Alan Akers - Prince of Scorpio

The break made me stand up and stretch and look out of the window. Across the patio, with its tables and chairs and Young Bargom’s clientele drinking happily, the canal ran along between meticulously upkept banks. And a great straggly gang of haulers passed, their gray slave breech-clouts filthy, the whip marks jikaidering their backs, bloody and filthy, hauling a huge gray barge with a cargo that brought the gunwales down to within a knuckle of the water.

I frowned.

Delia detested slavery as much as I did.

I had thought I had been brought to Kregen to help stamp out slavery. My own plans called for the fulfillment of my own selfish ends. To hell with the Star Lords and the Savanti! Delia was all I cared about.

Many times, as you have heard, I had been deflected from my intentions. Now, again, I was prevented from putting our plans into operation that day, as I had wished, by the distraught arrival of Kta. Angia.[2]

A plump, homey, beeswax kind of woman, she sobbed out her story. Her son was a proud and headstrong youth, but they were in debt, for he was a cabinet-maker and had had words with his employer and could not find fresh work. He would not ask friends of the Valkans here in Vondium for help. And now he had been dragged off to the bagnios. She was desperate. Could I help?

The story is quickly told. Quickly — in that I went with her to the bagnios and found her son, Anko the Chisel, and paid off his debt, and in the process being arrogant and insulting to the guards with their red and black sleeves. But not so quickly — in my discovery of the bagnios themselves. I have seen many slave barracks, and barracoons and bagnios, and those of Vallia were no worse than many. Here criminals, debtors, hostages, prisoners, those who had forfeited their liberty in any way, were kept for dispersal among the slave farms, or the haulers, or the mines, or in any of the many places that slaves were employed. We took Anko the Chisel out of that place and his mother, Kta. Angia, fell on her knees before me, whereat I felt all the nausea of myself rising, and I bid her get up and take her son home, and start again in the search for work.

The point I had had thrust upon me I did not want to face, would not face, refused even to countenance. Delia. That thought alone was all that mattered.

That evening everyone crowded in and The Rose of Valka rocked with the roistering songs of Kregen. And, chief among these, sung for all its seven hundred and seventy-eight stanzas, was The Fetching of Drak na Valka.

Among the Valkan revelers, dressed like them in the flaunting red and white, sat Seg Segutorio. I had told him, swiftly, not to start singing The Bowmen of Loh.

“I’ll fight any man who denies me!” he had started to roar out and I had hustled him away up the black-wood stair to my upper chamber.

“By Zim-Zair, you onker-headed bowman!” I exclaimed. He calmed down and then, with that strong streak of practicality that runs intertwined with the feyness of the men of the mountains and valleys of Erthyrdrin, he nodded, understanding. “Although, Dray, you know that there is no better bow than the longbow. All these made-up sinew and bone and horn bows, curved like a pregnant duck; they are as toys beside the longbow.”

“True, true. But — watch it!”

“All is ready. By the Veiled Froyvil, but Delia is a true princess! She has made the arrangements for the airboat. Thelda and I and little Dray are ready. We can-”

I felt shock.

“You — you wish to come, too, Seg?”

He looked at me as though I had slapped him around the face.

“Of course.” His bright blue eyes glittered on me in the soft radiance of the samphron oil lamp. “You want me to, don’t you, my old dom?”

I managed to say, “I couldn’t get along without you,” and turned away so that he should not see my face.

The noise from below was reaching fantastic proportions and we went down and took up the wine — it was the best of Jholaix, precious and rare and saved for super-special occasions — and joined in the singing. Vangar ti Valkanium sang. Anko the Chisel sang. Everyone sang. We sang of Valka. A lithe and lissome girl, very beautiful, with a heart-shaped face and a figure to stir men to immediate action, recited some of the more sublime passages from The Fatal Love of Vela na Valka and we all joined in the choruses. Then, for the third time, we roared out all the seven hundred and seventy-eight stanzas of the song commemorating my fetching of Valka out of the shadows and of the Valkans fetching me to be their Strom.

It takes a long time to sing seven hundred or so stanzas and when, at last, we threw the shutters back it was high noon outside in Vondium. Deldar Vangar had a mad scramble to get back to report for duty. He spoke of a visit the Emperor was paying to Vindelka, northwest of the city. No one took much notice, the fumes of wine coiling in our brains. Seg had left early, saying that as a private Koter he had duties to perform he dare not let lapse now, so close to the time for our departure. He had mentioned Vindelka, too.

We had, in the Kregan idiom, a zhantil to saddle, and we all had our secret parts to perform. To clear my head, after I had shaved that harsh chin of mine, I took a stroll along the quays and watched all the busy loading and unloading of the great galleons of Vallia. Produce from all over the known world flowed into Vondium, and the products of Vallia flowed out. Gulls wheeled overhead, shrieking. The twin suns shone gloriously. The air held that bracing tang of the sea. But — the Star Lords had expressly forbidden me to sail the seas of Kregen for a space. How I longed, then, to take my Delia up onto the deck of a great galleon and sail with her over the rim of the world!

When I returned to The Rose of Valka a sedan chair such as are commonly seen all over the city stood at the door. The two men who bore it were slaves, although decently clad in dark brown shifts, with a lotus-flower emblazoned on breast and back. With them were four soldiers and a Hikdar, wide of shoulder and lean of waist, their raffish hats sporting feathers of yellow and green, with a double red stripe slashed athwart their brightness. I went in, and Young Bargom presented a lady whose face was covered with a deep violet veil. My first glance convinced me this could not be Delia in disguise, and the leap of my heart stilled.

Bargom withdrew and the lady lifted her veil. She was young, pretty, but with a pallid squarish face in which the brown eyes held none of the luster and sparkle to which I was accustomed.

“I am Pela, my lord Strom, handmaid to the Kovneva Katrin. I am bid to tell you that the Kovneva must see you immediately.”

“Yes? Do you know why, Pela?”

“No, my lord Strom. Only that it is urgent, very urgent.”

“I do not know the Kovneva Katrin. Tell me of her.”

“But, my lord Strom!” Her eyes opened wide and for all their dullness they expressed astonishment.

“She is a great and powerful lady. Since the Kov died she has refused to marry. Now she is a devoted attendant upon the Princess Majestrix.”

So that was it, I said to myself. I yelled for Bargom and between us we made me look presentable, with a buff jerkinlike tunic with wide winged shoulders which left the white silk shirt sleeves visible. I buckled on the rapier and main-gauche and took up the hat with the red and white feathers. Down the black-wood stairs I went, following Pela, who got into the sedan chair very quickly. The bearers lifted their poles, the Hikdar gave me a sketchy salute, rapped out his orders, and we started for the palace. The effects of a rollicking night coupled with the fresh air left me feeling alert and breezy, although with the edges of fatigue beginning to creep along my bones. We climbed up through the crowded streets and along wide boulevards where the quoffa carts trundled and the zorca chariots whickered their tall wheels. There were fewer airboats than usual wheeling over the city today. The birds sensed this, and they swooped and gyrated against the twin suns.