Alan Akers - Prince of Scorpio

“Thank God for that,” I said. I said “thank God”; I did not say “thank Zair”, or Opaz, or the Invisible Twins, or Pandrite, or use any of the colorful expressions of Kregen.

“So we came back to Vallia and I do not like to think what Delia went through then. Thelda and I were married-”

“And you have a son called Dray.”

He started to look uncomfortable, then the old fey wildness broke through, and he glared at me. “Of course! What better name in all the world is there? Tell me that, you stubborn old onker!”

“And how did you come to be here?”

“Why, I am a bowman, or had you forgotten? I am a private Koter in the personal bodyguard of the Emperor, the crimson Bowmen of Loh-”

I tried to sing a certain stanza of that song, and although my voice cracked and wheezed like a leaky set of bagpipes, Seg got the message. The stanza is a particularly mocking one. It is often omitted. Seg threw back his head and laughed.

“Now, by Vox! I can live again, Dray Prescot!”

After that a confusion set in, and I was aware of shadows moving, and then of a woman sobbing and crying and laughing and holding me in her arms, whereat I grunted and pretended to be much more soggy than I was. Poor Thelda! She meant so well, with her pushy ways, and her constant exhibited concern for everyone’s welfare. But, as I was to discover, she had changed enormously from the plump sweaty earnest girl who had marched with us across the Hostile Territories and tried to suborn me away from Delia on the orders of the racters.

I did say, itching an old sore: “Where are the fallimy flowers for my poultice, Thelda?”

At this she burst into a torrent of tears, all wet and sticky. I heard Seg chuckle, and Thelda went away, crying. Seg bent over me. “You must rest now, Dray. A doctor is coming. Then we will get you out of the palace.”

I opened my mouth to say what I so desperately longed to ask. Then I shut my mouth. I was well enough aware of the situation and what had happened. I dare not ask for Delia. I knew people were risking their lives on my behalf. Seg was a private Koter in the Emperor’s bodyguard, a crimson Bowman of Loh, and thus had been able to dispose of the men carrying me out to execution. They had been his own comrades; he had slain them for me. I felt the shame of that, the fierce leap of pride, and the dark agony of remorse, but it was done, and, in truth, for my Delia’s sake I would wade through oceans of blood, as I have said. I am not a nice man.

“Don’t take chances, Seg. Clear up all traces. For your sake, and Thelda’s — and little Dray’s.”

“Do not fret, Dray. Erthyr the Bow is with me now.”

At this I felt more reassurance, for Seg seldom called on the name of that puissant and powerful spirit, the supreme being of Erthyrdrin; that he felt like that, and I knew it was a genuine emotion, proved he was satisfied.

Later I discovered more of the reasons for that satisfaction. But, even now, Delia will toss her head, grow very hoity-toity, and refuse to discuss just what was contrived. I know a body was found and substituted for me, and a convincing explanation put forward for the absence of five bowmen, four private Koters, and a Jiktar. At dead of night, with only two smaller moons hurtling low across the sky, I was conveyed out of the palace and secreted in a hidden room built into the attic of a lopsided house leaning crazily at the end of a maze of alleyways well away from the canals. The Presidio, the high council answerable only to the Emperor, confirmed his haughty actions in condemning me to instant execution. Korf Aighos and the other eight Blue Mountain Boys were put on trial. I asked about them, and Seg nodded, his face alive with all the old fey qualities, the strengths, the joyousness, the sheer love of life of his character. His black hair and blue eyes looked dearly familiar to me.

“They have been found guilty — as they were, Froyvil knows — but Delia knows your feelings, she’s known you long enough to read you like an illuminated scroll of my childhood, and we have plans to rescue them.”

And, in due course of time, they were rescued and secreted in another safe house in Vondium. The doctor came. A dried-up little stick of a man with tallow-yellow hair and a wispy moustache, he was competent enough. His first action was to snap the locks and open his velvet-lined sturm-wood case of acupuncture needles. His name was Nath the Needle. Doctor Nath the Needle. Well, there are many Naths in Kregen.

“I don’t know how you survived, my lord,” he said, sniffing. He wore a somber dark-brown suit of clothes, a decrepit old cloak, and a hat in which the two slots over the eyes had worn into a gaping hole, like two gun-ports smashed into one by a thirty-two-pounder roundshot. “The infection from a shorgortz is generally reckoned to result in a terminal disease. But, there, medicine is improving every day in Vallia, and no doubt the Blue Mountain men have acquired an immunity unknown to us. I must look into it, indeed, I must.” He babbled on like this, but he gave me some foul-tasting gunk, and, indeed, I began to mend very quickly.

Delia, of course, was kept under strict surveillance.

I had an idea.

She would seek to find a way to throw off her servitors and guards and visit me, but danger lay there, for all she was the Princess Majestrix. Seg told me that as far as he could tell the Emperor cherished a very real affection for his daughter, but that his ideas on the majesty and aura of an emperor kept interfering with that ideal. He was determined she should marry. She was his only child, and his doctors had told him he could have no more. I had never heard Delia mention her mother, and I assumed she was dead. Now, after Delia’s displays of temper, as the court gossip went, she was to be held on a very tight rein until the Kov Vektor provided a fresh king’s ransom in wedding presents. I told Seg what I required. He looked at me, chuckled, then laughed, and finally he roared with good humor. Feeling fitter than I had in weeks, I was duly shaved, and new clean clothes were brought in for me to put on. I stared into a mirror of real glass that was the proud possession of Paline Panifer, the girl Seg had found to care for me and the room. Paline is a common name for a young girl on Kregen, like Cherry on Earth, and she was fresh-complexioned, dark-eyed, a little solemn and overawed in my presence, but she cooked a truly delightful squish pie and she could make Kregan tea properly. Also she did the laundry with an amazingly tiny amount of soap.

“A boat is due tomorrow, Dray,” Seg told me. I stood up. I felt good.

‘Tomorrow, then, Seg.”

He didn’t bother to wish me luck. I believe he thought I didn’t need it. Both of us thought the other returned from the Ice Floes of Sicce; and after that — who needed luck?

The next morning, early, I put on my new gear. The buff leather tunic fitted well, and the buff shirt was clean and starched. The hat was gray with a fine curly set of feathers in red and white, the colors that servitors of Valka wore on their sleeves. The tall black boots shone with Paline’s ministrations. I buckled on the belt with the rapier and main-gauche Seg had brought. As always, I sheathed a knife back of my right hip. Swathed in a voluminous gray cloak I went with Paline from that maze of alleys and out toward the canals and quays. The tang of fresh air braced me up. The twin Suns of Scorpio flamed overhead. All the bustle and uproar of a great metropolis flowed about me. The lesten-hide bag given me by Seg, who had had it from the hand of Delia, hung heavily inside my shirt. I looked up and there rose the forest of masts. I felt my pulses quicken. The Star Lords had forbidden me to venture on the sea for a space, but they could not prevent my quick interest in all I saw and in the sealore I absorbed, it seemed, through my pores.