Shadow

    'I have permission to take a person designated by you to Allaban to meet the prince, the king now,' Shadow said. 'He will be returned safely within four days and will confirm that Vindax is alive, although still very ill.'

    'How do you propose to get by the wilds on Eagle Dome?' Ninomar demanded.

    'I came that way,' Shadow said. 'They will be no problem. You agree, Keeper?'

    Vonimor suddenly bellowed, 'That Karaman! I told you in Schagarn--'

    'Silence!' the duke roared.

    'I know about Schagarn, Keeper,' Shadow said. For the first time his cold expression softened, almost into a smile. 'It is suddenly very relevant, isn't it?'

    He stood there, glowing against the sky, and it seemed that the whole audience was still holding its breath. Why did the bird not attack him?

    Ninomar took a step forward. 'King Jarkadon has been proclaimed. He has issued a declaration--'

    'Silence!' the duke roared again.

    'With respect, Your Grace,' Ninomar said firmly, wondering how much of this sudden courage was from the lingering effects of the wine, 'these are public matters. Very well! I have orders which do not recognize the status of Vindax as crown prince--'

    'Or as a prince at all, I suppose?' Shadow interrupted. A quiet sigh went around the whole group.

    'I have orders to take that person to Ramo.'

    'Go ahead and try,' Shadow said.

    'I also have, downstairs, a promotion for Ensign Sald Harl to the rank of flight commander.'

    The lone young man's face turned furious red in the sunlight. 'Take that to Ramo and stuff it in his royal ear!'

    'Shadow,' the duke said quietly, 'there is more. King Aurolron had apparently put your parents in the cells. King Jarkadon has released them.'

    Shadow's eyes narrowed, and he stiffened. 'That would be because of you, Keeper, I suppose?' he said.

    'I don't know,' the duke said.

    'How do you feel about tyrants who use family members as hostages?' Shadow demanded bitterly. 'If you are suggesting that I should trust Jarkadon, then I can only say that I knew him when he was a small boy. He was a little turd then, and he is a bigger turd now. You know what his father said about him.'

    Ninomar gulped at such treason.

    'Ukarres!' the duke roared, spinning around. 'Did you show him that letter?'

    'Yes, he did,' Shadow said. 'You knew Aurolron--he always offered the small end of the egg.'

    There appeared to be a standoff. IceFire turned her head to look at something, and the spectators stiffened, but nothing more happened. The other birds were absolutely still, eerily so.

    The duke stepped forward beside Ninomar. 'Shadow,' he said, 'leave personalities out of this. We have matters of very grave import here. You say you know about Schagarn. I think that others do not. I also am summoned to court, and I would want to disclose those hidden things to His Majesty. Would you agree to allow me a hectoday to go to Ramo and return, without any change in the present status?'

    Ninomar was getting very tired of hearing about this Schagarn and of not hearing about it.

    Shadow shook his head. 'l do not meddle in politics, Keeper, and I have no authority to do so. I will give you my personal opinion, though: Nothing is likely to happen within the next hectoday. But that is only my opinion, and it carries no weight.'

    'The king should know,' the duke said.

    'But who is the king?' Shadow asked. 'You are the authority on the Rand. Do I return and tell King Vindax that he has your loyalty? Or do you support the usurper, Jarkadon?'

    Nicely put, Ninomar thought. And he himself must make that decision also, on behalf of the few royal troopers he had with him. If his choice was not the same as the duke's, then he was going to be in the castle dungeon before three bells.

    'I think I need time to consider,' the duke said. 'Again I offer you my hospitality, upon the honor of my house.'

    'And again I decline it. Decide.'

    The duke had gone very pale, and Ninomar suspected that he was not much better himself. Jarkadon's two sets of orders showed that news of his brother's survival would not provoke an abdication.

    'You are accusing me of conniving in an attempt to murder Vindax,' the keeper said at last. 'Yet you want me to do homage to him? Would he accept it?'

    Now it was Shadow who hesitated. 'We did not know of the king's death,' he admitted. He shrugged. 'It makes no difference. Vindax agrees that you were not privy to the plot, so he will accept your fealty. But the assassin must be punished--he is adamant on that.'

    Now--and much too late, he knew--Ninomar realized that they were discussing Elosa. After NailBiter launched, her bird had been next to the prince's. He and the bishop had never even considered Elosa. A child? But she could have done it, and the prince could have seen, albeit too late to stop his launch. The official inquiry had failed, then, and there was another problem.

    The duke was silent, and his shaded face was visibly running sweat. If he supported Jarkadon, then the proclamation of bastardy effectively named him as a traitor for fathering Vindax and he must turn against his own son as a pretender. If he supported Vindax, then his daughter was a would-be assassin and therefore a traitor and he would also be in rebellion against the established court.

    So the duke must choose between son and daughter. And if Vindax was not his son--and the duke at least could not be in doubt--then he was certainly the true king, but the duke's daughter must be sacrificed...while if Vindax was truly his son, then he was still a traitor and he and the queen dowager could suffer traitors' deaths, regardless of who was on the throne...Ninomar's head was spinning.

    'Go back to your Vindax,' the duke said, 'and ask a pardon. Bring it here--'

    'No!' Shadow said. 'Kneel now, here, before me, and pledge your unconditional allegiance to King Vindax VII, or I return and tell him that you are in league with the usurper Jarkadon.'

    This was a commoner speaking to the premier noble?

    'Then your Vindax will remain forever an exile in Allaban!'

    'What was done at Schagarn is ended,' Shadow replied quietly. 'What if Vindax joins forces with the republic to recover his throne? You threaten war, Keeper? Kneel and swear!'

    The duke moved as fast as an eagle. Two steps, and he had snatched a bow from one tub and an arrow from another and the bow was drawn and the feather at his eye before Ninomar knew what was happening.

    But Shadow had moved also--he spun around and leaped out into space and was gone, as the arrow passed where he had been.

    Women and men screamed in unison.

    Deliberately, IceFire hunched and launched and vanished; Ninomar had not noticed that she had been unshackled. Elosa wailed loudly.

    But Shadow? Ninomar thought of that terrible drop and the smashed table, and he suddenly slid to his knees and vomited up great quantities of mulled wine. When he had recovered, people were streaming down the stairs and a few others were having hysterics and yet others had hooded the birds and slipped between them to peer over the edge and look down into the darkness at the body.

    'Well, that is the end of him,' he said aloud. 'He must have been completely crazy all along, and the prince is dead.'

    There was a dry wheeze behind him. 'He was not crazy,' Ukarres said. 'He has been to Allaban. That was not the end of him.'

    After a moment he added, 'But it may be the end of us.'