“Yes.”
“So can we all. It is something our mistress thought proper in her girl slaves, her Chail Sheom.” She spoke with a bitter savagery, a masochistic anger. The Chail Sheom is the name on Kregen given to these beautiful girl slaves who wear fine silks and pearls and who minister intimately to their mistresses.
“You shall be free, Merle,” I said. “You and Xasha and Floy.”
We crept toward the aerial stables. Before we crossed the second garden of the pools where the intricately pierced stonework of the Pagoda of the Green Smile stood against the rising of the Twins, we could hear the birds. They rustled and stirred and fluttered their wings. We approached cautiously. At the barred gate the guards, sleepy, not caring to catch this boring duty, talking desultorily between them, had no notion of our presence. They still could not have known what it was that sent Notor Zan’s cavernous paunch encircling them in darkness. I did not kill them. I stepped over their unconscious bodies and called the girls. They ran up, lissome forms in the moons- light.
“You have homes to go to? Places where you will be safe?”
They were surprised, and even though they were still in shock, they were dismayed that I meant what I did.
“You will not desert us now, Jikai?”
Shouts resounded and torches flared in the gardens, beyond the pools, toward the villa.
“If you fly now they will never find you. Go. I have tasks I must do here before I may leave.”
Floy in her drugged way said, “If you plan to kill the Kov I will stand with you. Give me back the dagger.”
“I do not wish to kill the Kov. He is an onker and a rast. But I have more important work to do.” I pushed the gate open and started to untether the nearest fluttrell. He banged his wings and pretended he was asleep; but I woke him up smartly enough and with a whimper he was dragged out.
“Chaadur,” said Merle, again. “Will you not fly with us?”
I brought out two more fluttrells before I answered.
“You must fly fast and far, Merle. If you are sure you know where you may go, I will trust in that. And you, Floy, for you are of Havilfar, also, I think.” I turned to the beautiful black girl. “But you, Xasha, are from Xuntal, I believe. Where will you fly?”
Her cool appraising eyes rested on me. She put out a finger and touched my upper arm. “I have friends beyond the Mountains of the West, where I lived as a small girl. I shall fly there.”
“And I to Hyrklana,” said Merle, “for I do not think I can live more in Hamal.”
The shouts and the torches passed away beyond the Pagoda of the Green Smile. In a few more murs the searchers would reach the aerial stables. “Floy?” I said.
The Fristle fifi smiled lazily. “Ifilion,” she said. “Which is yet a kingdom with its own soul.”
Where the River Os marking the southern boundary of Hamal proper bifurcates, so that one arm runs around toward the north and the other arm runs around toward the south, the land between the arms right up to the sea has over the centuries been extended outward in a smooth rounded promontory which faces northwestern Hyrklana. This is the land of Ifilion. Its kingdom has remained independent, and there are whispers that sorcery and magic account for this integrity in the face of Hamalian aggrandizement and empire-building.
“Ifilion is small,” I said. “You will do it much honor.”
The girls mounted up. They saw I meant what I said. I clapped the birds on their tails and stood back. As they rose into the night sky with that streaming pink moons-shine gleaming upon their pinions, I thought I heard three separate words ghost down from the wind-rush. “Remberee,” and, “Remberee,”
and, yet again for the last time, “Remberee.”
“Remberee,” I said, but I spoke to myself.
Already I crouched and ran into the shadows beyond the aerial stable wall. Guards were running and torches flared and the shouts were strong and confident now.
“The stables! The cramphs make for the stables!”
The wing-beats of the three fluttrells dwindled and died. The guards burst out past the Pagoda of the Green Smile.
“They fly! See —
A Hikdar ran up, waving his thraxter, untidy in shadowed pink light.
“After them, you onkers! Mount up and fly!”
In the shadows I gripped the hilt of Bagor’s thraxter and I cursed. Women! Forever talking! And now they had talked so long and so late they had allowed the guards to see them winging away.
Silly girls! Stupid onkerish women!
I had a task to do here for Vallia and for Valka. No longer, if I was successful, would our Air Service have to make do with fractious fliers that broke down at the most inconvenient moments. No longer would I tremble every time Delia or the twins took to the air in a voller. No, by Vox! My job was here, to break into the fitting shed, to find out everything hidden there, everything there was to know about how to build fliers.
And then I must hurry back to the Shrouded Sea and meet the airboat with my friends and clasp Delia in my arms again. That was my duty. But I am grown soft and a weakling, even on Kregen, which is death to weaklings.
Holding the thraxter easily I stepped out into the moons-light and I shouted, high and hard, at the running guards.
“Hold! The first man to try to enter the stables is a dead man! This I promise you, by Havil the Green, whose name be eternally damned!”
Well, it created a stir. I’ll say that.
At the time I did not like the Hamalese, as you know. I had not forgotten the way, through their laws, they had tortured young Doyden, and then hanged him, or their underhanded tricks, their dishonest dealings in fliers. They had tried to kill me many times, and failed, and I wanted to be gone from here.[6]
They had not been kind to me in the Heavenly Mines, either.
The guards took little stock of a lone man, armed with a thraxter, without a shield. They charged, a bunch of them, hotly, furiously, instantly. Their very reaction betrayed them. As they converged on me over the trimmed grass of the garden of the pools outside the aerial stables I slipped into a fighting crouch. That crouch was a little exaggerated, for I wished to fool them. The first, the fleetest, simply held his shield before him and thrust with his thraxter. I slid the blow, pulled the shield down, and stabbed him in the throat over the top band of his lorica. He fell away, choking, splattering gouts of blood, dark in the moons-light.
The next two came in together and I ran at them, leaped between them and chopped the right one’s face off, landed, sprang back, and without compunction sliced the other’s neck beneath the back helmet rim. A stux flew past. I deflected a second stux with the thraxter. I dodged about. If I was badly wounded now I’d be done for, for they’d swamp me with numbers.
The stars twinkled above, and the twin moons shone down, in their three-quarter phase so that they shed light enough. I ducked and weaved and shifted, to seize a stux with my left hand as it whistled past and so return it. The Hikdar bellowed. I had not thrown wildly.
“By Krun!” yelled a soldier. “The cramph is a devil!”
“Stand back and shoot him down, comrades!” advised another. This being sound advice the soldiers moved back and I saw men trotting up with crossbows. Time had passed, enough time, I hoped, to give the three girls the opportunity to lose their pursuers in the wide wastes of the night sky of Kregen. The shadows on the far side of the stables looked inviting. I did not wait but ran instantly for them. As I vanished into the shadows of the trees so the first bolts whickered about my heels. Running away might become addictive. But I had work to do. .
If any of those thickheaded guards wondered why I had not myself taken to the air they perhaps believed I did not have the skill or knack of riding a saddle-flyer. Most Havilfarese peoples can fly a bird or a flying animal. But they also employ guards and buy slaves from countries where flying on the back of a monstrous bird smacks of the devil himself.
I ran. They might think of a number of places where I might go. I did not think they would guess I would make for the fitting shed. Whatever story they had pieced together, they would know from Hikdar Covell that it was the gul Chaadur who had caused this trouble, slain the Kovneva, and was now on the run from justice and the laws of Hamal.
The parking areas for fliers which regularly brought in supplies and stores had to be given a wide berth. Most
