“But if the emperor dies, his daughter and her husband will take the throne and the crown. You have thought of that?”
“If the emperor dies you are out of it, Prescot. If he dies before things are settled the land will run red with blood, for it will mean civil war, without doubt.”
“And you would run that risk?”
“It would be no risk for us,” said the kovneva, and she chuckled in her crone-like way, her gorgeous body incongruous in the soft swathes of silk. “For we will win whatever the intervening chaos may be.”
They believe that, these high and mighty of the world.
Of course, by Makki-Grodno’s disgusting diseased left kidney, it is often true.
“Do you expect me to connive at the murder of my father-in-law?”
“If you were a man with blood of Vallia in him, if you had the breeding, then it would be nothing to you.”
I did not say, “If that is breeding a fellow is better off without it.” But it was a near thing. The swathing buff cloak could be ripped off in a twinkling. Depending on the danger, it would be the longbow or the longsword. Either would suit me in my frame of mind. Eventually they offered a deal in which I would have no part of the death of the emperor and in which I would keep all the lands and titles I now held in Vallia with the exception of Prince Majister. They could not know how little I valued that. In return I was not to oppose them, and was to make sure my people did not interfere during the coup. I asked about this, but they were too cagey to give me any details. Without attempting to imply any false modesty, it seemed to me they were anxious to get me out of the coming conflict because they feared my influence. They must have some apprehension of what I could do. Otherwise the terms would not have been so generous. Whether or not they’d keep their side of the bargain would be in the laps of the gods.
Had I been acting only for myself, for the old impetuous Dray Prescot who thumped before he thought, I’d have roared out some obscene suggestion at them and then gone swinging into action. I felt a keen regret that I could not do this. I needed the exercise. But more than mere gratification of my injured ego hung on this. The fate of Vallia depended to a very great deal on what was decided here in this conservatory. It was in my interest to appear to go along with them, giving them rope, so that I might more surely bring them down into ruin.
So I said, “Let me think about this. There is the Princess Majestrix to be considered.”
Ered Imlien burst out with: “Do not worry your head over her, you onker. The Princess Dayra occupies her mind.”
Furious, Natyzha Famphreon rose from her wicker chair. “Speak not of things of which you know nothing, you fambly!” She would have gone on. But I took a few steps toward this Ered Imlien and clutched up his buff tunic in my fist and shook his head a little and I glared into his eyes.
“But you had best speak to me, rast! And quickly!”
Fifteen
“Speak up, cramph!” I loosed my grip a little and some air flowed down with a great whooping gasp into his lungs. His face was a bright purple, like a rotten gregarian. He wheezed. I thought his eyes might roll out of his head. So I shook him again, just to keep him in the right frame of mind. He choked out: “The Princess Dayra, she is nothing more than a-”
I hit him before he could say whatever he was going to say.
I suppose I was oversensitive about my daughters because I had held my Velia in my arms as she died. I could never forget that — what father could? So I hit him again and said, “Speak carefully, Imlien, speak very carefully.”
“I do not know!” he blubbered out, his face already beginning to swell, a trickle of blood down his chin from a split lip. “I hear only that she-”
“Careful!”
“She runs wild! I cannot tell more for I do not know!”
I became aware of the conservatory again, and of the others frozen in postures of horror. The Chuliks had trotted out from behind their glass screen, their weapons ready, and the kovneva waved them down. If they wanted a fight, by Vox! I was in the mood now, right enough, to my shame.
“He speaks the truth, Dray Prescot! No one knows what your daughter Dayra is up to. That is where the Princess Majestrix has gone. More than that no woman knows.”
I let Ered Imlien fall to the floor. I glared at the kovneva. “You are not of the Sisters of the Rose?”
She drew that gorgeous body up and her lean crone-like face sharpened. “No.”
She made no offer to tell me which order owned her allegiance. I did not ask. She would not have said if she did not wish to.
“It seems,” I said, “that if we make a deal I shall have to watch this lump of offal.”
“I will answer for him. He is a trylon. Thengelsax is too close to the northeast for his comfort. His estates are raided. He is foolish only in his concern for his estates.”
“And his people?”
“They fight for him as is their duty.”
The idea that Dayra had something to do with the raids from those hard folk of the northeast crossed my mind. But it seemed too preposterous. And, anyway, was not all the island one? Was not Vallia Vallia?
Perhaps there were no raids at all, and this was an invention of this miserable Ered Imlien to his own dark ends. I looked at him. He was drawing himself up and quite automatically reaching out for his riding crop. If he’d attempted to hit me with it I hadn’t noticed. But it was broken in half. Had I done that?
“You have shamed me, Prince,” he said, and the words gritted out through his teeth.
“Not so, Imlien. Not so. You have shamed yourself.”
“One day-”
“Ered! Keep silence!” Natyzha Famphreon glowered on the miserable trylon and Ered Imlien turned away, muttering, but he kept silence as far as I was concerned.
To the kovneva I spoke and I admit with some trepidation. I was astounded at the quality of my voice. It hardly sounded like the bull-headed, vicious, intemperate Dray Prescot I knew.
“And can you tell me nothing more about my daughter?”
She shook her head. I thought, but could not be sure, that a dark gleam of triumph crossed those arrogant features.
“Nothing more is known.”
There was nothing more I could find out. Whatever it was that Delia had gone to sort out, I could only hope that she and Melow would be successful and return swiftly to me. They had to be successful! We had lost one daughter. We could not bear to face the anguish of the loss of another.
I forced myself to calm down. I could trust my Delia. She was supremely competent in these matters. I had a job to do here and that I must do. There was one other matter I wished to discuss before I left here, either walking out with all due civility, battling my way out with the Krozair brand in my fists or carried out feet first.
So I smashed myself out of that fearful frame of mind. One must, as they say on Kregen, accept the needle.
“We have ranked our deldars in this matter of the emperor,” I said. “And we agree I shall think on it. Tell me, Natyzha Famphreon, what know you of the Black Feathers?”
Her arrogant old head went up at this. She started to walk between lines of potted plants, twirling the green fronds. We all walked with her, although Ered Imlien kept well clear of me. The onker was swishing his broken half of the riding crop about and trying to bash his boot and hitting his knee, whereat I was minded to laugh.
“The Black Feathers? Ah, you have heard of them?”
I said in a nasty voice, “If I had not heard of them I would scarcely be able to ask you.”
She had the self-consciousness to flush up at this, at my suggestion, at my tone. She snapped a twig from a sweet little loomin, and twitched the flower about, not gently.