King of Swords (The Starfolk) (30 page)

“Something’s coming,” Menkent said, staring up at the skies with his ears askew. “A pegasus, I think.” A bow flashed into his left hand.

“The only pegasus I know is Markab,” Talitha said. “That means Vildiar.”

The centaur notched an arrow. “It’ll be a tricky shot in this light, but I’m good. I’ll get him for you.”

“No!” she snapped. “I want my son back.”

The centaur sighed and lowered his bow, but did not put it away.

Rigel had known from his first glimpse of Gienah the swan that she was aerodynamically impossible. A flying horse must be even more so, unless it had a chest a kilometer wide to hold all the muscle it would need. Yet the great beast circling lower in the starlight undoubtedly had the traditional pegasus shape—a handsome white steed with plumed wings. Its rider had seen their lights and was coming in to land nearby.

Land the pegasus did, as lightly as a bee, although it was the largest horse Rigel had ever seen. It folded its great wings and the rider dismounted. Making no effort to tether or hobble it, he came striding over to the group. Inhumanly tall, bizarrely emaciated, pale as a specter—Prince Vildiar was unmistakable. He stopped a few feet in front of them and frowned down at the corpse at their feet.

“What happened here?”

“Twenty-three people were murdered by some of your sons,” Talitha said.

Vildiar looked thoughtfully at Rigel—as if analyzing the helmet or wondering whether it was the right time to bring up the subject of the two sons and a daughter who had been slain at his Front Street house—and then at the centaur, who held a feather close to his right eye and a steel arrowhead at his left
thumb, the shaft between them pointing directly at the prince’s heart.

“Order that idiot monstrosity to lower his bow, or I’ll kill him.”

“Put it away, Menkent,” Talitha said.

“Yes, Your Highness.” The centaur’s bow cracked like a gunshot, making Rigel jump. The sound was followed by a resounding thump as Markab the pegasus collapsed to the ground. “See that?” Menkent exulted. “Right through it! The arrow went right through its heart and out the other side.”

Vildiar raised a hand…

“No!”
Talitha stepped between them. “There has been enough killing tonight. And you deserve it after what happened here. Where is my son?”

“
Our
son,” said the giant in a withering tone. “The last I know of him was that you disobeyed the regent this morning and sent him back here to Spica. And before you start screaming, I assure you that I do
not
know where he is. I do
not
know who took him or killed the people here, and I did
not
order it.”

Talitha said, “Ha! But if you find him in a dungeon at Phegda, you will return him to me at once, won’t you?”

“No. I do not expect to find him at Phegda, and even if I do, I shall wait for a ruling from the throne. The regent was prepared to consider the question of custody in court this morning until your halfling started slaughtering sphinxes left and right. You are not well positioned to argue about massacres, my darling ex-consort.”

“But now Queen Electra has returned! The game has changed, Prince.”

“It has, although everything Electra has achieved so far demonstrates that her powers continue to wane. She sent her palace guard and this murderous tweenling of yours to storm my residence and kill three valued halflings. You were not the
only one wronged today. And now your semi-intelligent horse has slain my priceless pegasus.”

“So if you did not come to demand ransom for Izar, why are you here?”

“Ah, yes,” Vildiar said sadly. “In the midst of all this useless recrimination I forgot my original purpose. I am the bearer of very bad news, Talitha dear. Your father is grievously stricken. I promised the queen I would find you and bring you to Canopus as soon as possible.”

“Stricken? What sort of stricken?”

The giant shrugged. “They are not sure. Some sort of curse or poison. He is in terrible pain and not expected to live.”

T
alitha and Vildiar hurried off through the portal. Rigel hung back, staying between the prince and the centaur to discourage any attempts at revenge for the killing of the pegasus. He could easily imagine the starborn hurling a sneaky fireball as a parting shot. He worried about the bodies in Spica needing burial or cremation or whatever the starfolk did at funerals. Who was going to look after them?

