Alan Akers - Secret Scorpio

“And much am I beholden to you, Koter Avandil. What are you going to do with the Fristles?”

“The landlord will take care of them. Come with me. You cannot stay here now.”

This was an eventuality I did not relish. I reached up and touched the bowstave. He nodded, half smiling, his whiskers fierce.

“Yes. I see you have bought yourself a bow with the money you acquired, to go along with your zorca. You should be careful how you spend your cash. Buying things you cannot use is a dangerous pastime.”

“Yes,” I said with a fine free meekness, adding, “koter.”

He laughed again, that great booming numim laugh. “I warrant the fellow whose throat you slit for the money wishes he was here to spend it instead of rotting in a ditch.”

“If you think that, why bother your head over me?”

“You ask questions, Nath the Gnat, more than is seemly.”

“I crave your pardon. But the landlord will throw these cramphs out and I can sleep.” I kept forgetting, the more he pestered me, to add the required koter into the conversation. He saw I meant it when I again refused his invitation, so at last he left. I pondered. One more day, would that make so much difference? I could go up and see Natyzha Famphreon later, after sleep. Yes, that would be the answer. I somehow or other did not relish the thought of slipping out the window and finding Rafik Avandil smiling and waiting below for me.

Had I not sent my comrades away they would have created a diversion. Those Opaz-forsaken Fristles. But for them I’d have been halfway to Natyzha Famphreon’s villa by now. So, cussing away in my stupid fashion, I stripped off the gear and slept.

The sleep was needed and I awoke refreshed before dawn with that old sailor’s knack of setting alarm bells ringing in my skull, echoes of Beng Kishi’s Bells. I ordered up a huge breakfast which I demolished in short order.

The fate of empires hangs on tiny threads.

But for the Fristles I would have been long gone to the racters; but for the state of the haggard old crone who served the breakfast I would have left at once. Now there is disease on Kregen, as seems to be inseparable from man and his nature and the state of the universe in which we live. The ordinary ailments are treated matter-of-factly, and the needleman of Kregen are skilled at relieving pain, even during surgery, with their cunning twirling needles. I have not so far mentioned the disease which strikes horror into the heart of a Kregan. It is seldom mentioned in polite conversation, just as once on this Earth cancer was not a subject for decent conversation. Kregans can confidently look forward to two hundred years or so of life. Right up until their very last years they do not change much, do not appear to alter. This disease — I will tell you its name just the once — this chivrel prematurely ages its victims. Oh, the men and women stricken down live on. They tend to die around their two hundredth year or before, rather than living that extra golden autumn, but their appearance and their strengths are those of ancients of days. This, as you will readily perceive, explains the appearance of old crones and decrepit men in my narrative of life on Kregen.

The serving woman was old, suffering from that disgusting disease. How it was caught, how transmitted, no one knew. No cure was known. Whenever I think back to my days on Kregen as I fought for what I believed was worth fighting for and recall the conversations and the oaths spoken, always I change that particular curse into a different English equivalent — leprous is an example. People were not afraid to live with the sufferers. Body contact, breathing the same air, none of these things caused the disease. So instead of flinging my cloak around me and rushing out, I stayed and helped her stack the tray and lifted it so that she might open the door. I was in the act of closing the door after her, ready to don my equipment, when the ghostly form of Khe-Hi-Bjanching materialized across the chamber. He stared at me, peering, as though his trance state of lupu was not perfect. Then his misty body solidified. It seemed the wizard stood in the chamber with me.

Never had I seen the lupal projection of Phu-si-Yantong spying on me as clearly as I saw Khe-Hi. He held out a paper. Like an onker I stretched out my hand to take it. My fingers passed through the yellow paper. I cursed. Khe-Hi pointed. So, a fambly to the end, I looked down and read what he had written. Famphreon’s villa is under observation by the emperor’s spies. As I finished reading, the lupal projection of my Wizard of Loh thinned and wisped and vanished. I stepped back. By Krun! Was I to be foiled by a pack of miserable imperial spies?

I debated.

A hot gratitude to my friends for their work made me realize that they, having discovered the information and sending it as fast as they could via wizardly sorcery, would feel poorly rewarded if I simply barged up there anyway. Mind you, they’d half expect that kind of oafish barbarian behavior from Dray Prescot. But intrigue breeds intrigue, plot conjures forth counterplot.

No, by the Black Chunkrah! I said to myself. I’d play this one very coolly indeed, like a warrior prince rather than a naked, hairy, howling barbarian.

And then the door opened and I swirled about ready to use whatever weapons might be necessary. Rafik Avandil started back.

“Nath! You look-”

“Koter,” I said, and I let the barbaric instincts leach from my muscles. Zair knows what he thought then. A civilized man can display the quickest of reactions when, here on this Earth, he is aware, with his civilized sense, of an automobile hurtling down on him on swishing rubber tires. Then he will jump. With my Clansmen on the Great Plains of Segesthes and venturing among the southern forests I had learned to jump when a leem attacked. Rafik Avandil slid his half-drawn clanxer back into its sheath. He had not touched his rapier. He carried both swords in a fine raffish way, slung low on his left hip. He said he had come to see if I was all right.

I said, “You show great concern for a common laboring man.”

“I am at a loose end. You appear to bring me opportunities for a little light exercise. Let us go out and find an open-air tavern and sit and drink sazz and watch the girls.”

I, Dray Prescot, replied, “With a will, koter.”

Mind you, at the first opportunity, crossing a wide avenue where the zorca chariots rolled glittering in the dawn lights and the people were already about their hurrying scurry of another day, I lost him. I skidded down a narrow alley on the far side and watched him go running along the avenue, in a right paddy. Numims, as I knew from my friend Rees, have generous hearts. Well, some of them. So I spent the day prodding and prying. It became clear that, dressed as I was in an old brown blanket cloak, I could penetrate places closed to anyone not of the laboring classes. In Vallia the social structures were organized differently from the way they operated in Hamal with the guls and clums there. So, all in the fullness of time, I picked up the black feather and rolled it in my fingers, looked at the fat apim with the sweaty jowls and small vosk-like eyes and said, “Tonight, dom. I shall be there, to the greater glory of the Great Chyyan.”

That had been in a dopa den. I gulped the fresh air as I went outside, for all it was blowing from the fish wharf nearby. The search had not taken me overlong. I pondered.

If I chanced my arm and visited Natyzha Famphreon and the emperor’s spies took me up, that would place the old devil in a pickle. Would he take my head off this time? Or would he think of his daughter?

The racters with their schemes would have to wait. The Black Feathers posed the greater threat. The impression of the great city as a gigantic wen about to suppurate and burst and release all the evil oppressed me. Black feathers were to be seen, worn in the fashion of the colored favors of Vallia. My ugly old face drew down into grim lines. Intemperate and headlong as I am, I forced myself to ignore this tawdry panoply of evil and wait until the night’s meeting.