Wings of Power

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Bogatyl’s dirty hands, Gard thought, tearing at the child that had been Deva. The man had no scruples, had probably wormed his way into Jamshid’s service when the old man’s faculties had begun to fail . . .

  Deva ground a bread pellet under her thumb as if it were Bogatyl’s skull. The dragonet blinked, eyes shading eerily from blue to gray to blue. The saltcellar. Just like the one in Apsurakand. The spice itself lying in snowy drifts in the shell. Miniature oars for spoons.

  Senmut hobbled into the room. Among the finely dressed courtiers he looked like a thistle in a flower garden. How had he reduced the new clothing Raj had given him to rags so quickly? Had he laid it upon the pavement of the hathikana for the elephants to sleep on? Arrogant modesty, to affect worn clothing when there was no need.

  Senmut took his place on Gard’s other side and exchanged glassy stares with the honey-glazed boar’s head before him. The old man’s features were distorted in the mirrored flank of the saltcellar, stretched into a carnival mask that was not humorous but sinister . . .

  A bubble of thought in Gard’s fermenting mind suddenly burst. To sprinkle the salt Bogatyl had used, not the spoon-oars but the steering rudder. Gard had not realized the rudder was more than decoration.

  Deva, splattered by Gard’s image, peered at the artifact. Senmut frowned hideously. “Damnfool plaything,” he muttered, his nightly litany when confronted with his twin’s handiwork. “Useless pile of junk.”

  The daemon’s little snout quivered like a hound on the scent. Gard laid his fingertip on the silver toothpick that was the rudder and sent a probing strand of power into it. Nothing. Inert.

  Deva leaned toward it, brows drawn with suspicion. Senmut shoved Gard’s hand away. “Here, boy, let me.” He waggled the rudder. It came loose in his fingers. With it, he probed the cavity where it had rested. Several grains of something brown and sticky adhered to the nacreous shell.

  Gard darted a glance upward. The courtiers, the officials, the priests were all eating, heads down, jaws masticating anticipation and dread mingled. Vijay sulked. Jamshid ate his cracked wheat with the concentration of a child learning how to use a spoon. Bogatyl watched him; yes, it could be that calculation furrowed the man’s jowls.

  Quickly, Gard and daemon summoned an obscuring haze around the saltcellar and its investigators. The eye of anyone looking at them would skid elsewhere, finding nothing of interest.

  Senmut set one of the grains upon his tongue and spat it out. “Henbane,” he said. “And something else. Deva?”

  She sniffed at another grain. “Whatever it is, I wager it clouds the mind. Clever of—Menelik? Or Tarek?”

  “If Menelik had had Jamshid assassinated, he would have had to deal with Rajinder. So he kept Jamshid alive but weakened, which weakened Raj.” Gard glanced over at the prince. Rajinder looked at a plate of food as if not quite sure what to do with it. Bogatyl stood behind him.

  Gard narrowed his eyes. The Vizier’s face stretched, distorted like a reflection in the saltcellar. Beneath that face was another, handsome and sleekly ruthless. Under his breath Gard said, “Bhai made the cellar and concealed the herbs in it. Tarek may or may not have had anything to do with it. Shrewd, to place no warding spell on it, to leave it untouched by magic so that magic-users would not notice its ugly purpose. Shrewd and damnably subtle.”

  “Bogatyl,” spat Deva, “has been feeding Jamshid the debilitating herbs since long before we arrived here. How many Apsuri rials does it take to buy a Ferangi vizier, do you think?”

  Senmut’s hand snapped the rudder. “We cannot denounce Bogatyl now, on the eve of battle. He will claim he knew nothing about the hidden herbs.”

  Too polite a company to spit. Gard settled for clearing his throat harshly. He rose casually from his pillow and stumbled against the table. The saltcellar swayed. The dragonet lunged forward like a horseman with a lance; its gesture pushed the ornate container on over the edge of the table and, with a reverberating crash, to the floor.

  In the sudden silence shards of shell and silver skittered madly across the marble. Chamberlains rushed forward squeaking in dismay. Bogatyl’s features, Gard noted with satisfaction, flipped disoriented through shock, rage, horror, and settled on bland, noncommittal surprise.

  “I—do excuse me,” Gard stammered innocently. “I caught my foot.” He bent as though to pick up the pieces and secured the wad of stickiness, concealing it up his sleeve.

