the buttress and so found a narrow crack in the inner wall, a crack seeming merely the ruin of time, plastered over against the fall of the towers. But the plastering was a mere shell, covering stout wood, and the wood pivoted and revealed a square opening, a foot on a side. I gripped the iron handle, shaped like the handle of a spade, and pulled.
Almost soundlessly, so well wrought was the masonry, the section of stone pivoted about itself. The opening widened into a narrow doorway and onto stairs leading down.
Down we went and with the practiced knack of those accustomed to such things flint and steel lit the lanterns. The stairs leered below us, dark and sinister, running strips of water, darkly stained, brilliant in the lantern glitter.
Down we went.
Niter caked the walls lower down, and greenish slime hung in greasy tendrils. On we went along a jagged corridor where Inch appealed feelingly to Ngrangi, immediately hushing himself and rubbing that tall head of his.
These labyrinthine windings of corridor and tunnel and stair are virtually dictated by any palace architect on Kregen. A whole system of secondary channels exists alongside the proud and ornate halls and chambers. Many of these secret runnels I had had blocked up when first living here; but I had a map of those I knew of remaining in my head. To find the sick room was not difficult; merely tortuous.
I put my eye to the eyehole in the wooden screen and looked out into the room in which the emperor lay dying, in which Vadnicha Ashti Melekhi had screamed invective and had myself and my friends thrown out.
Doctor Charboi was in the act of rising from the bed. A glass shone in his hand. His smooth face looked well satisfied. He spoke to someone out of my angle of vision.
“He will sleep now. Quite safely."
The voice that answered, all cut glass and splinters, all vicious neemu-hiss, said: “Very good, doctor. See that he is not disturbed. Have the guards called at once. The young prince thinks he is very masterful. Kov Layco was most angry."
“I have done my work well, vadnicha."
We knew what devil's work that was.
“I do not deny it. You will be paid."
Charboi gathered up the implements of his trade and went toward the door. He knocked and the door opened. I saw the crimson-clad arm. So the Bowmen kept the door sealed, now, and opened only to those they knew. I did not smile. But I rather fancied Ashti Melekhi would have some hard explaining to do to Kov Layco Jhansi, the emperor's Chief Pallan.
If she chose to remain in the room she would have to take her chances with us. We would have to quiet her before she could cry out and warn the guards. Charboi had only just got away; I think I half regretted that at the time. But, there's no time like the present—I was about to bash open the secret door and spring leem-like upon her, when she appeared. She walked to the outer door, and paused, and looked back.
I waited.
I saw her face. All thin and white and scornful, that face, with its red mouth and arched eyebrows. And she smiled. That smile would have held a Manhound for a space. Bitter, cunning, devilish—and, yet, also, I guessed, a little regretful. I do not wish to paint Ashti Melekhi in colors that are all black. I believe she was an accomplished player on the lute. I know she kept an aviary of exotic birds. But, in the death of an emperor, it is hard to paint lighter tones when the emperor's daughter is your wife.
Then, with a small golden staff slung on a jeweled chain about her neck, she knocked upon the door. The Bowmen opened for her. She said: “Watch the door. Hold it."
“Quidang, my lady!"
No one was going to come into that room through that door this night, unless it was over the dead bodies of the Crimson Bowmen and their new Chulik mercenary partners.
So she went out, all feline grace and thin glitter, hard and brittle and oddly manlike and I wondered when I would see her again.
Gently the secret panel eased open and I stepped into the sick room. The nurse on duty sat looking at the emperor and, I swear, a tear glistered on her pale cheek. The flunkeys were gone. The nurse did not see me, she saw nothing more as the black scarf whipped about her eyes blindfolding her. Turko held her arms, very gently, and we tied her up and laid her comfortably on a thick rug of Zeniccean-made fleecy-ponsho, a gift from Strombor, with a golden cushion for her head. She did not struggle and, no doubt, poor soul, was scared witless.
We lifted up the emperor and placed him carefully in the litter we had brought, using his own bedclothes. He weighed pathetically little for a man who had once been so strong and robust. With a single quick look around the sick room we returned through the opening and I, going last, latched the secret panel shut.
Our return was uneventful. I began to think we had planned so well as to negate all problems. Onker!
We took turn and turn about to carry the litter, for each of my comrades knew my views on manual labor, the status of nobles, and the mumbo jumbo of aristocratic privileges.
We knew the routine of the palace guard. The Crimson Bowmen were professionals and would keep up their hired mercenaries to the same standards. The guard commanders changed the sentries every three burs—two hours by terrestrial reckoning—and we had taken almost the whole of that time. We anticipated leaving just before any trouble from the guard reliefs with their watchwords and their lanterns and their ready weapons.
With soundless speed we filed through the concealing opening, the emperor carried smartly if gently enough, and I reset the plaster-coated wood. At the opening of the gate we paused. Someone swore; but so low the words did not carry.
The two closed carriages were gone.
