She laughed small musical notes. “You decide quickly, my dear figlet. You should wait and get to know me awhile before you harden your opinion. I am just as much a slave as you fancy yourself to be. I am a slave to my freedom. And to my ship. I’m utterly devoted to my ability to jump into my ship and dash off into the stars, to the adventure of plotting a quick course between the paraspacial doorways and dropping out of non-space with a new planet swimming beneath me in the blackness like a fresh fruit on velvet. Oh, excuse me.”
“That’s all right,” the figlet quickly reassured her. “You can eat any plant you wish, as long as it’s not intelligent. And if it is intelligent, you will have a very difficult time eating it, especially if it’s a relative of mine.”
Spacebread chuckled. “Yes, the bravery of Sanguakkoid Warriors is well known. Why did your human sell you?”
The figlet looked sheepish. “One of his children tried to step on me, and I punched him in the nose. The mother insisted I be gotten rid of.”
“So he sold you to a slave trader.”
“No. He traded me. For two Gomporks. And so I ended up being sold at the bazaar today. I thought I was surely going to be gnorlff meat.” The figlet quivered at the thought.
“I like to foil a gnorlff when I can get the chance.” Spacebread winked devilishly. “I am hoping our friend Lord Dezorn will be in the regent’s party tonight. It will do me good to see it green with rage again.”
“Oh, you don’t think it will, do you!” The figlet popped into the air. “I don’t want to see it again. The sight of a gnorlff strikes terror into a figlet.”
“Don’t worry. You’re legally my property, and it has no right to you. But we shouldn’t be here long enough for any problems to develop.”
Spacebread went silent as a tall, thin figure appeared around a doorway and gestured at them.
“It’s the Protocol Officer,” Spacebread whispered.
They rose and hurried down the stairs into a lighted marble hall. The officer, a pale blue Ralphian with very nervous movements, informed them that he could only guarantee the regent’s attention for a very short period. The regent did not like to be bothered with small things.
Spacebread calmly straightened her belt and shook her cape back a little. She noticed the figlet wringing his hands. “Relax. Act natural. Let me do the talking.”
That helped the figlet some. He had never met a regent before, and he was scared. He hoped the gnorlff wasn’t here.
Suddenly two armed guards in purple uniforms with gold armor dashed inside the doorway and stood at rigid attention on either side of it with their rifles before their grim blue faces. Voices emerged next from the room beyond, voices in a quiet crowd of sound that grew louder as a clattering footsteps were added. The regent, wearing a diadem, stepped through first, then about a dozen people after him in the babble of after-dinner chatter.
“Your Majesty.” The Protocol Officer bowed very deeply. “I would like to take a moment of your time. Here is an offworld friend of mine, Madame Yashir Govonon of Dangsen’s Planet. She has something to ask …” He did not express himself well, and his voice was wobbly.
The regent turned to face them, distracted. He had been talking to the person beside him (who was beside Lord Dezorn, the gnorlff), but as he caught sight of Spacebread his expression froze, and his words halted abruptly.
He was obviously the regent, by his bearing and the way the rest of them folded around him as much as by his crown. He was taller than Spacebread, a handsome green lizard with crested fins atop his head, a brief green beard … and spectacles. Thick mauve spectacles stretched around his glowing orange eyes. In a moment he had regained his apparently lost composure. He turned to the Protocol Officer and asked him curtly to have the musicians stop playing. The officer hurried off, glad to be rid of the situation.
“Yes, what is it, Madame?” he said in a measured but craggy voice.
Spacebread paused before she spoke, and her eyes glowed with an inner fire as if she had recognized something familiar in VolVarnix.
“I am fresh-come from Fomalhaut, Your Majesty, where my inn room was broken into last night and a belt was stolen. A friend of mine was killed. I located the belt, which I now wear, minus the buckle, at the bazaar, where it was sold by one of your guards, Thracko. I ask simply that justice be done, my object returned, and the individual responsible for my friend’s death be tried for murder. I beg your indulgence in this matter and appeal to your … honesty.” She bowed neatly from her waist.