  It was Jamshid’s voice that rang through the hall. “Good, wizard-ji! Excellent! Destroy that pretty Apsuri toy—we do not need such finery—in my day we fought wearing leather caps, none of these youngsters’ polished armor!”

  Even as Gard bowed respectfully toward the khaddi, he saw Rajinder’s and Srivastava’s dark eyes demanding explanation. Later, when he could be alone with them, he would lay one more burden upon Raj’s shoulders and pose yet one more everlastingly unanswerable question.

  Servants began to clear away the mess. The dragonet curled into a scaly ball in the pit of Gard’s abdomen. Deva sat, her hands folded in her lap, her sapphire pulsing gently, her eyes downcast and mouth tight with her own puzzlements. Senmut drummed his fingers upon the table, unable to glance at Bhai, and glared with indiscriminate surliness at everyone.

  Rajinder was pronouncing some sort of benediction. “And may the battle come swiftly to its conclusion,” he finished.

  That, Gard told himself, is what I hope, and what I fear the most.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The horses snorted and jangled their harnesses. The Imperial escort stood huddled together, pretending indifference to this war between Ferangi and Allianzi. As well they could, since they would not have to take part in it.

  Dawn gilded the eastern side of the great tower and laid a rosy light over Nikander’s white hair. “My lord Gard,” he said with a polite bow. “Do you have messages for me to take to the Emperor?”

  Gard had sat up half the night trying to write to Andrion, and in the end had only an empty inkpot, a blunted quill, and a pile of ruined parchment for his efforts. What could he explain, what could he justify? “No, thank you,” he said to Nikander. “Please give him my respects.” I no longer care what Andrion thinks of me, he added to himself.

  Which was a curious conviction; it might be amusing to mull it over, sometime, when he had the time, not now . . . The dragonet stirred inside Gard’s chest; he felt as if his bones closeted a flock of butterflies, a tickle that was almost painful.

  Jofar sat on his horse watching Gard. His facial features shifted and spun like one of Dhan Bagrat’s soul-catchers, trying to apprehend the subtleties of the situation. His shield blushed as the sun burned away the hazy sky. Behind him coils of smoke hung over the Apsuri camp as the soldiers ate their herb-laced brews and sharpened their weapons for battle. Gard nodded to his erstwhile friend; with Jofar in charge of the escort, there would be no treachery.

  Nikander nodded lugubriously and mounted his horse. Admirable soul, to say nothing when nothing could be said. Gard, with an exhalation that was part groan, part sigh, imagined Nikander reporting to Sumitra that her city, her family, was at war. By which time the war would be over, the culmination of a siege of pride by envy that had taken—what? Ten years? Twenty?

  Jofar led the ambassadorial troop away. Gard and his handful of Ferangi soldiers slipped back inside the gate and it crashed shut behind them.

  His obligation and his conscience, Deva and Senmut, stood beneath a vendor’s awning. A company of Ferangi cavalry clattered purposefully down the street. Gard scrambled out of the way—you wait and wait and grow old waiting and then everything happens at once!

  Vijay and Rajinder rode side by side in the lead, through Rajinder’s generosity or Vijay’s assertion Gard would not venture to say. He hoped absent Bogatyl was writing letters to Tarek, imparting his knowledge of Ferangi tactics—skewed information fed carefully to him by Rajinder. A fine justice, to make the man help when he meant only to harm.

  “Now wha
t, boy?” demanded the old monk, Deva’s bright eyes at his shoulder like some exotic bird’s.

  “A parley,” Gard replied. “Protocol must be observed.”

  Senmut snorted. The dragonet somersaulted with a tooth-rattling jar down Gard’s chest and proceeded to chase its tail. Several elephants lumbered down the street. Their vast flanks were painted russet, peacock, and gold. Upon the largest was an intricately fringed howdah in which sat Jamshid.

  In only three days he had begun to emerge from his drug-induced senility. His face was still flabby and the hand that grasped the railing was blue-veined, but his dark eyes glinted with the uncanny clarity of Srivastava’s. And there was Srivastava herself, just behind him, concealed modestly in a curtained howdah.

  The Ferangi cheered. Gard applauded. Senmut and Deva exchanged an approving glance. Inspiring to see sickness healed, and the incisive intelligence of Raj or Sumitra revealed in Jamshid like a gold nugget swept from a sewage-scummed pond. Perhaps it foretold a happy ending . . .

