King of Swords (The Starfolk) (43 page)

The imp nodded vigorously. “I gotta… got another Lesath from an old halfling in the palace!”

“So I heard. I’d like to see that. Commander Zozma,” Fomalhaut told Rigel, “has secured Nihal with two prides of sphinxes and a wing of griffins, and I have set the necessary occult bars on the portal. It should be quite safe for Izar Starling to do some exploring.”

Izar actually remembered to look for Rigel’s nod of approval before he launched himself out the door into an unsuspecting
landscape. Bodyguard and mage were left alone, regarding each other in thoughtful silence over a table of dirty dishes, neither of them willing to try for first blood. The mage’s eyes looked like chips of amber still cold from the Pleistocene.

Having the shorter life expectancy, Rigel spoke first. “You can see the future?”

The mage’s smile would have frozen gasoline. “No. But I do get strong hunches. Yesterday morning something told me that the imp might find good use for a Lesath in the near future. I could be sent to the Dark Cells for giving him one.”

“Legally so, but who would execute the warrant?”

Fomalhaut’s second smile was more sincere. “Good question. But it is a good law. Today Hadar Halfling slew Cheleb Mage, our oldest and wisest mage. His father must have given him amulets far in excess of what the law allows.”

He still had not introduced a topic for debate, but Rigel had a long list of questions waiting for him. Perhaps that was the agenda—it was payback time, be-nice-to-the-royal-half-breed time.

“My mother told me that you came to our rescue in the Walmart store because you were seancing Tarf. She also said that Tarf and co. had been seancing me from the Starlands for a while. I led them to her, and Tarf extroverted to deliver the Cujam.” Electra had been talking obvious rubbish.

Fomalhaut pouted as if he had expected strawberry and tasted lemon. “Yes, your mother. A remarkable ruler, but nothing else in her reign will be remembered like that thunderbolt she dropped in the Great Court today. A royal halfling?” Fomalhaut sighed. “It is obscene! Earth decays and corrupts us also. But I grant you that you are a more tolerable depravity than Vildiar’s litter, and a juvenile on the throne is less odious
than that brainsick beanstalk would be, so you will have my assistance.”

“I am honored and relieved, my lord. Just you or all of Red Justice?”

A long and deadly silence. “Red what?”

“My mother told me about Red Justice, starborn.”

Fomalhaut nodded, thin-lipped. “She truly had diminished. That must have been just before Kornephoros died, so she may have been feeling the guilt curse even then.

“I cannot promise for the rest of our group. Some of them are so appalled by these events that they have faded. Whether they will ever return, I cannot say, and we are all sick at the thought of a publicly acknowledged royal halfling. But I will see what I can do to enlist their help as well.”

“Thank you. In what ways?”

“To guard the queen and her son, our only other Naos. You will necessarily be involved. The scandal about you and Talitha is already spreading. Today Her Majesty’s senior advisors repeatedly urged her to put you away as an abomination. She blistered their ears, and my vocabulary is not entirely metaphorical. She appointed you Marshal of Canopus, which gives you authority over the entire palace guard and stars know what else—you, a halfling fresh out of the wild! Four councilors faded at the thought.”

“Will the collar match my eyes?”

The starborn flashed fury. “I do not recall; the office has been vacant for centuries.”

“So my main job will be to assassinate Vildiar?”

“I did not say that!”

“Of course you didn’t, but can Talitha ever be safe while he lives?”

Silence.

Rigel persisted. “Is there anyone else who can deal with him? And I do mean
kill
him.”

Glaring, Fomalhaut shook his head. Evidently that was as far as he would go. But Rigel was officially a halfling, and Rigel had Saiph. After what had happened at Giauzar, it was doubtful that even Saiph could prevail against Naos Vildiar, but it was still the best chance anybody had. No one could force the prince into a Dark Cell. There was only one solution—and the guilt curse might kill a three-quarterling.

“You have not explained, my lord, how you turned up so opportunely to rescue Electra and myself when Tarf set the earthlings on us.”

The mage clicked his shark teeth a few times. “We—Red Justice—knew that the Family was tracking several halflings. That is another illegality, as halflings are supposed to be rescued, not trolled as bait for a conscience-driven lost queen. When Tarf suddenly extroverted, I was able to follow.”

“How? I mean how did you know? I understood that seancing was done in the Starlands to observe events on Earth. You are able to spy on people here with it?”

“No. That is not possible.”

Rigel smiled triumphantly, just to annoy the old sourpuss. “So you were tipped off! You have penetrated the Family. Some member of Red Justice can dissemble as one of Vildiar’s halflings?”

The mage flushed with anger at Rigel’s line of questioning. “That might be possible transiently, but it would be insanely dangerous. If you need lessons in how magic works, halfling, I suggest you ask Starling Izar.”

Rigel ignored the jab. “Then you have an agent in the Family? A servant? Or have you managed to turn one of Vildiar’s own children?”

Fomalhaut showed his dagger teeth again, but not in a smile. “Domestic halflings are bad enough. I had forgotten how obnoxious they could be when reared in the wild. What Red Justice does is no business of yours, tweenling.”

“With respect, my lord, it is very much my business.” Rigel braced for trouble. “You moved the queen and me to Alrisha, and the next day somebody tried to murder us there. As Izar’s bodyguard and Marshal of Canopus, I need to know whether you are a traitor, Starborn Fomalhaut!”

