by Victor Poole
"You keep to your station, little nephew," Elan growled. "You may be lording it up in the sticks now that your father is dead, but you can't do that here."
"If you refuse to answer to my authority as Thief Lord," Delmar said calmly, "I will choose to seek a higher authority than yourself." Elan's eyes quickened, and his throat grew tense. He glanced again at Ajalia, and then straightened up, and looked imperiously at Delmar. Elan, Ajalia told herself, did not look very impressive when he tried to look commanding. Delmar, however, looked regal and furious without ever trying. Delmar's strawberry-blond beard clung in short, tawny curls against a strong chin and jaw, and his eyes, which were turned now with disdain on his uncle, looked entirely like the piercing eyes of some bird of prey. Simon, Ajalia thought, had looked sometimes like a hawk, but Simon had resembled a dark and ragged bird, a bird who fed on the scraps of carrion he was able to gather in the wilderness. Delmar, she told herself, looked like the finest of all birds, and like the king of all raptors.
"You are not the Thief Lord," Elan said, and his voice was little more than a growl.
"This man is useless to us," Delmar told Ajalia. Delmar settled himself into the saddle, and told Ajalia to fetch water and hay for the horse. Elan watched this exchange with something like amusement in his eyes.
"You can't order anyone about in the stables," Elan said loudly to Ajalia, as she stepped past him and towards the annex where the little two boys had gone. "Where is she from?" Elan asked Delmar, as if they had not been arguing seconds before. Ajalia did not hear Delmar's answer. She went straight into the stables, which lay along the left-hand side of the palace, and found a bucket. She dipped it into a trough that lay in a long stall, and then gathered up an armful of hay from the corner of another stall, where a heavy dark workhorse stood idly and watched her.
"You can't take hay here, lady," a little boy shouted, when he saw her. Ajalia looked at the boy, and winked.
"It is for the mighty steed of the Thief Lord," Ajalia told him, speaking in Slavithe. "I am the sky angel, come to restore all things. Find all the servants. Come and see the dead falcon, who has arisen from the ashes." The boy's eyes, throughout this speech, had grown gradually larger and larger, until the openings in his face filled up almost all the area of his skin. The boy's nostrils were flared with intense interest, and his mouth had dropped open. His eyebrows looked as though they were trying to crawl up into his hair. The boy turned, and dashed down the aisle of the stable so quickly that he slipped, and stumbled against the wooden door of a stall. Ajalia, as she turned and carried the hay and the bucket out of the stable row, heard the boy shouting in the distance. She smiled.
When she came in sight of Elan, she saw that man standing with his weight on one leg, his other propped out to the side. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his head was cocked to one side. Ajalia saw then that Delmar was doing what he had done to the two assassins who had come to the dragon temple; she saw that Delmar was sneaking energy, his own, particular charm, into the back of his uncle's spine, and undoing the anger and tension there. Elan now looked quite off guard. A look of scorn was still on his features, but his body was no longer wrought up in preparation for a fight.
Delmar's reaching of energy was not magic; it was like what Ajalia did when she negotiated. She did not use magic for this, but watched the expression in people's eyes, and followed the barest movement of their muscles. Delmar, she thought, could do the same thing, but without speaking much. Delmar, she told herself, could charm people into exposing themselves to him. He looked so honest, and so without guard, that she saw that Elan had decided he was barely a threat. As soon as Elan had let down his guard, Delmar had begun to study him, and to find out his weak points. Ajalia saw that what she did with people's emotions, and their words, Delmar did with people's bodies. Already now, Elan looked quite relaxed. He still seemed to think that Delmar was an obnoxious and minimally-important interruption to his day, but Ajalia saw that Elan was no longer prepared to deal seriously with the threat that a visiting Thief Lord presented.
Ajalia carried the hay and the bucket of water to Delmar; when she drew close to the black horse, Delmar swung his leg over the saddle, and dropped to the ground. Ajalia saw with some pleasure that Elan was eyeing the beautiful black goatskin saddle that was strapped to the black horse's back.