Suddenly, in a distant chamber, the music stopped. Eerily, it all ended on one note, not an instrument hesitating.
An indefinable something played between the regent’s bespectacled eyes and Spacebread’s before he spoke. “You come all this way merely for a belt buckle?”
“For the buckle and my honor,” she replied.
“Captain,” the regent said to one of the guards without letting his gaze leave Spacebread, “have the mentioned soldier report here immediately.”
VolVarnix turned to his entourage. “I would like very much to speak to the offworlder in private. Please continue onto the game rooms and begin without me.”
The crowd, somewhat disconcerted (Lord Dezorn’s sallow face was a mask of puzzlement and fury, its pods clutching and unclutching spasmodically as it glared at the figlet), moved off down the echoing hall and through a door. Spacebread motioned for the figlet to retire up the stairs. When he had done so, obviously relieved, the two stepped out of earshot of the remaining guard.
Spacebread smiled wryly. “You have come a long way, Basemore, since Altair Four. It appears you have invested the fruits of my labors very profitably.”
VolVarnix quivered on the brink of a sneer. His orange eyes seemed to burn through his glasses. “You must realize the delicacy of your position, pussycat.”
Spacebread stiffened.
“I am virtually supreme ruler of this land and before long … I shall be even more powerful. Try to discredit me, and I will have your molecules dispersed as a spy. I think you know I would do it. I will let you question this man about your paltry buckle and your paltry murder as long as you do not mention our former … partnership.”
Spacebread’s smile broadened. “What’s your game this time, Basemore? Loot? Or perhaps the chance to betray these people and open the slave concession on Ralph? Or maybe this time you’re after the big kick: power.”
“That is none of your concern,” the regent hissed. “And my name is VolVarnix. If you like, I will pay you …”
“That won’t be necessary, Your Majesty. I was paid once for an involvement with you, but some rogue exchanged stones for my share and left me to face the ISP on a crippled ship. I will exact that debt, with interest, someday. That is not why I am here. As long as I get my buckle back and this man stands trial, you will have no difficulty with me.”
VolVarnix, or Basemore, shook his head. “No. I said you may question the man. That is all. If he gives you the correct information, fine. If he does not, he is still my personal guard. I will deal with him in my own way. I can assure you of complete satisfaction there. I will not have men under me of that ilk.”
Spacebread laughed bitterly. “Ilk. You speak with such righteousness.”
The regent stepped back and flourished his purple embroidered cape. “Am I not the very image of righteousness?” He wore a violet silk tunic spattered with bronze and gold decorations, ribbons, jewels. A golden belt and sword and crimson breeches finished the costume. He leaned forward. “Do as I say. And remember, if you move against me in any fashion, you will be breaking your oath to the Power of Ralph.”
Spacebread’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know that?”
The regent’s face cracked in a broken smile. “A world has many ears. The king can discover what he wants to from them.”
“But you are not king of all Ralph.”
“Merely a matter of time … Silence! They come.”
Both wheeled to face the re
turning guard and a slight officer busy tucking his tunic in. His face was a blotchy blue, and he moved uncertainly, as if in great fear. His eyes danced from Basemore to Spacebread and back like a rabbit seeing two foxes.
“Your Majesty—” he began.
“Silence!” the regent barked. Then, turning to Spacebread, “You may question.”
Spacebread faced the fellow and sized him up. Like most Ralphians, he was slight, and his agitation added to that appearance. He was terrified. Of her, or the regent?
“Your name is Thracko?” she queried softly.
He nodded, his eyes still wide with animal fear.
“You sold the belt that I am now wearing to a booth owner at the bazaar?”
His mouth twitched. “I-I was …”
The regent’s richly ringed finger shot out toward the man. “You must answer as best you know how, Captain! Remember your honor and your oath to the king.”
“YesmyLordVolVarnix!” the Ralphian sputtered in one convulsed breath. He straightened like a board and spun on his heels to face Spacebread.
