My own plans must come first. There was much to do. An airboat, it seemed to me, was the obvious choice; indeed, the only choice. Once I had abducted Delia we would have no peace until we reached Strombor in Zenicce.
Even then the Emperor might fit out a mighty expedition and dispatch his powerful fleet with thousands of mercenaries to bring his daughter back. I did not fancy myself in the part of Paris, and Delia could occasion the launch of many more than a thousand ships, aye, and fliers, too, for I knew without question she was far more beautiful and passionate and willful than Helen could ever have been. But I would not bring upon Strombor the fate of Troy; the Emperor and his Vallians would never be the Greeks in this tragedy. If necessary Delia and I would fly to Sanurkazz and go to Felteraz, where I knew how welcome we would be. Mayfwy would welcome us. That was certain. If the Emperor followed us there through all the long and perilous dangers, then where would we go?
I jumped up and overset the teapot.
“Goddamnit to hell!” I said. I would make a start, and go with my Delia to the ends of this strange world of Kregen, and let the fates play with their silken strands as they would. Young Bargom came in somewhat rapidly, to investigate the overset teapot I thought. But in his hand he held a heavy knife, not quite a shortsword, something like a cleaver — a weapon he could with perfect truth say he had picked up from his kitchen — and his face held a down-drawn, savage look that surprised me. He saw me standing there, composed, he saw the teapot, and he didn’t know where to put the knife.
“The teapot thought itself a flier, Bargom,” I said. Then, “What troubled you?”
He blurted it out: “I thought some Vox-spawned rast had crept in here, my lord Strom, to do you a mischief.”
The incident passed. But it added up. Bargom said there were many expatriate Valkans living in Vondium. They were anxiously desirous of paying their respects to their Strom. They had heard what had been done on Valka and many of their friends had left to return home. Many of those still remaining intended to return. Meanwhile, here in the city was their Strom, the man who had cleansed their home and made of it a place worthy to be lived in again, a place of which to be proud. With a callous cynicism and a calculating appraisal of the advantages I could wring, I saw these people. They came in, in ones or twos, sometimes a family, and they brought little gifts, tokens of their esteem. All went on about how Valka was no longer merely a slave-province, of which there were more than two or three, and the letters they had had telling them of the great things being done there. Some of the women even kissed my hand. I began to feel the greatest cheat and impostor in all of Kregen. I have said I love the island of Valka. This is true. I believe in that upper room of the inn
One young lad there was, tall, strong, upright, with the glowing features of hero-worship about him I found most distasteful, whose name was Vangar ti Valkanium, told me he was a Deldar in the Vallian Air Service. He had come in mufti, the buff tunic and the wide-brimmed hat with the red and white colors in feathers and in a great cockade over his left shoulder. I told Vangar ti Valkanium something of my admiration for the Air Service people, and we talked very pleasantly. When he left I knew that I would feel a pang at abandoning my island of Valka.
But I would abandon any and everything in two worlds for the sake of my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains.
Sitting at the black-wood table in the window I felt a softly caressing touch stroke feather-light across the nape of my neck. It was there and gone in an instant. I took no notice. In the window on its own special pedestal stood a flick-flick. The plant has many names on Kregen, and as an example of the closeness of the Vallish to the Kregish, the fly-catcher is fleck-fleck in the Vallish and flick-flick in the Kregish. Its six-foot-long tendrils uncoil like steel springs, their honey-dew stickiness certain death for flies. The flowers are cone-shaped trumpets of a pale and subtle peach color, and they gobble flies like a starving elephant stuffing down buns. Most homes like to have a flick-flick, usually near the kitchen. Flies, as I have said, get everywhere.
The break made me stand up and stretch and look out of the window. Across the patio, with its tables and chairs and Young Bargom’s clientele drinking happily, the canal ran along between meticulously upkept banks. And a great straggly gang of haulers passed, their gray slave breech-clouts filthy, the whip marks jikaidering their backs, bloody and filthy, hauling a huge gray barge with a cargo that brought the gunwales down to within a knuckle of the water.
I frowned.
Delia detested slavery as much as I did.
I had thought I had been brought to Kregen to help stamp out slavery. My own plans called for the fulfillment of my own selfish ends. To hell with the Star Lords and the Savanti! Delia was all I cared about.
Many times, as you have heard, I had been deflected from my intentions. Now, again, I was prevented from putting our plans into operation that day, as I had wished, by the distraught arrival of Kta. Angia.[2]
A plump, homey, beeswax kind of woman, she sobbed out her story. Her son was a proud and headstrong youth, but they were in debt, for he was a cabinet-maker and had had words with his employer and could not find fresh work. He would not ask friends of the Valkans here in Vondium for help. And now he had been dragged off to the bagnios. She was desperate. Could I help?
The story is quickly told. Quickly — in that I went with her to the bagnios and found her son, Anko the Chisel, and paid off his debt, and in the process being arrogant and insulting to the guards with their red and black sleeves. But not so quickly — in my discovery of the bagnios themselves. I have seen many slave barracks, and barracoons and bagnios, and those of Vallia were no worse than many. Here criminals, debtors, hostages, prisoners, those who had forfeited their liberty in any way, were kept for dispersal among the slave farms, or the haulers, or the mines, or in any of the many places that slaves were employed. We took Anko the Chisel out of that place and his mother, Kta. Angia, fell on her knees before me, whereat I felt all the nausea of myself rising, and I bid her get up and take her son home, and start again in the search for work.
The point I had had thrust upon me I did not want to face, would not face, refused even to countenance. Delia. That thought alone was all that mattered.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
That evening everyone crowded in and
Among the Valkan revelers, dressed like them in the flaunting red and white, sat Seg Segutorio. I had told him, swiftly, not to start singing
“I’ll fight any man who denies me!” he had started to roar out and I had hustled him away up the black-wood stair to my upper chamber.
“By Zim-Zair, you onker-headed bowman!” I exclaimed. He calmed down and then, with that strong streak of practicality that runs intertwined with the feyness of the men of the mountains and valleys of Erthyrdrin, he nodded, understanding. “Although, Dray, you know that there is no better bow than the longbow. All these made-up sinew and bone and horn bows, curved like a pregnant duck; they are as toys beside the longbow.”
“True, true. But — watch it!”
“All is ready. By the Veiled Froyvil, but Delia is a true princess! She has made the arrangements for the airboat. Thelda and I and little Dray are ready. We can-”
I felt shock.
“You — you wish to come, too, Seg?”
He looked at me as though I had slapped him around the face.
“Of course.” His bright blue eyes glittered on me in the soft radiance of the samphron oil lamp. “You want me to, don’t you, my old dom?”
I managed to say, “I couldn’t get along without you,” and turned away so that he should not see my face.
The noise from below was reaching fantastic proportions and we went down and took up the wine — it was
