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  “We’re unable to sell vollers to Vallia, Hamun, at a time like this. That makes sense, doesn’t it, by Hanitcha the Harrower!” He sipped his wine where we sat watching Nath Tolfeyr being cut down to size by the Zeniccean, Leotes ti Ponthieu. The points were rebated, for it was a mere practice bout, or else Nath would have been a degutted corpse. “The Vallians don’t like it, too bad for them! They’ve sent a deputation to plead with us for vollers.” He laughed, a cheery, good-natured laugh. “They don’t stand a chance in an Herrelldrin hell!”

  “So the Pallans think one of the Vallians from the deputation is trying to steal their secrets?”

  “Our secrets, Hamun, my old sport!”

  “Quite.”

  “Well, it’s only a theory. But the Queen will send the Vallians away with fleas in their collective ears.”

  He used a Kregish expression, but that was what he meant.

  We were contracted for a gambling zorca race in the afternoon, and we went and cheered on the animals as they raced the course. They didn’t have zorca chariot racing here, as we did in Valka. But they’d import that, too, before long. Strom Hormish arrived, and made a scene over the Havil-forsaken Djang who had run off. He was liable for all kinds of penalties under the law.

  “Bad luck, Strom,” chortled Chido, and went back to cheering on his zorca, urging him to ride down all opposition.

  “He seemed docile enough to me, Strom,” I said. “It is bad luck. Did you whip him?”

  “No, as Hanitcha harrows our good intentions! I gave him a thraxter and told him to fight a wersting -

  and he ran!”

  Even Tothord of the Ruby Hills laughed over that.

  The idle raffish days slipped by. I saw the Vallian delegation taking the air, shepherded through the sacred quarter, and recognized some of its members. I calculated that the Emperor of Vallia, Delia’s father, had given up all hopes of his wild son-in-law finding the secrets of the vollers, as well he might. It seemed to me the Racter party, who wanted to oust him from power, had pressured him into this delegation. It would get nowhere. But at least it would show the people of the Vallian empire that something was being done. If by chance it succeeded, the racters would take the credit. When it failed they would put the blame on the Emperor.

  How my Delia must have seethed over this!

  The voller in which I had arrived, cracking up by the burning farmhouse where I was held by a Rapa while another hit me on the head, just before I met Rees the lion-man, had been sold for scrap. Now I determined to sell the model I had bought in its place, for I scarcely used the thing and I was running short of cash. I think, too, the strain of being an undercover agent, and a potential Bladesman, was telling on me at this time.

  A buyer had been found. He lived about twenty dwaburs east along the River Havilthytus, and I would fly the voller out and return by boat. I looked forward to the journey, for it would be over new ground and I might turn up some chance to help my mission change from a shambles of disaster to brilliant success.

  The twin suns, Zim and Genodras, cast down their mingled streaming colored fires as I flew east over the rich Hamalese countryside. I spotted a cloud of flutsmen, and after my first instinctive tensing, relaxed. They would be fresh recruits, hired by Hamal, being prepared to be sent out against the empire’s enemies. I watched the birds and their riders and saw them diving down onto what was evidently a small but extremely rich villa by the river. The place was laid out as a pleasure garden. I frowned. Something was amiss.

  Two other airboats flew past without halting. I suppose the flutsmen were confident, knowing they would be mistaken for allies, hired by Hamal, as I had mistaken them. But I could recognize a flutsman raid when I saw one. Why should they descend on this small and lonely villa, a pleasure palace in miniature?

  Wheeling the flier and buckling up my weapons, I headed down to the villa of pleasure. The scene below revealed in horrid clarity just what was going on. The Flutsmen had now all landed and were busily engaged in their furious and reckless way with the guards. The reivers kept a ring before a tiny folly, perched on a spit of land jutting into the river, where skiffs and sailboats were moored. The scene was idyllic, bowered in sweet-smelling trees. The struggle below smeared that fresh brightness in horror.

  A small group of reivers, their backs for the moment secured from attack by the guards as their comrades battled on, burst into the folly.

  My voller landed beside the folly, a little white-painted rococo pavilion. Women were screaming. I saw guards stretched upon the green turf. The guards were apims, Rapas, Numims, Brokelsh, mercenaries very quick with the sword. The flutsmen had not had it all their own way, and there were flutsmen corpses lying there, the brave clotted streamers bedraggled. I leaped out, tearing free my rapier and dagger, and ran for the pavilion.

  A Numim staggered out, his fierce lion-face anguished.