“I did as you said. I sold the belt.”
“You were on Fomalhaut Six last night, and you stole this object, killing a tavern keeper?” she queried.
The Ralphian gnawed at his lip for a moment, eyes straight ahead and glazing. “No! I—I was not the one who stole it. The one you speak of was my aide. He is dead. His leg had been fried, and he died on the way back here. W-we … He is dead. His leg had been fried and he died on the way back home.”
Spacebread paused. The man had rehearsed this. “You are in the habit of cruising frontier worlds and looting travelers, Captain?”
Captain Thracko shut his eyes for a second, swallowed, then answered, “We were on the way back from Aldebaran on the regent’s business and had stopped over for fuel and to rest the crew. My aide, Dzackle, was a low sort. He went for a drink at the tavern and return later with the object you mentioned, mortally wounded. He died on the way back home. He probably saw you wearing it and decided to steal it.”
Spacebread rubbed her delicate chin thoughtfully. The fellow was lying. Nothing in his story fit together right, and he was repeating the same phrases. Besides, no one stops at Fomalhaut 6 for fuel. “So, instead of staying and seeing the matter settled, you harbored the thief, kept his booty, and blasted off immediately for Ralph. It seems almost as if you had been waiting for him to arrive.”
“Not the way it happened, ma’am. Dzackle arrived on board just as we were preparing to lift off. I was going to leave without him, figured he had gotten drunk or lost. He was in shock. I assumed either that he had been ambushed or that we were being attacked. It was only after we returned to Black-Black that the belt was discovered, hidden in his clothing. Then it was to late to do anything.”
“Where is the buckle, Captain?” Spacebread persisted.
“I-I sold it to a merchant from Wone for enough money to bury Dzackle with some honor.”
“The merchant’s name,” Spacebread demanded, ignoring the inconsistencies.
“Trakovn, a jeweler from Wone.”
VolVarnix seemed to simmer. “And you sold the belt to a different merchant? What honor did you buy with that money?”
“Your Majesty,” Thracko started, “I did not think-”
“No, you didn’t!” VolVarnix hissed. “You did not think at all.”
Spacebread looked sharply at VolVarnix (Basemore). Did he realize that Thracko was contradicting himself by saying he went to the trouble of selling the buckle in one place and the belt in another? Was that why VolVarnix fumed so? A feeling of unease crept over Spacebread. There was far more to this situation than she was supposed to believe. And Spacebread had known Basemore too long to trust the look of facts he was even remotely connected with; she certainly did not believe he intended to spend the coming years playing stand-in king for a child on a backward frontier planet. But she could not push the matter. Yet. There was something in the naked terror with which Thracko’s eyes met the regent’s that told Spacebread more than she could learn by asking clever questions. Her intuition was just as valuable as her intellect.
“You have spoken the truth? The killer Dzackle is dead and my buckle sold to Trakovn of Wone?” she demanded.
“Yes. I swear to it,” the captain said weakly.
She looked to Basemore. He continued boring his gaze into the Ralphian. At last he said to the guard, “Take this man to the detention area. I want to speak to him later.”
Thracko sagged as he was led off.
“I want my buckle back,” Spacebread stated. She stood with arms akimbo and faced the regent.
“I have no jurisdiction in Wone,” the reptilian king answered tersely. “And as for the captain, you should not worry yourself. I will see to it that he plays no more games with other people’s property.” Basemore was clearly disturbed over the incident, and Spacebread knew it was not on her account.
She said, “But chances are the merchant is still in this city, surely still on this continent. Since your guards are responsible, I insist that you have your guards locate this man Trakovn and return my gem.”
The hint of a smile cracked Basemore’s cruel, sly mouth. “My guards are needed for more urgent business. Attend to your business yourself. I have indulged you as much as I want to. If I had been regent longer, I would have you stuffed back in your spaceship, wherever it is, and thrown off this planet as an undesirable. Your reputation is well-known. But I do not wish the old king to have any second thoughts about my appointment and so will govern softly for the time being. Do not think it is permanent, and do not meddle with the internal affairs of this planet. Find your bleeding bauble, if you can, and return whence you came, or you might have been here too long. I have done all in the matter that I am going to. Make sure you understand me, pussycat.” He glared at her through his thick glasses.
