thinking!
As Reg, still on his shoulder, made alarmed noises in his ear, Lional considered him. 'Do you know, Professor, I liked you much better when you were diffident and ingratiating. Recall, if you can, that I am your king!
'You're not my king! I'm Ottoslandian, we don't have kings! And after what just happened I can see why!'
Lional sat up. 'I'm warning you, Professor. You're on very thin ice.'
7'm on thin ice? I am?' Choking, he took a stamping half-turn around the dais. 'And what do you call that little stunt you just pulled, Your Majesty? I call it tap-dancing on a melting ice floe! Have you forgotten that Sultan Zazoor has an army? And don't you understand that when he figures out he's been had he's going to introduce us to it? Intimately?'
'I suggest, Professor,' said Lional, coldly, 'that you moderate your tone.'
'To hell with my tone!' he retorted. 'You've spent the last hour playing fast and loose with a foreign power's religious icons! You forced Reg into impersonating one of them and manipulated me into upholding the lie! I don't have enough fingers and toes to count all the rules I've just broken! And you tell me to moderate my tone?'
Lional sighed. 'I must say, Professor, you disappoint me. What I have done, sir, is solve the punitive Kallarapi tariff crisis, thus rescuing New Ottosland from certain bankruptcy and thousands of my subjects from suffering, and I've taken the first steps in consolidating a lasting alliance with our Kallarapi neighbours while incidentally saving Melissande from the tragedy of spinsterhood. All in all, it's been an excellent afternoon's work. I deserve congratulating, not scolding.'
The man was serious. He really thought what he'd done was praiseworthy. Oh, dear God…
'And what about Mel- I mean, Her Highness?' he said, suddenly exhausted. 'What if she doesn't want to marry the Sultan of Kallarap?'
Lional looked baffled. 'What she wants is irrelevant. The Melissandes of New Ottosland have always married to further the interests of the kingdom.'
Which may be true… but he wondered if anyone had thought to remind the current Melissande of that. 'All right. What if the sultan doesn't wish to marry the princess?'
'Oh, I don't think that's very likely,' said Lional, carelessly. 'Not want to marry a young woman in the prime of her child-bearing years, capable of giving him a fistful of sons to carry on his quaint camel-breeding empire?' He shrugged. 'I admit Melissandes not exactly beautiful. But you know what they say, Professor. All cats are grey in the dark. Really, you mustn't fret so. You'll give yourself indigestion.' A lazy smile. 'Besides. Zazoor will do whatever his gods tell him to do. In that respect he's as gullible as his gormless little brother.'
If there'd been something handy he would have thrown it at Lional and the consequences be damned. 'But, Your Majesty, think. What if Shugat wasn't as convinced by our little charade as he led us to believe? What if he takes a moment on the way home to stop for a chat with his gods and the gods say 'Wedding? What wedding?' What do you think is going to happen then?'
'My dear Gerald…' said Lional tartly. 'Calm yourself. Shugat is nothing but a moth-eaten old man with delusions of grandeur. And as for the gods of Kallarap… surely you've worked it out by now?' 'Worked what out, Your Majesty?' 'The gods of Kallarap don't exist!' Gerald stared.'You don't know that!'
Lional let out an exasperated groan.'I'll tell you what I know, Professor. I know that when Shugat asked his gods to kill me, they didn't. And when I stood here and invited them to strike me down in my stockings, nothing happened againV
'Actually, you invited them to strike down Reg and Tavistock.'
'Mere detail,' said Lional. 'What matters is there was no striking of any kind. Which leads me to one of two conclusions. Either the gods don't exist or they approve of what I'm doing! Either way, I win.' He smiled.'And Zazoor loses.'
On his shoulder, Reg heaved a sigh and scratched the back of her head. 'You know,' she mused,'I hate to admit it but he's got a point.'
'There. You see?' said Lional. 'Even your little feathered friend agrees there's nothing to be concerned about.' Reg sniffed.'Well, I didn't say that!
