“Ya see there, Jasper, if this ain’t Earth-made, I’m a harpy’s next a’ kin. And them orcs wouldn’t have let this get by. They’d have smelled it easier ‘n me. And it wouldn’t have been buried so deep then neither.”
He flipped the cylinder in the air, caught it and stuffed it in a fur-lined pouch hanging from his belt, then poked and sniffed around for a while longer seeing if he might find more. After an hour at it, he was convinced he’d found all he was going to find. The sheriff’s men had been thorough enough in that regard. However, Ilbei didn’t need to find any more.
“Whatever gone on with Master Tytamon and that sweet Earth kid here, it weren’t no orcs,” he proclaimed as he swung back into the saddle and urged his mule to a trot. As usual, the donkey was unwilling to follow the mule just yet, and the lead rope went taut almost immediately, jerking Ilbei’s arm violently and forcing him to stop. “Come on, Jasper,” he called back. “Miss Orli don’t have time fer no shenanigans.” The donkey seemed to understand, and once more the three of them were underway.
Chapter 49
T
hadius was clearly irritated when Orli entered the dining hall wearing hunting attire. He looked her up and down with a pained expression, like he’d just bitten into a clove. “Did you think we’d be dining in the stables?” he asked.
At first she didn’t understand what he meant, but he waved it off by the time she figured it out. “Please, sit.” He stood and moved to the chair on his immediate left, a high, straight-backed thing that Orli regarded skeptically. Surely the upright rigidity of such a design, no matter how beautiful, could only be the work of someone who had no intention of ever sitting there.
Thadius pulled it out for her and repeated his invitation for her to sit. “Please, Miss Pewter … Orli, sit.” His voice grew kinder, forgiving, perhaps even apologetic.
She came around the table, thanking the steward who had escorted her this far as he turned to go. She sat down and allowed Thadius to help scoot her chair forward, requiring the assistance really, as the construct was truly massive, the sturdy hardwood made heavier with gold inlay and gold leaf—every bit as ostentatious as any furnishings of the Queen.
“Thank you, Lord Thoroughgood,” she said. “And I want to apologize for how I acted earlier. For my manners and, well, for the dress. I will find a way to pay you back for the damage. That was uncalled for, and I really am sorry. I’m not usually like that.”
Beneficence flowed from him like the wine the steward poured, fluid sweetness, made so by the careful arts of a master craftsman. “Don’t spend another thought on that contemptible gown,” he said. “I should have known it would not be to your taste. I am well aware of the fashions your people favor, at least as evidenced by those few Earth people I have met thus far. Given that, it was foolish of me to presume you might desire such finery.” His gaze darted briefly to her present attire, and it would be inaccurate to say the smile was anything more than pointedly polite.
Orli wanted desperately to ask what Queen Karroll had to say about Tytamon and Black Sander, but she’d promised herself she would not start a row. Thadius was, as evidenced by his feats of a few days ago, an accomplished soldier; he was a member of the ruling class of Kurr; and he was clearly an intimate of the Queen, the proof of that apparent in his involvement with the
Citadel
project and Tinpoa Base. Orli knew she’d been wrong to think he would not handle things properly, here on his own world no less, and she was determined not to be rude again.
She sat silently as liveried servants brought her food, the first course a small plate of thumb-sized wafers and a little silver bowl filled with what looked like tiny pink peas. She resisted the urge to lean down and smell it, thinking that might be rude, but her hesitation to pick up the small silver caviar knife beside the bowl and spread any on a wafer, as Thadius was doing with relish, did make her host put down his own utensil and smile.
“It’s called prospon,” he said after watching her clearly struggling with the decision of whether to try it or not. “Eggs of the novafly. Try them. They are the rarest delicacy on all of Prosperion and delicious beyond imagining.”
Horror contorted her face in a most unladylike way. She looked at him, wincing, and sought to verify what she thought she’d just heard. “Did you say
fly
eggs?”
