Secret Scorpio

Ten

The airboat flew swiftly toward Vondium.

Once I had received Delia’s message I had wasted no time. A quick trip to our villa in Drakanium, a change of clothes, with a flustered majordomo and flunkies running in circles, a hamper of food and drink, weapons, money, and I was away in one of the small fliers we kept at the villa, as we tried to keep a voller or two at all our places.

I did not think my cover had been broken, but then, I didn’t give a damn if it had. What had happened in Vondium to drag Delia away? Was the emperor dead? But everyone would have known — no. No, perhaps not. It paid very often to keep news of the deaths of kings and emperors secret for as long as possible.

The voller was a fleet craft, for its stabling at the villa envisaged its emergency use, and we made a good thirteen and a half to fourteen dbs.[2]

At this headlong speed I would reach Vondium in a couple of hours. So, composing myself as best I could, I sat down and raided the hamper. Of the details of that meal I remain vague, save that I ate and drank and looked continually ahead for the fantastic sight of Vondium, the capital city of the Empire of Vallia, to rear over the distant horizon.

Once again I was entering Vondium at breakneck speed and with a single definite goal in mind. I flashed over the broad expanse of pastureland and agricultural activity surrounding the city. The waters of She of the Fecundity, the Great River of Vallia, sparkled ahead. There were the Hills, spread out and bowered in greenery, with the flash and gleam of white villas and red roofs. There were the sky-spanning aqueducts. There the grim gray walls and the higher battlements in gleaming yellow and sapphire, the flagstaffs, the conical tower roofs, the long, incredibly thin extensions of archways beneath the suns. Other fliers circled in landing and ascending patterns. The broad swaths of the major canals and ornate boulevards crisscrossed the city, creating islands of stone or brick, the timber and stucco island given over to parks and preserves, islands covered with barracks and factories, islands for sport, islands for all the devoted pursuits that obsessed the citizens of Vondium.

Of it all I fastened my eager gaze on the enormous Palace of the Emperors. Over wide colonnaded streets parallel to the canals we flew, this speedy little voller and I, seeing below the broad wharfside avenues thronged with busy people. Over a cluster of temples, built to foreign tolerated gods, over an arm of a canal leading directly to the Great River where shipbuilders worked on the skeletons of galleons of Vallia, bare and ribby in the light. On, and now I slanted down, aiming for the palace. The majestically architectured kyro before the main facade showed its usual hectic activity and few people bothered to look up at a single small air-boat.

Chafferings in the marketplaces would not be interrupted for so small an event. But what events were taking place within the glowing walls of the Palace of the Emperors?

The instant I touched down on the landing platform above the small garden of the palace wing reserved for the Prince Majister, I leaped out. Delia’s old apartments had been enlarged and improved and when we stayed in the capital we stayed in our own private wing of the palace. I raced inside, seeing servitors running. Delia and I kept no slaves; there were many thousands of slaves in Vondium, aye, and many in the great palace of the Emperors.

Normally we kept only a skeleton staff in our wing of the palace for, to be honest, we spent little time there. Now the place hummed with activity and very soon I had made my way, followed by various flunkies who conceived it their duty to run with me, just in case I might drop something, or require a service — Zair knows why servants will fuss so — through to our inner and truly private apartments. The Jiktar of the guard detail, a Pachak called Laka Pa-Re, bellowed his men to attention.

“The princess?” I asked, not stopping.

“In her apartments and all well, my prince, may Opaz shine the light of his countenance upon her.” Then he added, quite outside the usual military formula: “By Papachak the All Powerful, my Prince, it is good to see you!”

“And to see you also, Laka Pa-Re.”

His men bashed open the balass door smothered with the gold zhantils with diamond eyes, and I went hurrying through. Laka stood back, still remaining at attention, his tailhand upthrust with that wicked steel blade glistening. He had retained his Pachak name for he was a mercenary, a paktun — the silver mortil-head on its silken cord looped over the shoulder of his armor proved that — and perhaps a greater contrast could not be imagined than between his loyal service as a paktun and the thieving deviltry of those masichieri I had been stumbling over lately.

The tall balass doors closed and I looked down the carpeted corridor with the golden lamps and the ivory ornaments, the great Pandahem jars filled with flowers, the silver mirrors, and the doors at the far end opened and a trim figure clad in hunting leathers stepped through. At her heels a prowling, incredibly ferocious Manhound trotted, tail lashing, fanged jaws opened, saying in that growly, spitting, menacing way of jiklos: “. .Deserves to be spanked, the hussy.”

They saw me.

Delia simply flew at me, wrapping her arms about me, kissing me, laughing and sobbing, saying breathlessly, “I know, my heart! I know what you will say! But this cannot wait!”