When he emerged into Ascella Square, he found it brightly lit by a near-full moon and the ear lights of a melee of sphinxes, starborn, and halflings. Among them stood several human servants—most of them wearing livery that might have graced Hollywood Regency romances—and unicorns harnessed to small two-wheeled gigs little larger than the sulkies used in harness racing. As he watched, Talitha was being driven away in one. He let Menkent precede him down the steps into the crowd, then made sure that the house door was locked before following him. The centaur hurried off into the crowd, probably looking for something else to eat.

The smells of Canopus were already familiar, a blend of spices, desert dust, horses, sweaty people, and a faint tang of the sea. Palm trees showed dark against the moonlit sky.

“Halfling Rigel.”

Rigel turned to face the speaker. “Sphinx Praecipua.”

“Come with me. You are included on the list.”

“What list?”

The guard’s beard twitched in annoyance. “The list of persons who are summoned to the palace.”

That was good news, for Rigel would certainly have gotten lost on his own. He was in serious need of both food and rest, and he suspected that this night was far from over. “Thank you. There has been a massacre at the princess’s domain—more than twenty people murdered. Who will attend to those bodies and investigate the crime?”

“Her Highness has already reported the matter to us. We have it in hand.” Praecipua halted at one of the gigs. The unicorn flicked its ears uneasily, as if detecting the scent of a large carnivore nearby.

“What news of the heir?” Rigel asked.

“There has been no announcement about His Highness’s condition,” the guard said guardedly.

“Halfling!” Prince Vildiar had folded his great length into another one of the gigs and was beckoning to him.

Rigel walked over and offered an insolently small bow. “Your Highness?”

“You testified this morning that you are ignorant of your parentage.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Then it is time you heard the true story. Get in.” Vildiar took the reins from his driver, who obediently dismounted.

Saiph did not react, so whatever lay behind this surprising invitation was not immediate revenge for Tarf, Adhil, and Muscida. Rigel took the driver’s place, and off they went. The prince set a dignified pace into the dark-shrouded streets, steering with his hands between his knees, which stuck up as high as Rigel’s helmet.

“Back in the year of orange stars, the regent-heir proposed that his daughter and I enter into a pairing, which is a legal agreement to produce and rear a child. Talitha was—”

“When was that, my lord? I am not familiar with your calendar.”

“Or good manners. Do not interrupt your betters. Twenty-three years ago. Talitha was not yet of legal age and very immature. Normally I do not pair with children, but His Highness was concerned about the shortage of Naos in the realm. You are aware of Naos, I hope?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We seem to have become rarer over the last couple of millennia and we had recently lost many fine Naos in an unfortunate series of accidents. Such clusters of bad events do happen in nature, like falling stars or droughts, and only the ignorant seek evil, unnatural explanations for them. I agreed to the pairing. Talitha proved less willing, but she has always been headstrong. As a minor, she should have obeyed her father; as a Naos, she was forbidden from entering into a pairing without the consent of the monarch. The same rule applies to me, although neither Electra nor Procyon before her ever refused my requests.”

That was hardly surprising, given his murderous reputation. The unicorn was trotting along in its own shadow, cast far ahead by light from an amulet in the prince’s right ear. The street was a dark canyon, too deep for moonlight to penetrate,
but bats wheeled and whistled overhead, and somewhere a hopeful swain was singing a love song. Someone ought to throw a chamber pot at him.

Vildiar continued his sad sermon. “Talitha was young, as I said, and headstrong. She sought to block the pairing by doing the unthinkable—she deliberately conceived a child by an earthling. In your world’s terms, that is worse than a high status lady giving herself to a beggar in an alley. It is almost as vile as bestiality.”

Rigel did not ask whether the same taboo applied to starborn males and human females, because he already knew the answer and did not want to be evicted from the sulky and left to walk.

“The pairing ceremony had to be cancelled, of course. The scandal would have been tremendous—even worse than we initially thought, because she had refused to name the father. We eventually discovered that he could have been any one of several minor mudling servants in Dziban. I am afraid that you will never uncover that half of your parentage.”

“Half is better than nothing. It is exciting to learn that I have royal blood in my veins.”

