King of Swords (The Starfolk) (42 page)

Wasat paused to see how his son was taking his story. Encouraged by his smile, he continued. “She was lonely at the top, and I was a limber lad, and… You know it can happen. But with us it just went on happening, year after year, century after century. And I know that once we got together she never took any other men. Or elves. Not once! When she learned about you, she dragged me down to the Great Court one night and stood right on the Star to tell me so. Not once, she said. There could be no doubt that I was your father.” He sniveled a little. “That was like her. Always kind. Apart from being a tweenling, I was old to sire a child.”

Rigel chuckled. “Mom was not entirely honest with me. The way she told it, she was passed around like the baton in a relay race. I even wondered if Alfred could be my father.”

“Alfred?
Alfred?”
Wasat cackled at the ludicrous notion. “He would have been a precocious ten or so, I’d think. No, Alfred’s father was her secretary and his father before him, for eight or nine generations. When Electra returned yesterday, she just appointed the next in line. And I don’t think any of those know-it-all confidential secretaries ever suspected what my duties were. Everyone thought the queen was an abstemious prude. Nobody ever noticed the office mouse who turned into a lion at sunset.” He cackled again. “We would make love, sit up in bed drinking wine, reading poetry, debating history, and then make love again.”

Rigel nodded. It was a bizarre image, but probably just the sort of private intimacy a royal personage might enjoy as a respite from the public scrutiny and endless ceremonies of her office.

An unnoticed tear ran down the archivist’s cheek. “She was a lusty woman, your mother, but I could still satisfy her right up until…”

“Until I came along and spoiled everything?”

“Until I became an arthritic geriatric, older than half my archives.” Wasat sighed, but that had not been what he’d meant. “Now she’s gone. We had one of the longest love affairs in the history of the Starlands.”

This ancient clerk was not quite the heroic, swashbuckling father Rigel had expected to find, but he clearly had love and loyalty and integrity in spades.
You will always be a servant by day and a lover slipping through the secret panel at night, but if you are big enough to accept that humble status and ignore the sneers, then your love can be very long term.
Electra had been thinking of her ever-faithful Wasat when she’d said that, wondering if Rigel was as good a man as his father was. Was he big enough? Did he have the strength of heart to serve his woman incognito for a lifetime, without public reward or recognition, as Wasat had served her?

“I’m not exactly a halfling, am I?” he said. “I’m a three-quarterling! I met the Pythia last night, and she warned me not to try to kill Vildiar when I got the chance. He claimed that his magic was stronger Saiph, but the Pythia told me to be merciful and I think she meant that I’m more elf than human. She was telling me that I’d be subject to the guilt curse if I killed a starborn. I would have died like my mother just did.”
Minotaurs, sphinxes, halflings, but never full-blooded elves.

Wasat shrank back in alarm. “That’s quite possible! There have been cases of halflings succumbing to guilt. I wonder if any of them…” He turned to look at the enclosures where he kept the records.

“Rigel!”
Izar was standing in shallow water with his hands on his minuscule hips. “Rigel! Come
on
!”

“The tyrant calls,” Rigel said. “Time to go, Dad.” They exchanged smiles. “I’d give you a loving hug, except I don’t want Izar to know about you. He’s a good imp, but it would slip out eventually.”

“The hug can wait. Come back whenever you can get away, Son. I know I cannot hope for forgiveness for what happened in Winnipeg. The woman I had hired—”

“If there was anything to forgive, it is forgiven,” Rigel said. He had been wrong in his initial reconstruction of the tragedy. The first-time father who had panicked and mislaid his baby had not been too young; he had been too old. “The main thing now is to cut Vildiar and his baboons down to size before they kill Talitha. And they’ll want to get me too.”

“Four!” The statue barely had the word out before Adhafera Sphinx’s bellow rolled over the sand: “Halfling Rigel! You must come now!” He charged after it like a hungry lion.

Rigel jumped up. “The queen?”

