the Northeast constitute a real menace to the throne? Could they topple the emperor?”
She screwed up that clever, wizened, vicious old face.
“Yes and no. I do not think they could field an army that could break through to Vondium. But the troubles they cause can lead to such disorder that a strong and better-placed faction could seize the power. Up there they have great faith in their necromancers-”
“Necromancers? Of wizards and sorcerers, yes; but-”
“Necromancers I said, and devilish Opaz-forsaken corpse-revivers I mean!”
I digested that. Then: “And the strong and better-placed faction would be the racters?”
No one answered. The answer was writ plain on all their faces.
“Well, that is where we part company. I will stand against you for the emperor if needs must-”
“You fool! You destroy yourself! He hates you and will do nothing for you. Think again, Dray Prescot. Think of yourself and your family.”
I did not answer that directly. I fancied it would too directly put a weapon into their hands.
“And the Panvals? The white and greens? Will they not strike for the power?”
They laughed their contempt. “The Panvals will fade away as salt dissolves in water when the racters strike.”
“And the other factions? The Vondium Khanders? The Fegters who grow daily in strength? The Lornrod Caucus-”
“Them!” broke in Natyzha. “They are contemptible. Their only wish is to destroy everything, to pull down what has been painfully built over the centuries. No, we shall have no truck with them.”
“As to the others,” Nalgre Sultant amplified the kovneva’s thoughts. “It is natural that accommodations and alliances will be formed. There are many small parties, formed for a particular reason, with whom we can work when the day to strike comes.”
“And in that day you’ll try to put your puppet on the throne of Vallia? You’ll attempt to make some onker the emperor and then work him with your strings?”
They damn well knew I’d never be their puppet.
I was still smarting under the notion that I was the puppet of the Star Lords. I had been working on that, as you shall hear; but the idea aroused blind fury in me.
They did not say that since my interference they had lost a great deal of their power over the emperor and it rankled. They still held frightening powers; but these days the emperor could act with a greater freedom than ever he had before.
“If you directly oppose us, Dray Prescot, then you must take the consequences.” Natyzha looked at me and then away, in that typical slanting look that so largely summed up the racters’ way of influencing affairs of state. “You will probably find yourself dead and on the way to the Ice Floes of Sicce when we strike.”
“But all legally, of course?”
“Oh, yes, prince. All legally.”
So I bid them Remberee in an air of chilly hostility, tempered only by the understanding between us, and took myself off. I observed the fantamyrrh of The Sea Barynth Hooked as I went out, for the sake of Irvil the Flagon, the landlord. Then I went off to perform an errand and to uncover some more of the information I sought before leaving for the Northeast — and for an uncomfortable ride into the bargain.
Seven
The place to which I took myself brought back vivid and happy memories, memories of a time that was, in truth, a happy one even though it was shot through with a deep anxiety for my Delia, and for others of my friends. Here we had roared out the old songs and planned what best to do about the dying emperor. I went down to the Great Northern Cut and there, on the eastern bank, found that comfortable inn and posting house, The Rose of Valka. The landlord, the same Young Bargom, greeted me with genuine warmth and his delighted yells brought the household running. He wanted to know all the news and how we had fared in our voyage to save the emperor. Bargom, who was now grown a trifle grave with the years and his responsibilities, remained still the locus of feeling for exiled Valkans. Exiled no longer, of course; but Valkans who had business in the capital gravitated to The Rose of Valka like bees to honey. If I dwell too long on my friends, and places that I am fond of, I think that natural. I’d far sooner think of and tell you of The Rose of Valka, and the good times we had there than speak of some of those places of horror into which I plunged on Kregen. But life being what it is, and Kregen being the splendid and terrible world it is, the dark and phantasmagoric times seem always to outweigh the lighter and carefree times. More’s the pity.
They brought me through into that wide spacious room with the lights of Zim and Genodras flooding resplendently through the windows, where the flowers bloomed in their pots along the windowsill, and around me the happy sounds of a busy inn life tinkled merrily, and the superb smells of that divine Valkan cooking brought the saliva to my mouth. So I quaffed a few cups of unsurpassed Kregan tea and ate miscils and talked. No — I lie. I did not drink a few cups. I drank many cups. At last, when my inquiries became more particular and pressing, Bargom put his hands flat on his knees and stared directly at me. This subject had been glossed before. Now he pursed up his lips and looked judicial.
“Well, strom, it is like this, d’ye see. Yes, we have heard stories of the Princess Dayra. Nath ti Javvansmot, who runs The Speckled Gyp, told me what they did to his place. The fight they started smashed most of his windows, the best part of his crockery and a dozen amphorae, and the devils stove in two barrels of the best Gremivoh — begging your pardon, strom, but facts is facts.”
“They started a fight and they laughed and left?”
“They laughed all right, strom. But they didn’t leave until they’d had their bellyful o’ watching the fun. Fun!”
“Was Nath ti Javvansmot recompensed?”
“Oh, aye. Aye. The Princess Delia, may Opaz bless her and smile on her, paid up in full. Although-”
And here Bargom scowled his heavy Valkan scowl. “Although ’twasn’t entirely the Princess Dayra’s doing, not her fault altogether, for she was egged on. I’m sure of that.”
“And since then?”
“Nary a sight nor sound of her, strom. Nothing.”
Well, no need for me to feel disappointment. If the reports were true, Dayra was up in the Northeast, somewhere to the north of Tarkwa-fash.
“And the name of the man she was with?”
Here Bargom looked at the floor, and twiddled the strings of his red and white apron, which bore the bright stains of wine here and there, and then he looked at the flick-flick plant on the windowsill which was just in the act of transferring a half-starved fly from one suckered and sticky tendril down its orange gullet. Flies found little dirt to feed on in The Rose of Valka.
“Come, Bargom. You and I are old comrades. Have no fear of offending me. I know Dayra is mixed up with a scoundrel.”
“He’s a scoundrel, well and true. And there is a gang of ’em — a dozen, at the least. But who is this scoundrel? Now there you may as well ask Poperlin the Wise! He calls himself any number of names, and not one of them his. Some say he’s the illegitimate son of a high noble, others that he’s a fisherman from the islands who stole a purse and bought himself an education beyond his real capacity. Others say he’s a paktun, probably a hyr-paktun who may wear the pakzhan, who is living high on the vosk of his ill-gotten gains. Others-”
“Aye. Aye, I hear. You have not seen him? You can give me no description? No name, one name at the least, with which I may begin inquiries?”
Bargom frowned and scratched his ear. “I did hear Nath say that his cronies called him Zankov[1].”
“Zankov. Now that is a strange name, indeed. Who are the other nine?”
“Why, strom! There aren’t any, to be sure.”
