Alan Akers - Secret Scorpio

“And you suspected Avandil all along?”

“Since he came here from Hamal pretending to be a loyal cheerful Vallian koter. The emperor’s agents never sleep. We dogged his footsteps, except when interfered with. That he was Makfaril was a surprise.”

“And the emperor knew of this?”

A look of such cold hardness passed over Vanki’s corpse-white face as to make his resemblance to the imagined devils of Cottmer’s Caverns vivid and repulsive. “The emperor, may he live forever, knows we serve him as best we may. He has other problems weighing on his mind.” Then Vanki looked at me with all the chilling presence of a dedicated, clever man who understands not only his own power but also his own limitations. “The racters. . you must realize, Prince, how much more powerful they are now? Had you been seen visiting them you would have been taken up.”

“But, Naghan,” said Delia, smiling, holding my arm. “Not now, I think?”

“There is a night to be lived through yet, my princess.”

I pointed to four Bowmen who marched in step. They carried a burden between them by arms and legs and the golden wink of glittering armor scintillated among the heaps of slain.

“You will not question Makfaril now, Vanki.”

We looked down on the body of the numim Rafik Avandil, Makfaril, tool of Phu-si-Yantong. From his throat above the golden rim of the corselet protruded the hilt of a long slender dagger. I pulled it out and the blood welled. The jewels clustered on the hilt were red, and they formed the outline of a rose.

“It is mine,” said Delia. “But how-”

“What is more to the point, my love, is how you came here?”

We walked a little away from Vanki and his black-and-silver-clad men. The chamber of death bustled as the Bowmen did as I had commanded. Delia looked at me, her head on one side.

“Again, my heart? I will tell you all that I may in honor reveal. Melow was wounded and I saw her safely to our Delphondian villa here in Vondium. I went about the business that took me away — just for now let me keep that close, for I will tell you, I promise, when I am able — and I remember nothing from the moment I was drugged in some damned inn until they whipped that black covering off me and I saw-”

She shivered and I put my arm about her. “It was wicked and scarlet! Hissing! I thought then that-”

“Yes, well,” I said, an onker to the end. “You know what thought did.”

When I asked about Dayra and Lela as we made our way through the maze of chambers and past the barracks and so up the circular slimy stair and out into the fresh air of Vondium, she told me they were well and as far as she knew dwaburs away and busy about business for the Sisters. She had left them with instructions to come and see their father as soon as they were able. Her smile was sweet, yet I saw the weariness in her. Her experiences had been horrific. Mine had been compounded of her horror, lumped together with my own and hurled full in my face, as a leem springs, near-shattering me when I saw the black-feathered cloak whipped away to reveal the naked body of my Delia spread for sacrifice. The devilish hand of Yantong was in this, surely. The sacrifice of the Princess Majestrix would have been used in ways I could not comprehend. Chyyanism was finished. All the priests who would have carried the word for the day of uprising were dead. Makfaril was dead. The Day of the Black Feathers would never dawn in Vallia.

The simple people who had been hoodwinked would wait and they would grow restless. If they rose the insurrection would be in uncoordinated attacks, sporadic, local, able to be dealt with. Then the people would tire and lose faith and in the end they would curse the Great Chyyan and his twinned spirit, Makfaril.

“It is sad that people like the Racter party have triumphed,” I said later, as we went through into our private apartments in our Valkan villa on its hill in Vondium. “But better, I think, than had the Great Chyyan triumphed.”

“The racters are blind in their evil, as we know. Most are corrupted by their own wealth and power. But Makfaril was not Phu-si-Yantong then, after all. And my heart, Naghan Vanki, who is a monstrously clever man, said this numim kept close watch on you.”

“Aye! Too close, I think.” The callousness of Rafik Avandil seemed to me symptomatic of much that is evil about Kregen. Phu-si-Yantong had spied on me in Delia’s temple, knowing my own wizard could foil his lupal projections. So he had sent those poor doomed Rapa masichieri and Avandil, his tool, had slain them and appeared to save me, just to gain my confidence. I recalled what one of the Rapas had cried out in horror. And Rumil the Point — had he too been an instrument of Yantong’s? I thought the Fristles heaven-sent to aid Avandil’s schemes. So, smiling at Delia, I walked into our private room. “But the numim is dead, and with him for a time the schemes of Yantong.”

“The racters have grown stronger, I think. But my father? They will seek to use him even more ruthlessly now.”

“They believe they have a compact with me. That can be used to your father’s advantage.”

“But he has banished you from Vondium.”

I looked up out of the window. She of the Veils cast down her golden light, tinged with a pink fuzziness. The Maiden with the Many Smiles stole gently over the fantastic silhouette of Vondium, bathing rooftops and spires with a second roseate wash of fire. All the stars of Kregen glowed in their brilliant constellations. I turned back to the sumptuously furnished room. Truly, life on Kregen is a hurly-burly of ups and downs. But who would have it any other way?

“Your father has been emperor for a long time. Now he has this Queen Lush of Lome to worry him, along with the new factions seeking to destroy him. I shall have to make him see sense.”

“And if he will not? You called him an onker. He will not forget. He is my father, and he is a terrible man in his wrath, a true emperor.”

“Perhaps onker was too harsh for your father. Not for an emperor.” I yawned. “I care not for tonight.

Now I am for the Baths of the Nine. Then I shall eat a stupendous meal. And then I shall sleep the rest of the night away.”

“That, my love,” said Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains, “is what you think.”