few Manhounds in our ranks would do wonders for the discomfiture of those who opposed us.
Inside the doorway with my bare feet sinking into Walfarg weave rugs, the towel dangled over into my face. I could see nothing and gave the towel a swipe out of the way as I walked on. When the yellow toweling whisked away I stood gaping more than a trifle foolishly at Delia. She looked like a twisted bundle tied up ready for the laundry.
Instinctively, for this was Kregen, I leaped forward and even half-naked straight from the bath a dagger dangled at my side. This I drew.
Delia laughed.
“You silly old fossil. Just stand still and let me get out of this slowly and properly.”
“By Zair-”
“Wait.”
I waited.
She sat on the rug with her right leg bent over her left, the left foot tucked in and pointed and her left arm stretched down her right foot from knee to ankle. Her upper body twisted right around from the waist, although she sat firmly on the floor, until I thought she could look back over her own shoulders. Her right arm was bent behind her back. And that rounded right knee was jammed tightly up under her left armpit. She looked — well, she looked marvelous, of course, all tied up like that of her own volition — but the power and serenity flowing from her took my breath away.
Carefully, moving with a grace that caught at my throat, she unwound herself. At last she lay back, her arms at her side, and for all anyone would know she might be laid out ready for her last journey to the Kregen equivalent of the Valley of the Kings. Then, with a smile, a small, cheeky smile, she sat up and said, “I’m ravenous!”
“There is tea in the Sapphire Reception Room. Shouldn’t you wear a leotard for that kind of thing?”
“In my own bedroom? With only a grizzly old graint of a husband to blunder in?”
“Well, you run perilous risks-”
“Not now — I don’t. I am for tea and miscils and palines-”
“What was that?”
She told me the Kregish for the Spinal Twist, the equivalent to the Sanskrit Ardha-matsyendrasana.
“That’s all a part of the Disciplines of the Sisters of the Rose? We have similar although far less seductive exercises in the Krozairs.”
“Hardly exercises, Dray. A way of tuning in with Opaz, I think; a way of getting through material worlds to what really matters beyond them.”
“I know.”
Shaking my head at the marvel of Delia I saw about getting dressed. A simple tunic sufficed me, and Delia wore a soft laypom-colored tunic girded with a narrow belt fashioned from interlinked silver flowers. We both swung daggers from the belts. She looked gorgeous. The dress in its magical way set off the glory of her face and those brown eyes that could be so melting or so imperious, and added a special luster to the chestnut tints in her brown hair. Fit, she looked, radiant. As they say on Kregen, she had the yrium for an empress.
We went together through the hastily refurbished corridors and past blackened and windowless openings in the walls to the Sapphire Reception Room. My people were already there, changed and foaming for the meal. They waited for us, as was decent; but we were not late. We might have been, had Delia not been of so determined a nature.
In the absence of any properly organized palace retinue and court dignitaries, the rump made do as best they could. A major-domo — old Garfon the Staff — hobbled up to me, for he had taken an arrow in his heel and it was slow to heal, and banged the balass, golden-banded staff down on the flags by the door. I stopped his yell at once. If the people in there didn’t yet know me, then, by Vox, I was in the wrong business. And, yet, they could know only the outward me, the Dray Prescot who banged and barged about and thumped skulls and got things done. They could know nothing of the Dray Prescot who for long hours agonized over what to do for the best, and hoped he could do it, and trembled in doubt.
“A strange happenstance, majister,” old Garfon the Staff boomed. He was a mite put out, as all major-domos are, that he hadn’t got around to bellowing out titles. “Two embassies await audience and crave your indulgence.”
“Spit it out, Garfon, for my mouth is like the Ochre Limits.”
“They await audience in the Second Enrobing Chamber — that was spared except for the northeast corner of the roof — and, well, majister, it is indeed passing strange.”
Delia put her hand on my arm. So I just said, “Well?”
“One embassy is from the Racters.”
“Those cramphs. Well, they deal legally, or, at least, most of the time. Go on.”
“The other is from Layco Jhansi.”
A gasp broke from my people who listened.
My brows drew down.
“A deputation from the most powerful political party in Vallia — or, at least, the party that was the most powerful. And a deputation from the old emperor’s chief pallan, who betrayed him and tried to assassinate him. This is, good Garfon, exceedingly interesting.”
“It does not take a wizard to divine what they want,” said Delia.
Barty Vessler bubbled over, half-laughing, half-enraged at what he saw as the effrontery of it.
“Each is prepared to offer you an alliance, majister. That is the gist of it. One against the other, I’ll warrant.”
“Aye,” I said. “Each offers alliance, for they are at each other’s throats up there in the northwest.”
Delia laughed, a pure tinkle of sound.
I nodded.
“And, seeing they are like savage leems, one with the other, you have put both deputations, Garfon the Staff, both of them together in the same chamber.”
Chapter Three
The aftermath of that damned vision of the Wizard of Loh, Phu-Si-Yantong, clung unpleasantly. I would not forget what he had attempted against me during the Battle of Voxyri when he had sent me a personal and hideous vision of Delia betrayed by the arch-seducer, Quergey the Murgey. That plot had failed and in nerving me to take a fateful decision had brought Vondium into our hands. That was the battle in which the Phalanx had finally decided it could go up against any kind of army and win, without doubt, against my stern admonishments.
So my anger was still fizzing and undirected, for Yantong could be anywhere in Paz, manipulating his puppets at a distance. I could, for the moment, do nothing against him. So it behooved me to contain and control anger against the masters of these two deputations. They deserved anger — and the people of Vallia opposed to them would call it righteous anger — but I tried to look into the future. Alliances must be formed, in order to bring to a rapid close the agony that ripped Vallia apart.
Garfon the Staff went scurrying off to separate the two deputations. He went with Barty’s raucous comment that he might find the Second Enrobing Chamber a sea of blood if he did not hurry. One or two voices raised at that, commenting that the event might be a Good Thing, that it would rid the world of a few more rasts.
“Palines,” said Delia, with firm practicality, offering me the dish heaped with the succulent yellow berries. Scooping a handful I cocked an eye at Nath Nazabhan, as, cup in hand, he sauntered across. “Neither of them, majister, for my money.”
I chewed. “If we do not have to fight one or t’other, that will free half of our hands.”
Korero laughed.
“Mayhap. But an alliance with a traitor or a bunch of political chauvinists is not to my liking.” Nath was serious.