He turned to go, and the guard snapped to attention. Some of his guests, including the curious gnorlff, were crowding the gaming room door to see where the regent could be.
Spacebread braced her hand on the hilt of her sword. Pussycat, he had called her! Twice.
“Basemore!” She spat the name like a curse down the marble hall. His striding figure froze.
“There is a time set aside for old debts to be settled, and when our time comes it will be settled in full. Whether you are regent, prince, or king. And never call me ‘pussycat’ again. Remember that.”
She turned on her heel and left the chamber reverberating with courtier’s whispers. She knew Basemore would love to have her jailed for insolence, but he’d already told her he couldn’t risk upsetting the old king in any fashion. Gallwort probably had informers watching the new regent to learn his true intent.
The figlet was hiding in the deep shadows beneath the stairs. “Is it over?” he asked nervously, peeking around an arch.
She smiled as her anger faded, briefly checking over her shoulder to see that no one was following. Her pricked ears eased. “For now. Let’s get back to the inn. I have much to think over.”
[4]
Night Flight
“BEFORE? You’ve seen the regent before? But how? I thought this was your first visit to Ralph.” The figlet sputtered out the string of queries in shock.
Spacebread leaned against the inn wall and relaxed, seemingly ignoring the questions. She rippled her back, smoothing out all her muscles. Finally she responded, “I knew him years ago. Eight years.” She gazed vacantly into space, far beyond the dimly lit religious icon recessed in the stony inn wall. “Eight years. His real name is Bazdark, but he is known in a half-dozen worlds as Basemore the Basilisk. You saw the glasses? Specially treated mineral crystal. They block the rays from his eyes.”
“You mean he is sensitive to some form of light?” the figlet asked, puzzled.
“No.” She chuckled without humor. “The rays from his eyes. He is a basilisk, a luckily rare creature from a vanished race, which is able somehow to kill with his vision.
If you were to gaze upon those eyes, they would paralyze you, then ossify your cells within minutes. You would turn to stone. Basilisks are very dangerous, as you can imagine. Basemore is the only one I have ever met.” She paused to lick her shoulder.
“Where? How? What was he doing?” The figlet leaned forward eagerly.
She sighed. “We were in business together for a while, very risky business. And in the end he swindled me out of my share of the money and left me in what he thought was a trap. But I had never quite brought myself to trust him and had provided an escape beforehand. I have never seen him again until tonight.”
“Do you think he had anything to do with stealing your belt?”
“Absurd, isn’t it?” Spacebread mused. “And yet it is no more absurd than the theft of my belt in the first place. Perhaps its very absurdity is a clue to the meaning. Most utterly absurd things are true.
“But why? What could possibly be so important about a cut stone? Could it be made of some special, precious mineral, or perhaps a religious object, or a unique work of art? But it appeared to be no more than a curved, faceted crystal of some variety of opalescent quartz, the kind any jeweler could make.”
Spacebread poured herself some wine from a pitcher on the table. The figlet, being a plant, refused to drink the blood of a distant relative. However, the idea of his mistress being involved with a king and in distant adventures fascinated him. Maybe she could teach him to be a Warrior.
“Where did you get the belt buckle?” he asked.
“I think I found it aboard a derelict spaceship. An antique, floating out beyond the Scatterlings, in the ocean of space between galaxies. I couldn’t tell what race had made the ship, but she was very old. Maybe a thousand years old. At any rate, she was filled with ancient loot. A lot of it had been ruined by the vacuum and low temperatures of space. But there was a sealed coffer floating in some cables. And in it were a number of things. Strange old charts and maps, and the gem. I had it fashioned into a belt buckle and sold the other stuff. I suppose I’ve had it for ten years.”
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