called it, and I was for the canal and for pressing on to Drakanium where I would meet Delia.
We made our Remberees and I expressed my disappointment at missing his declamation, for he was truly a golden voice, and then I hurried to the canal to make travel arrangements. The zorca ensured a ticket in a narrow boat. I found a quiet seat where I might watch the passing banks, sliding along all green and golden under the suns, and I dozed and took my meals with the best of them and kept to myself, tolerated here in Delphond, and so came at last gliding with the canalfolk all hauling lustily away under the stone vaulted archways of Drakanium’s watergate.
As a city, Drakanium was simply a larger edition of a Delphondian town, clean, neat, sparkling, bowered in vegetation, filled with the prosperous bustle of a contented folk — at least it had been. The city was just as clean and neat and the flowers bloomed magnificently and the fountains played. But the people hurried about their tasks with worried looks. A regiment of totrixmen were exercising on the parade ground and I judged by their antics they were newly formed. The Jiktar was near to apoplexy as he bellowed orders, and the awkward six-legged totrixes tangled up and squealed and the lances all slanted at odd angles. But they flew nice banners and flags.
I had agreed to meet Delia at the best inn, instead of her villa here, to keep my cover. A hostler took in my message, giving me a sharp look as he went in through the lenken door under the glowing tiles, where the moon- blooms clustered thickly. Bees droned and the shadows lay across the stone-flagged court. I sat down on a bench and a serving wench brought out a flagon of best Delphondian ale. I quaffed it gratefully.
To these people I was a mere wanderer, a tramp, and if the Princess Majestrix wished to speak with me she would, and that was her business, and if she did not, then I would be told and seen off the premises. They are civilized in Delphond.
The hostler came back. He wore a frown.
“I gave your message to the landlord, dom. He says to tell you the Princess Majestrix is not here.”
“When is she expected? Maybe I am early.”
“Oh, she’s been here. You were expected.” He did not add that he couldn’t for the life of him understand why a great and glorious princess should worry her beautiful head over a dingy tramp. He went on, almost casually, imparting his news: “She has had to return posthaste to Vondium.”
I stood up.
“Did she say why?”
He took a step back. His coarse sacking apron rustled as he switched his arms out. “No. She did not say. Just that she had to go to Vondium on a matter of extreme urgency. A courier came in an airboat. From the emperor, it was said. The princess went with him and her suite with her.” He rolled his eyes with the memory of a great dread removed. “She had a ghastly creature with her, a most bloodthirsty monster, all claws and fangs and hair, but they all went in the airboat to Vondium.”
That monster was Melow the Supple, and I felt relief.
Relief that Delia was safe. But what could have caused her to dash back to Vondium? What disaster had struck now?
Ten
The airboat flew swiftly toward Vondium.
Once I had received Delia’s message I had wasted no time. A quick trip to our villa in Drakanium, a change of clothes, with a flustered majordomo and flunkies running in circles, a hamper of food and drink, weapons, money, and I was away in one of the small fliers we kept at the villa, as we tried to keep a voller or two at all our places.
I did not think my cover had been broken, but then, I didn’t give a damn if it had. What had happened in Vondium to drag Delia away? Was the emperor dead? But everyone would have known — no. No, perhaps not. It paid very often to keep news of the deaths of kings and emperors secret for as long as possible.
The voller was a fleet craft, for its stabling at the villa envisaged its emergency use, and we made a good thirteen and a half to fourteen dbs.[2]
At this headlong speed I would reach Vondium in a couple of hours. So, composing myself as best I could, I sat down and raided the hamper. Of the details of that meal I remain vague, save that I ate and drank and looked continually ahead for the fantastic sight of Vondium, the capital city of the Empire of Vallia, to rear over the distant horizon.
Once again I was entering Vondium at breakneck speed and with a single definite goal in mind. I flashed over the broad expanse of pastureland and agricultural activity surrounding the city. The waters of She of the Fecundity, the Great River of Vallia, sparkled ahead. There were the Hills, spread out and bowered in greenery, with the flash and gleam of white villas and red roofs. There were the sky-spanning aqueducts. There the grim gray walls and the higher battlements in gleaming yellow and sapphire, the flagstaffs, the conical tower roofs, the long, incredibly thin extensions of archways beneath the suns. Other fliers circled in landing and ascending patterns. The broad swaths of the major canals and ornate boulevards crisscrossed the city, creating islands of stone or brick, the timber and stucco island given over to parks and preserves, islands covered with barracks and factories, islands for sport, islands for all the devoted pursuits that obsessed the citizens of Vondium.
Of it all I fastened my eager gaze on the enormous Palace of the Emperors. Over wide colonnaded streets parallel to the canals we flew, this speedy little voller and I, seeing below the broad wharfside avenues thronged with busy people. Over a cluster of temples, built to foreign tolerated gods, over an arm of a canal leading directly to the Great River where shipbuilders worked on the skeletons of galleons of Vallia, bare and ribby in the light. On, and now I slanted down, aiming for the palace. The majestically architectured kyro before the main facade showed its usual hectic activity and few people bothered to look up at a single small air-boat.
Chafferings in the marketplaces would not be interrupted for so small an event. But what events were taking place within the glowing walls of the Palace of the Emperors?
The instant I touched down on the landing platform above the small garden of the palace wing reserved for the Prince Majister, I leaped out. Delia’s old apartments had been enlarged and improved and when we stayed in the capital we stayed in our own private wing of the palace. I raced inside, seeing servitors running. Delia and I kept no slaves; there were many thousands of slaves in Vondium, aye, and many in the great palace of the Emperors.
Normally we kept only a skeleton staff in our wing of the palace for, to be honest, we spent little time there. Now the place hummed with activity and very soon I had made my way, followed by various flunkies who conceived it their duty to run with me, just in case I might drop something, or require a service — Zair knows why servants will fuss so — through to our inner and truly private apartments. The Jiktar of the guard detail, a Pachak called Laka Pa-Re, bellowed his men to attention.
“The princess?” I asked, not stopping.
“In her apartments and all well, my prince, may Opaz shine the light of his countenance upon her.” Then he added, quite outside the usual military formula: “By Papachak the All Powerful, my Prince, it is good to see you!”
“And to see you also, Laka Pa-Re.”
His men bashed open the balass door smothered with the gold zhantils with diamond eyes, and I went hurrying through. Laka stood back, still remaining at attention, his tailhand upthrust with that wicked steel blade glistening. He had retained his Pachak name for he was a mercenary, a paktun — the silver mortil-head on its silken cord looped over the shoulder of his armor proved that — and perhaps a greater contrast could not be imagined than between his loyal service as a paktun and the thieving deviltry of those masichieri I had been stumbling over lately.
The tall balass doors closed and I looked down the carpeted corridor with the golden lamps and the ivory ornaments, the great Pandahem jars filled with flowers, the silver mirrors, and the doors at the far end opened and a trim figure clad in hunting leathers stepped through. At her heels a prowling, incredibly ferocious Manhound trotted, tail lashing, fanged jaws opened, saying in that growly, spitting, menacing way of jiklos: “. .Deserves to be
