by Larry Niven
“We’ll get this over as quickly as possible,” the Emperor said. He leered at Burning Tower. “The king will be impatient. I don’t suppose you’ll want the services of a Great Mistress tonight, Majesty?”
“I will have more than my share of happiness,” Sandry said.
“Discreet. I trust the ceremony was satisfactory?”
Burning Tower started to speak, but Sandry gripped her hand tightly. He said, “So far, indeed, Supreme One.”
“So far? There is more? What more?” the Emperor demanded.
“It is only a small part,” Sandry said. “We come from far away in a land of hunters and barbarians. Has the Son of the Sun ever heard of Lordkin?”
“No.” The Emperor was impatient.
“The Lords have retained ancient customs that originated among the barbarians,” Sandry said. “You may enjoy this.”
They emerged onto the Great Plaza. The crowds were still in the stands. Vendors moved through the stands with buckets and dippers, and food rolled in corn shucks. From the sounds, the buckets contained intoxicants. Someone shouted a raucous obscenity, and everyone laughed.
Spike stood next to Sandry’s chariot. He eyed the stallion with contempt, but when he saw Sandry he stamped and reared. “He doesn’t like me,” Sandry said.
The Emperor smiled.
“And now the bride mounts her one-horn,” Sandry said.
Burning Tower hesitated only for a second. Two hands and an athlete’s leap put her aboard Spike, settling like a feather. Spike turned to look her in the eye.
“And I stand in my chariot—” Sandry mounted the chariot. A guard jumped in with him.
“Careful of those gifts,” someone said importantly. The Emperor frowned.
“Now, Tower,” Sandry said. He used the kinless language. It sounded like he was chanting. “Ride to the shop, ride to my cousin, ride fast. Ride now!”
Tower shouted. Spike shook himself free of the young girl who had acted as groom, and darted across the plaza, long white veils streaming behind her, and a rainbow cloud of butterflies. The crowd roared.
“And I must capture the bride!” Sandry shouted the language of Aztlan. “I must do this without assistance! Hee-ah!”
Blaze and Boots darted forward at the command. At the same time, Sandry pushed the already unsteady guard. The guard lost his footing and fell off the back of the chariot, and rolled as if he’d practiced it, and came up smiling to watch Sandry drive his war chariot across the Great Plaza of Aztlan in pursuit of Burning Tower on her great white unicorn. It was easy to follow the trail of butterflies.
The people of Aztlan shouted encouragement as first Tower, then Sandry clattered down the steps into the palace stables below, then out through the tunnels to the streets of Aztlan.
Chapter Thirty
Flight
She was squiffed, but she was swift: Clever Squirrel ran as if she were flying, upright as long as Regapisk and Flensevan were holding her arms and running alongside, with Egret leading. She fell once, scaring Regapisk and amusing herself, before they reached the chariot. Then Regapisk drove while Egret and Flensevan kept her from falling out. Squirrel was having the time of her life…and then she went to sleep.
She wasn’t heavy. Egret carried her into the shop.
Pink Rabbit was there to greet them.
Flensevan spoke a few words to his sons. Pink Rabbit bleated like a goat facing the butcher. Then all three scurried toward the back of the shop. Reg followed. Squirrel was out like a blown candle.
The boys paused in the main display room. They pulled the wicker weapons display off the wall and rolled it up, a tube with spears and blades inside.
They all streamed down to the pool beneath the shop. Egret began turning the crank in the wall. Regapisk perceived a growing magical glare from the black water.
Squirrel’s eyes opened. “Ooo,” she said.
The King’s Guards would never catch Spike. He’d never catch Spike! Sandry swayed as the chariot swung from side to side down the streets of Aztlan. An occasional butterfly showed he was on her trail, and he’d just have to trust that Tower was riding in the right direction. It would be a disaster if she were actually riding for the palace.
