“Yes, your majesty. Yes, your majesty. Yes, your majesty!”
And she made a wondrous sweeping salutation, swinging her arms round and round in a flamboyantly exaggerated mockery of the Labyrinth symbol.
After a time Carabella went below. Valentine remained on deck, studying the horizon through a seeing-tube.
What kind of reception, he wondered, would he have in the free republic of Piliplok?
There was hardly anyone who had not opposed his decision to go there. Sleet, Tunigorn, Carabella, Hissune—they all spoke of the risk, the uncertainty. Piliplok, in its madness, might do anything—seize him, even, and hold him hostage to guarantee its independence. “Whoever enters Piliplok,” Carabella said, as she had said months before in Piurifayne, “must do so at the head of an army, and you have no army, my lord!”
From Hissune had come the same argument. “It was agreed on Castle Mount,” he said, “that when the new armies are organized, it is the Coronal who should lead troops against Piliplok—while the Pontifex directs the strategy at a safer remove.”
“It will not be necessary to lead troops against Piliplok,” said Valentine.
“Your majesty?”
Valentine said, “I had much experience during the war of restoration in pacifying rebellious subjects without bloodshed. If you were to go to Piliplok—a new Coronal, untried, unknown, with soldiers at his back—it would be sure to stir armed resistance in them. But if the Pontifex himself appears—who can remember a time when a Pontifex was seen in Piliplok?—they will be awed, they will be cowed, they will not dare to raise a hand against him even if he enter the city alone.”
Though Hissune had continued to voice strong doubts, in the end Valentine overruled him. There could have been no other outcome, Valentine knew: this early in his Pontificate, having only just handed over the temporal power of the Coronal to the younger man, he could not yet relegate himself wholly to the kind of figurehead position that a Pontifex might be expected to assume. Power, Valentine was discovering, was not easily relinquished, not even by those who once thought they had little love for it.
But it was not wholly a matter of contending for power, Valentine realized. It was a matter of preventing bloodshed where bloodshed was needless. Hissune plainly did not believe that Piliplok could be retaken peacefully; Valentine intended to demonstrate that it could be. Call it part of the new Coronal’s education in the arts of government, Valentine thought. And if I fail, he thought—well, then, call it part of mine.
In the morning, as Piliplok burst into view high above the dark mouth of the great river Zimr, Valentine ordered his fleet to form two wings, with his flagship, the Lady Thiin, at their apex. And he placed himself, clad in the richly hued Pontifical robes of scarlet and black that he had had made for himself before departing from the Isle, at the prow of his vessel, so that all of Piliplok might see him clearly as the royal fleet approached.
“Again they send the dragon-ships to us,” Sleet said.
Yes. As had been done the last time, when Valentine as Coronal had come to Piliplok on what was to have been the beginning of his grand processional through Zimroel, the fleet of dragon-hunters was sailing forth to meet him. But that other time they had had bright Coronal-ensigns of green and gold fluttering in their riggings, and they had greeted him with the joyous sounds of trumpets and drums. Now, Valentine saw, the dragon-ships flew a different flag, a yellow one with a great crimson slash across it, as somber and sinister as the spike-tailed vessels themselves. It was surely the flag of the free republic that Piliplok now deemed itself to be; nor was this fleet coming to hail him in any friendly way.
Grand Admiral Asenhart looked uneasily toward Valentine. He indicated the speaking-tube he held, and said, “Shall I order them to yield and escort us into port, majesty?” But the Pontifex only smiled, and signaled to him to be calm.
Now the mightiest of the Piliplok vessels, a monstrous thing with a horrifying fanged figurehead and bizarrely elaborate three-pronged masts, moved forward from the line and took up a position close by the Lady Thiin. Valentine recognized it as the ship of old Guidrag, the senior among the dragon-captains: and yes, there she was, the fierce old Skandar woman herself on the deck, calling out through a speaking tube, “In the name of the free republic of Piliplok, stand forth and identify yourselves!”
“Give me the tube,” Valentine said to Asenhart. Putting it to his lips, he cried, “This is the Lady Thiin, and I am Valentine. Come aboard and speak with me, Guidrag.”
“I may not do that, my lord.”
“I did not say Lord Valentine, but Valentine,” he responded. “Do you take my meaning? And if you will not come to me, why, then I will go to you! Prepare to take me on board.”
“Majesty!” said Sleet in horror.
Valentine turned to Asenhart. “Make ready a floater-basket for us. Sleet, you are the high spokesman: you will accompany me. And you, Deliamber.”
Carabella said urgently, “My lord, I beg you—”
“If they mean to seize us,” he said, “they will seize us whether I am aboard their ship or mine. They have twenty ships for each of ours, and well-armed ones at that. Come, Sleet—Deliamber—”
“Majesty,” said Lisamon Hultin sternly, “you may not go unless I accompany you!”
With a smile Valentine said, “Ah, well done! You give commands to the Pontifex! I admire your spirit: but no, I will take no bodyguards this time, no weapons, no protection of any sort except these robes. Is the floater ready, Asenhart?”
The basket was rigged and suspended from the foremast. Valentine clambered in, and beckoned to Sleet, grim-faced and bleak, and to the Vroon. He looked back at the others gathered on the deck of the flagship, Carabella, Tunigorn, Asenhart, Zalzan Kavol, Lisamon, Shanamir, all staring at him as though he had at last taken complete leave of his wits. “You should know me better by this time,” he said softly, and ordered the basket lifted over the side.
Out over the water it drifted, skimming lightly above the waves, and climbing the side of the dragon-ship until snared by the hook that Guidrag lowered for it. A moment later Valentine stepped out onto the deck of the other vessel, the timbers of which were dark with the ineradicable stains of sea-dragon blood. A dozen towering Skandars, the least of whom was half again Valentine’s size, confronted him, and at their head was old Guidrag, even more gap-toothed than before, her thick matted fur even more faded. Her yellow eyes gleamed with force and authority, but Valentine detected some uncertainty in her features as well.
He said, “What is this, Guidrag, that you offer me so unkind a welcome on this visit?”
“My lord, I had no idea it was you returning to us.”
“Yet it seems I have returned once again. And am I not to be greeted with more joy than this?”
“My lord—things have changed here,” she said, faltering a little.
“Changed? The free republic?” He glanced about the deck, and at the other dragon-ships arrayed on all sides. “What is a free republic, Guidrag? I think I have not heard the term before. I ask you: what does it mean?”
“I am only a dragon-captain, my lord. These political things—they are not for me to speak of—”
“Forgive me, then. But tell me this, at least: why were you sent forth to meet my fleet, if not to welcome us and guide us to port?”
Guidrag said, “I was sent not to welcome you but to turn you away. Though I tell you again that we had no idea it was you, my lord—that we knew only it was a fleet of imperial ships—”