Lional sat back. 'I think, Professor, you need a little quiet time to reflect upon this momentous occasion. Given your excellent assistance I shall overlook the tone and content of your recent remarks. This time. Don't feel obliged to join me for dinner. I shall look for you in the morning. We'll go hunting.' 'Hunting?'
'Yes indeed,' said Lional, nodding. 'I'll see you in my private stables at seven, Professor. Just you, I think. No need to rob Vorsluk's emissary of her beauty sleep.'
'Sarky bastard,' muttered Reg. 'I'll give him beauty sleep…'
'Hunting,' said Gerald. Oh, lord. He'd thought Melissande had been joking about that. Arid just when he thought things couldn't get any worse…
'Don't be late,' added Lional. 'I can't abide unpunctuality. It puts me in such a bad mood.'
It was a dismissal. Gerald bowed, jerkily, and made his escape before he forgot every last oath he'd ever taken as a wizard and turned King Lional the Forty-third into a toad. Nerim sat in an overstuffed armchair in the palace guest quarters' salon and shivered. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so afraid.
It was hard to say which scared him the most: the fact that for the first time in his life he'd been in the living, speaking presence of the gods… or that in the half hour since he and Shugat had returned to their suite the holy man had refused to utter a single word. Instead he remained motionless and cross-legged on the floor under the window, eyes closed, hands in his lap.
From birth every Kallarapi knew his people were the gods' chosen. Never once had Nerim doubted it. Some of his earliest memories were of sitting on Zazoor's knee in the private temple of their father the sultan, may he dwell with the gods in perpetual peace, listening to Shugat pronounce the desires of the gods. Shugat, whom the gods now refused to answer.
When he and Shugat had left Kallarap it had been in the safe and sure knowledge the gods were sending them to give New Ottosland's king one last chance to honour his sacred oath and pay to them the tariffs required by treaty. Shugat had said so. Shugat had said the gods were enraged by King Lional's refusal to follow the path laid down by his honoured ancestor King Lional the First. He'd said this was a sacred mission to restore the honourable bonds of mutual obligation between Kallarap and New Ottosland. He'd said the gods would reward them for doing their holy duty.
Shugat had said twthing about weddings and new alliances and the gods revealing their presence to the New Ottosland king. Surely he would have mentioned it if the gods had told him about any of that? So… what was going on?
Had Shugat somehow offended them? Had his refusal to acknowledge their presence in New Ottosland turned them against him? And if that were true what did it mean for the rest of Kallarap? If Shugat had sinned did it mean the punishment must fall upon all Kallarapi? Upon Zazoor?
Nerim barely stifled his cry of grief and terror. Flinging himself from the armchair to his knees before the ominously silent Shugat, he held out his hands in desperate entreaty. 'O Holy Shugat, I beseech thee… speak to me! Are we forsaken? Are we abandoned? After a thousand years of protection do the Three now belong to New Ottosland?
Shugat's eyes snapped open. They were black as night and blazing with the heat of countless suns. Startled, Nerim fell backwards. So ferocious was the fire in Shugat's eyes that he scuttled behind the safety of the armchair and cowered there as the holy man stared and stared at nothing he could see.
At long last the leaping black flames died and Shugat's eyes were his own again. The old man stirred. Flexed his fingers in his lap and nodded his bald head in answer to a question only he could hear. Using his staff to help him, he got to his feet. 'Come, Nerim,' he said.'It is time to go home.' Because he was too angry to wait for a native palace guide and subsequently made every wrong turn it was possible to make, sometimes more than once, it took Gerald forever to get back to his suite from the king's audience chamber. Slamming open the doors, he stormed inside.
'Dammit!' he shouted, stamping about the sun-dappled foyer. 'Dammit, dammit, dammitl That bloody man! That insane, megalomaniacal, off-his-rocker, bastardY
Reg jumped off his shoulder and perched instead on a handy chair back. 'Careful now, or you'll do yourself a mischief And close those doors before somebody hears you and repeats what you're saying to our little blond