As he left the plaza, he saw that Sareg was boarding another chariot. Sandry laughed. Those clumsy excuses for war chariots would never catch him. By the time they got off the piazza, he’d be out of sight, and they wouldn’t even know where he was going. They might assume the wedding palace, or even the king’s palace, and either guess would be wrong.
If they did catch him…Sandry began to arm himself, removing the jeweled covers from spear points. His bow was unstrung, of course, and he’d never be able to string it while riding at a gallop, but it was there, and so was a full quiver of flight arrows. If it came to a fight, it would take only a moment to string that bow, and there wasn’t a weapon in Aztlan that could touch him as long as the arrows lasted.
Not only his arrows, but some others. Dark arrows, the kind Thundercloud had used, dark shafts with turquoise heads. The Emperor must have planned some spectacular for his people, something he was going to do with Sandry’s bow.
Then he had throwing spears and the atlatl. He’d seen no sign of atlatl practice in Aztlan.
Spears, arrows, but there were more guards than he had weapons.
His sword! They’d put his iron sword in its place. He buckled it on, almost falling when the chariot lurched, but he felt better with the familiar weight hanging against his left hip. So. Arrows, spears, then cold iron. He careened into a large public square. To the left was the bridge leading across the river to the king’s palace. There were butterflies straight ahead. She hadn’t taken the wrong turn.
He stuffed the weapons into the largest spear case. Rope. Had they put the lasso in the chariot? He found it and wound it around the weapons and the case so that they made one bundle.
Drive with both hands! How often had Masterman Chalker shouted that at him when he was learning? But he needed one hand to drive and one to bundle the weapons and one to hold on to the chariot. He compromised by laying the reins across the chariot bulkhead and shouting orders. He could do that with these horses, so long as the street was straight.
There was enough leather rope to make a neat bundle of all the weapons. It made a heavy package. Boat? he thought. I’ll never swim, not with armor and all these weapons.
And with all his weapons, there were still too many guards. Would they try to kill him? He didn’t know. Probably they didn’t want to kill him, and that might give him an advantage, except that he didn’t want to kill them either! Curse! And they wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who assisted him, or to hold Tower as hostage.
And of course they could follow butterflies as well as he.
The city was empty, almost abandoned. An old woman was crouching fearfully in a doorway; there were loaves of bread scattered in the road, and two baskets. Hah! Tower had passed. She must be headed for the gem shop. “Hee-ah! Go, you beauties!”
Tower tumbled off Spike. Regapisk was in the shop’s doorway; he shied from the beast’s horn. “Come on in,” he said. “Where’s Sandry?”
“The gods know! He told me to come here, and he was following when I left the piazza. If he’s fast enough, he won’t be bringing guards down on us. What have you got? Is there really a way out?” She’d kill him if there wasn’t. Sandry had never trusted his cousin.
“I’ll wait here for Sandry. Go on in.”
The bonehead was glaring at Regapisk. Tower turned him forcefully away. Tower fondled his ears and whispered into them, then stepped back. “Good-bye.” She swatted his flank, and he went. He kept looking back. They’d see him! But there was nothing she could do about that.
“Inside!” Regapisk ordered. “In and down.”
She tried to resent his tone, but he was right—there was no time—and she’d just have to trust him. She darted into the shop.
There was a boat down there. A sunken boat, i
n a pool surrounded on three sides by a stone floor just higher than the water level. The fourth side of the pool, the south side, was separated from the river by a heavy-beamed wooden wall.
The boat glowed faintly down there under the water. Tower gawked. Regapisk, she thought. I might have known. A sunken boat.
Clever Squirrel, cross-legged on the stone floor, watched her with her jaw hanging. Her eyes didn’t follow Tower’s fingertip. She giggled.
Flensevan and Egret were there.
“Does this thing float?” Tower demanded.
“Of course,” Flensevan said. “When we are all here. And this had better be worth it! It’s the second time I’ve been imp-implicated in a king’s escape. Zephans was worse. The Emperor actually put a crown on him! Where’s King Sandry?”
“I left him—”
“You l-left him?”