The pink and golden moonlight, strengthening slowly as the Twins eternally revolving one about the other gradually added their luster, threw odd shadows from the battlements. The damned carriages were not there. Someone had unmistakably purloined them, for they had been left firmly tethered under the colonnade, and the krahniks, useful draught animals, had shown no inclination to break free and trot off.
I caught Seg's arm.
“We walk,” I said into his ear.
“The emperor—?"
“Once we clear the palace precincts we become a drunken party with a casualty. There are eight of us. We should not be molested—"
That, onker that I am, was as far as I got.
The devils were clever and they were quick and they very nearly had us.
The deadly glitter of steel in the moonlight ... The quick indrawn breath as killers pounced ... The scrape of sandals across time-worn stones...
My own rapier jumped into my fist and I swear it was only a fraction of a second faster than my comrades', for we were a right tearaway bunch and, after the first quick shock of the ambush, a certain pitying sorrow for our would-be slayers afflicted me. In that, I suppose, the old haughty pride we all fight down reared more of its ugly head than is strictly desirable. Turko's brand-new parrying stick flashed with smooth-oiled steel and balass, and a lunging rapier skipped and twanged away. Turko put his hand on the fellow and the cramph went sailing up, spread-eagled marvelously against the moons.
“Hai!” said Turko, reflectively, unruffled, taking a sober enjoyment.
Hap's short clansman's axe whirled and bit, withdrew and bit again—fast, fast!
Inch licked out
deftly with his great Saxon-pattern axe, and lopped, and reared up, stark against the stars, and so went with the swing, rhythmically, shearing blood and ribs and backbone in a dark welter of spraying offal.
Seg and Vomanus, who had been carrying the litter between them, placed the emperor down as fast as was decently possible. One of the attackers, mere ghost-like figures bundled in dark cloaks, shrieked and shrieked as he held, unbelievingly, onto his insides which were now outside. Silence was of no more consequence.
“Leave a few for me!” bellowed Seg, ripping out his blade, plunging on.
“And me, by Vox! Can't a fellow have any fun!” And Vomanus twinkled his rapier out, very smooth, in that typical careless way of his.
Balass and Oby, in the rear, struggled to get out.
I, Dray Prescot, just stood. I just stood there, my rapier glinting in my fist, and I wanted to laugh. Yes! I wanted to bust a gut laughing. What poor fools these fellows were, to attempt to slay a mean bunch like us. How comical!
So I took no part in that swift and deadly struggle beneath the Moons of Kregen. Balass got in a few whacks with his superb new sword we had built back in Valka. The others stood, weapons ready, crouched, looking about into the shadows.
Young Oby stalked out, mightily upset. His wicked long-knife gleamed sharp and clean.
“Not one,” he said. “A right leem's nest. You might at least have saved me one."
The others laughed. Gravely, with broad smiles, they promised Oby first pick next time. They were not speaking altogether idly. So, I stepped out at last.
“Pick up all the gear. We are all reivers, mercenaries. We do not scatter good weapons about. Bundle the offal into the canal. And do not take all night about it. The guards will be here in less than no time."
“Aye, Dray,” they said, but softly, already at work. We did not know what further hostile ears might be listening, affixed either side of eyes that had witnessed horror. I thought that no other stikitche who had witnessed what had happened to his comrades—there had been twelve of them—would want to come rushing out upon his death.
We all knew, deeply and with conviction, that this attack must herald some fresh horror, that what all Vondium feared must come to pass and the future lay drenched in blood. This was a prospect that appalled me, careless as I may be in these things. We had to take the emperor to Aphrasöe and there effect a cure and so bring him safely back to his capital and reseat him on his throne, defeat the dark plots of his many enemies, and bring a fresh period of peace and stability to all Vallia.
“Take up the emperor. Quick and sharp. Pull your scarves about your faces.” I glared at Inch. “And, tall man, hunch yourself over. We have to win back to the inn."
Silently, feral as leems, we padded away moments before the guards arrived with much heralding of their coming, made our way back to The Rose of Valka where the supplies and the fliers were waiting for us.
Among the gear we had stripped from the corpses were twelve fine metal masks. I will have more to say on the subject of metal-work and masks, for the Masks of Kregen form a fascinating, beautiful and horrible story of their own, but for now I will say that these masks were built of fine-quality steel, crafted by a mastersmith. They were all alike; triangular nose, curved lip opening, cunningly slotted to slide above an apim's ears, with brow ridges over the eye orbits chiseled into the semblance of hair.
Mass production is, as you know from Hamal, practiced to some degree on Kregen; but of necessity hand-crafted objects like these must differ in detail, one from the next. They were genuine stikitche masks, most costly; but they did not match the assassins themselves. Each one had worn ordinary clothes, buff, green, amber. I shook my head.
“Although it may seem a foolish thing to say, these do not appear to have been professional stikitches."
They all took my meaning. No assassin is going to parade around with a special badge that lights up and proclaims he is an assassin. But some marks of the trade do sometimes show.
“Look at these,” said Oby, his nimble fingers turning over the badges in the lamplight of the snug.
