Nath Nazabhan and Barty Vessler were talking to Delia and I crossed to them, having had a few words with Jago De-Ka, a Pachak Jiktar who had come in from Zamra with news. The island was almost clear of the reiving mercenaries and flutsmen, he reported, and the Pachaks who had made a part of the island their home were now more than ever wedded to their new way of life. I expressed myself as satisfied, keeping a grave mien, as was seemly in so important a matter to a Pachak. Pachaks are a race of diffs with whom I delight in doing business.
Barty was still rather high on indignation, and Nath was as grimly ferocious as ever when I joined them. Archolax the Bones, the deep lines in his face more pronounced than ever, walked across to us with a most determined air about him. I sighed. I could guess.
“…until they dangled for two sennights!” quoth Barty.
“But you have friends up there, do you not?” inquired Delia with that devastating simplicity that snicks in like a rapier between the ribs.
“Friends? Oh, aye, friends. But if they wear the white and black these days, how can they be friends?”
Old Archolax sneezed. With great ceremony he withdrew an enormous square of yellow silk and blew. While the stentorian bellow was still echoing through the room he spoke up, swirling the yellow silk about grandly.
“Majister! The treasury is scraped to the bottom so hard I swear you would not get a single stiver out of the dust in the vaults. The Racters are all the grievous things we know them to be. But, majister! They have money. They are rich. Their estates up there are fabulously wealthy. An alliance there would fill our coffers. We could hire mercenaries and throw the damned mercenaries from Hamal out of Vallia.”
He did not finish with: “I have spoken.” Had he done so it would have fitted perfectly. Delia’s face bore that knowing, half-mocking, teasing smile.
The way these old buffers use their sneezing and their kerchiefs always amuses me — and causes me some facetious admiration, too, seeing that they thereby cloak their own highly individual designs. Old Evold Scavander, the wisest of the wise men of Valka, could always get that haughty and promising Wizard of Loh, Khe-Hi-Bjanching, going by a few splutters and sneezes and a whisk of bright cloth.
“I hear your words, Pallan Archolax, and they are indeed worthy of note. The embassy from Jhansi revealed their true purpose, and have left, with a zorca hoof up their rump.” One of the Kregish ways of saying with a flea in their ear, that charming expression, and the others smiled. “But that does not tilt the balance down in favor of the Racters.”
“Their gold tilts the balances.”
About to give what I considered a stiff reply, Barty saved me the trouble, saying what was in my mind.
“But honor will tilt the balance back!”
So we wrangled for a space, and I think they could all see already the way my mind tended. Finally, I said, “We have the resources if we plan carefully. Gold to buy mercenaries will not set Vallia free. Our country must be set free by her own efforts. This is a cardinal principle.”
Archolax opened his mouth ready to sneeze, saw me watching him, and merely swiped the yellow silk over his nose.
“Your commands, majister,” he said. And then he added: “My fingers itch to feel Racter gold. But my heart would not be in it.”
“Of course,” put in Nath Nazabhan. “We could take the Racter gold, anyway.”
“What, Nath!” exclaimed Barty. “Double deal ’em?” He screwed up that incredibly naive face, and one could almost see the wheels whizzing around in his head as he once more confronted the thrill of skullduggery in action.
The idea was intriguing; but it would not do, and we all saw that. Nath’s flyer remained unsaddled. Pallan Myer walked over from the door, and coughed, and stood waiting. He was youngish, stooped over from long hours of reading, with always a book or a scroll tucked under his arm or, to be honest, more often opened as he walked along reading, a constant terror to anyone else who did not look where they were going. I had put him in charge of education, the Pallan of Learning, and I was due to go with him to see about a group of new school buildings being fashioned quickly from materials left over from a slave bagnio, after it had burned, and many of the poor devils inside it, too. Acknowledging Pallan Myer, I said: “Educating the children of Vallia is more important than wrangling. Nath. Do you go and see Strom Luthien and give him our word. And, Nath. Try to be gentle with the rast.”
“Aye, majister. I will try.”
Barty chuckled. “That’ll be a pleasant surprise for him.”
Myer started in eagerly talking away about the plan to give each child in the new building his or her very own desk. That way, he said, they’d do a lot more work without the jostling and larking you always found when the children sat on long benches, all scrunched up. I nodded, agreeing, and figuring out where we could find the artisans and the wood. Barty fell in with us as we went. Delia called across, saying she had work to do, and I smiled at her as we went out.
His face shining like one of those fabulous polished apples of Delphond, Barty Vessler strode along with us out into the suns shine. I saw Delia looking after him as I turned to give her a parting smile. Barty was deeply in love with Dayra and she was off somewhere adventuring on her own account and had been numbered in the ranks of those who opposed us. She had been or was still, for I did not know, a boon companion to Zankov and that crowd of cutthroats. Now that the Hawkwa country had declared for Jak the Drang and I was emperor in Vondium, now that Phu-Si-Yantong had withdrawn from this area, what in a Herrelldrin Hell Zankov was about posed a prickly problem.
Zankov had slain the old emperor. That emperor was Dayra’s grandfather. I wondered if she knew that her comrade Zankov had murdered her grandfather.
Attitudes are easy to strike and damned difficult to un-strike.
Barty burbled on about the coming campaign as we mounted our zorcas to ride out to the new schools. We had already traveled a fair bit of the road in freeing all Vallia and we looked forward to riding side by side to finish the task. Every day Barty grew in stature, in wisdom and cunning. Of courage there had never been any doubt. You will perceive, I think, that I was looking with increasing favor on Barty Vessler, the Strom of Calimbrev. I knew practically nothing of my daughter Dayra. Yet the hope, barely formed and certainly not articulated, was that Barty would match up to Dayra, who was also Ros the Claw.
Ros the Claw. The suns slanted their radiance down about us and the day smiled with promise, and I thought of that wicked steel taloned glove she wore on her left hand. Those cruel curved claws could have your eyes out in a twinkling. A real right tiger-girl, Ros the Claw, a she-leem, clad in her black leathers hugging her skin tight, all grace and lithe lissomness and striking feline beauty. And Barty had no idea that Dayra was Ros the Claw.
My own feelings muddled my thinking. I had not been on Kregen when Dayra and her twin brother, Jaidur, had been born, and Delia had shouldered a heavy burden — two heavy burdens. And there were the other children, also. The Everoinye had banished me, then, and I had now firmly made up my mind not to cross them again in any open way. The feelings about Dayra made me itchy, fretful, tearing open tender wounds I had thought long since scabbed over.
No matter where Dayra might be in Vallia, no matter what she was up to, it seemed to me right that I should talk to her in friendship and love. She hated me. I had had proof of that. And, also, I thought I had proof that she did not hate me, for she had drawn back and had not struck me from the instant she understood that I had at last recognized Ros the Claw as my daughter Dayra. That gave me hope.