“Kov Vektor of Aduimbrev is the Emperor’s choice,” he said. He spoke with care. He wore leathers dyed black and white. He was a racter and flaunted that. The racters were a party, composed of many people from all walks of life — except, I thought with bitterness, those who walked the canal towpaths. They were a power in the Presidio. They had the strength to banish panvals on trumped-up charges, but there were still many panvals who wore the green and white colors. A man might choose to flaunt his color allegiance, as Larghos did. Or, as Pallan Eling, the minister responsible for the canals, did, wear merely a small black and white ribbon tucked into a buttonhole. I guessed Larghos’ servitors would wear sleeves banded black and white, and the colors of the Black Mountain -
appropriately enough black and purple — would appear elsewhere on their jerkins. The older a lineage the less colors in the insignia, in general. Some men, like Tobi ti Chelmsturm, with five colors to their name very often preferred the dignity of using merely two colors for their men, and these would be colors of their party. Humans and halflings, we share the same failings. I said, “I do not support Vektor in this.”
“Good. He is a weakling, a sop. You can smell him coming a dwabur downwind, like a woman’s hairdresser.”
“You have a candidate for the Princess Majestrix? Who is that, Trylon?”
He made up his mind. When he spoke the name I felt the blood rise and sing in my head.
“Vomanus of Vindelka.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I felt outraged, betrayed, soiled.
I spoke before I thought.
“I understood that Vomanus was — ineligible to marry the Princess!”
He stared at me narrowly, and lowered his cup. “Now where would you have heard that?”
Collecting my thoughts, I said, stumbling and bluffing my way through: “I am not certain — it seems it was a drunken evening, somewhere, men talking and boasting. But, clearly, it cannot be true.”
He leaned back, sizing me up afresh, but he neither confirmed nor denied what I had suggested. Back there in hated Magdag where I had intrigued and fought for my slaves and workers I had last seen Vomanus. I had sent him with a message to Delia. He had always treated me as a comrade, and although he was a young man whom I delighted to call “my lad,” there had been a mystery about him. He had said, once: “Just take it from me, Drak, my friend, Kovs are Kovs and Kovs to me.” No, he could never voluntarily seek Delia’s hand in marriage, not when he knew the passion that flames between the Princess and me. Then — he must consider me dead! Yes, that could be the only explanation. And then, of course, I felt the guilt and the remorse — emotions I always try to quell out of perversity -
when I remembered how finely he had always supported me. And all the time he had loved Delia himself!
Trylon Larghos said, “Young Vomanus was willed the estates and lands of Vindelka. The Emperor approves. As to what happened to Tharu, out there in the wilds of the inner sea, who knows? Who cares?” He was too sophisticated a man to say, as many would, of the inner sea: “wherever that is.” He knew well enough where it was, although he’d never travel that great distance all his life. “Tharu was an Emperor’s man. He was a great power behind the throne. Now he is gone, Vomanus is one of us.”
I felt the sadness and the sorrow, but if young Vomanus really loved Delia, then he would use whatever levers came to his hand. He would move heaven and hell, in Kregan terms, to win her. I could not blame him. What would he say when he learned I was still alive!
I decided to test that. Speaking casually enough, my cup at a jaunty angle, I said: “What of this hairy madman I have heard of — this wild clansman-”
“Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor?” Larghos laughed, and his laugh was most evil. “Whether the Princess loved him or not does not matter. Prescot is dead. And the devil can go to the Ice Floes of Sicce with my boot in his rear. He has caused far too much trouble. But now the time is ripe for the racters, for Vomanus, for me — and for you, too, Strom Drak!”
Just then Young Bargom trundled in with fresh tea. He said in his blunt Valkan way: “There is a Koter below, asking for you, my lord Strom. He does not give a name.” Bargom glanced at Larghos. “He wears green and white, my lord Strom.”
“A rast of a panval!” exclaimed Larghos. He had half drawn his rapier before he recollected himself. “If I can force an argument on him as I leave I’ll do so, and spit his guts! Aye, by Vox! And laugh as I do it!”
He took his leave, promising to speak with me again, and he was well pleased with his morning’s work. When he had gone Young Bargom shook his head and leaned out of the window.
“Hai! A racter is on his way out! I don’t want trouble in my inn — hey, you there!”
He turned back to face me. “Your pardon, my lord Strom, but Trylon Larghos is a noted duelist. He says he’ll spit this onker’s guts, he’ll spit them, mark my words, my lord Strom.”
Suddenly it was borne in on me — what the blue blazing hell was I doing fiddling about with politics in Vondium? I had agreed to abduct my Delia, we would fly together to Valka, to Strombor — we would finish with Vallia and begin a new life, together.
Whoever the panval was, he took the threat seriously, for he did not show up. Bargom busied himself clearing away the breakfast things. He liked to talk.
“They say the headless zorcamen have been seen, my lord Strom. They were riding within sight of Vondium last night.” He shivered. “They mean ill, mark my words, my lord Strom.”
“You believe in them, Bargom?”
He straightened up, the tray balanced easily on one hand. “Of course, my lord Strom! They are evil, supernatural! They set fire to buildings, they abduct people — and a two-headed chunkrah was born only last week. Mark my words, my lord Strom, evil days are coming to Vondium!”
Ghosts and black towers and bats and apparitions, all these things, then, were believed in by Bargom. How many others in Vondium believed? If they were racters dressed up, why were they doing these things here, where the racters were all-powerful? Again I thought of this mysterious third party, but Bargom, who had heard whispers of them in his pot room, knew nothing solid about them. They were called the third party, not because there were only three parties, but somehow people realized that they must rank as a force at least equal with the failing panvals, and possibly with the racters. The other parties — generally owning allegiance to territory as well as belief — were too small to be counted.
Just to the northeast of Vondium rises the strange height known as Drak’s Seat. The two main peaks, when viewed from the center of Vondium, look uncannily like a great throne, lowering over the city. Drak’s Seat. Snow and ice are found there — as Jenbar had told me — which last longer in good condition than a man might believe, when packed in the Kregan way in sawdust of sturm-wood. I detest ice in drinks, for together with worry it is a prime source of ulcers. And no truly civilized man relishes having the taste of a fine vintage destroyed by great chunks of frozen water floating in his glass. Young Bargom chattered on telling me the gossip of Vondium. His life was here, now; with a wife from the city, and children, and his father’s bones buried in the Opaz-sacred cemetery a dwabur beyond the eastern gate, he had nothing to draw him back to Valka. His talk told me much, and I saw how useful he could be to me.
Of the third party he could tell me only that men whispered behind their hands that dual allegiances were involved. The great nobles were all playing for themselves. The Emperor sought for allies and friends. Evil days were coming to Vondium. The headless zorcamen were one symbol of that, a presentiment and a sign of terror.
Why should Nath Larghos, a Trylon with power that placed him extremely high in the councils of the racters, seek out a lowly Strom and attempt to win him over?