  Vijay was beckoning. Gard was supposed to hover grandly behind the two princes, like the power behind the khaddi the Allianzi thought him to be. He managed to achieve a dignified stride as he crossed the pavement. If his scramble onto the horse was somewhat less than dignified, no one noticed; the gates were swinging open.

  He settled his sword along his thigh. He swallowed the sudden taste of honey in his mouth. The dragonet’s great sapphire eyes shaded into gray and back into fathomless blue, reflecting the swiftly changing color of the sky. The wind was cool, reeking of offal and iron.

  Outside the gates of Ferangipur gathered rank upon rank of soldiers. Wings of cavalry enclosed a faceless bloc of infantry, their spears pointing skyward like a denuded thicket. Bowmen rattled their lacquered Khazyari bows. Chariots whipped by, spun, and returned, raining clods of mud.

  Menelik himself, horned and plumed, sat an armored and tasseled horse at the apex of the group. Jofar was just returning to his side; behind him Shikar and Tarek stopped jostling and turned to face their common enemy, Shikar glowering, Tarek insultingly indifferent. Beyond them were arrayed the other Allianzi satraps, gruff bearded faces under boar’s tusk helmets, broad shoulders clanking with scale mail, gnarled hands grasping shields large and small and wielding various edged weapons.

  Not a bread knife, a fishing gaff, or a plowshare in the lot. Gard’s mouth crimped. Ludicrous hypocrisy, to line up like clay targets upon a practice field and meet face to face as if there were no respect lost between the sides!

  Menelik began a sonorous speech. Rajinder listened politely. Vijay and Shikar exchanged sneers. Tarek, like Gard unarmored if not unarmed, inspected his hands set lightly upon the pommel of his gray horse.

  None of the Allianzi seemed particularly surprised to see Jamshid. Resentful, but not surprised. Bogatyl would have warned them. Hopefully Bogatyl had been led to overestimate the Rajah’s returning faculties.

  Menelik droned on, cataloging his allies: The Satrap of Trebizon by the lake where the cranes nest, of windy Zonguldak, of Manusowar of the red rocks . . .

  Gard looked surreptitiously this way and that. Bhai? There was not even a whiff of the man. He might not know his brother was here; why should Bogatyl know the relationship? It was difficult to imagine how people gathered knowledge without the maddening but convenient shortcuts of magic.

  On the walls of the city, in the eye of the sun, stood several dark shapes. Deva and Senmut inspected the ropes triggering the catapults, the wheels turning the pots of liquid fire, the wooden arms and gears of what the old monk called a semaphore. Now if only the guards atop the great tower could remember how to transmit messages with their matching contraption.

  Ladhani held Narayan’s hand, the boy peering at his father far below. Beside her was Yasmine, her blue eyes above the uplifted rim of her sari as bewildered as those of a small and timorous rodent suddenly finding itself in the midst of a vast hall.

  Yasmine’s husband sat stolidly, nodding his head in time to Menelik’s list—Yasodhara, Shahrbanu, Khadijeh . . . Surely Menelik was counting each individual hovel within his boundaries!

  The rising sun cleared the city walls. Light glanced off Rajinder’s intricate armor, off Vijay’s gilded helmet, off the painted flanks of the elephants. Tarek looked up and raked the parapet with a glance, his aura unfurling and rippling around him. He knew Yasmine was there.

  Jamshid began an equally stultifying catalog. A breeze tickled the banners and sighed among the upraised spears. The dragonet banged its head against Gard’s breastbone. Tarek! Gard called silently.

  The wizard’s eyes shifted to the side, even as his face still tilted up. Darts of flint probed at Gard’s aura and were driven back by its silver and purple folds. Hah! I am stronger than when we first met!

  Languidly Tarek lowered his chin. The corner of his mouth twitched in what could have been a smile. His thought crossed Gard’s like a sword clanging against another: A little difficult to dance on horseback, Kundaraja? Do not flatter yourself that you can affect the outcome of this—argument.

  Can you? Gard’s dragonet offered Tarek the obscene gesture that Gard, in this oh-so-cordial martial folly, could not make.

  The wizard shrugged the gesture away and turned toward Jamshid, his lips spreading into a mocking grin—although, Gard thought suddenly, he might not have been mocking the Rajah but himself.