When she stepped close to the horse, she was surprised to feel a tingle of sharp magic pass over her skin. She glanced at Delmar, but he made no sign. She arranged the bridle of the horse, so that his mouth would be free of the bit, and then strung her stirrups up against the saddle, and loosened the girth.
A host of stable boys, and another great row of male servants had assembled very quietly in the back of the pink stone courtyard. Ajalia looked up from her work, and saw these people, and the ghost of a smile chased itself over her face. Elan, who was telling Delmar some gossip about the family in the palace, saw her smile, and turned to see what she was looking at. Elan glowered when he saw the gathering of boys and men; he waved his arms, and shouted at them to get back to work.
None of the boys shifted from their places, and the men only made token motions of beginning to move away. The eyes of the boys and men were fixed on Delmar, and on the black horse. Many of the boys pointed also at Ajalia, and whispered to each other.
"What are you looking at?" Elan demanded, striding over to the boys. "Get back to your work!" he shouted.
"Elan," Delmar said, and stepped away from the horse. Ajalia saw a shimmer of deep blue against Delmar's skin, when he passed out of the circumference that closed around the horse. She followed him, and again felt the shimmer of magic against her skin. She glanced back at the horse, who stood as if penned in a stall, and she thought, when she looked very closely, that she could see the almost-invisible shape of a magic enclosure that Delmar had formed around the horse.
Delmar's uncle had paused in his progress towards the servants, and turned back. Ajalia saw that Delmar already commanded more of Elan's respect than he had before; Elan listened when Delmar called out to him, and unconsciously turned, to hear clearly what he would say. Ajalia was sure that Elan was yet unaware of his own growing respect for Delmar, and for Delmar's position as the Thief Lord.
"They have come to look on my very fine horse," Delmar said. "Will you take me to my uncle?" Elan's face darkened again.
"I am all the uncle that you need to speak to, boy," Elan snapped. The boys that were lined against the wall hissed quietly at this; Ajalia saw that the servants were all avidly interested in Delmar, and she saw some of the boys, in the very back, making the sign of the dead falcon with their fingers. She saw that Elan did not see this, though he heard the mutterings among the boys. "It is just a black horse," Elan snapped at the servants. "Go back to work!"
"I need to speak to someone who knows of Rane," Delmar told Elan. "There has been trouble." Elan, for the first time, looked a little interested.
"Trouble with Rane?" Elan asked. He glanced with dislike at the row of boys and the huddled serving men. "See to the horse," Elan snapped, and walked into the open archway that lay at the end of the courtyard. Delmar looked back at Ajalia, and told her to leave the horse where he was. Ajalia nodded, and waited until Elan was out of earshot. Delmar followed Elan, and Ajalia went to the boys and men.
"The Thief Lord has made a special cage of magic for his black horse," Ajalia told the boys. She took one of the lengths of colored light that she had drawn earlier from the earth, and that she still held close in her hand. She wound the light through the hearts of all of the little boys. "The dead falcon will need warriors soon," Ajalia said. "Already, in the white city, the falcon's boys are learning to fly."
Gasps and murmurs of anxious delight passed at once through all of the boys. Ajalia was sure that some gossip of the doings of the boys of Slavithe had reached the palace in Talbos. Elan seemed curiously unaware of the new shape of Slavithe, but, Ajalia told herself, a palace could be a strangely isolated place to live
, if the servants didn't like you or tell you things, and, she remembered, the spies from Talbos had broken off communications with the city. Rane, she supposed had been some kind of connection point for many of the spies of Talbos; now that he was dead, and now that both entrances to the city, and the pass up in the northern wall, had been sealed with magic, the spies seemed unwilling or reluctant to venture out of Slavithe.
Ajalia had, at first, thought that only Denai had ceased communications with the royalty in Talbos, but partway through the week when the bulk of the purge had been conducted, she had found three of the spies she had met in the secret meeting helping to carry dead bodies towards the poison tree. She had greeted these men, and asked them how their business went. The three spies had glanced at each other in some confusion, and then confessed, with some embarrassment, that they had yet to appoint a new chief spy, and had consequently not yet reported much of the doings of Slavithe to their masters in Talbos.