“He’s a big boy. Who’s Zephans?”
“Zephans Mishagnos was a wizard of Atlantis. He came as a trader, but the Emperor named him king. They must have expected him to run, nearly half of the kings have tried to, but they thought he’d use a boat. Atlantis, right? And he had a boat, only we made it disappear while Zeph played king. Then we got him into a basket and away he w-went off with Ruser. My brother says he got as far as Crescent City. So the Emperor forgot about the boat…gods willing.”
Pink Rabbit appeared on a balcony, his arms loaded with clothing and jewelry. He dropped it all in a heap on a balcony high above the water-lapped stone floor.
“But—but it’s sunk!” Tower said. “Flensevan, how do we get it outside? Does the roof open?”
“It will rise,” Egret said. He indicated the low ceiling. “It will rise above the water, so all this has to go before we can raise it.”
“Above the water.” She remembered, Morth of Atlantis had said something about boats flying above the water, but she hadn’t believed it. “Are we going over land?”
“Oh, the ships of Atlantis prefer water under them. Anyway, what do you want under you when the magic goes away? We’ll go out through”—his hand slapped thick wooden beams—“here.”
Regapisk bellowed through the halls. “I can see him!”
Flensevan and Egret lifted a wooden beam in the south wall. “Give us some help,” Flensevan grunted, and Tower added her strength to theirs. Squirrel was asleep, still sitting on the stone floor.
Rolling and bouncing down toward the river road, Sandry saw Spike coming up at him. The bonehead paused to stare down the stallion, then brushed past. Sandry threw up a shield to fend off the horn, and turned, ready to do it again, but Spike was disappearing upslope.
Sandry could hear chariots and horses behind him in the winding roads. He kept riding. He could glimpse a sparkle of water between the houses.
There. Flensevan’s combination house and jewel shop. Butterflies marked its door. Butterflies and Regapisk.
“Sandry! Hurry!” Regapisk was shouting.
“Help me with the weapons!”
Regapisk ran out as Sandry leaped from the chariot. “Tep’s teeth! You have enough weapons here to fight an army!” Regapisk paused, then grinned. “Inside. Inside and down. Go, Your Majesty!”
“You son of a dog,” Sandry said, but he said it under his breath. Reggy was Reggy, and just now he could say anything he liked.
Stairs at the back of the house led down into a dark pit. There were lights down there. Sandry ran to the lights. Regapisk clattered down the stairs behind him.
Chapter Thirty-one
Little Rainbow
There was a boat down there, but it was underwater. Everyone was straining at moving beams. It was a nightmarish scene that made no sense at all.
“King Sandry! Lord Regapisk!” Egret was shouting. “Help with this.” He was turning a drum, some kind of winch. A rope led from that up and into the house above. “Help me!”
Regapisk threw his weight onto the winch handles. “Here, Majesty! Help!”
“You call me that again and I kill you,” Sandry said.
Regapisk laughed. “If you don’t help us, you won’t have to—your guards will do it for you.”
Trust Reggy. Sandry took one of the winch handles and threw his weight into it. The winch turned, slowly. The house groaned.
“Heave!” Egret shouted.
Sandry strained. The drum turned, and daylight seeped into the dank basement. More. The ceiling was rising, folding up against the upstairs north wall. Flensevan and Pink Rabbit were hauling on another rope. Suddenly the entire south wall of the house fell away and floated downriver. The afternoon sun blazed into the basement as the ceiling came free to fold against the still-standing north wall.
“Now!” Flensevan shouted. He gripped ropes that led down into the water. Pink Rabbit seized another, and Egret rushed to join them. They pulled. There was a flash of blue light, bright enough that even Sandry could see it. Squirrel was startled awake and mumbled something.
The boat rose. Up through the water, higher, until it was floating above the river, the decks just level with the wooden balcony high above the stone floor. Egret swung a gangplank across to it.