The twelve badges were of a wersting with a korf in its jaws.
“The bitch!"
“Yet they must have followed us to the palace and waited—they cannot report back to her,” I said. “This is serious. Ashti Melekhi considers herself powerful enough to assassinate the Prince Majister.” No ridiculous thought of self-importance crossed my mind, only the facts as stated. “This must not deflect us from our purpose. The emperor comes first."
“I think,” said Hap Loder, judiciously, “that I may return through Vondium. I may have a few words for the lady."
So we all laughed. Clansmen are regarded as the devils of barbarians they truly are in Vondium—was not I a Clansman?
Thelda was all tears and alarms as we bundled the masks and badges into a big black cloak; but Seg hushed her, and young Dray gently took her for a fortifying sip of strong wine. Sasha simply took Inch's fearsome axe and tut-tutted, and taking up a cloth began to polish until the true steel shone. Inch caught my eye and smiled. “The lassies of Ng'groga are trained to support a man, in more ways than the merely amorous."
At this, Tilly bristled up, her fine slanted eyes catching the lights and gleaming, very cat-like.
“You apims think we Fristle girls are trained only for the arts of love, like your sylvies! Well, you are wrong—"
“But, Tilly,” said my son Drak, very chivalrous. “All the world knows how the Fristle men care for their womenfolk."
“And we can show our claws, too, Prince Drak!"
I knew that to be true, by Zair!
Melow the Supple, recovered from the wound she had taken in defense of Delia, a story they would not tell me because it concerned the Sisters of the Rose, let rip one of her curdling, snarling chuckles. A ferocious Manhound, once of Faol and now of Valka, she said: “Women know how to look after their brats where I come from."
And her son, Kardo, who never voluntarily leaves the side of Drak, broke out with his own harsh laugh at this. I did not marvel. But I knew a whole lot of people on the Island of Faol who would never believe Manhounds, the fearsome jiklos, savage hunting beasts genetically manufactured from human beings, could ever laugh, let alone share poignant human emotions. As for Shara, Kardo's twin sister, well, she always went loping savagely at my daughter Lela's side, and where they were, Opaz knew.
Delia could tell me nothing of what was happening to our daughters, save they were safe.
The Wizard of Loh, Khe-Hi-Bjanching, pushed forward. We all waited respectfully for him to speak. The snug in The Rose of Valka, went suddenly quiet. “You are all going on this expedition. But, my prince, why not have the Melekhi woman arrested? The poisoning will stop then, and—"
Nath the Needle shook his head. “The process is too far gone. Only this miracle can save him.” We all knew that Nath was a renowned needleman among his friends; he had no need to advertise. What he said we believed.
“But you are all mad, mad!” cried the Wizard.
“We are surely mad, Khe-Hi,” I said. “Of a certainty. But I daresay we will muddle through. I shall go ahead to make the arrangements with the Todalpheme while the expedition is put together. We meet at the Risshamal Keys—you can find at least one of the men who will know the rendezvous."
“So,” said my Delia.
“One thing,” I told them. “The assassins who attacked Drak must probably have been the same bunch. I think we will all be better off outside Vondium, anyway.” My son's fate must be considered involved with mine by Melekhi—which it was not, in truth. He, as the Amak of Vellendur, had his own path to hew. I intended to find a Stromnate for him as soon as may be; but he had run Valka for me with Tom Tomor and the Elders, and done well. As the son of the Princess Majestrix he must know that eventually, given the longevity of Kregans, he stood a better chance than most of becoming Emperor of Vallia himself. I finished somberly: “The emperor must be got to Aphrasöe
, and nothing must stop that. Nothing. The fate of all Vallia hangs on that. Until the emperor is returned to the throne, fit and well, anarchy and blood will rule in Vallia."
These tough warriors of Kregen understood that. I could leave the final preparations in good hands. Weapons, food, drink, clothes, supplies, all would be taken care of. As for airboats, well, the gigantic skyships Seg and Inch had stolen from the emperor to rescue me in Zandikar had been returned, not without a sniff and a few cutting remarks from the old devil. So now we would fly in somewhat smaller vollers; but large, well-found craft, all the same, carrying spare silver boxes to uplift and power them in flight.
Of provisions we would take enough to withstand a siege. Of weapons we would take an arsenal, for that is the Kregan way. All in all, as we stood to say our Remberees, we were a most lively company.
Delia made sure I was, myself, accoutred and weaponed correctly. We said our private farewells in a small private room of Bargom's off the blackwood landing, where the samphron oil lamps burned low, and the smell of night-blooming flowers carried heady scents in the lustrous air.
Then the small voller I would use was hauled down from her tether. I kissed Delia and climbed aboard. The stars spread above, the lights glowed from the windows around the small courtyard, built onto the flat roof at the rear of Bargom's The Rose of Valka. I observed the fantamyrrh. I waved to the others.
“Remberee,” I shouted down. The voller rose. “Remberee."
Savage Scorpio [Dray Prescot #16] Page 8