Vildiar shot him a suspicious glance, and then went back to watching the road.

“The child was born in the year of red pelicans. It…
you
… obviously had human ears and your other physical features that would allow you to pass for human. We consequently arranged for a skilled mage to take you to Earth and give you to a woman who had just lost a baby. I would have been within my rights to refuse to have anything to do with Talitha, but the scandal had been successfully suppressed, so I accepted the regent-heir’s wishes and paired with her as soon as she recovered from your birth. She bore Izar in black butterflies, two
years after you. By mutual consent we let the pairing lapse at the end of its primary term. The rest you know.”

“Not all, Your Highness. Who put Saiph around my cute little wrist?”

“Talitha, of course.” Vildiar lowered opalescent eyebrows in a frown. “This morning that decrepit halfling said that Queen Electra was the last to check it out of the archives store. She did come and go more in those days, but I have no recollection of her being anywhere in the Starlands as late as that. Her last sighting before this morning, that I recall, was at a pairing celebration back in the year of violet fists. She continued to attend pairing parties long after most other topics had palled for her, so I am sure she would have become involved in the matter I just disclosed to you if she’d been around to hear of it.”

“But—”

“The Star punishes deliberate lies. Honest mistakes it ignores. The curator reported what he saw in his records. He thought he remembered the queen’s visit, but it was a long time ago, and he is aging, as your sort do. Wasat must have been thinking of some other trip she made in search of some other amulet. His wrongful testimony this morning was a considerable surprise to both the regent-heir and myself, and undoubtedly to Talitha as well—a huge relief, in fact, because we were braced for the scandal of the century.”

Izar had not inherited all his creative talent from his mother.

Rigel tried not to display his skepticism too openly. “I have seen the archives store, my lord, and I am astonished that even my sponsor could manage to steal anything from there. She is a starborn of great talents, but how did she manage such a feat?”

“Easily. A princess has the right to borrow low-grade amulets from the royal collection. I expect Talitha made some excuse
to visit the archives, stole Saiph while the old man’s back was turned, and forged the queen’s name in the ledger when signing for some minor amulet or other. When she was allowed to hold you for a few moments after your birth, she palmed the amulet and slipped it onto your wrist. After that, it could not be removed.”

A touching tale, but a violin accompaniment would have added pathos.

The sulky jiggled along an avenue of gigantic seated statues, so huge that only their moonlit toes and shins were visible from the road below them. Then it turned into the palace by an entrance that Rigel had not seen before. The unicorn’s hooves clinked across a great courtyard, and it pulled to a stop in front of a doorway. Vildiar reined in at the steps. A sphinx bowed to him, touching his beard to the ground.

“Three days ago,” Rigel said, thinking that it felt like years, “Fomalhaut Starborn introverted me from Earth. How did he find me, and why was he looking for me?”

“For that you will have to ask the mage himself, halfling.”

“He refuses to talk to me.”

“Not surprising. I never speak to halflings myself, but I have made a reluctant exception in your case. If you recall that the mage delivered you straight to your natural mother at Alrisha, then I think you can deduce the most likely explanation. I suggest you ask the sphinxes to find you a place to sleep tonight. Your mother will be busy tending to her sick father. If she wants you, the harpies will find you. Now you understand, of course, why she has been taking such an interest in you, and why she could not possibly tell you the true reason.”

“And why I felt so attracted to her.” Rigel dismounted. “It is strange how instincts work, isn’t it? Thank you for your kindness
and the illuminating story, Your Highness. You have explained a lot that I wanted to know.”

He bowed and watched the prince drive away.

“Male ungulate excrement!”

The sphinx said, “What?”

“Just a passing opinion. Do harpies fly by night?”

“Certainly. There is a perching wall over there.” He pointed with his tail.

“Thank you.” Rigel walked to the place indicated, which had a fusty smell, like a henhouse. He said, “Harpy!”

Several minutes passed before a familiar flapping announced a bird’s arrival.

“What crap is this?” it squawked. “Dragged off my roost in the middle of the night to wait on a freaking ignorant half-breed with its head in a bucket?”