“Master Fu-Ming-Fung,” was all Vad Valadian said by way of introduction.
That name sounded idiotically ridiculous. This stikitche, then, required an alias. He bowed gracefully and stood, silent and waiting. So they discussed terms for the disposal of the queen and her chief ministers. The whole conversation was repugnant to any normal person.
The one-eared Khibil, I had ventured to believe, was not a villain. Now, it appeared, he was, and a thoroughgoing one, at that. No doubt this unholy pair had promised vast rewards for loyal service once they became empress and emperor of Loh. So he'd found a top-class assassin for them.
When the bokkertu had been concluded the vad and the stikitche left bowing and scraping. Licria sprayed perfume into the air and the place stank like a rest home for Sylvies. The glance she flashed Schian and her abrupt order to the guards to leave were unequivocal. Now was my time to burst in and tell them their fortunes.
Just at that critical moment a soft shushing footfall sounded along the secret passage. Instantly, quicker than thought, I was flat against the wall in deep shadow away from the light through the spyhole.
There were three of them, creeping cautiously along. As they passed bands of light I saw they wore dark clothes and weapons glittered. So the devils had followed me in here! They were an inconvenience. We were bound to make a noise. Still—the lynxter loosened soundlessly in the scabbard.
The three black-robed men halted before the spyhole. One peered through. At once I saw the truth of the situation, and my unwanted part in it. By the pustular armpits and infected nose of Makki-Grodno! What a mess!
Even as they burst into the room beyond the spyhole so I charged.
It was all a confusion of action and swirling capes and glittering steel, of Licria screaming and Schian swearing and trying to draw his sword and of the stikitches abruptly aware of the peril at their backs trying to switch targets. Schian did for one and I stretched the other two out. The guards smashed into the room, breaking the little bolts.
“It's all over!” I shouted, and I used all the authority I could muster. The guards halted, uncertain, and I stared at Licria who was climbing to her feet from the cover of the sofa. “Tell them, princess. Your life is safe, and so is the life of the trylon.” If she read a double-meaning into the words that was my intention.
Her face, always pale, resembled the ashes of a fire dead before dawn. She trembled. “The shints,” she mumbled, and she bit her lips, and stared at the corpses. She gestured. “Drag them away!”
Schian lifted the bloody tip of his sword towards me.
“Where—how did you get here?”
“As to that, I will tell you—and the princess. Now, do as you are bid!”
He jumped and fairly snarled at the guards. Now was another moment of crisis, this time a personal peril. If he said: “Kill him!” what would then eventuate?
He did not. Licria took a huge draught of wine, and choked, and more collapsed on the sofa than sat down. Schian looked uncertain.
I said: “You have had a lucky escape. Had I not come to talk to—”
Schian snorted his contempt. “Talk, you shint! You came to kill us.”
“Had I wanted you dead would I have stopped the stikitches—onker!”
He flushed up. He was still more shaken than he realized. I went on in my old gravel-shifting voice: “I wanted to tell you to stop sending assassins against us. I have overlooked your impertinence, your treachery and your pathetic assassination attempts. But my patience is not unlimited.” I nodded my head towards the door. “Those fellows were sent by someone who had no doubt suffered from your attentions in the past.”
Licria looked up. She whispered. “The queen?”
Staring at her, I saw the way her cosmetics were flaking and running.
“Hardly. She has no need of that to discipline you.”
That made her angry, her blood thumping in reaction to the scare. She flung her head up and opened her mouth and I cut in: “Your life has been saved by me before this. Or have you forgotten?”
She was looking up at me. She stood up, swaying only a little. In a small voice, a wondering voice, she said: “No, I have not forgotten. And if what you say is true, you have saved my life again.” She was staring at me. “I had not realized just what—what kind of man you are.”
Schian started to say something and she snapped out: “Do be quiet, Ge-fu!” With the dark stains of kohl ruining her face—a fact of which she must have been unaware—she looked at me. Now I have seen that kind of look on women's faces before. And, always, by Krun, it means trouble.