Adhafera slid to a four-paw halt. “The queen is conferring with her senior officials. But Zozma wants you, urgently. Now! There is trouble.”

Zozma could go chase his tail, as far as Rigel cared, but he didn’t dare explain how much this meeting with Wasat mattered to him.

“I’ll be there in just a minute.” He waved for Izar to come join him. “Go and guard the door,” he said to the sphinx.

“Just because you’re the old queen’s cub,” Adhafera growled, and then stalked away muttering, tail thrashing.

Izar arrived, wet and angry. “You said—”

“Yes, I’m sorry. We have to go. Halfling, Izar Starling was robbed of all his amulets yesterday. What you may not have
heard yet was that he inflicted the worst defeat on the Vildiar gang it has ever suffered. He killed three of them and wounded a fourth, using a Lesath called Turais.”

“A dog. A HUGE dog,” Izar explained, hands waving.

Rigel nodded solemnly. “Enormous. I mention this to show that the starling, despite his youth, is mature enough and responsible enough to be trusted with the strongest defense you can find for him.” He might need it, and a new defender would be good for morale.

“Dog?” Wasat muttered, rising stiffly from the bench. “I don’t have any serious dogs in stock at the moment, starling. How about a dragon?”

“Dragon?” Izar’s eyes widened, and his ears twitched.

“A small dragon. About unicorn size, but able to blow fire a fair distance.”

“That would do!” Izar looked ready to melt with joy.

“Then come with me, imp.”

Rigel ran down to the pool for a quick dip.
Dragons?
Now he almost hoped that Hadar would take over the Izar file personally.

M
y dragon’s name is Edasich,” Izar announced. He was riding on Kalb Sphinx’s back, which on any other day would be an epic honor, but it couldn’t compare with owning a dragon.

“Should you say that?” Rigel gasped. His four-footed escorts were racing through the palace, and he was wearing himself out trying to keep up. He had earned this punishment by lingering too long in Miaplacidus. “Won’t that summon him?”

“Not him, her. She’s a girl dragon, doesn’t have a pizzle. But saying her name won’t bring her. I have to stamp my foot too. This foot. That’s her, there.” His ears and fingers glittered with amulets, but he was pointing to the pride of his collection, a slender jade anklet on his twiggy left leg. “She’s a beautiful green color. I’ll show you later.”

He would certainly have to show someone, and Rigel had brought that ordeal on himself. Then they turned a corner, and he caught a whiff of something terrible.

The park was modest by palace standards, about half a hectare, and irregular in shape, with buildings on all sides, so it was overlooked by many windows and rooftop terraces.
Among its lawns and flowers, fountains and trees of all shapes, a small crowd of gaping onlookers was being held back by more sphinxes, including the towering Zozma—sphinxes could not string yellow tape. Whatever they were guarding had the same foul stench as the dying Kornephoros.

When they reached the spectators, Rigel told Kalb and Algenubi to stay behind and look after Izar. They obeyed without so much as a miaow.

Praecipua opened a path for him through the crowd and led him around some shrubbery. The first corpse was a sphinx, whose neck and shoulders had already turned to black slime. The rear half of a red-feathered arrow lay beside it.

The female starborn was on her back. Most of her chest had rotted away, and her coppery hair had lost its former luster. The male beside her had lost his face and head, but his death throes had rucked up his cotton gown to expose his shins, which were covered in blue fuzz.

“The sphinx I do not know,” Rigel said, fighting nausea. “The others were Starborn Cheleb and Halfling Graffias. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“Doesn’t hurt to have confirmation,” Zozma rumbled. “This venom smells like whatever killed the regent. Do you suppose they used their own blood to poison their… What’s wrong?”

A lot was wrong, terribly wrong. The Family had silenced the informer before he could incriminate Vildiar. They had struck down a mage of red rank, which must be a considerable feat. Had they known she was a member of the Red Justice coven, or had she just been unlucky enough to be guarding their chosen target? But Zozma was not referring to those troubles. He was asking why Tweenling Rigel looked
like
that
, and Rigel looked like
that
because Saiph was throbbing violently.