Ajalia had been sure that some one of the spies would have remained loyal to the king, but now, as she looked at the boys, all of whom seemed excited and interested in the sky angel and the rising falcon, she thought that the stable boys seemed more up to date that Elan did, about the current state of affairs in Slavithe. Perhaps, Ajalia thought, some of the Talbos spies had some other method of sending messages to their king. The spies had proven that they were able to pass through magic barriers; they could have gone out of the eastern gate, and traveled to Talbos. Perhaps Elan, Ajalia thought was massively out of the loop of information, but she found it odd that the guards that came to the Talbos gate seemed to know so much more about her, and about Delmar, than Elan did.
When Ajalia had wound her string of light through the chests of all of the little boys, she tied one end of the string to a thick golden light within the earth, and the other end to a coil of blue sky energy. The boys all let out an exclamation, and some of them jumped. The men, who were staring openly at Ajalia, looked around at these boys. Ajalia imagined the string lifting up gently into the air; the boys all floated a few inches above the ground; their shouts filled the courtyard. The men exclaimed in surprise, and drew back from the flying boys. Ajalia lowered the boys back down to the courtyard floor, and retracted the string of light.
"All of you will learn to do magic, under the reign of the new king," Ajalia told the boys quietly. The men heard what she said, and began to mutter to each other. Ajalia cast a glance back at the black horse, who was contentedly munching on the pile of hay, and she hurried after Delmar and Elan.
She passed through three long rooms that lay all in a chain before she caught up to Delmar. She resumed her place behind his right shoulder, and listened to what Elan was saying.
"You mustn't think, just because Simon's gone," Elan said bossily, "that the people of the white city are going to accept anyone as the new Thief Lord. I've heard people say here that they expect Tree to take power again." Elan glanced at Delmar, as if gauging his reaction. Delmar made no change in his expression; he walked along behind Elan, looking almost bored, as if Elan were a chatty little servant boy. "What's this girl you bring with you?" Elan asked distastefully. "Why is she here?"
"Ajalia is my slave," Delmar said, without emotion. Ajalia felt a small throb of pleasure at being called a slave again. She found that she had missed her master's ways, and Delmar, just now, was being rather like him. She hoped that her master would agree to come to Slavithe; she thought, if she showed up to his Eastern estate on a flying horse, that her master would be hard-pressed to refuse such an adventure. She wondered if her black horse would change colors, when she wound the lights through his shoulders to make wings, and she smiled. Elan was glaring back at her as he walked through the passages. They came to a set of winding stairs, and Elan began to climb. Elan seemed to be holding in a diatribe of words. He restrained himself for several minutes, and then seemed to burst with the pressure of not saying what he thought.
"You know that you don't have slaves there," Elan said. "Is she a servant, or a trick of some kind? Are you hoping to play a trick on Lerond?"
Delmar turned his face slowly, and observed Elan. Elan, under the steady gaze of his nephew, blushed, and turned away.
"I just think it's odd for you to say you have a slave," Elan said quickly. "It isn't allowed there," Elan told Ajalia, as though informing her of some obvious fact.
They came to the top of the stairs, and Elan opened a door, and let Delmar go through first. Elan slid quickly in behind Delmar, so that Ajalia came in last. Ajalia was enjoying herself pretty thoroughly now; she saw that Elan looked distinctly off balance, and that he was jostling to find his confidence again. Elan, she thought, was a shambles now of the harsh and commanding presence he had begun with today.
Delmar's clothes were still damp, and his hair fell about his face in pleasing locks. The clothes that Calles had made for Delmar were fitted closely around the tapering of his waist, and his broad shoulders were encased in tailored layers of good Slavithe cloth. The tunics Calles had made were different than the usual tunics in Slavithe; Ajalia thought that it could hardly be called a tunic anymore. An under layer of strong rectangles had been sewn beneath the chest and the shoulders, and the cloth formed a sturdy shape around Delmar's massive shoulders.
Ajalia did not understand how Delmar had seemed to fill out so quickly after his parents had been killed; it was as though his mother and father had been leeching all of the life out of him, and his body had, since they were gone, filled up with all of his own energy. His body, she was sure, was mostly the same, but the way he held himself, and the stature he now possessed, was large and masculine. She got a thrum of pleasure out of looking at him.
