and starving, so that they had at last stolen an airboat and made good their escape, Nath Nazabhan drew me privily aside.
Seeing that Nath had something he wished to get off his chest I moved quietly with him to a curtained alcove. I had been watching one of Kov Vodun’s people with a puzzled interest. This man — if it was a man, for in the enveloping green cloak and hood the figure could as easily have been a woman — moved with a slow stately upright stance. He (or she) carried his (or her) hands thrust deeply into the wide sleeves of the robe, crossed upon the chest. The waist was cinctured by a narrow golden chain from which the lockets for rapier and dagger swung emptily. There was merely black shadow within the hood, and a fugitive gleam of eye.
Upon the breast of the swathing green cloak, and very small, appeared the maroon and gray and the leaping Sea-Barynth. So I turned away, guessing this personage to be an adviser to Kov Vodun. If he (or she) turned out to be a Kataki in disguise, or some other evil-minded rast, my people would soon find out.
Nath said: “I suppose he is genuine? I mean, the real kov? He could be a spy, still working for Yantong.”
“He could be genuine and the real kov and still be working for Yantong.”
“By Vox, yes!”
One of the clever tricks an emperor has to know how to perform is judging character. So many people judge character by a person’s relations with society or established social orders; to perform the difficult task properly you have to judge if a person is being true to his own basic beliefs. This is fundamental. What goes even beyond that, penetrating into the unknown depths beyond the fundament — if, truly, that be possible — is to judge not only a person’s adherence to his own beliefs and therefore his own qualities of character; but to judge if those beliefs match up to what you yourself believe. If the two square — fine. If they do not — beware!
A part of the puzzle was solved for us almost at once. The least important part, to be sure. A Jiktar walked across the Kov Vodun and he moved a little diffidently, I thought. He wore a smart uniform of sky-blue tunic and madder-red breeches, and because he was Nath Orcantor, known as Nath the Frolus, and a well-liked regimental commander, he wore his rapier and main gauche as a matter of uniform dress.
He had raised a regiment of totrixmen for the defense of Vondium, and because he was from Ovvend he had insisted on clothing his regiment in blue tunics and red breeches, a combination unusual for Vallia. Now he halted before the kov and was introduced by Chuktar Ty-Je Efervon, a wily Pachak who was Nath the Frolus’s Brigade commander.
“Orcantor,” said Kov Vodun. “Of course. Your family is well known in Ovvend — shipping, I think.”
“That is so, kov. And I remember you when you visited Ovvend with your father. I am saddened at his loss, for he was a fine man and a great kov.”
“His death shall be avenged,” said Vodun, and he spoke between his teeth. All who watched him saw the flash of insensate rage. “I shall not rest until the devils are brought to justice.” His left hand dropped to his belt and groped, and found no familiar rapier hilt. But we all understood the message. Justice, from Vodun Alloran, the Kov of Kaldi, would be meted out with the sword.
“So he is the real kov,” said Nath.
“It would seem so. I think it is high time Naghan Vanki earned his hire.” Naghan Vanki had come in from his estates and was prepared to resume his position as the emperor’s chief spy-master. We had crossed swords in the past, and come to rapprochements. Now, with Delia to smooth the way, Naghan Vanki, Vad of Nav-Sorfall, was prepared to work with me. “He must sniff out all he can of this Kov Vodun.”
“Agreed. Vodun has a way with him, a presence. The ladies are quite smitten.”
And, by Krun, that was true, for the ladies were clustered around Kov Vodun now and were hanging on his words. Vodun had a story to tell, of hair-breadth escapes and disguises and swift flights in the lights of the Moons of Kregen. That flash of rage we had seen in him had struck like a lightning bolt, and had as quickly vanished. But Vodun would not rest until his father had been avenged.
“Well, Nath, I cannot shilly-shally about like this all day. I have a new flour mill to inspect, and then, I fancy you may feel it incumbent on me to take a look at the Second. Is this in your mind?”
He laughed.
“They are in good heart, now. It is only miserable skulking sorts of formations that do not relish showing off for their emperor.”
We had barely touched on that awful moment when the Second had recoiled. They had broken at the junction of Kerchuri and Kerchuri, the two wings of the Phalanx. They had been forced back on their rear ranks, a seething sea of bronze and crimson and many of the pikes had gone up. A pikeman whose pike stabs air is of little use in the front ranks. But the Third’s Sixth Kerchuri had swung up and held the torrent of voves, and the Second had closed up, reformed, and held. That, as I pointed out to Nath, was the achievement.
After the break, they had taken a fresh grasp on courage, had breathed in, and then smashed back, file by file, and the pikes had come down all in line, and they had driven the clansmen recoiling back.
“There are many bobs to be distributed, majister.”
“We shall make of the ceremony something special.” The men had earned their medals, and if they called them bobs in fine free-and-easy fashion, they valued them nonetheless. Making my excuses to the company — which had thinned now as the people went about their work -
I slipped away without ceremony. The Sword Watch were there. Delia gave me a smile and I said: “I must talk to you this evening, my heart.” Whereat her face grew grave and she understood that I did not talk thus lightly. But I went out and mounted up on a fine fresh zorca, Grumbleknees, a gray, and took myself off to the flour mill.
The original mill had burned in the Time of Troubles and the new structure incorporated refinements the wise men said would increase production as well as milling a finer flour. If I do not dwell on this flour mill it is precisely because this inspection was typical of so many that had to be undertaken. Everyone wanted to shine in the sight of the emperor, and although I could, had I wished, regard that as petty crawling lick-spittling behavior, I did not. We all worked for Vondium and for Vallia and my job was to make sure we all did the best we could.
The streaming mingled lights of the Suns of Scorpio flooded down as the waterwheel groaned and heaved and turned over as the sluice gates opened and the white water poured through. I looked up. Feeding the people would be by the measure of this mill that much easier. So I looked up, and with a hissing thud a long Lohvian arrow sprouted abruptly from the wood, a hand’s breadth from my head.
Chapter Three
“Hold fast!” My bellow ripped into the air. The bows of the Sword Watch, lifted, arrows nocked, drawn back, poised. Those sinewy fingers did not release the pull on the bowstrings by a fraction.
“There he goes!” shouted Cleitar, furious.
We could all see the bowman who had loosed at me clambering up the outside staircase of a half-ruined building across the canal. He wore a drab gray half-cape, and his legs were bare. He carried the long Lohvian bow in his left hand, and the quiver over his shoulder was stuffed with shafts. Like the arrow that still quivered in the wood by my head, each one was fletched with feathers of somber purple.
“A damned stikitche!” raved Cleitar. “Majister — you allow him to escape. Let us-”
“Lower your bows.”
The archers in the detachment of the Sword Watch obeyed.
Targon the Tapster, his face scowling, his brilliance of uniform which lent him, like them all, a barbaric magnificence, aflame under the suns, heeled his zorca across.
“Assassins, majister. They should be put down-”
These officers of the Sword Watch had not always been fighting men. I think it true to say their military experience had all been gained in contact with me. We had fought together in clearing Vallia. Cleitar the Standard, a big bulky man with bitterness in his soul, had been Cleitar the Smith until the Iron Riders had sundered him forever from his family and home. Targon the Tapster and Naghan ti Lodkwara had met over the matter of strayed or stolen ponshos. Now they formed a body of close comrades I came to value more and more as the seasons and the