  He tried to speak, gurgled, and fell. The stux had penetrated deep into his back. I leaped up the steps and burst into the pavilion. Cool shadows fell about me. The scene jumped into instant clarity and focus. Three beautiful girls lay dead on silken cushions, their blood staining the mosaic floor among the soft rugs.

  Someone had blundered there, for the girls were Chail Sheom, courtesans, garlanded with golden chains, extraordinarily beautiful and worth a fortune each. The woman who sat on a cushion, her face a mask of horror, surprised me. She wore all black: the short pleated and flared skirt of Hamal; a frilled, lacy blouse; a cummerbund around a tiny waist; and a turban-like cloth wound about her head — all black. She was beautiful, oh yes, in a hard feral way, with intense passion in her eyes, and a mouth that could firm to instant command. Her eyes were green, slanting, commanding. She sat, motionless, watching the six flutsmen who had come to take her.

  They were arguing among themselves, as is the flutsman’s way. The three who had slain the girls were being reviled by the other three. That made sense. They had a large dark blue bag, and one was pulling the drawstring open, clearly intending to stuff this woman, at least, into the bag, even if they’d missed the girls.

  “For the sake of Barflut the Razor Feathered!” boomed one. “Nath, get your fumbling fingers out of it, you onker!”

  “Hurry and stuff the she-leem in the sack!” rapped back Nath, furious. “The other guards will be here soon!”

  They wrestled with the sack, which opened a fraction before the drawstring stuck again.

  “Pick the she-leem up, throw her over your shoulder! By Gish! Have I to tell you everything?”

  The woman saw me. The chill of horror in her eyes warmed, it seemed to me, much as a samphron-oil lamp might glow in the Ice Floes of Sicce. She saw me looking at her and the flutsmen, and a strange calculating look drove the horror from her green eyes. She seemed to grow taller, more lithe, sensuous, utterly commanding and demanding.

  “May Milah Bateh bless you with the brains of a calsany!” The flutsmen were wrangling away, swearing their convoluted flutsmen’s oaths, still tearing at the drawstring of the sack while two of them busied themselves stripping the gems from the bodies of the slain Chail Sheom. This big fellow Nath backhanded his companion away and started for the woman in black seated immobile on her cushion. “You are rancid brained yourself, Nalgre! Go see if the guards are-” He broke off as this Nalgre turned, saw me, and let out a shriek of anger and joy.

  “A ponsho come for the shearing! By Gish! I need the sight of bubbling blood to drown your babbling, oh Nath, father of onkers!”

  “Father and mother of vosks, Nalgre of the clipped wings! Stick him and end your silly chattering.”

  Well, as I knew, flutsmen are deadly fighters. They scour the skies seeking prey. They are a foul pest, it is true, but they have given me much enjoyment in my time. As now.

  Nalgre whipped up his thraxter and came at me.

  Despite the stories that a flutsman would never walk across a street to pick up a golden deldy but would fly, they are marvelous fighters afoot. We engaged, an
d from the back Nath bellowed: “I’ll take the she-leem. Rondas, Naghan, go and show Nalgre the Vosk how a flutsman fights!”

  With cheery shouts two flutsmen bore down on me. For a few moments I was beset; then I dropped one — whether Rondas or Naghan I did not know — and cut Nalgre’s face with a slash that only his superb speed turned from a fatal to an injurious blow. He yelled — in anger — and forced himself back again.

  The other one — either Rondas or Naghan — screeched and staggered away holding his guts. The rapier does its work neatly and with dispatch there, and they wore only light flying leathers without armor. Nalgre began to boil. The other two bellowed multifarious flutsmen’s oaths and rushed at me, and in a blur of twinkling steel I fended them off. Another went down — we had not been introduced — and I saw Nath hoisting the black-clad woman up over his shoulder. She made no movement or struggle. Her stony self-possession after that first frozen horror intrigued me. I dealt with another — and still Nalgre, streaming blood, eluded me. I swung back, stuck out a foot, and tripped him. There was no time to stab into his unprotected back as he went down, for Nath, bellowing like a chunkrah in labor, bore down on me, immense, his feathers flaming with color, those clotted streamers whirling from his leather flying helmet.

  I said, “Put the lady down, Nath-”

  His thraxter blurred before my face.

  I beat it away with the dagger, drove the rapier in with a precision that must be exquisite. The blade passed a finger’s breadth by the woman’s dangling body. Nath gave a last-minute lurch, the blade scored his side, and then I let him have the dagger-hilt in the face.

