Bre’en smiled, and leaned forward to gesture Ionina out of the shadows. “I am captivated by Your Highness’s acquisition. She is beautiful—almost supernaturally exotic. Tell me, little one,” he addressed the girl, who was anything but little, “to reach the Summerkingdom from County Tsarang you must have crossed the Snowkingdom. Did our land please you?” For all the man’s ugliness, he had an engaging smile.
The girl seemed puzzled by his question, finally said faintly, “I no … I mean, I don’t know.”
Bre’en’s laugh was cheerful, yet not mocking. “You don’t blow? In just four words my entire kingdom is consigned to obscurity! I am crushed.” He turned to Pelio, and abruptly changed the subject. “Your Highness, it was not by our request that we deal with your father through Prince Aleru rather than yourself.”
Pelio nodded woodenly. Another time, he might have speculated on the Snowman’s motives. As it was, the words scarcely registered.
Bre’en bowed and walked toward the transit pool. His men followed with stiff, almost awkward precision. As soon as they were gone, Pelio started for the pool himself. Ionina caught up and said, “We go to show me those things now?”
The prince shook his head abruptly. “No. Later, it will have to be later.” To his surprise, she seemed more upset by his refusal than by anything else that had happened. His hand came up and he almost patted her shoulder. “Really,” he said in a more kindly tone, “we’ll do it another time. Soon, I promise.” But the promise could be an empty one. If Aleru suspected Ionina was a witling, he might check Pelio’s story; if he looked hard enough, the story would collapse. And that would be the end of them.
Eight
By the time Yoninne arrived at the prison-cell-cum-guest house, twilight had darkened into night. One of the moons had risen over the rim of the ancient volcanic cone, and its silver-gray light sparkled off wavelets in the central lake, limned the sloping sides of the boats floating there, and turned the beach she walked along into a pale, curving strip. From somewhere across the lake, still in the shadow of the cone’s wall, there were sounds of laughter and splashing, and a pleasant smell that could only have been barbecue.
One of her guards—guides?—drew her off the sand onto a path that angled up the hillside into the palmlike trees. The moonlight scattered into triangular silver fragments as it sifted down, and the smell of green things hung all about. In the humid air, her dress was only beginning to dry, but the material was so soft and light that she scarcely noticed the dampness—while the flight suit she carried in one hand was still sodden, even though it had been lying on the windowsill all day long.
This was quite a change from her treatment that morning, when she had been hustled off a straw pallet in a doorless cell and unceremoniously hauled from one pool of water to the next. Now her guards were almost solicitous; after Pelio said good night they had even agreed to walk her to her quarters rather than teleport there.
Ajão had certainly been right about the boy Pelio. As the number-one son of the biggest wheel on the continent, he was spoiled rotten, but it hadn’t taken long to see that behind his bluster was a kind of soft-hearted naivete. That had puzzled her through most of the day until, there in that strange cold room, he confessed that he couldn’t teleport any more than she could. You’d think he was admitting to some terrible disease; poor guy, in a way perhaps he was.
That admission was just further evidence that the Azhiri needed no super-technology. Sure, they had simple crafts—ironworking and such—but all the fantastic things they did were applications of the “Talent” most of them were born with. She hadn’t really been convinced of this till she saw what passed for toilet facilities among the upper classes; the fixtures were carved from marble and quartz, yet the waste -disposal system was no better than a common outhouse.
All in all it had seemed safe to tell Pelio that no members of her race could teleport. And her admission had made the kid look so … happy.
Through the leaves and tree trunks she saw a flicker of yellow. The path wound on another fifteen meters, then opened onto a clearing set in the hillside. By the moonlight she saw a large cabin done in the usual stone-and-timber style—but this building had a doorway hacked through one wall. The flickering light from within painted a yellowish trapezoid on the mossy ground.
As she stepped into the fresh-cut doorway, Ajão Bjault looked up from the wall torch he had been examining. “Yoninne!” After a day filled with gray-green faces, his chocolate skin and frizzy white hair looked incongruous. The old man’s gaze flickered from Yoninne to the two Azhiri who still stood in the darkness beyond the room. “I didn’t hear you coming up. Are you all right?”
Yoninne smiled. Ajão’s hearing was so bad he would probably miss the crack of doom. She stepped into the room. Behind her, she heard the two guards retreat. “I’m fine. Just fine.”
The other looked at her a bit strangely. “How do you like this place?” he said. “They brought me here just before sunset. Quite an improvement.” Yoninne looked around. Like most isolated buildings she had seen that day, it had only one room, with a transit pool in the center. Pelio had been as good as his word: their new apartment was nowhere near as opulent as his quarters, but it looked comfortable enough. Yoninne curled up on one of the pillowed chairs and suddenly felt very tired in a kind of satiated way. Supper had been good. The lead and mercury in the local “edibles” would be lethal in the long run, but they certainly didn’t affect the taste of food.
Ajão still had a puzzled expression on his face. “I’ve been trying to make these torches burn brighter,” he said. “They’re not just simple pieces of wood. They have a wick structure…” He stepped back from the torch’s wall bracket and peered out the doorway into the darkness. Then he turned back to Yoninne, “I don’t know why I’m so cautious; they don’t understand a word I’m saying.” Now that she looked at him more closely, she realized he was tired and jittery. And still he had the air of being unable to believe what he was seeing. “Did you have any luck, Yoninne?”
“Luck?”
He frowned. “The maser, Yoninne. The maser.”
“Oh, no. But don’t worry, we’ll get it some other …” Her voice stuttered into silence, and her peaceful mood vanished as abruptly as if she had been slapped in the face. She understood now the puzzled look in the other’s eyes, and realized just what he was seeing: Yoninne Leg-Wot, the stubby, flatchested pilot. She looked down at herself, saw the thing she had called a dress—a short green kilt, barely large enough to hold her wide hips. She had been running around like a fatassed fool all day. Leg-Wot bounced onto her short legs, felt a hot flush of humiliation rising to her face. And this senile bastard just stood there pitying her.
“God damn you, Bjault,” she choked out as she stumbled across the room to the lavatory alcove. She yanked the curtain shut and ripped off the skimpy kilt. Her flight suit was still damp, but she pulled it on with a few quick motions, and zipped the diagonal fastener. She stood silently for several seconds watching herself in the wall mirror. Wearing the flight suit, she was her usual coolly efficient self.
She slid the curtain aside, and walked back across the room, die water in the suit’s boots making faint squishsquishsquish sounds. The old man still hovered nervously by the far wall. “You know, Yoninne,” he said in that diffident, hesitant way of his, “you’re not the only person who’s had a bad time today. Until this evening I was cooped up in that cell, wondering what they had done to you … and what they were going to do to me. I—”