Ajalia heard a patter of shoes behind her; she looked back, and saw several of the stable boys running along behind her, clinging close to the walls. She winked at them, and they grinned at her, their eyes shining with glee. The boys had let themselves in by the door Elan had opened; Delmar's uncle was leading them now along a room with a shining red floor, towards a set of grand doors at the far end of the room.
Ajalia followed at Delmar's shoulder; she saw that Elan was jealous of how assured and calm both she and Delmar seemed. She knew that Elan had seen this whole encounter going quite a different way. She could see that Delmar's uncle had thought that Ajalia and Delmar would be like poor relations, to be brought in to the presence of the king at his pleasure, and after much pleading and obsequiousness on Delmar's part, but the new Thief Lord's assurance, and the calm and steady way that Ajalia followed and deferred to him was clearly rankling Elan's studied superiority.
Ajalia thought she could see Elan thinking of getting his own servant, to follow him about and look respectfully at him, the way Ajalia followed Delmar. She smiled to herself, and thought of her first Eastern master. When she had left behind the tiny estate of that master, he had immediately gone through a whole string of slaves, not one of which could do what Ajalia had done for him. He had settled at last on a poor scrap of a boy that Ajalia had used a little in her own business in the house. The boy's name had been Grof, and he had been slow of speech, but cunning. Ajalia had always formed the habit of having some particular boy as her aid, wherever she lived. She had begun to do so after she had found out that many of the other slaves in her second master's string had been stealing from her, and setting her up for beatings. When she had found this out, she had bought over one of the boys, and paid him to be her spy.
Ajalia's second master had been one of the wetlands traders; after belonging to him for a brief time, she had determined to arrange for her escape towards the Eastern lands, where the masters lived with honor. She had only been able to get herself into a poor and second-rate estate in the East, at first, but then she had worked her way towards a sale to her current master, and there she had lived ever since. Darien, her Eastern boy, was in the caravan of slaves returning now to the East, but Leed and Daniel were her particular boys in Slavithe, and Ajalia hoped to find another set of willing la
ds here, in the palace in Talbos.
Elan drew up to the great double doors at the end of the room with the red floor. He turned back impressively to Delmar, and smiled with condescension.
"I won't let you come in," Elan said, "but I will go and find my brother."
"I will wait," Delmar said. Delmar still showed no emotion; Ajalia saw at once that Elan was disappointed; she thought that Delmar had surprised Elan, who had been hoping for a fight. Elan, she saw, wanted Delmar to protest this exclusion, and to jostle to be let in to the room that lay beyond. Elan glanced with irritation at Ajalia, and then looked back at Delmar.
"You aren't important enough to let in," Elan said pointedly. Delmar turned, without any emotion in his eyes, and stared at Elan.
"I am waiting, uncle," Delmar said. The hint of a blush crept up Elan's cheeks, and he turned, his face hard, and slipped in through the double doors. Elan left the doors a little ajar, and Ajalia could hear the faint murmur of conversation in the room beyond. She looked back, to see the boys who had followed her, and saw that they had vanished. There were deep crevices set into the walls on either side of the room, and each of these was filled with a carved pillar; Ajalia suspected that the stable boys had vanished behind these pillars.
"Have you got more uncles?" Ajalia asked quietly.
"Two more," Delmar said. "My grandfather had four sons, and one daughter. My father, Simon, was the oldest. Then the princess, my uncle Thorn, Elan, and my uncle Fallor."
"What is the name of the princess?" Ajalia asked, her eyes on the crack in the door. Delmar glanced at her, and smiled.
"It's an embarrassment," he murmured. "No one is allowed to speak her name in the palace. My grandmother's family has a long tradition of awful names. My grandmother insisted on naming the princess. You will have to ask the princess yourself."
"Why?" Ajalia asked. "Don't you know her name?"
"Oh, yes," Delmar said. "I want to see your face when you get it out of her, though." Ajalia looked at Delmar, who had an expression of delight in his eyes, and then the door opened, and Delmar's face again fell into a look of deep neutrality. An older man appeared, followed closely by Elan.