I said: “I have told you why I came to see you. Leave us alone. Now—remberee.” I started for the secret passage.
“Wait—” she called.
Schian snarled out: “I'll have that bricked up, by Hlo-Hli!”
“It's no use, princess.” I spoke hard. “No use.” I ducked my head and stepped into the passage and started off along briskly, very briskly, by Vox! If Schian sent guards after me, well that would be in his nature. Also, he had completely missed the byplay. There was no doubt at all that if ever their plans came to fruition he'd wind up in a sack weighted with chains in the river.
If this new assassin was as good as Vad Valadian claimed then Queen Satra was in trouble. Whatever she might believe about her ability to protect herself and however much she might shrug off Licria as a real threat, she'd have to be warned. The assassin looked competent. That smart, well set-up young fellow exuded menace. It hung like an aura of bright darkness about him.
In the event I cleared off out of the villa without trouble.
What Delia said when I walked in I will not repeat. After she let me go I told her what had happened. When I'd finished, she said: “They might take heed. Oh, and Mevancy is here with a friend.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. From Vallia. Caspar Del Vanian. A famous artist. He's come to paint Queen Satra's portrait.”
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* * *
Chapter seventeen
Mevancy reclined in a graceful posture on a chaise longue with the radiance of the Suns of Scorpio reflecting in from the high north window. She had a filmy scarf cunningly draped about her back with the ends beautifully folded about both her forearms. Her bindles were thus concealed. Apart from the scarf she wore no other clothes.
Her usual high color burned into a brilliant rosy flush as I barged into the room. “Cabbage! Get out!”
The lively young fellow in the painter's smock had his back to me, working at his easel. He turned his head, saw me, and dropped his charcoal.
“Majister!” he said, his pleasing face with the brown hair and eyes frank and not over-awed. “You completely fooled me.”
“Are you going to go, cabbage, or are you going to gawp?”
“Now then, pigeon. This isn't the first time I've seen—”
“No! Well, you needn't assume—”
“I'll see you both at the second breakfast.”
I took myself off, and if I say I was chortling away inside, I am sure you will understand and forgive.
At the second breakfast Delia said: “Will you tell us all the news of Vallia, Caspar? We've been a little out of touch lately.”
“I'm afraid, majestrix, I too, have been out of touch. I've been—”
About to burst out: “Knocking off more targets, I suppose?” I did not. I clamped my black-fanged winespout around a handful of palines.
Caspar gave me a quick glance and went on: “Painting in the aracloins.”
Well, that was what he wanted to do, instead of painting portraits of the empty-headed lords and ladies of Kregen. I gave him a mean stare.
I said: “How'd you come to meet Vad Valadian?”
He jumped. Calmly, he said: “Mevancy arranged it.”
Swiveling to look at her I lifted an eyebrow.
Mevancy looked hard at me and then glanced at Delia.
“Pigeon!” I snapped, and I own I hear
d the sharpness in my voice. “The Empress Delia knows about the Everoinye. There are no secrets now.”
“Yes,” she nodded her head. “Yes, this was arranged with the knowledge of the Everoinye.”
“Well, what the blue blazes do they think they're playing at? Surely they know that she-leem Licria will be far worse than Satra?”
There ensued a little pause, and then Caspar said: “Mevancy—when did you tell Drajak—I mean the emperor—?”
“I didn't.”
“You can knock off the majister bit, Caspar. Drajak will do.”
“But how—?” they both demanded. Delia laughed.
When she'd finished telling them, Mevancy blew out her rosy cheeks. “I've read the stories about Dray Prescot and—well, now, by Spurl, I really believe every last one!”
“The queen didn't send the assassins last night.”
“One of her ministers,” Delia observed.
“Too scared to tell the queen the truth,” said Mevancy.
“All the same,” I said, shaking my head. “I don't think putting Satra out of the way is altogether a bad idea if someone worthy could be found to be empress.” I looked at Mevancy. “But Licria—”
“Drajak.” Caspar leaned forward. “The plan is to prove to the queen that Licria is plotting against her. Simple revenge ought to follow.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling faintly foolish.