  Silence. Oh, it was Gard’s turn. He directed his horse into the open space between the gathered armies and turned his back upon the Allianzi. Ignoring the itch between his shoulder blades—he had seen Khazyari skewer a boar with arrows from just such bows as were now focused on him—he began mouthing the meaningless phrases. “Honorable Shah, estimable Rajah—resolve disputes and return to brotherhood . . .” Hah! he thought again. The dragonet crouched in his gut, ears pricked, claws oozing in and out.

  “Bastard,” called someone behind him.

  Smoothly, Gard finished his speech and turned back around. “Yes, Nazib-ji?” he inquired courteously of Menelik.

  Menelik smiled, teeth bared. He repeated, “Imparluzi bastard. Who gives you the right to speak for the khaddi of Ferangipur?”

  “I do,” stated Rajinder.

  Gard rolled his eyes upward. The sky was blue now, as pure and cold as Deva’s sapphire. The sapphire itself winked in the corner of his eye.

  “Kundaraja,” sneered Shikar. “Lord of the Dance. Leader of Souls.”

  Bastard son of a bastard son of a demon—you are quite correct. Gard lowered his eyes and targeted Shikar’s florid face. The dragonet spread its paws. A cloud materialized from nothingness above Shikar’s head and poured raindrops on him. His horse jerked sideways and he grabbed for his saddle.

  The Ferangi howled with delight. Even Srivastava peered through her curtains and smiled. Raj smothered his own expression and said sternly, “Gard-ji, if you please.”

  Gard snapped his fingers. The cloud vanished. Shikar, scowling, water matting his fine plumes and red cloak, lunged forward. Menelik waved him back, the lion ordering the jackal to heel. Tarek rode forward.

  Gard felt Deva frown, felt her send a tendril of awareness toward the wizard. Not now, he told her, intercepting her query and folding it back.

  “The Padishah will withdraw his forces,” Tarek was saying. His gaze glanced upward to the battlement and fell again, whether attracted by Deva or by Yasmine, Gard could not tell. “If you return the woman Yasmine, the wife of Satrap Shikar, and pay for your insult in stealing her.”

  “It seems to me,” said Jamshid, “that if you value something you should not leave it lying about for anyone to pick up.”

  Deva frowned at such cavalier words, Gard noted, but Yasmine did not.

  Vijay purred, “Shikar was not man enough to keep her. He needs his brother’s armies to win her back. Why should we give in to such a weakling?”

  Menelik managed to swallow his grin of agreement. Shikar glared, his hand opening and closing upon the hilt of his sword. Tare
k gazed into the middle distance.

  Jofar inched closer to the elephants and caught Srivastava’s eye. He offered a quick, restrained salute. She considered him a moment, then retreated behind her draperies. Jamshid, his eye darting hither and thither like a hummingbird, caught this exchange and called, “Menelik, could you find nothing better than this ape to be your heir?”

  Jofar looked around, his jaw working. Menelik dismissed the question with a slash of his hand.

  “Will you return Yasmine?” asked Tarek, reading his lines without enthusiasm.

  Rajinder opened his mouth. Vijay leaned forward and shouted, “Come and get her!”

  “And what then shall I do with you, boy?” returned Shikar.

  This had been an exercise in futility right from the start, Gard told himself, reining his horse backward. A conference attended by swords and lances had nowhere to go but down.

  Insult was met with rejoinder. The ranks moved closer. Gard spurted from between them and joined the elephants. The opposing armies swayed ponderously. The warriors were like dogs, sniffing and bristling, baring their teeth and looking for a soft place to bite—Tarek’s infuriating smugness—no, Menelik was smug, Tarek was gravely assessing the situation—unless the whole ridiculous parley was only a cover . . .

  Rajinder’s brows shot upward. He waved the elephants back toward the city. He leaned out and seized Vijay’s reins, pulling him away from Shikar’s empurpled oaths just as Shikar drew his sword.

  But Menelik was faster. His own sword flashed upward. “Allianzi!” he shouted. “Attack!” The ranks of soldiers plunged forward across the flat.

  Well, I am not going to faint in amazement at that! Gard urged his horse headlong up the ramp into the city, the elephants churning the mud upon his heels, the dragonet clutching his heart so that the pounding of his own blood repeated the rhythm of the hoofbeats.