Regapisk didn’t wait. He grabbed Clever Squirrel and carried her up to the balcony, then across to the slippery decks. Water streamed off the decks.
The boat was floating, flying. It was all curves, like Sandry’s bow. There were windows in the bottom, set flush.
“Welcome to Little Rainbow,” Flensevan said. “Quickly. Quickly.”
The river was ten manheights wide here. There were people across the river. They stared and shouted as Sandry and the others scrambled aboard. Flensevan’s sons threw bundles of goods to the deck.
“Cast off,” Flensevan said.
Egret was grinning widely as he loosed the last ties, and let Little Rainbow drift out into the current.
Witnesses were not an issue. The only folk in town were a few servants who had not gone to see the king’s death, resurrection, and wedding, and the dozen guards now pouring through the winding streets toward Flensevan’s shop. Now they halted, staring at a flying boat as it wafted downstream. Now they were scrambling over walls and into houses, dodging a bonehead’s lethal horn.
“Seven,” said Regapisk. “It’s an Atlantean boat. It’ll hold seven. The mers all know that the Atlantis numbering system is base seven.”
“And I wouldn’t have left without my sons,” Flensevan said firmly. “Some of us will be sleeping on deck, I suppose. We’re loaded with trade goods, mostly charged talismans. Plenty of manna to keep us afloat. They’ll still be partly charged when we reach Crescent City.”
Tower asked, “Are you a magician?”
“No. I can’t see manna. Ruser picked us a good partner: Regapisk can.”
Tower let that pass. “I don’t see any way to row.”
The Little Rainbow River flowed west below them, and the boat flowed with the water.
“That’s one thing Zeph forgot to tell us,” Flensevan said, “how to move faster. Sails might work if you’re going downwind.” A horde of children was following the boat along the River Road. Flensevan smiled and waved to them. “Keep your husband below. It might help if nobody actually sees him aboard.”
“The guards saw me,” Sandry said, rising through the hatch. “Love, we’ll get little out of your sister. I only had a sip of that stuff, and I can still feel it. She must have been drinking it all night.”
The stream flowed faster. Not as fast as a real war chariot, but faster than those wagons the Aztlan troops used. And he’d never taught anyone how to use his chariot.
He looked upriver. “I hope they don’t take it out on Blaze and Boots.”
“I was thinking of Spike,” Tower said. She stood beside him at the stern rail.
“He was raising hell with the guards who were chasing me,” Sandry said, “last I saw. He belongs to the Emperor now; they won’t dare hurt him.”
“Mmm. All right. And we’re married, and there aren’t any boneheads around.” And su
ddenly she was in his arms. How had that happened? She rubbed her cheek against his beard. He held her, and looked back toward where Spike would be. With this many people aboard a small boat, he thought, you don’t need a bonehead. They stood close together at the stern rail.
Little Rainbow passed the city gates and skimmed past the Caravanserai. Guards stared. Then there were trumpets, and the thunder of drums, and a cloud of locusts flew up the valley toward Mesa Fajada. For a few hundred paces, the river paralleled the High Road. That was frightening, but then the river wound northward and straightened. They drifted fast away from Aztlan and its roads and into wasteland, rocks, and sagebrush.
Chapter Thirty-two
The Last Battle
“I think we made it!” Regapisk shouted. He was holding the stout tiller attached to the left-hand steering oar, but there didn’t seem to be much work involved. The river ran swift and deep here, no rapids and few turns, and the boat drifted above it, the keel and steering oars just in the water. Regapisk gestured, and Flensevan took his place at the steering oar. “Dinner,” Regapisk said. “I brought food.”
Sandry realized that he was hungry. They hadn’t eaten since an early breakfast. “Good.”
He stood with Burning Tower, looking back through the Aztlan canyon. In the late afternoon sun, Mesa Fajada blazed against a clear blue sky. There were yellow buttons at its top. He watched them grow larger.
“Baskets,” he said regretfully.
She pulled away. “Oh my gods,” she said, but she was looking toward the bow.
