Alan Akers - Transit to Scorpio

“My clan,” I said. “Of which they will not let me loose the reins of leader-of Zorcander and Vovedeer, with Longuelm.”

She nodded, bright-eyed, and I guessed she was turning over ripe schemes in that devious mind of hers.

“I am an Eward by nuptial vows, and they are a goodhearted House, and the family of Wanek is very dear to me. It was Wanek’s uncle whom I married. But they are not Strombors! Only by treachery were we conquered. I think it is time a new House of Strombor arose in Zenicce.”

“You would be its Head,” I said, feeling my affection for her make me reach out and touch her wrinkled hand. “If that were so, then I agree. You would make a superb Head.”

“Tush and flabber-mouth!” Then she turned her bird-bright old eyes up at me, so woebegone and miserable with worry over Delia. “And if I were, and it were so, I could delegate, could I not?

That would be my right by law and custom.”

“Varden,” I said. “He would be a good choice.”

“Yes. He would make a fine leader for a House. I am glad you are friends with my great-nephew. He has need of friends.”

I thought of the great Noble House of Esztercari, and of a certain enameled porcelain jar of Pandahem style over-man-height standing in that corridor between the slave quarters and the noble, and I sighed. Varden and Natema would make a splendid couple. I had fought for her there, against the Chulik guards, and Varden would have done the same.

Varden had something else on his mind.

We were standing in an immense bay window overlooking an interior avenue of the enclave filled with the bustle of morning market and the cries of street vendors and the passage of asses and the squawking of birds and the grunting of vosks, with the slaves purchasing food and clothes and drink and all the busy hustle and bustle of everyday life. Varden tried to open the subject of conversation a number of times, and at last I had to make him speak.

“I know you fought for Natema,” he said. “For Delia told me of it. I do not know how to thank you for saving her life.”

I spread my hands. If this was all! But he went on.

“Delia told me, and she was angry-how superb she is when she is angry! — that you were in love with Natema.” Varden rushed on now, ignoring my sudden start and the glowering look of fury I knew had flashed into my face. “I believe that was the true reason for her leaving us. She knew you did not care for her, that you regarded her as an encumbrance, for she told me all this, Dray, and she was very near to tears. I do not know whether to believe it or not, for from all I have seen I had thought you loved Delia, not Natema.”

I managed to blurt out: “Why should my not caring for Delia make her leave, Varden?”

He looked astonished.

“Why, man, she loves you! Surely, you knew that! She showed it in so many ways-the ling furs, the scarlet breechclout, her refusal to take Natema’s gems-and the way she looked at you. By Great Zim, you don’t mean to say you didn’t know!”

How can I say how I felt, then? Everything lost, and now, when it was too late, to be told I had had everything within my grasp and thrown it away!

I rushed from that sunshine-filled bow window and found a dark corner and heard only the stamp of my heart and the crash of blood through my head. Fool! Fool! Fool!

They left me alone for three days. Then Great-Aunt Shusha wheedled me into returning to life once more.

For their sake, for pride’s sake, for the sake of my bonds of obi-brotherhood with my clansmen, who were riding over the plains toward the city, I paraded a facsimile of normal living. But I was a husk, hollow and dead, within.

Varden told me, with a smile he tried to hide in face of my agony, that Prince Pracek of Ponthieu had contracted with a most brilliant bride-to-be, a princess from the powerful island of Vallia; that the Esztercaris had, however unwillingly, agreed to this match, for it would strengthen their alignment-and this meant, as I saw at once, that Natema was freed. Varden bubbled with the hope that in some fantastic way he would claim her. I told him I was pleased for him. I even ventured out into the public places of Zenicce once more. I had to live now only for my life with the clansmen. An unpleasant scene developed one day as storm clouds rolled in the from the Sunset Sea over the city. We had gone to the Assembly Hall and, leaving, were met by a crowd of the Esztercaris entering, and with them the purple and ocher of the Ponthieu. In the animated crowds always to be found talking and lobbying in the corridors and halls surrounding the Great Hall there were the silver and black of the Reinmans and the crimson and gold of the Wickens, so we were not alone.

Among the Ponthieus walked a tall and burly man clad in a fashion strange to me. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, curled at the edges, and with two strange slots in the brim above his eyes. His clothes were of buff leather, short to his thigh, belted in at the waist so the small skirt flared, and immensely wide across the shoulders. The shoulders were padded and artificially broadened, I saw; but the effect was in no wise incongruous. He wore long black boots reaching over his knees. He wore no single item of jewelry. His face was wind-beaten, bluff, with a fair moustache that curled upward.

“The consul of Vallia,” remarked Varden. I knew that in the city there were many consular offices, their functions more mercantile than diplomatic, for the niceties of foreign protocol are not too highly developed on Kregen, and a Noble House would have no hesitation in smashing down a consul’s door should they desire for some reason to do so.

The man struck me as a seafaring man, and his manner, quiet, relaxed, reminded me of the calm that deceives before the gale.

“They’re discussing the bokkertu, I suppose,” said Varden gleefully, Vallia was unusual among the land masses of Kregen in that the whole island was under one government. It lay some hundreds of miles away between this continent of Segesthes and the next continent of Loh. Vallia, as a consequence, was extremely powerful, with an invincible fleet. Such an alliance would make the Esztercari-Ponthieu axis so formidable nothing could stand against it. We must strike first, before their plans to attack us matured. It was on that day, I remember, that for some reason I went to the chest where I had stored the gems I held in trust for Delia. They were gone. Upset, miserable with my own worries, I had not stomach for further upsets and slave beatings, so I did not mention the matter. There was my portion that Delia might have-Delia, wherever she was now!

Now we glowered on the Esztercaris and rapiers were fingered and half-drawn and someone had the sense to send for the city wardens, and no blood was spilled. But the storm clouds above Zenicce were no blacker than our faces, and portended no greater hurricanes and whirlwinds.

A day later Gloag at last reported he had found Nath, the thief, and that Nath would help, for-how I relished the irony-he regarded himself as an obi-brother of the clansmen with whom he had escaped and shared dangers.

The simplicity of the plan was its strength.

No walls girded Zenicce with a ring of granite. Each enclave was a fortress in its own right. An attacking army might swirl along the canals and open avenues; they would swirl as the French cavalry swirled about the British squares at Waterloo-a scene I witnessed for myself. Even the three hundred thousand free people without the Houses maintained their own fortress-like enclaves into which they could retire from their souks and alleys. Great-Aunt Shusha gave me a surprise. She called me into the long room of her private apartments, and smiled and cackled at me as I gaped at a dozen of her personal retainers. They were clad not in the Eward powder blue but in a glorious, flashing, brilliant scarlet. They looked pleased.