Fires of Scorpio (21 page)

Well, he did look splendid in everything except the cut of his jib. He’d been a young rip, an imp of deviltry, and lovable through all his pranks. Then he’d become a kov and it had gone to his head, and his mother, Tilda of the Many Veils, had begun to drink. And then — well, and then what? He had seen his army defeated in battle, he had crawled back, somehow, into the king’s favor. He had held onto his kovnate. There were lines in his face, of course; but no more than any Kregan who can hope for better than two hundred years of life might expect. There was a nervousness about him, a jerky irritability I did not much care for. He kept rubbing the palm of his left hand over the pommel of his sword. The weapon looked to be plain enough, useful, and at odds with the rest of his gaudy get-up.

He stared at us. His brows drew down in a practiced grimace designed to intimidate. He saw me.

His expression did not change. His glance passed over me, over Pompino and Quendur, lingered on Lisa. We four just stood there like balass blocks.

“You have been allowed to go scot free. This has been done without my authority. What is your explanation?”

Pompino opened his foxy mouth and I said: “The Silver Wonder binds us all in comradeship, pantor.”

He let a small twisting movement of his lips convey displeasure, hauteur, disgust with us lower orders — anything we wished to deduce. I own it, I began to entertain doubts about that young imp Pando in these latter grown-up days.

“You claim allegiance to Lem the Silver Leem?”

He didn’t beat about the bush; bashed it straight out.

I did not answer at once. Caution in using the name of Lem was habitual to all devotees. Caution derived as much from chauvinistic pride as anything else, I judged, motivated the Leem Lovers in this. Pando nodded then, young, handsome, with betraying blueish smudges under his eyes and that continual rotating rubbing motion of his palm on the sword pommel. Before I’d decided to bash on with the story — in for a ponsho in for a vosk — he said: “You forswear allegiance to the Silver Wonder?”

“No, pantor,” I said. “Just that some names are not usually spoken before a Llahal, or the pappattu that Furry Silver and Dried-Blood Brown demand. That is all.”

His eyes opened wide and he stood up straighter.

“You speak in a way to have your tongue torn out, rast!”

And, still, I couldn’t be sure. Would Pando have joined up with Lem? If he had not, we would be lost to claim allegiance. And yet, and yet — Murgon must have told him, and the strom would not have done that if Pando was not a devotee.

“We mean no harm, pantor,” said Quendur, speaking up stoutly. Pando ignored him. He eyed me.

“You are the one called Pompino, from Tuscursmot? That is in South Pandahem.” He said that in a cuttingly dismissive way, a North Pandaheem barely tolerating a Pandaheem from the South.

“No. I am Jak.”

He started, suddenly taking on a strange, wary look. He inclined his head a little, looking at me with those damned eyes of his bringing back the memories.

“You who call yourself Jak. I think I know you. We have met before.”

I made no reply.

“Where was it, tiksum! Speak up. You would not have forgotten me, that is sure. I cannot recall everyone I have met in life. And you are one ripe for punishment.”

I said: “I’ve given your backside a thumping before now, Pando, and I should have given you a few more, had your mother Tilda not been so—”

He rushed and tried to hit me.

I held his arm and we stood, glaring into each other’s faces. His whole demeanor took on the frightful appearance of a fellow having a fit. He glared. He tried to speak, and swallowed, and his lips writhed. He spat in my face.

“Dray Prescot! You — you — let me go and I will surely kill you!”

“My name is Jak. I told you, Pando. My name is Jak.”

“Yes, yes, yes! That I believe!” He called me all manner of vile and odious creatures. “You pretended to be called Dray Prescot, you pretended to be the Lord of Strombor, and I believed you! And then when the real Dray Prescot made himself Emperor of Vallia, mother and I knew he was not you! You—”

“Behave like a man, Pando, like a kov.” I hoped these stupid words might make him empty out his hatred, and then we could start over.

“I’ve met the Emperor of Vallia, when he was the Prince Majister. A cool, polite, stuck-up cramph—”

“Really? What was he like?”

“Nothing like you. Let go my arm and I shall thrash you and kill you—”

“How is your mother, Pando? Tilda the Beautiful?”

“You dare ask! You dare speak her name—”

“I am told she drinks.”

He opened his mouth wide and, now, it was perfectly clear he would shout for his guards. I put my hand on his mouth, and pressed, and said: “We must talk over old times, Pando. When you are yourself again. But if your mother drinks then you had better not blame me.”