Then, with a little laugh that probably sounded like the growl of a goaded zhantil, I added: “So that explains this mysterious Princess's Swordsman you women were so secretive about.”
“Caspar the Peaker—in person!”
With a fresh bunch of palines balanced on my palm I said: “So how do you prove to the queen that what you say is true?”
“No problem—”
“No, no problem when you admit you're a stikitche in private with her! She'll have the guards in and your head off so fast your feet won't, as they say in Clishdrin, touch the ground.”
“I'm sure Caspar will be convincing—”
“Maybe, pigeon. But he'll have to be convincing pretty damn quick!”
“This is not the first time this deception has been played.” Caspar moved his empty fruit juice glass on the table, making patterns. “I must claim, with due modesty—and I am not a modest person—that I know how to conduct myself in these circumstances.”
With that assurance I had to be content. Delia said that she was sure Caspar would handle the whole business admirably, and that gave me confidence.
Having to be as content as I could be with the situation over the succeeding days I turned to other affairs that pressed in. Many letters were written—a whole library of correspondence, by Vox!—and so I was able to keep my finger on the pulse of what went forward in Paz. The speed with which Queen Satra re-imposed her will on Walfarg impressed me as it awed everyone. Her activities meant she was too busy to sit for a portrait. No doubt she felt she had to accomplish much in little time—a feeling with which I was only too familiar. This meant that Caspar was not called to the palace and so the plan could not go ahead. Mevancy's portrait bloomed.
“Trylon Schian is becoming so impatient I think he'll burst a blood vessel.” Caspar wiped his brushes as he spoke, head on one side regarding his easel. “As for the little Licria—she bides her time like a syatra.”
“The queen will want the portrait soon.” Delia spoke positively. “She knows her time is drawing to a close and she will use it as propaganda. Her army grows larger every day.”
“Once she has all Walfarg,” I said somberly, “if she marches across the frontiers, that will—”
“What will happen then is in the hands of Opaz.”
“And the Everoinye.”
The very next day Satra sent for Caspar.
Just after he'd gone off with servants to carry his artist's gear and a bunch of Delia's lads of EDLG as guards, Deb-Lu-Quienyin walked in on us as we were thinking about the mid-afternoon meal. He looked grave.
After greetings he said: “As you know we have set cauls of protection about the ruby of the Skantiklar in Makilorn.”
“Not—?” exclaimed Delia, somewhat crossly.
“Not yet, thanks to the Ones of the Seven Arcades. Carazaar has been attempting to break the seals, and failing.”
“Thank Opaz—and you—for that!”
“It is evident that he has not yet rebuilt sufficient kharrna. But we believe he soon will. What he is doing is to use force.”
“Shanks?”
“Yes, Dray, unfortunately. Seg and Inch will be flying in soon from Tambu. They have fought the damned Fish Faces there and succeeded admirably in driving them off—so Carazaar is busy transferring them to attack Makilorn.”
“This is a crisis, then.” Delia slapped the hilt of her rapier. “Another one, confound all the Opaz-forsaken Fish Faces on Kregen!”
I said: “It looks as though we'll all have to go down to Tsungfaril and see about defending Makilorn.” I snorted. “What a prospect, by Vox!”
“If we can prevent Carazaar's forces from taking the city and breaking into the palace where the ruby is hidden, his kharrna may be overcome.” Deb-Lu pulled his ear. “I say may be. He will be most powerful, most powerful indeed.”
“You mean the nearer he is to the damned red stone the greater he can work on your protection?”
“Exactly.”
“Then we'll just have to stop him, blatter him good!”
Around then I would not have been in the least surprised if a scorpion the size of my hand had stalked in with his eight legs going up and down and his flaunting tail curving up, its black sting and purple sac of poison very nasty. As I've said, Kregish scorpions have these eyes on stalks, not usual, and when the scorpion of the Star Lords makes eye to eye contact, it is, I can testify, a most spine-erecting feeling. As for hunting by sound, there is on Kregen a swift little arachnoid of which it is said he can hear your muscles moving your bones about inside your body. This eenlan, all glistening brown, yellow and black, gives rise to the old-fashioned saying: “As noisy as an eenlan.”