The mage drummed his fingers furiously on the table and drew a deep breath. His golden eyes burned. “In a thousand years, I have never apologized to a halfling or even dreamed of doing so. I apologize to you now, Marshal. Your inquiry is justifiable. Yes, we had an informer inside the Family. His name was Graffias. You were extremely fortunate to run into him and not one of his brethren when you raided Giauzar this morning. But then you went and enlisted his aid, and he was slain, ending his usefulness to us.”

“No.” Rigel thought back to the confrontations at Giauzar. “No, they had fingered him already. They knew. His father was anxious for him not to escape.” Poor Graffias! “I suppose he tried to defect and asked for protection, but you and your mage buddies sent him back to be your spy?”

Angry silence. Fomalhaut was not going to admit to making a mistake.

Rigel said, “So Graffias reported that the Family was seancing me, and you started doing the same.” How long had he been the box office hit of the Starlands? “Then Electra entered my life posing as Mira. Did you recognize the queen despite her dissembling, or did you just guess who she was?”

Glowering, the mage ground out the words. “We suspected. The next morning, when Tarf started the riot in that marketplace,
the Cujam amulet did not affect her, so I knew that she was not human. I moved her to safety at Alrisha because it is a seedy, disreputable dive, not the sort of place anyone would look for her. I also knew that Talitha was visiting there incognito. Talitha had great trouble recovering from her enforced pairing to Vildiar, although she was being excessively stupid in hoping to find a reliable companion in a place like Alrisha. Electra would see through her dissembling, and if she needed help, I knew she would find it from Talitha. You, I did not care about.”

“Understandably so,” Rigel said, straight-faced. So Red Justice had also been watching over Talitha, the last surviving Naos? He wondered how much they had tried to guard the others who had died, but it would be unwise to ask. “And your story about the Moon Garden? All moonbeams?”

“Unfortunately it was,” the mage admitted sourly. “It backfired. When Muphrid learned that your amulet was the ancestral Saiph, he knew exactly how to get back in Vildiar’s good books. In truth he had never been out of them. He rushed over to Phegda with the news. Vildiar wasn’t there, but Hadar’s gang was, and they moved in to make sure that Saiph could never become a threat to them.”

This sounded like the truth at last. Rigel nodded. “Thank you, my lord. Let us work together to remove, or at least confound, the Phegda evil.”

The mage sneered. “Your good intentions vastly exceed your capacity. Now that I have admitted to possessing a modicum of prescience, will you not believe me when I tell you that only an early death awaits you here in the Starlands? I am certain of this.”

A cold chill told Rigel that he believed this prophecy. “How long have I got?”

“Three months, maybe four.”

“Remind me again when it gets down to a week, will you?”

Fomalhaut rose and stared down at Rigel with venomous dislike. “You are exhausted, tweenling. I will see that the imp is not molested, and perhaps put a few more safety catches on his Lesath. Go upstairs and sleep. You are in no fit state to perform your duties at present. Also, I have a repugnant hunch that you will need all your strength later this evening.”

“Not if I am given any choice in the matter, my lord.”

The mage snorted and strode away, but Rigel was serious. The dream was over. Talitha could not afford to jeopardize her throne with a major scandal right at the start of her reign. Maybe she could risk a half-breed lover in a century or two, but not now. She would have to enter a formal pairing with a true starborn, maybe Elgomaisa, or whatever his name was. Cue the violins—D minor,
doloroso
.

He took a tour of the building in the company of Olga and Sphinx Praecipua. He vetoed the sleeping quarters they had assigned, and chose others, where Talitha would have access to Izar, and any intruder would have to go past Rigel himself to get to either of them. His decisions were accepted without argument, a respect he found frightening. The last few days had changed him and he did not know this new, dangerous, involved person he had become. He had a cause to serve and that alone was unfamiliar. He had a duty that conflicted with his own impulses, which was even stranger.

He went outside for a hasty swim in the millpond and confirmed that Izar was in no trouble—he was just creating lots of it for other people.

Then he dragged himself up the narrow wooden stairs, flopped on top of his bed, and put what Izar would call his “self” into a bottomless sleep, devoid of dreams.

He roused briefly when Izar slammed the door and stamped across the room toward the one that had been assigned to him. Talitha must have arrived, because nobody else would have managed to discipline the boy.

“Good night,” Rigel murmured. Answered by another slam, he put himself back to sleep.

A dream came to him in darkness. He opened his eyes to see a woman leaning over him, a woman of unimaginable beauty clothed in a trillion stars, for her skin gleamed with them from the tips of her ears down to her hips. Her hair was a galaxy of multicolored flames.

Instantly awake, he barked, “No! Go away! You mustn’t!”

“Mustn’t?”

“Mustn’t!” He clutched the sheet tight under his chin. “You are queen now. You cannot have a sordid love affair with a mongrel like me. You are too young to rule, but the starfolk will prefer you to Vildiar, for they all know of his crimes. Even so, they will surely turn against you if you flaunt a half-breed lover in their faces.”

Mercifully she moved away. She sat on the edge of the bed and the eyes that stared back into his were deadly. “I am queen of the Starlands, and I will do anything I like with anyone I please.”

Rigel moaned. “No! The diehards like Fomalhaut will not accept that. They won’t.” The mage had come close to telling him so.

Her starry aura burned redder, hotter. “You are telling me that one halfling lover is wrong but hundreds of mudlings would be all right? That’s their choice.”

“Vildiar does what he does for power. They all know that. You would be doing it for lust, or that’s what they’ll say, anyway.” He was right, but oh, how it hurt!