He laughed, a deep and genuine one that caused him to lean back against his chair and show the angle of his jaw and the lump of his Adam’s apple, which bobbed visibly up and down beneath the tanned flesh of his throat.
She shrugged. Delicacy or not, fly eggs did not sound appetizing.
His mirth abated, and he fixed her with a tutelary look. “
Nova-
fly,” he said, emphasizing the first part heavily. “Not
fly
fly. There’s a huge difference. As big as the difference between corn and unicorn.” His eyes flicked downward, indicating the exotic dish before her. “Try it. Be brave, explorer from Earth. It’s absolutely divine.” He swept up a dollop of the pink stuff and smeared it on the wafer, then lifted it to his mouth. He made a show of closing his eyes and humming with delight, a deep throaty joy that Orli thought might be hard to fake.
She looked down at her plate and decided he was right. Pushing aside images of pink maggots bursting forth at the touch of the knife, she followed his example—although taking much less than he had—and took a hesitating bite.
It was spectacular. Flavor burst upon her tongue in a cascade of sweet, savory, salty and a bit of an exotic, wondrous spice she’d never experienced before. It was all so perfectly balanced that she thought it had to be the work of some spectacular magic-wielding chef.
“My God,” she nearly gasped, working the perfect crispness of the eggs against the roof of her mouth where they popped in tiny explosions of fabulous textural delicacy. She swallowed and took a sip of wine. Even the wine tasted better.
“You see,” Thadius said. “Just as I promised. You know, it took eleven men nearly two years to harvest these two servings. I doubt even the Queen has had so much on her table recently.”
Orli’s eyes popped wide. “You can’t be serious. Eleven men? Two years? Why would anyone want to work that hard for a few teaspoons of fly jelly, even if it is this good?”
“Men will do what pays best—if they have the skill and the wherewithal to pull it off, that is. I have a particular knack for knowing just such men, and I can afford to pay.” He motioned with his knife toward Orli and her newly discovered Prosperion delicacy. “As you can see.” His grin was nearly wicked with delight.
She looked down at the novafly eggs and shook her head again. “Fly eggs, go figure.” She wiped out the labor of all those men, and all that money, in a few quick bites. She felt guilty in doing so. Or at least nearly did. She grinned back at Thadius when she was done. “If that’s how this meal starts, I can’t wait to see what’s next.”
He laughed. “Ah, yes. Well, I must confess that was the best hound in this hunt. I led with it in hopes of bringing you some cheer. I wasn’t sure how you would be feeling when I sent for you. Consider the prospon something of a peace offering. I admit that I was indelicate this morning as well. I might have been more anticipatory of your discomfiture upon awakening had I taken the time to be so.”
She smiled. He wasn’t so bad.
“Speaking of horses, novaflies and unicorns, how would you like a tour of my collection when we are done? I have many fine and rare things of Prosperion that an otherworldly woman such as yourself might appreciate in ways that the denizens of Kurr frequently cannot. You know, too long on the water to smell the sea and all that rot.”
A servant was clearing away her empty prospon dish in exchange for a new and larger silver bowl, which he filled with a creamy soup ladled from a gleaming tureen shaped and etched to match the bowl. The soup steamed as he portioned it out, a rising cloud of savory mushroom and something else, something luxurious yet unidentifiable, something entirely Prosperion. “I’d love to,” she said. “But not until after we eat. I swear, I can’t catch up on my appetite.”
He laughed again, and leaned aside so that the servant could fill his bowl as well. “Indeed. Let us enjoy one dish at a time. Just one, fine dish at a time.” He seemed to enjoy the soup even more than she did as he watched her eat.
As promised, when dinner was done, Thadius took Orli on a tour of his “collection” as he called it. Orli thought of it more as a series of collections, as there were several, each distinct and unrelated, contradictory even. He had art; he had weapons and armor; he had antiquities, books, furniture, strange inventions which included some machines that she could not fathom the purpose of; and last, as she discovered at the end of the tour, a collection of exotic animals. It seemed to her that most of the house existed for no other purpose than to hold it all.
