gang would make a fascinating task to unravel and learn. Like me, she used aliases as it suited her. In that, at the least, the very littlest least, she was like me.
It was damn small comfort.
Vondium hove into view and the place was burning in many areas, the fierce orange flames reflecting in the canals, the proud buildings on their hills and islands burning and collapsing. I stared, shocked back to present crises.
The long straggling black fingers of fugitives clogged roads leading away from the capital, the canals lay deserted with all the narrow boats gone, and not a flier sped through the sky apart from my own sole voller I had stolen from Udo.
The palace was not burning and a Pachak guard ringed it to prevent looting. The devoted loyalty of the Pachaks through their honor system of nikobi was never better demonstrated. I landed in the great kyro before the palace. A guard checked me quickly and efficiently — those guards again, men, just men, doing a job, and faithful, not mere lay figures to be spitted and chopped and cast down all bloody and forgotten — and I was led off to their Chuktar.
A few quick glances told me that all the Pachaks hired by the emperor for duties in various wings of the palace had been collected together. Even the Pachaks from the wing given over to the use of Delia and myself, for with the Chuktar stood our Pachak paktun Jiktar, Laka Pa-Re. He greeted me warmly. The Chuktar, the highest of the military ranks apart from princes and kovs and generals and kings and their like, was Pola Je-Du. He looked more haggard than I liked.
“Lahal, prince. The situation, as you see, is ripe.”
“Lahal, Pola Je-Du. Your orders?”
“To guard the palace. Since the defeats the emperor-”
“Defeats? I had heard of one.”
“The Hamalese fought well, so I am told. The Vallian army was defeated in detail. The Crimson Bowmen fought brilliantly, those that marched. The others-”
I looked at Laka Pa-Re, remembering how he had warned me that the guards were being bribed. Laka nodded. “The guards who took bribes were weeded out. Naghan Vanki saw to that. But the damage had been done.”
“And the various elements disaffected in the capital and the provinces took the chance to rise. There has been much mischief, prince.” The Pachak Chuktar pulled his moustache. Smoke billowed up from a dome across the kyro and the distant sounds of shouting and the crashings of masonry reached us, thin and attenuated. “The emperor marched out with all that was left to him. For us, we guard the palace.”
Not for the first time I wondered how the emperor had ever remained emperor for so long. With these Pachaks a great deal might be done — and then I reconsidered. There were perhaps five hundred of them. Against the Hamalese army, against the mobs and the irregulars and the mercenaries of the factions, would they have made all that much difference? The Pachaks would fight in their superb fashion when the first looters arrived with whichever army reached Vondium first. As a reserve, as a hard core, they would serve. Maybe the emperor was still the crafty old devil I thought him.
“And the Princess Majestrix?”
The question was followed by a general shaking of heads in the small, round, unadorned Pachak helmets. No one had any news of the Princess Majestrix.
More information was given me — of the arrests of men hitherto considered loyal to the emperor, of the way Queen Lushfymi more and more obsessed him to the exclusion of all else, of the riots, the burnings and lootings and killings, of the exodus from the capital as the various hostile armies closed in, Hamalese, rebels, insurgents. And I knew a fresh and powerful host inspired by a revived corpse could now be added to that number. .
It seemed to me that Phu-si-Yantong was drawing ever closer to his insane dream. But he could not control all the foes of Vallia advancing on Vondium. In that, paradoxically, lay a slender hope. In that wide and grandiose kyro with its surrounding colonnades and superb architecture the slender line of Pachaks ringing the palace and the small knot of officers all looked fragile, alone, gray chalk marks against the brilliance. In the radiance of the suns a chill wind blew dust across the flagstones. A confused noise drew our attention to the far side of the square. The sound of a multitude, the ragged tramp of feet, the jingle of weapons, the creaking of carts, made the officers walk along the ranks, tautening up their men. The Pachaks moved with the quiet, well-ordered air of men waiting for business. They were ready. They would earn their hire.
Calmly the Chuktar gave a last few orders. I said: “I will stand and fight with you, Chuktar Pola Je-Du, if you will.”
“I will it so, prince, and deem it an honor.”
No victorious army of irregulars, no raging army of mercenaries broke into the square. A beaten army debouched and began to straggle across the stones. They were wounded, and dusty, wrapped in bloody bandages, exhausted. At their head mounted on a drooping-headed zorca rode the emperor. This was an army shattered and near-destroyed.
Krahnik-drawn carts brought in the seriously wounded. A few flags drooped here and there, ripped and bloodied standards. A couple of squadrons of totrix cavalry retained their guidons. But for all else these men formed a mere mob.
The emperor rode slowly toward the group of high ranking Pachak officers. At his side, mounted on a pure white zorca, rode Queen Lushfymi. She wore armor. Somehow, it did not look absurd; gilded breastplate, flaunting helmet crowned with the red and yellow of Vallia, a jingling assortment of weapons buckled about her and her mount. I stood, grim-faced, prepared to be exceedingly nasty. Eighteen
The Hand of Phu-Si-Yantong
In the emperor’s private inner sanctum he placed his goblet of wine on the polished table and banged a fist down on his knee.
“I’m not finished yet, son-in-law, so don’t take that tone with me. Queen Lushfymi thinks we have as good a chance as any of defeating these rasts from Hamal.”
Only a few of us had gathered here after the shattered remnants of the army had been attended to as best we could. The Pachaks still stood guard. Now Queen Lush, half a dozen of the pallans who remained, Chuktar Wang-Nalgre-Bartong and myself conferred with the emperor. The news was as bad as it could be without being total disaster. In detail all the forces arrayed against the foes of the emperor had been defeated.
“Kov Layco Jhansi will yet bring in a victory, son-in-law. Once he disposes of these scheming rasts of Falinur the rest will see they had better toe the line.”
“Falinur?” I forced myself to remain calm.
“Aye! The kovnate you made me give to your so-called friend Seg Segutorio. They have risen like flies and march to war — and where is this precious Seg Segutorio, Kov of Falinur? Skulked off as you do
— or does he lead his host against me?”
The emperor’s hand curled in a claw about the stem of the goblet. I couldn’t tell him that Seg had been hurled back to his home in Erthyrdrin after his baptism in the Sacred Pool — banished like all my friends to their homes. So, instead, I said: “And what of Vomanus? His Kovnate of Vindelka marches with Falinur. They quarrel over Vinnur’s Garden, so-”
“Vomanus? That great rascal. Where is he you may well ask.”
I judged that many a wight had taken himself off from the capital in these troublesome times; but I felt disappointment with Vomanus. He was a careless fellow, true; but he was half-brother to Delia. . All the time we spoke and argued and planned meaningless plans in the face of the catastrophe, Queen Lush sat upright, toying with her wine, looking at the emperor fixedly. When he glanced fondly at her she would smile. She wore a simple robe of a deep yellow, and not a scrap of jewelry. She looked different from the easy, casual, bitchy minx I had left here.
“Layco Jhansi will subdue the central provinces. The southwest awaits events. The southeast-” Here the emperor looked pointedly at Lykon Crimahan, the Kov of Forli. Him you have met before. Now he was the Pallan of the Treasury, the new pallan, for Pallan Rodway had long ago passed away and the last incumbent suffered from a cleavage where his neck should be.
Forli, often called the Blessed Forli, lies up an eastern tributary of the Great River and extends to the east coast opposite northern Veliadrin. Lykon Crimahan had no love for me. Yet, I believed he hewed to his own faith
