Now Gremivoh is a wine of Vallia much favored in the Vallian Air Service. This Lykon, despite my manner, took the point.
“I would prefer a more subtle Pastale,” he said, very — smooth.
I took that point, also. For Pastale — and I admit it is a reasonable vintage — is the export monopoly of the House of Operhalen, whose colors are blue, green, and ivory. And the Operhalens, a noble house of the enclave city of Zenicce, were at that time allied with the Ponthieu and against my own noble house of Strombor. The ruler of Operhalen was a little frog-like man with a stoop and a leer, and a reputation for inspecting his own consignments of Pastale too lovingly and too frequently. This damned Lykon Crimahan would know I was Lord of Strombor and that the Operhalens would like to see me dead, so he asked for a glass of their Opaz-forsaken wine. I smiled.
“Certainly, Kov. As it happens, I was able to board and take a ship of the Operhalens. Their wine is yours, freely given as it came to me, free.”
Seg laughed and then turned away, drinking.
Tharu did not laugh, but his fierce old whiskers bristled up a little more. The Emperor spoke and everyone stopped talking.
“We are here to discuss serious matters,” he began. “I have said I am not happy with you, Dray Prescot, you whom I made Prince Majister. I would like an accounting of what you have done with the treasures we have poured out for you.”
The damned old scoundrel! He’d lent me a parcel of fliers, which he had got back, and some of his Crimson Bowmen of Loh, almost all of whom he had got back. As for hard cash, that had been conspicuous by its absence.
I said, “You found your journey here pleasant, Emperor?”
He didn’t like me calling him by title, and he knew I knew it.
“Yes, it was comfortable. The voller you presented me is a fine craft.”
“It should be. It was taken by the Kov of Falinur and his friends from Hyrklana, and is a first-class voller.”
“That is as may be. Where are the fliers you promised me? There was much fine talk, I remember,” and here he waxed most sarcastic, “of bringing to us the secrets and the methods of the contraptions inside fliers. We should build our own, you promised me. Well, Dray Prescot? Where are these secrets?”
Mind you, the old devil had the right of it, for all that he over dramatized his part. I had signally failed to gain all I had dreamed of. But I did know a very great deal now.
“The wise men are still laboring to reproduce the silver boxes. For reasons I will not go into now, the full secrets did not come my way.”
That was the signal for the dowager Kovneva Natyzha to thrust up her lower lip and let go one of her famous barking laughs, like the blow of an ax striking a tree.
“I warrant you do not wish to go into the reasons, Prince! I warrant you enjoyed yourself in Hamal.”
I stared at her with a cool expression on my face, I hope, my eyebrows raised. This old biddy, this Vallia-renowned Natyzha Famphreon, the dowager Kovneva of Falkerdrin, was a noble woman with whom I had always tried not to cross swords. Her face held that nut-brown, cracker-barrel, experienced look of iron authority exercised over many seasons. Her mouth curved down at the corners, and grooves alongside her chin extended the arc. Her chin thrust forward so that her lower lip was habitually upthrust, giving her a scornful, arrogant look of power. She was well past her one hundred and fortieth year, I knew, and her face showed something of that, although on Kregen people change little from their coming of age to the time when they are battened down for the last journey to the Ice Floes of Sicce. But her body! She had pampered that body of hers, so that it remained firm and pliant, soft and supple. She was known to say that a man couldn’t care less about a pretty face, but no man could stomach an ugly body. She was generally right about it, too, if many of the men surrounding the Emperor at this time counted. She wore a bright red gingerish wig, which gave her a comical appearance as well as a great and horrific presence. In addition, her eyebrows, a fierce and wiry black, jagged upward like black wings over her dark eyes.
“You have heard of the Heavenly Mines?” I asked.
“Some stories,” she said offhandedly. “Answer the Emperor. Where are the fliers and their secrets?”
“Yes,” chipped in her son, the Kov of Falkerdrin. “Answer the Emperor.” He was a product of bad breeding: chinless, weak-eyed, pimply faced. That was not his fault, of course, but the fault of near-incestuous parents greedily grasping each other in lust that did not consider the consequences. The result had made him a straw in the hands of his mother, who ran him and his official position as Pallan of the Armory.
Delia put a hand to her breast. She knew me. She half rose, and, on a breath, said, “You would not go back to the Heavenly Mines?”
“No one but a fool who wished to commit suicide in the most painful of ways would go back there.”
The unspoken thought lay between us. She knew just how much of a fool, a true onker, I am in these matters.
The door opened and San Evold Scavander put his head in, his brown eyes mad and snapping, glee written all over his crusty old face.
“My Prince!” he tried to bellow, sneezed, and wiped his nose, gurgling with laughter. “My Prince! The cayferm is true cayferm! A residue is left — I do not know how. The boiling has been a success! Come, my Prince, and let us test the gift of Oolie Opaz.”
I rose. “Then let us go to the laboratory,” I said, not without a sneaky feeling of satisfaction. “And see if Opaz shines upon Vallia.”
Chapter 5
The vaol boxes and the paol boxes lay nearby.
I said, “Majister, if you would push this box toward this other box. .”
He did so.
We all clustered around the scarred lenken table in Scavander’s chemical-smelling room, where the wreckage of Lish’s airboat, the silver boxes, and the supplies of minerals Ornol had brought were piled. Two new boxes awaited the imperial blessing.
A brass vessel still bubbled on a dying fire, and the sweet scent of squishes hung in the air. Samphron-oil lamps had been lighted, but through the high windows She of the Veils smiled in from the night sky of Kregen.
The Emperor, most tentatively, pushed one box toward the other.
They reached that particular distance from each other and they both sprang into the air!
We all let out our breaths. I was enchanted. Delia hugged me and everyone was one beaming smile. The boxes rose straight up. They struck the ceiling among the cobwebs, parted, and so fell down again with a great clatter. Everyone laughed. I say everyone — even in my mood of great euphoria I noticed that Lykon and the dowager Kovneva Natyzha did not laugh, did not even smile.
“And this can be repeated?” asked the Emperor.
“Oh, yes, Majister,” piped up Scavander. He wiped a hand across his forehead. “Indeed, it is a mere matter of-” And here he launched into a description which made me frown. It was recondite and extraordinarily complex, filled with arcane words, and made little sense even to me, who ought in the nature of things to have known what he was talking about. I felt the whisper of unease. The Emperor waved all that aside brusquely.
“Suffice it that my son-in-law has succeeded in his task. I will have sums set aside for the building of fliers. Indeed, if all we hear out of Hamal is half true, we shall have need of them.”
“I do not believe it, Majister,” spoke Kov Lykon. “I am not at all persuaded that Hamal means us mischief. Their quarrel is with the countries of Pandahem. And we of Vallia should welcome anyone who can ruin the Pandahem.”