First he’d led her through three floors of the manor proper, two above where they’d eaten, and one below. And it was after having traveled through an armory filled with pieces of military equipment so beautiful, so hideous, and in some cases simply odd, that he led her through a door that only opened after he had spoken a few magic words.
“Now for the good stuff,” he said with a wink. “I dare say, I expect you’ll be thrilled to chills with what comes next.”
The magically locked door opened onto a spiral stairwell made of black iron that wound its way downward through a neat vertical shaft, the stone walls perfectly cut and fitted, but otherwise unadorned. While it was evidence of superior craftsmanship, it was entirely out of keeping with the rest of the great house.
Thadius reached into a small nook in the wall where an open crystal jar was filled with round beads made of something soft, like soap or wax. He took one of them out, spoke a word and suddenly a candle appeared, floating in the air before him. It moved down into the darkness as he stepped through the door and onto the first of the iron steps.
Orli gasped at the sight of the luminous illusion, struck by a sudden flash of memory, the candle and the bead reminding her of that wretched day in the cage when Black Sander had cast the same sort of spell.
Hearing the sound escape her, Thadius swung back, mistaking her alarm. “I assure you, Miss Pewter, these stairs are better built that anything they’ve got in that drafty old castle Tytamon keeps. Look.” He bounced twice on the stair he was standing on. “There you see? Solid as a warhorse.”
She shook off the memory, and the mention of Tytamon, and apologized. “Sorry,” she said. “I just … well, your spell startled me. Go on. I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?” he asked, watching her closely to be certain she truly was.
She nodded and stepped in after him. “I’m fine,” she repeated. “Let’s go.”
Once more he began down the stairs. Almost immediately she detected the now quite-familiar smells of livestock, the sort of olfactory experience that had, two years ago, been completely out of her realm. Here, on Prosperion, such odors were ubiquitous.
They quickly made their way down the long, narrow staircase, and it was obvious from their pace that Thadius was eager to impress her with what they were about to see. The stairwell descended a long way, and their footsteps echoed up and down the stone shaft sounding the rapidity of their pace. Orli found that she was very glad she was not encumbered with one of those ridiculously complicated dresses the elite women of Kurr chose to wear—the sort of thing she had so thoroughly destroyed only a few hours before. These stairs, that gown, and the shoes they expected her to wear, would not have been conducive to such a precipitous descent, especially not at this pace.
They came to a landing at the bottom where Thadius set to opening another door, again speaking the words to deactivate a magic lock as well as using an iron key. Orli glanced up in the direction from which they had come. Quite a climb. She estimated they must have descended at least a hundred vertical feet.
The door swung open onto a massive chamber that she figured at one time must have been part of a natural aquifer. It had been shaped further by the hands of men, of course, and it expanded out before her in three roughly parallel tiers, each only slightly higher than the one below. All three climbed away from her at a gentle angle, sloping up to the far side of the chamber, where, at the very end, they turned up sharply and became part of the opposite wall. Each tier was lined with cages on either side, an aisle in between, and from the sounds echoing all around, there were clearly animals inside many of them. From the bottom of the stairwell, she couldn’t see what kinds of animals they might be, but it only took a moment after the door was open for Orli to know that, without a doubt, this was the chamber from which the animal smells came. It seemed she’d just discovered the existence of Thadius’ private zoo. A shudder ran through her as she fought to quell recent memories.
“Come have a look,” he said. “I know you like animals well enough. See what I’ve got here.”
He led her to the first row of creatures in cages along the aisle of the lowest tier. The cages were all made of iron, varying in width and height, but fairly uniform in a fifty-foot depth, dictated by the solid rock face of the adjacent tier rising behind.
“Look in there,” he said as they came to the first cage. He pointed through the bars, directing her attention toward a thick clump of blue-leafed foliage of a variety she did not recognize. She couldn’t see any creatures in it or nearby, though, so she allowed herself, botanist that she was, to briefly contemplate the plant.