up, if on a reduced scale, for no chatelaine knows from one day to the next if the lord might arrive. And if all is not in apple-pie order and everything ready immediately for comfortable occupation
— exit one chatelaine and enter a sufficiently energetic and zealous new one. So we had three days to kill.
We sang songs and we told stories and we played Jikaida.
Kov Furtway was inordinately fond of Jikaida. This is the board game popular on Kregen involving an elongated form of chessboard — the actual number of squares may vary along with the numbers of men, and the different sizes are dignified by different degrees — which, together with chess, checkers, and Halma-like moves for the men, combine to form an engrossing game of mock war. Genal the Ice and Bibi had a board, for one is usually to be found in every house in Kregen, if sometimes a little rooting about in cupboards is necessary, and we settled down to a tournament. The men were blue and yellow.
“Blue,” said Furtway, not giving me the opportunity to guess his closed fists. “You take the damned blue.”
Jenbar chuckled, but the sound was such as I had heard Thelda utter — or my many friends of Pandahem. “Blue, the color of the Opaz-forsaken Pandaheem cramphs! My uncle, Kr. Prescot, never plays the blue.”
“As you wish.” I thought of that great battle in Magdag. “I, too, have a fondness for the yellow.”
We played. Furtway was skilled, tough, ruthless, unscrupulous when he could thus win a point or a piece. I reacted at first with vigor, and gradually the yellow pushed back the blue along the board, and I was aligning my sights on his left-wing Chuktar, when I paused and considered. I came to the conclusion it might be judicious to let this man win. After all, a board game can be turned into profit and advantage, as I well knew; and there is to some men a superior form of winning in contriving their own defeat. So I fumbled a Deldar’s move, and with a flashing smile and a triumphant gesture, Furtway removed my right-wing Chuktar.
“Your concentration lapsed, Kr. Prescot. Always, at Jikaida, as in life, you must bend your mind to the task in hand.”
“Yes, Kov Furtway. You are right, but I am most anxious to reach Vondium.”
They had, of course, asked me my business in the capital. I had fobbed them off with a casual story of a consignment of cortilindens coming into the port, and turned the conversation, managing to bring up the subject of the Emperor and his wayward daughter. Both men did not attempt to hide their feelings.
“The Emperor is the Emperor, and his will is law. But we sometimes have to take measures for his own good. The Princess Majestrix, now, is willfully disobedient in refusing to marry.”
I saw Jenbar nodding in agreement.
“She is the most beautiful girl in all Vallia — in all the world, I truly believe — and she must marry some day. Happy the man who claims her hand.”
“The man whom the Emperor wishes her to marry,” I said, speaking with care, and yet seeming casual.
“He is a good choice?”
“That fool!” cried Furtway. “Why, Vektor of Aduimbrev is totally unsuited, for all that he is wealthy and powerful and has the Emperor’s ear.”
“Vektor is a get onker!” Jenbar spoke with passion. I knew of the passion my Delia could arouse in the hearts of the men in her bodyguard and retinue; I had seen its results aboard the swifter
“But the racters, they desire it, do they not?”
Jenbar snorted. Furtway cunningly captured a zorca patrol led by a Hikdar and, with the blue pieces in his hand, stared at me. “The racters run the country, no one can deny that. But in this they are wrong.”
“Yes,” said Jenbar. “But where do you stand in this argument, Kr. Prescot?”
I was merely a Koter, and therefore only a small step up from the great mass of the ordinary folk among whom I truly belong, as I sometimes think; the question, however, was not patronizing, as might be supposed, coming from the nephew of a Kov. Jenbar really wanted to know.
“As for me,” I said, attempting to forestall an imminent attack on my exposed right wing, “I do not think the Princess Majestrix should marry Vektor of Aduimbrev.”
“Ah!” quoth Furtway, and demolished a Jiktar and two Hikdars. “You have lost the game. Place the pieces for another. As for Vektor — when your business with the cortilindens is finished, call at my villa. You will be welcome. You are a man of resource. I can find work for your hands, aye, and your brain.”
“Thank you, Kov Furtway. I shall look forward to that.”
This might be very useful. A man as powerful as a Kov on my side would weigh heavily in the scales. I played considerably better the next game, taking both his wing Chuktars, but eventually letting him push a strong force through the center and so rout me. His passion for the game was unslaked, and I saw how much of his life was reflected in the pieces on the board. Vallia, as I understood it, while being preeminent on the outer oceans, maintained a minuscule army, mainly composed of honor guards and the like, and employed mercenaries whenever land warfare was involved. The interior police, however, and the aragorn, were prominent in the political affairs of the islands. On the third day a shrill cry brought us to the door and we saw toiling up the slope toward us a shaggy old quoffa dragging a cart on its runners, its wheels removed and slung on the sides. The quoffa looks like a perambulating hearth-rug with bunchy shoulders and hindquarters — it has six legs, but the Earthly nomenclature trips from the tongue — and a dogged old head from which the steam blew in great snorts like one of Mr. Stevenson’s new engines. The carter was a Relt, at which I was much surprised. But the Relts, those less formidable cousins of the bird-headed Rapas, are often found in employment in many countries. He shouted again and Bibi chuckled and bustled about, for this was her regular delivery of four weeks’ supplies. Also, the Relt would take away a heaping load of ice on the downward run, and Genal would give him orders for the number of carts he required for the main delivery. After a great meal and a single glass of an excellent vintage from Procul, a full and rich red wine, we bade Remberee to Genal the Ice and Bibi. They were given a handful of broad gold talens, with the head of the Emperor on one side and the — smaller — head of Furtway on the reverse, charged with a checkerboard. I considered this carrying a passion for a game to a fault, that it should be the man’s emblem and figure on his coinage, but it turned out that the checkerboard was the Falinur insignia. I had privily sorted through the coins I had taken from the dead men and found some with the Emperor on the obverse, and faces and designs I did not recognize on the reverse; these I handed to Genal and Bibi with my sincere thanks.
Then we clambered aboard the cart, warmly wrapped against the chill of the ice blocks, even though Genal had reduced this load on our account to make a space, and off we went. The sliding descent on the runners was wild enough, but when the Relt replaced the wheels, and off we went again, I felt my opinion change, and knew the wheels were worse. At last the faithful quoffa could be put back into the shafts and we trundled decorously into the large village, almost a small town, nestling in the valley.
Clean through the center of the town ran a broad canal, bridged here and there, but unmistakably the artery of commerce and travel. There were many long narrow boats afloat. The ice went straight aboard one of them, together with ice from other ice-gatherers, and the boat pushed off at once.
“I’d have thought it would melt too soon, aboard a barge,” I said. The Relt rubbed his beak in the habit they have, and said in his squeaky voice: “This is ice for only a few dwaburs south. Ice for farther afield goes by airboat. Look.”
We all looked and there was an airboat — drab, gray, battered — rising over the houses and heading south.
“That is for us,” said Furtway in the voice of the Kov. We paid the Relt and walked across to the airport. Yes, we could book a passage south, it would cost us the same price as it cost the ice-shippers, and we would have to provide our own food, sleeping equipment, and an indemnity. In case of accident we must sign away the right of our heirs to claim against the ice-shipping Company of Friends. I was to learn a great deal more of these Companies of Friends which control so much of the trade and industry of Vallia. Both my companions made no bones about signing, so neither did I. The airboat carried us — not particularly comfortably and in somewhat chilly conditions — a hundred dwaburs south, where we were set down in the bustling market town of Therminsax. From this place Furtway was able to dispatch a zorca courier — one of the officers charged with maintaining the zorca communications over the island — on payment of a sizable sum and proof that he was who he said he was. This he