He slobbered against my hand and tried to bite and I twisted him away. I whispered fiercely into his ear, downbent as I held him. “You remember me, Pando. I was your friend and I remain your friend. If you blame me for what has happened in your life you do me an injustice, and one I will not stand for. Inch was right. You needed to be shown more than I was prepared to show you, out of respect for your mother—”

He got a lip around my palm and slurped: “Let me go!”

That was what he meant; it sounded like porridge slopping from the saucepan to the plate.

I let him go and stood back. I said: “Remember. I remain your friend. If you insist on calling me enemy—”

His sword was out of the scabbard. He held it as though he had no idea on Kregen how it got there. He swayed. He sagged back against the bare table.

“We will see. Because once I — I will not have you killed out of hand. You must prove your friendship, for I have never forgotten you.”

“That is something, then, you young imp.”

His head snapped up. “I am the Kov of Borm — No. No, kings and kovs never meant much to you, did they?”

“No.”

This meeting had not gone as any rational man might have expected it to go. The recriminations — yes, they were expected. After all, as far as Pando and Tilda knew, I’d simply walked out on them. They didn’t know that treacherous King Nemo had had me drugged and shipped off like a bundle of washing to slave at an oar in a swordship.

And I was pushing away the central and most dire concern — Pando — Pando was an adherent of Lem the Silver Leem.

That did not bear thinking of.

My three companions had remained silent, and if I suggest this was an awed silence, that would not be too far from the truth. Now Pompino drew a breath and said: “We’d better—”

“Silence,” said Pando, and ignored my comrade Pompino and addressed himself once more to me.

“What happened to Inch?”

This did not surprise me. When Pando had been nine or ten — a goodly time ago now — he’d met us and we’d helped him and his mother and secured his kovnate of Bormark for him. Then I’d disappeared, and then Inch had disappeared. Inch had been around longer than I had. Pando, a young rip, would not forget these events of an impressionable youth so indelibly imprinted on his memory.

I said: “I have not seen Inch for a long time.”

This was true, Zair forgive me. I went on: “Your King Nemo, the old King Nemo we woke up out of bed with a dagger at his throat — you remember? — had me chained and sent to the swordships—”

Pando flinched.

“Aye! And, after me, he had Inch likewise packed off to slave. Inch escaped, praise be to his Ngrangi. D’you think, lad, I’d have so callously abandoned you or your mother?”

“You should have said sooner—”

“Is all well?” Strom Murgon’s voice floated in.

Pando’s face took on a dark and hateful aspect.

“My cousin takes good care of me.” He shouted back: “All is well, Murgon. We shall be out presently.” He spoke without a quiver, a strong young man’s voice, used to command. Then, to me: “Very good care. There is a matter between us I do not think can end but with steel.”

“You will tell me when you want to, Pando. Now, I would like to see Tilda of the Many Veils—”

That down-droop to his face drew lines around his mouth.

“Yes, you are right, Dray — Jak. She does drink.”

“And you do not blame me?”

“I did!”

“I thought so. But—”

“If King Nemo were not already dead and wandering the Ice Floes of Sicce, crying despairingly to find the way to the sunny uplands beyond, I think I would have sent him there.”

“There is a new King Nemo, now, they tell me.”

“A flat slug. He stands with Murgon against me.”

“So you’re in trouble — as usual.”

At this he gave a small, half-smile that changed his face some way toward the impish look I remembered.

“And you! I need not be surprised that you’re in trouble, that is endemic with you. I owe you much, and I have never forgotten. But, now is no time — I have to see the king and discharge tiresome business. Murgon will take care of you. I assume you have talked your way out of this predicament.”

“A matter of punishment for a justified chastisement, and the Silver Wonder—”

“Ah! I own I am surprised that you...”

For a moment we stood silently, staring one at the other.

Then he said, “We will talk more on this.” He raised his voice: “Cousin Murgon!”

The strom slid in through the doorway, his sword half out of its scabbard. The shadow of the Chulik bulked at his shoulder.

“I am satisfied that you have acted correctly. I shall wish to see these people later. See to it.”

Murgon’s lips twisted above the beard. But he got out a polite reply. Pando swirled up that short cape, slapped his sword down hard, and took himself off. He strode out, to be exact; but that would convey an impression that was absent. Pompino glanced at me. I shook my head. So — out we all went and climbed once more into the waiting carriage.