I held her close, feeling her heart beating against mine, holding her, the dizzying scent of her in my nostrils, twining around me, making me wonder why I ever was fool enough to leave her. I forced myself to regain my senses. I took her by the shoulders and held her off, looking at her, at her face, her eyes, her mouth, her hair. “Delia! What cannot wait?”

“I am forbidden to tell you.”

I felt outrage.

“Who can forbid the Princess Majestrix of Vallia? Your father-?”

“No.” She looked gorgeously lovely, yet filled with a distress I could not hope to understand then.

“All I can say is that I love you, that I must go, that — by Vox!” she cried, which made me realize how serious a matter this really was. “By all that I hold dear I will tell you as much as I may — and more, I dare say, if you hold me so and look at me like that.”

My ugly old face must have been a sight, by Zair!

“Well?”

She spoke more calmly. “I must hurry. You know I am of the Sisters of the Rose. .”

“Yes.” I began to have an inkling now.

“I dare not tell you, even though you mean all there is in the world to me. But, but, dear heart, you are a man.”

“And you are a woman and, to pile the cliche upon the banal, I give thanks every day to Zair that it is so.”

“Do not laugh at me, my darling! This is women’s business. The Sisters of the Rose, we hold our secrets

. . well!” She flared up as her thoughts sought utterance. “Do I question you too closely about your precious Krozairs of Zy?”

I felt only a small shock.

“No, my love, you do not. For you know I am under vows.”

“And may not a woman, even if she is your wife, also be under vows?”

Instantly I felt the biggest boor in two worlds. I felt an onker, a calsany. What right had I to pry into exactly those areas of my Delia’s life that were, through other forces, denied her enquiry in mine?

I drew her to me and kissed her. The kiss was long and passionate and if she was in a hurry to be about this mysterious business of the Sisters of the Rose she was in no hurry to end the kiss. At last I stepped back and released her.

“You have everything for the journey? Melow will go with you? Weapons, clothes, money, food, the fastest voller?”

“Yes, yes, my heart!” She laughed. “Do not take on so!”

“When you go venturing out into Kregen, my love, you must take all the protection you may.”

“That is true. But the Sisters of the Rose take care of their own. We do a great deal of good, in a quiet way. We have opened two new hospitals for sick slaves in the past year. And when there is a war. . well, you know.”

Yes. I did know. The Sisters were invaluable. There were other feminine orders, of course, notably the Sisters of Samphron and the Order of Little Mothers and the like. Delia often abbreviated in the Kregen way, calling the Sisters of the Rose the SoR, as I abbreviated the Krozairs of Zy to Krzy. This was important, truly important.

So I contented myself with making sure she had everything I could think of — save myself — upon her journey. Melow would go, and a female Manhound, a jiklo, can rip up a wersting or a neemu and the chances of a strigicaw are not all that bright.

Melow the Supple jagged her fangs and said in her hissing voice, “Do not fret, Dray Prescot. The princess is a canny girl and knows her way about. I can but wish you had eased two more sets of twins into the world for me.”

“Hush, Melow!” said Delia.

The Manhounds of Kregen are indeed a fearsome sight. Artificially bred to run on all four like hunting cats, ferocious of aspect, deadly in killing skills, superbly muscled, they can strike terror into the stoutest heart. Yet this Melow the Supple, for whom I have a great fondness, savage and vicious as she was, was a kindhearted mother of twins. She was dressed in bright clothes, for she loved brilliance in dress, with neatly groomed hair and wearing sandals over those gut-ripping claws. I put out my hand and touched her cheek.

“Take care of her, Melow.”

She grimaced and hissed, as much as to say what an onker I was and I ought to know better than even to mention so obvious a thing.

Then I said another stupid thing.

“Thelda?” I said to Delia.

Well Thelda, Seg’s wife, had been companion to Delia in some fraught moments in our lives, and she always meant well, and she always said that she was Delia’s best friend. I knew Thelda belonged to the Order of Sisters of Patience — I invariably found a high amusement at that particular trifle of appositeness — so I couldn’t be surprised when Delia very calmly said, “This is a matter for the SoR, my love. Now you have delayed me long enough. Come on, Melow.”

She kissed me again and I let her go reluctantly, saying, “But you haven’t said when you’ll be back.”

“When you see me.” Then she relented, and said, “I’ll be as quick as I can, I promise.”

I saw her to the voller. And it was no joke; she’d selected our fastest four-place craft. I saw the way she solemnly observed the fantamyrrh as she stepped aboard.

I stood back. The guards and the retainers stood in a ring, all looking up. The voller sprang away, with Melow looking over the side like some frightful gargoyle, and rose up into the limpid air with the streaming mingled lights from the Suns of Scorpio lighting up her side and blazing like a beacon.

“Remberee, my love!”

“Remberee, my heart!”

And the flier spun up and away and soared over the glittering rooftops of Vondium. Damned independent in their ways are the girls of Kregen.

But, then, that is just as it ought to be.