No scorpion appeared so the Star Lords were not going to interfere—at least, not just yet—although they hovered near, damn near, by Bunje Kazar the Effable!
Caspar arrived back well pleased with the first sitting, saying that, as usual, he was painting the queen's head and her clothes would be worn by a slave or a lay figure. He saw the graveness on our faces.
“It looks as though I won't be here for you to complete my picture, Caspar.” Mevancy held down her annoyance very well.
“Oh?”
When we'd told him the news he screwed up that young fresh face, making his few remaining spots dance about. “You'll need armies, then.”
Rollo, who'd joined us for the evening meal, interjected: “And mages.”
“Quite,” said Deb-Lu.
“One interesting thing I heard,” said Caspar. “The queen told one of her ministers—that bloodthirsty vorsim, Pallan Quincing—that if any Hlo-Hli forsaken Shanks marched into her territories she'd string them up, make all of ‘em dance on air.”
“Only,” I grunted sourly, “they won't march. They'll fly.”
Delia said: “Satra has no real experience of Shanks.”
All the same, what Caspar said cheered me a trifle, for obvious reasons.
Knowing that Deb-Lu was maintaining contact with our forces in Tambu, I asked him: “When do you expect Seg and Inch and the others back, Deb-Lu?”
“Oh, now they know where the Schtarkins are going they intend to follow as soon as they've regrouped their forces.”
I cannot say I felt too pleased about that, by Vox. Regrouping of forces is usually a euphemism for a process following highly unpleasant occurrences.
Delia put her hand over mine. “Nothing frightful. We'd have heard.”
“I suppose so.”
So, as you can see, the situation was much like the curate's egg. We all cleared off for the night and sleep, for once
, did not come easily. If only—if only! Well, if ‘if onlys’ were not ifs but facts, two worlds of which I know a little would not be the same places.
Here was a situation where I could do with having the Everoinye use their powers to put me in two places at once. Deb-Lu's insistence that we remain in Hiclantung was about to be proved correct in the fascinating plot cooked up by the women to defeat the charming Licria. I wouldn't want to miss that. At the same time I had to go down to Makilorn and blatter Fish Heads. If Carazaar laid his claws on the ruby there—well, by the dripping nostrils and blackened teeth of Makki-Grodno!—how many would he have then?
Although without the aid of the Star Lords I could not be in two places at once, other remarkable innovations were taking place in Loh that would have astonished almost as much. Queen Satra was actively creating a flying service. Her air service was to be modeled on that of Vallia. Delia told me how much Satra had been awed, impressed, and eventually angered by her flight aboard Vendayha Lady. Out of sheer politeness—and because Delia is the kindest person on two worlds—Delia had put Vendayha Lady onto a regular shuttle ferrying the balance of Satra's army and entourage to Hiclantung. Satra grasped the war potential in that, by Krun!
“So that means another customer for vollers in the market,” I said.
“It's all progress, my heart!” I saw she was teasing me, although the matter was serious, and I understood she was right. We had to maintain a perspective on all our diverse problems. “We have a decision to make. Caspar and the little Licria's comeuppance, or Makilorn and Carazaar.”
“No matter what Deb-Lu may say now, there is no choice, is there?”
“Of course not.”
“I just hope Seg and Inch are all right. I don't like the sound of that regrouping.”
“How many more times, you onker of a fambly! We'd have heard.”
The only answer to that was to kiss her, which I did with great zeal and thoroughness. She kissed me back with a hungry passion that spoke eloquently of her fears for the future.
When Caspar returned that evening from his painting session with the queen he stood in the doorway of the room we used as a lounge and stared at us all in the lamplights. A stray shaft of radiance caught the corners of his eyes and for a moment his eyes glittered. We all sensed the significance of the moment. Only for that instant he stood, rigid and somehow taller than his height, then he stepped forward into the room and the spell was broken.
Scorpio Triumph [Dray Prescot #43] Page 14