  He dropped the woman in black.

  He swung ferociously to face me, his heavy face enraged and engorged with blood. His eyes glittered. Nalgre staggered up dizzily, swerved to the door. “Out, Nath, out! The guards! The guards!”

  I was not keen to slay these two. They amused me. They were reiving flutsmen, true, but they had failed here. The flutsmen who had slain the poor slave girls were already dead or dying.

  “By Gish! This one fights like a Hyr-paktun!” bellowed Nath. He glanced at his companion, then back at me. He made no further effort to engage but ran swiftly out into the sunshine. I heard a fierce yell. Nalgre darted after. I flicked blood drops from my blade and then went across and cleaned both dagger and rapier on the gaudy flying silks of a dead flutsman. Only then could I see to the woman. She was not harmed. She sat on the floor, and her face showed in startling contrast to the black of her costume. She watched me with those slanting green eyes. At last, as I said nothing, she spoke.

  “I am the Kovneva Serea of Piraju.” Then, speaking in a low cold monotone that contrasted with what she said as her white face contrasted with the black silks: “Hai, Jikai!”

  About to tell her that this little scuffle was in no way a Jikai, high or small, I was stopped by the entrance of a detachment of breathless guards. Bulky, hard men wearing link mesh, and with thraxters and shields handled with a competence that told of long experience, they hustled in — and made straight for me with the clearest of intentions of cutting me down on the spot!

  I had to jump and parry for a moment before the Kovneva lashed them with biting invective and cowed them. By Zair, but she knew how to command!

  “This Jikai saved me, you cramphs! And you were out chasing phantoms, lured away by those rasts of flutsmen!” She would not hear a word any of them could say. Their faces were the tough hard-bitten chunks of oak veteran warriors. They took her scorn ill; yet they endured. She drove them out icily, viciously, contemptuously. When the guards had gone she turned to me again. I felt my muscles haul my backbone up a little straighter as she fastened those slanting green eyes upon me, as her lips softened from that single scarlet gash to two soft curves. I knew that a Kovneva was a high rank. As for Piraju, that was an island off the northeastern tip of Hamal, precariously attached to the mainland by one of the long chains of tiny islands that stretch out like fingers into the Southern Ocean, the Risshamal Keys.

  “You do not speak, Jikai. Your name?”

  Well, now.

  To give her any of my varied assortment of real names would mean one of two things: those she did not recognize would mean nothing; those she did recognize would brand me as an enemy. To tell her I was Amak Hamun? No — that would blow my cover completely. So, once again, I had to invent a new name, on the spur of the moment, knowing my neck stood at risk. A Kovneva holds real and awesome powers in her own place.

  “Lahal, Kovneva,” I said. “I am Bagor ti Hemlad.”

  “Lahal, Bagor ti Hemlad.”

  I’d steered clear of any noble rankings, contenting myself with being a Horter. Hemlad, you will recall, was the town in which, in company with Avec Brand and Ilter Monicep, I had had an adventure involving smashing my face into an old lady’s basket of ripe shonages. I had been thrown into the basket of ripe fruit by a combination of circumstances including the lurching of an amith-drawn vehicle. Often I saw the trolleys being drawn so cheerfully on their tracks through the streets of Ruathytu by one of those marvelous diffs, the amith, with their apim upper half and totrix rear half, I thought of Avec and Ilter and those days wandering the south central area of Hamal.

  It seemed to me, then, as far as I could judge, that I had pitched it just right. This imperious Kovneva would lose interest in a mere Horter. A man of rank would have intrigued her. A mere mercenary, a paktun, a soldier-of-fortune, might have repelled her. Anyway, what I desired occurred, for when I said I was in a hurry, that she was now perfectly safe, and that I must press on, she did not attempt to dissuade me, except that she insisted I drink a glass of wine with her. It was the best Jholaix. I dissembled well; few people can afford the best of Jholaix.

  “The wine pleases you, Bagor?”

  “It is very fine, Kovneva. My thanks.”

