A pirate with a torch in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other shouted in the Qiribo dialect: "Stand! If you flee not, no harm shall come to you. We wish but two men from among you." He repeated this announcement until the hubbub quieted.
Other shouts came from outside. Barnevelt guessed that the pirates had thrown a cordon around the theater to catch runaways. He also had a horrid premonition of who the two sought by the raiders were.
Queen Alvandi and Princess Zei stood in their box, pale but resolute.
The bulk of the audience were still massed around the exits. In the center of the theater the cook, the executioner, and most of the priestesses had disappeared into the general mob; King Kaj and the high priestess remained.
The pirate leader with the torch shouted: "We wish . . ."
And at that instant the gaslights went out.
The sudden darkening brought a few seconds of silence; then a rising murmur that swelled to a roar.
"Snyol! You there, Snyol of Pleshch!" shouted a voice.
Barnevelt looked around. A few meters away from him stood King Kaj, revealed by the fugitive light from one of the moons. The king bore a triumphant smile on his face and the executioner's chopper in his hands.
"Aye, you!" repeated the king. "Take the queen to the palace, and let your companion Tagde take the princess!"
"How about you?" Barnevelt shouted back.
"I remain here. To me, all loyal Qüibuma! To me! Let's deracinate this ging of rogues!"
"I'm with you!" came Zakkomir's high voice, and the young man jumped down from the front of the box with a lady's sword in his hand. A few of the braver citizens joined them, and the remnant of the Amazon guard. With the king whirling the chopper at their head they bored into the scattered pirates. The clatter of weapons drowned speech.
Barnevelt, looking around, saw Tangaloa swarming up into the royal box, seizing Zei, and starting to hustle her off out through the private royal exit. Although Barnevelt would have preferred that job himself, he saw nothing to do but carry out the king's order. He climbed up after Tangaloa and caught the queen's arm.
"Come along, Your Altitude," he said. "But you—he…"
"Save the talk till later."
"I'll not come until…"
Barnevelt drew the queen's sword, a toylike little sticker, but at least it had a point. "You'll come or I'll spank you with this!"
They trotted down the tunnel through which the royal aunts and cousins had already fled. Outside, the seizure and search that the pirates had so carefully organized was fast breaking down with the extinction of the lights. People were running away in all directions, and here and there men fought with swords and pikes in the gloom. A Qiribo gentleman mistook Barnevelt for a pirate and came at him. Barnevelt parried the first lunge and a yell from the queen enlightened the man in the midst of a second.
Another character with a torch confronted them, saying: "Halt! Ah, 'tis he whom…"
It was the specialist, Gavao er-Gargan. Barnevelt's point got him through the belly.
He doubled over and fell, dropping the torch. Then Barnevelt was engaged with another. The pirate lunged. Barnevelt parried and felt his point go home on the riposte. But the pirate, instead of falling, came back for more. You could never be sure of hitting a vital organ on a Krishnan unless you knew their distinctive physiology.
"Heroun, you devil!" shrieked the queen, apparently at the pirate.
"We'll argue later, you mangy trull!" panted the pirate, coming at Dirk with a coupe.
They were still at it when another Qiribu got the pirate over the head from behind with a small statute. Splush!
Somewhere a trumpet blew a complicated pattern of notes. The crowd had now pretty well thinned out; and the Sun-qaruma, too, seemed to have gone elsewhere. Barnevelt saw a couple in the distance, running back down the colossal stairway that led from Ghulinde down to Damovang and the sea. He stepped over a body lying on the path, then over another that still moved. An occasional groan from the darkness around the shrubbery told of others left wounded.
At the front entrance to the palace, a cluster of Amazons formed a double semicircular rank around the portal, those in front kneeling and those behind standing, their spears jutting out like a porcupine's quills. At a word from the queen they opened to let her through.
"Saw you my daughter?" she asked the guard in charge.
"No, my lady."
Barnevelt said: "I'll go back and look for her, Queen."
"Go, and take a few of these with you. We need not all of them, now the rovers have withdrawn."
Barnevelt led a half-dozen of the girl soldiers back the way he had come. One of them carried a small lamp. He stumbled over a body or two and met only one person, who fled before he could be identified. The accoutrements of the girls clanked behind Barnevelt. He was sure he had gotten lost and was casting about for directions when a small twinkle, as of a fallen star, caught his eye.
He hurried over and found the bodies of the two pirates he had sworded. Beside them lay Gavao's torch, nearly out but putting forth one feeble tongue of flame.
The moonlight also showed Barnevelt a white square on the path. He picked up a piece of paper about a' span long and wide and turned it over. The other side was dark.
"Lend me that lamp, please," he said, and by the weak light of its flame examined the paper.
It was a print of the picture the old photographer had made of him and Tangaloa in Jazmurian.
He tucked the picture inside his jacket, thinking: A good thing the queen hadn't known the Morya Sunqaruma were after George and himself, or she'd have surely turned them over.
"George!" he called into the darkness. "Tagde of Vyutr! George Tangaloa!"
"Be that my lord Snyol?" called a voice, and footsteps and clankings approached. However, it was not George Tangaloa but Zakkomir bad-Gurshmani, limping, with a small party including a couple of Amazons.
"Where's the king?" asked Barnevelt.
"Slain in the garboil. Thus, whilst he evaded not the doom marked out for him in the stars, at least he came to a happier end than that which gallowed him. The queen'll be wroth, howsomever."
"Why?"
"Because, item: it spoils her ceremony. And, item: 'twill strengthen the sentiment of the vulgar for male equality. 'Twas another male, the palace janitor, whose quick wit led him to shut off the gas. Moreover Kaj knew what he was about. After he'd struck down twain of the robbers, he said to me: 'If we win here, we'll next deal with the old she-eshuna,' by which I think he meant the queen and Priestess Sehri. And then a pirate blade did jugulate him as he pivoted. But enough of that—where are your friend and the princess?"
"I'm wondering," said Barnevelt, and called again.
The party spread out to search. After much poking among the bushes an Amazon called: "Here lies one without hair upon his pate!"
Barnevelt hurried over and found that sure enough it was Tangaloa asprawl on his face, his shaven scalp puffed into a bloody lump over one ear. To his infinite relief Barnevelt found that George's pulse was still beating. When an Amazon dashed a helmetful of fountain water into Tangaloa's face, he opened his eyes and groaned. His right arm was also bloody; he had been run through the muscle.
"What happened?" asked Barnevelt. "Where's Zei?" Zakkomir echoed him.
"I don't know. I told you I was a dub at swordplay. I hit one bloke over the head, but the sheila's sword broke on his helmet and I don't remember any more."
"Serves you justly," muttered Zakkomir when this had been translated, "to use a light thrusting blade in such thwart fashion. But where's our princess?"