“The killer’s still around! Somewhere…”

Arrows? The sphinx had been shot from above. Rigel hastily scanned all the roofs and balconies all around the scene of the crime. “Izar! Get down! Kalb, cover him!”

The sphinx dropped and rolled, spilling the imp onto the ground and then pinning him with a paw when he shouted protests and tried to rise. Algenubi stepped over him as a living shield. The wiser spectators began bolting for the exits.

Satisfied that his charge was safe for the moment, Rigel resumed his survey of the windows and roofs. As he moved to peer around a palm tree, he was almost spun off his feet as Saiph struck aside an arrow that Rigel hadn’t even seen. Before he recovered his balance, a violent crash against his head hurled him sprawling to the grass. A second arrow had ricocheted off his helmet.

The world was spinning… a silhouette on a high terrace… black against the blue summer sky… already nocking another arrow in his bow… Saiph was throbbing violently, useless because it could not strike against the enemy from this range.

Spectators were fleeing, screaming in terror.

Rigel scrambled to his knees, and, with a giddy lurch, forced himself upright. He hardly had to bother dodging and weaving to make himself a difficult target because he was staggering so much, but the arrows were probably cruise missiles, guided by magic, just like—

He hurled one of the knives Wasat had given him the previous night. Knowing that it couldn’t possibly outrun an arrow, he ducked behind a palm tree and remembered to yell,
“Meissa!”
He was just in time, for the next arrow was
already on its way. When it lost its target, it thudded into the tree instead of following him around the trunk and skewering him.

Feeling safe again, he peered up in time to see Hadar’s bow shatter when the knife knicked the highly stressed wood. The giant staggered, but the blade itself did not seem to reach his person—magic against magic. Before Rigel could send a second missile, the halfling flipped him a finger in mocking salute:
Get you next time!
He turned and disappeared from view.

“Close off the treasury portal!” Zozma bellowed, but half his squad was already streaming away across the park. They would never catch Hadar. There would be no peace or safety in the Starlands until Vildiar was dead or crowned.

“Rigel!” Izar said, grabbing him with both arms. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” Rigel lied. “But now we need to go somewhere, don’t we, Commander Zozma?”

The safe house was named Nihal, and it was more calendar art—rambling fieldstone buildings with red tile roofs and walls draped in creepers nestled in among vines and fruit trees, both laden with fruit that had to be impossibly out of season. Everywhere, there were glimpses of distant hedges, trails, gates, livestock, and bonny hillsides, all of it much more skillfully rendered than Starborn Muphrid’s crude efforts to depict scenery at Alrisha.

Nihal’s managers, mudlings Marius and Olga, had produced a sumptuous spread in an enormous farmhouse kitchen. While Izar and his bodyguard gobbled everything within
reach, Marius introduced them to eight or nine halfling imps—carefully explaining that Nihal doubled as an orphanage—and even more human children, who were the offspring of the human staff. Izar’s eyes gleamed at the exciting prospect of bullying this new army into shape.

Nihal, Marius explained, also boasted hills, caves, creepy woods, hollow trees, a millpond with boats, a working smithy, a waterwheel, and two herds of unicorns—all stuff that would provide ample entertainment for an enterprising imp. To Izar, there was no time like the present. Indeed there was no time
but
the present.

Rigel groaned. “I need to digest.”

The imp eyed him menacingly. “You said I could introduce you to Edasich!”

Rigel thought
Stars forbid!
and wondered how in the galaxy he could persuade his young ward that it was nap time. Izar was well rested, but Rigel felt like he hadn’t slept in a year. Starborn Fomalhaut walked in, acknowledged the imp’s and halfling’s bows with a nod, and took a seat opposite them. He waved Olga away when she started to fuss over him.

“Turais…” Izar began.

“I heard he served you well, starling,” the mage said and his golden eyes shone like twin summer suns.