“Where shall we go, then, lordships?” the boatman called out to them. “Havilbove Quay’s the next, and then Kanaba, and the one after that’s the Guadeloom Quay.”
“Take us to the center of things, wherever that may be,” replied Prestimion.
And to Septach Melayn he said, “What do you suppose he could have been talking about, this business of Lord Prestimion going out in his yacht and sinking boats? It made no sense to me. These people must surely be aware that Lord Prestimion hasn’t had time yet even to pay an official visit to Stee, and that there’s no likelihood at all that he’d be living here and riding up and down the river by night making trouble for people.”
“Do you think they give much thought to the realities of the Coronal’s life, lordship?” Gialaurys said. “He’s a myth to them, a legendary figure. For all they know, he has the power to be in six places at once.”
Prestimion laughed. “But still—to imagine that the Coronal, even if he were here, would run down ships in the channel just for sport—”
“Trust me in this, my lord. I know more of the common folks’ minds than you ever will. They’ll believe anything and everything about their kings. You have no idea how remote from their lives you are in every way, living far above them atop the Mount as you do. Nor can you imagine what wild fables and fantasies they spin about you.”
“This is something other than a fable, Gialaurys,” said Septach Melayn impatiently. “This is simply a delusion. Don’t you see that the old man’s as mad as all those people you saw laughing to themselves in Kharax? Solemnly telling us that the new Coronal goes about sinking riverboats! Why, what can that be, if not one more example of this new insanity that’s spreading through the populace like a plague?”
“Yes,” Gialaurys said. “I think you’re right. Madness. Delusion. The man doesn’t seem stupid. So he must be crazy, then, and no question about it.”
“A most peculiar delusion, though,” said Prestimion. “Comic, in its way, of course. And yet I would have hoped they’d have had more love for me than to suppose me capable of—”
Just then came a sharp cry from the boatman. “Look, my lords, look!” He was pointing frantically forward with all four arms. “There! Just upstream from us!”
A disturbance of some kind, not at all imaginary, was quite definitely going on up ahead.
The river was churning with activity. Ferries and river-boats of all sizes were scurrying busily about, cutting toward one shore or the other at sharp angles as if making hasty alterations to their routes. And it was possible to see, a little farther on, a large and luxurious vessel—a ship of virtually regal grandeur—making passage toward them down the center of the channel with all its lights ablaze.
“It is the Coronal Lord Prestimion, come to sink my boat!” the Skandar moaned in a strangled-sounding voice.
This no longer seemed as amusing as it had been. It needed to be investigated. “Steer us toward him,” Prestimion commanded.
“Lordships! No—I beg you—”
’Toward him, yes,” said Gialaurys firmly, and added a couple of rough Skandar expletives.
Still the terrified boatman hesitated, imploring their mercy. Septach Melayn, grinning a broad shameless grin, turned and lifted his hand, showing it agleam with great round ten-royal coins. “For you, fellow, if there’s any trouble! Full indemnity for your losses! Thirty royals here, do you see? Thirty!”
The poor Skandar looked miserable; but he acceded gloomily and put a couple of his hands to the tiller, and kept the trappagasis on its course.
It was all alone, now, solitary and exposed: the only vessel, other than the yacht of the supposed Lord Prestimion, that still remained in midchannel. And it was bringing them nearer, moment by moment, to the majestic and overbearing ship that held dominion over this section of the river.
They were very close to it, now. Unsettlingly close; for it would be a very easy business, Prestimion was beginning to realize, for this great ship to pass right over their little boat and grind it to matchsticks, and sail away from the encounter without having felt the slightest tremor.
He was no expert on maritime matters; but it was obvious enough to him that this craft looming up loftily before them in the channel was built on a grand princely scale, the sort of yacht that a Serithorn or an Oljebbin might own. Its hull was fashioned of some black glistening wood bright as burnished steel, and abovedecks it bristled everywhere with a host of fanciful spars and booms and stays and banner-bedecked masts and glowlamps in a dozen colors, and from its bow rose the fanged and gaping head of some imaginary monster of the deep, elaborately carved and vividly painted in scarlet and yellow and purple and green. The whole effect was dazzling, awe-inspiring, just a little frightening.
As for the flag that it flew, Prestimion saw to his amazement that it was the Coronal’s own sea-going flag, a green starburst on a field of gold.
“Do you see it?” he cried, tugging furiously at Gialaurys’s arm. “That flag—that starburst flag—”
“And there is the Coronal himself, I think,” said Septach Melayn coolly. “Although I had heard that Lord Prestimion was a better-looking man than that; but perhaps it was only rumor.”
Prestimion gazed wonderstruck across the way at the man that claimed to be his very self. He stood proudly on the foredeck of this grand ship clad in robes of the Coronal’s colors, staring out in regal manner into the night.
He looked, indeed, nothing at all like the man whom he pretended to be. He seemed taller than Prestimion, as many men were, and much less sturdy through the shoulders and chest. His hair was a golden brown, not the flat yellow of Prestimion’s, and he wore it in curving waves, not simply and straight, as Prestimion did. His face was fleshy and full and not at all pleasing, the eyebrows too heavy, the nose too sharply hooked. But he bore himself with a prideful kingly stance, his head thrown back and one hand stiffly thrust into the slit of his green velvet surcoat.
Behind him stood a tall slender man in a buff jerkin and flaring red breeches, who perhaps was meant to be this Coronal’s version of Septach Melayn, and on his other side was a heavyset slab-jawed fellow in breeches of Piliplok style, surely intended to represent Gialaurys. Their presence made this bizarre masquerade all the more troublesome; it extended it into new levels of duplicity that destroyed the last trace of Prestimion’s earlier bemusement, and awoke in him something now approaching anger.
He had already lived through one usurpation; he had no tolerance in his soul for another, if that was in fact what this strange affair was intended to be.
The Skandar boatman’s teeth were chattering with fear. “We will die, lordships, we will die, we will die—please, I beg you, let me turn the boat—!”
Turning was beside the point now, though. The two vessels were so close that the false Lord Prestimion could easily run them down in the channel, if that were his wish. But his mood appeared to be a kindly one tonight. As the riverboat went past the great yacht on its starboard side the supposed Lord Prestimion cast his glance downward, and his eyes met those of Prestimion far below, and for a long moment the two men stared at each other in deep, intense contemplation. Then the grandly dressed Prestimion on the deck smiled to the simply garbed Prestimion in the humble riverboat far below, as a king may sometimes smile to a common man, and nodded in a grand courtly way, and the hand came forth from the surcoat clutching a small round bag of green velvet, which he flung casually outward in Prestimion’s general direction.
Prestimion was too flabbergasted even to reach for it. But Septach Melayn of the lightning-swift reflexes leaned forward and snapped the fat bulging bag from the air just as it was about to hurtle past into the water. Then the yacht continued splendidly onward, leaving the Skandar’s little boat by itself in mid-river, wallowing in the great ship’s wake.