This meeting with Pando had gone in a strange, almost eerie, way. What would the meeting with Tilda be like?

Chapter nineteen

Tilda

“But I am not ill!”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, Horter Jak! I am not ill—”

“Lisa looks all right to me,” said Quendur. “She is a remarkable woman—”

“I agree,” I said. “I hold Lisa the Empoin in the highest esteem. Yet she is ill — or, she will say she is ill.”

“Ah!” said Pompino the Iarvin.

“I’d never seen the sea until they took me away to be slave.” Lisa sat next to Quendur, very close, and his arm lay around her shoulders. “Then Quendur took the ship I was in, and threw overboard the disgusting wretch I was slave to. Quendur saved me—”

“As you have saved me a hundred times!”

These two looked at each other, and Pompino looked at me with an expression that said they’d forgotten anyone else existed. We were waiting in the carriage by a gateway where Strom Murgon had alighted to see about his business. I wanted to get Quendur and Lisa away, for Pompino and I would have to skip and jump before we burned Lem’s temple. For Lisa to pretend to illness after the experience she had endured would be perfectly in keeping and understandable. By Krun, yes!

“They swear by the Gross Armipand up in these parts,” observed Pompino in a musing way. “This mass of corruption is the very antithesis of Pandrite the All Glorious. Or so I am told. I think, Lisa, you will have to call most groaningly upon the Witch Mipanda, vile wife of the Gross Armipand, when you are ill. And that will be in short order, believe me.”

Lisa half-turned from Quendur’s clutch. “Yes. I will be ill.” She smiled a pale smile. “That will not be difficult.”

Pompino brushed up his reddish whiskers and looked pleased with himself. He was not named the Iarvin for nothing. “Then I shall take it upon myself to blatter this strom with some severity. Yes. By Horato the Potent, yes!”

“Ah...” I said. The caution in my tone brought Pompino’s head around very smartish.

“What, Jak?”

“The plan is for us to continue on with the strom.”

He looked disappointed.

“So it is, so it is. Well, there is always another tide.”

“The Tides of Kregen roll forever,” quoted Quendur. “And you have to pull into your moorings sharpish to catch the right one.”

“And when this one rolls in, it will not extinguish the fire we shall set.” Pompino bristled this out, all red and whiskery and his fierceness quite betraying his shrewdness.

I looked out of the carriage window and then, turning back, said: “As San Blarnoi says: ‘Every inch a gentleman and every foot a rogue.’ That sums up our Strom Murgon.”

“Aye!”

“If it was not for Lisa—” began Quendur.

“We know.”

“No one knows much of this cult of the Silver Leem. It is spoken of only in whispers, among sure friends. I know nothing of it. But I have been told not to ask questions.” Quendur had been a pirate, a ferocious render of the oceans; he looked sweaty and uneasy as he spoke of Lem the Silver Leem, knowing nothing of that debased religion. Humanity fears the unknown and we all know we fear the unknown, and knowing it is unknown and we fear it doesn’t help at all.

A noise of footsteps and distant voices and the shake of the carriage as the coachman roused himself took my mind away from the habitual way Quendur and Lisa had avoided any recognition of the name of Lem when we’d used it before. Not allowing unknown and therefore unpleasant facts into your sphere of cognizance is one defense. The door opened and Strom Murgon climbed in. He looked murderous, as one might expect, and the carriage jolted into movement at once. We rolled out and ground across cobbles, lurching to the right as, I guessed, we negotiated the archway.

No one spoke. The sound of half-suppressed breathing filled the coach with the effect of underground bat caves, geysers of fury, exhalations of menace. I found, as is all too often the case, Zair forgive me, that I couldn’t take all this overly seriously. The comic aspects came through too strongly. We were all into a desperate adventure; but it was a real laugh, all the way along...

Then, as we rolled through the streets in the darkened carriage, I fell into an introspection about our motives. Pompino just believed in bashing on and burning the temples of Lem. That would show ’em, he’d claim. The Star Lords would be pleased and would reward him. But — but was this going to do any real and lasting good? The temples could burn; the Leem Lovers could build more. If someone hit you over the head and said: “Stop loving him — or her — and love me instead!” would you switch your love? If something in which you believed was destroyed, would you give up — or would you build again, and stronger?