  Her amusement made those green eyes flare with all the reflections from Genodras. A mere Horter of slender means might never drink Jholaix from the day he was born to the day he died. I smiled inwardly. I was now able to take my leave. I flew on to make my sale, disposed of the voller, and took a boat back up the River Havilthytus. When the vessel passed that white pavilion, you may be sure I stared; the place was deserted.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Espionage

  Nothing useful came out of that trip back up the River Havilthytus. Nothing useful, it seemed to me, was coming out of my entire spying efforts in Hamal. The news with which Chido greeted me, although I had heard rumors before I slung my coat down onto the bed for Nulty to clear away in my room in The Kyr Nath and the Fifi, was that something of a reverse had been suffered by the army of Pandahem. That is what the Hamalians called their forces operating in Pandahem; it was not the army of the Pandaheem. I grimaced, thinking, good for them, the Hamalian cramphs.

  Chido noticed the glitter of gold falling from my coat as Nulty cleared it away.

  “Oh,” I said, offhandedly. “Just a souvenir I picked up.”

  “It is magnificent, Hamun!”

  Well, I was not about to tell Chido that this little golden trinket had been given to Bagor ti Hemlad by the Kovneva Serea of Piraju for services rendered. It was a nice piece, fashioned into the shape of a zhantil, that golden-maned tawny wild beast of Kregen, studded with a violet gemstone that Chido, handling it reverently, told me was extraordinarily valuable.

  “I prefer scarron,” I said.

  So I passed it off. For safety I pinned the thing to the scarlet breechclout, and locked the chain on it. I did not want to leave it lying about to excite further comment, and I did not wish to wear it where it might be seen. A spy has to think of these things.

  Before I made up my mind to sell it I would have to make careful inquiries concerning the Kovneva Serea, and, in all probability, break the violet-and-gold-zhantil brooch up, which would be a pity. Chido did say, before we went out to a gaming match he had contracted to bring me to, “It seems you are lucky to find it, Hamun. It is clearly a trophy
of war. Pandahem work, I’ve no doubt.” Then, before I could comment, he was burbling on in his artless way: “The Havil-forsaken news means that Rees will be marching out before he’s fully fit! It isn’t right, Hamun! Rees’s regiment bivouacs outside Ruathytu tomorrow.”

  This stupid reverse of the Hamalese forces in Pandahem, which I welcomed with vicious pleasure, meant that a friend was going marching off to war before he was fit enough to do so. Truly, fate is a weird old fabricator at times!

  “That means you’ll be marching out, too, Chido.”

  “Looking forward to it, old sport, looking forward.”

  Amak Chido spoke in an offhand way, with that cultivated drawl of the raffish set of Ruathytu, but he had been thinking about what going off to war would mean, and those thoughts had not been entirely to his liking.

  “If Rees insists on an entire regiment of zorcamen,” I said, and I spoke more weightily than I intended,

  “then I cannot march with you.”

  It was a sore point between us. That it was the truth merely helped its use as an excuse for me to stay in the city.

  Perhaps I ought to say here that this “truth” was simply the fact that for all the training Rees’s men had undergone, they were new recruits, raw. The best use for them would be as a thundering great mob charging headlong into the enemy. But they rode zorcas. Not the most suitable animal for a charge, when other forms of saddle-animal were available. As zorcamen they should be employed in the scouting role. But they would be totally unfitted to carry out that task with all the skills it demanded. Whoever was running the Hamalese war effort was here allowing rank and status and a glib tongue to lead them astray. A new Pallan for the Northern Front had been appointed, one Kov Pereth; I supposed Rees had got to him.

  There were plenty of glum faces as we went the rounds of the sacred quarter. Every Hamalian believed fervently that his empire would win this war, and would go on extending the boundaries of empire, but at setbacks like these they grew glum, where, I believe, other races would grow angry. It was on this day, I recall, that my winnowing of the wind at last yielded a result. Time was running out faster than I cared to contemplate. True, this setback to the Hamalese army of Pandahem gave me a little more breathing space; but all the time I spent here in Hamal I was somberly aware that when at last I prised loose the secret of the vollers a great deal more time would be required for the builders of Vallia to construct our own fliers. I was not overlooking the fact that Hamal was operating an expedition at a considerable distance from her home bases, and that she might overstretch her resources. From all I had seen in Hamal I knew the empire ruled by Queen Thyllis was immensely rich and powerful, with untapped resources of men, materials, and money. She would have to be struck many shrewd blows before the Hamalians could be convinced of the wisdom of halting their imperial ambitions and expansions. So that when at last all Pandahem had been conquered — perhaps even before the final mopping-up operations — the Hamalians would launch themselves in their clouds of sky ships against my home of Vallia. Looking back, I can think with warm affection — and not a little wry amusement, considering the way of it — how I now completely took the island empire of Vallia as my homeland. Vallia and Valka, Djanduin and Strombor!