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Two new boxes awaited the imperial blessing.
A brass vessel still bubbled on a dying fire, and the sweet scent of squishes hung in the air. Samphron-oil
lamps had been lighted, but through the high windows She of the Veils smiled in from the night sky of
Kregen.
The Emperor, most tentatively, pushed one box toward the other.
They reached that particular distance from each other and they both sprang into the air!
We all let out our breaths. I was enchanted. Delia hugged me and everyone was one beaming smile.
The boxes rose straight up. They struck the ceiling among the cobwebs, parted, and so fell down again
with a great clatter. Everyone laughed. I say everyone  even in my mood of great euphoria I noticed
that Lykon and the dowager Kovneva Natyzha did not laugh, did not even smile.
 And this can be repeated? asked the Emperor.
 Oh, yes, Majister, piped up Scavander. He wiped a hand across his forehead.  Indeed, it is a mere
matter of  And here he launched into a description which made me frown. It was recondite and
extraordinarily complex, filled with arcane words, and made little sense even to me, who ought in the
nature of things to have known what he was talking about. I felt the whisper of unease. The Emperor
waved all that aside brusquely.
 Suffice it that my son-in-law has succeeded in his task. I will have sums set aside for the building of
fliers. Indeed, if all we hear out of Hamal is half true, we shall have need of them.
 I do not believe it, Majister, spoke Kov Lykon.  I am not at all persuaded that Hamal means us
mischief. Their quarrel is with the countries of Pandahem. And we of Vallia should welcome anyone who
can ruin the Pandahem.
The growl of assent saddened me. Vallia and Pandahem were rivals on the outer oceans of Kregen.
That rivalry seemed stupid, wasteful, and altogether ugly to me. I had friends in Bormark, a Kovnate of
Tomboram, a kingdom in Pandahem.
 You may stake out a ponsho for a leem, I said, somewhat heavily.  That does not prevent the leem
from eating you after he has finished the ponsho.
Seg at my elbow quaffed off his Gremivoh. I knew what he was thinking: by the time the leem was
halfway through crunching up the ponsho Seg s superb longbow would have feathered the devil of a leem
like a pincushion. But they all took my meaning. I was finding the importance of talking at an oblique
angle to the direct statement, in dealing with these people around the Emperor. As a one-time first
lieutenant of a seventy-four on the oceans of Earth I had been used to belting out my orders and seeing
that the hands jumped to it, or there d be a few red-checked shirts at the gratings. Now, as I had
discovered, the soft approach often worked better at this level of statecraft. Not that either Lykon
Crimahan or Natyzha Famphreon much cared for the soft approach; they employed it in the same fashion
I did.
These two eyed the Emperor. They no doubt fancied themselves laboring under the enormous
disadvantage of not being related to the Emperor or his daughter, whereas I was the old devil s
son-in-law. Little did they know of the true situation at that time if they thought my marriage to his
daughter had softened him to me! He tolerated me  was indeed more than a little afraid of me, as I well
knew  yet the affection he could give was stunted and could only flower where his grandchildren were
involved.
There was a great deal of further conversation, in which I caught the anger against me more clearly than
ever. The fact that I was a barbarian clansman from the Great Plains of Segesthes, as well as being Lord
of Strombor, was held against me with as much venom as my marriage to the Emperor s daughter and
my schemes to create friendship with Pandahem. Crimahan and the dowager Kovneva argued
vehemently against squandering money on my crazy fliers. Since Hamal had begun her war against
Pandahem they had refused to sell us vollers. Hyrklana was even selling vollers to Hamal. Queen Fahia of
Hyrklana, that fat and evil lady, had trouble with her flier factories, and I knew there were men in
Hyrklana who burned her manufactories and sought to topple her from the throne. Yet Hamal insisted
she sell to them. No, we had to go on as I had planned. The only nit in the fleece was this puzzling
attitude of San Evold. What in the name of Zair was he up to?
The answer came like a thunderbolt when I got him alone in the laboratory after all the others went back
to the Chavonth Chamber to carry on the drinking and the discussions.
 My Prince! I am desolate!
I saw  or thought I saw.
 You fixed it, Evold! The squish steam was not true cayferm so you used another silver box  a
genuine one from Hamal!
He shook his head, holding out his hands, palm up, and then he sneezed. Spluttering, he said,  Not so,
Prince, not so.
 Well, spit it out, Evold!
 When the steam condensed I began to wonder if the water could have anything to do with the secret at
all. What was left in the box apart from water? Air!
 Ordinary air, from this damned laboratory of yours.
He beckoned me over to an apparatus on a low lenken table.
Ornol, his assistant, hobbled in. Ornol had fallen into a Valkan canal and before they d fished him out
he d drunk some of the canal water. He had not died, but he d never be able to walk properly again. His [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]