"Good show," Su-Cha congratulated, as Rider freed him first. The imp was the only one conscious.
"Help get these guys untied. We have to get them out. This place will be under attack in a few minutes."
Su-Cha moved. He knew Rider wasted no threats. "Who were those guys?"
"The dwarf is Kralj Odehnal. A sorcerer. An old enemy of my father. It can't be coincidence that he turned up as soon as the web began to fray."
Soup proved to be conscious. When Rider removed his gag, he croaked, "The runt's the mastermind, Rider. But there's somebody from the Citadel involved. He came up with the original plan. He got the runt in. Then he took over. They were going to wipe out a lot of people besides us."
"Uhm," Rider responded. "If you can walk, get out. Help Preacher." Rider hoisted Spud and Greystone effortlessly, ran to the nearest exit, out onto the lawn, dumped the two men, was back for Chaz in seconds.
The house had begun to glow when he charged out with the barbarian. The glow grew into a blinding brilliance. The roar of collapsing masonry rose inside the brightness.
Rider never looked. He dropped Chaz by Su-Cha. "When they recover, go to the laboratory. Wait for me there." Before Su-Cha could protest he spun and ran to the gate.
The street showed no sign of Odehnal or his coach.
Rider shrugged, took up the trail of glowing footprints once more. Now he ran, a long, distance-devouring lope. Twice the trail led to and from the homes of men high in imperial councils. Rider did not pause. He would get back to those men later.
Then the trail turned the direction he expected.
Rider's teeth showed in a grim smile.
VII
Emerald did his bandy-legged best to keep pace with Rider while remaining unnoticed. He failed. He was built for endurance. Of speed he was capable only of short bursts. He turned back, watched the crowd gathering to stare at the wreckage of the Vlazos mansion. In time Rider's gang came out the gate, supporting one another. He trailed them. His heart thumped wildly whenever he reflected on the fact that thirteen men had come to Shasesserre. He was the last one left, and only the Protector himself had been dispatched.
The Master might be in for as much trouble with the son as he had had with the father. Maybe more. They said the Protector trained his child from birth to assume the role he now faced.
He had to seize it first, though!
Right to the Citadel. Just as expected. Emerald blended into the holiday crowd in the Plaza. The initial festivities had begun. He pretended interest till he was sure he saw movement behind the window of the Protector's laboratory. Then he went to report to the Master.
Rider's men picked up and cleaned up. "Looks like a whole tribe of northmen camped here a week," Preacher grumbled, adding some scriptural quote about the savages bringing the earth low.
"Why do you always accuse us?"
"Because civilized people ... "
Su-Cha, observing from the window, cackled.
Chaz glowered his way. "I haven't forgotten you, devil. Your time is coming. Stewed imp with a garlic garnish. Think about it. Wonder when you're going into the pot."
Spud said, "If you ask me it would be revenge enough just getting him to help here. He wouldn't do his share if ... "
"Hold it," Su-Cha said, in a tone suddenly serious. "Take a look at this." He dropped off the sill, stood looking over with his chin resting on his forearms, childlike.
Chaz and Preacher joined him. Cautiously.
"It's that villain, Emerald," Preacher said.
The festivities were gathering momentum. The Plaza was crowded. Nevertheless, Emerald stood out. He was on the fringe of the mob, watching the Citadel gate.
The entire band crowded the window now. "Let's get him," Spud said.
"Rider said stay here," Greystone countered. "The web needs mending. He'll want our help."
"But he'd want us to do something if we saw that guy."
"We should stay put," Chaz said, surprising everyone. Usually Chaz was the first to yield to impulse, the most eager to jump into trouble.
"This mess is big," he said defensively. "We need to get organized to handle it."
Su-Cha declared, "I don't need to be organized to dance on that thug's head. And this time he isn't going to slick me." The imp headed for the door. Everyone but Chaz and Greystone followed.
Chaz went to the window to watch the gnarly man. Greystone continued picking up. He said, "Precipitous action often leads to its own reward. The sensible course is to restore the web before undertaking any action. We need its support."
"You figure the news is out yet?" Chaz glanced at the grisly ornament still pinned to the wall.
"This cabal would have an interest in maintaining secrecy till they placed themselves in the most favorable position."
"What happens tonight?"
"What do you mean?"
"Jehrke always hands out the prizes to the rope divers."
"Ah. Yes. So. These enemies of ours must have been confident they could achieve their ends before then."
"Rider will take his father's place, I guess. Oh-oh. There they go."
Greystone joined Chaz. They watched their comrades race toward the gnarly man, who spotted them, took off, stubby bow legs pumping furiously. "That fellow can surely run."
"For a ways," Chaz said. "Bet he ain't much over a quarter mile." Below, Soup suddenly slowed to a trot, though he did not give up pursuit. "What's Soup up to?"
Soup had been smitten by a suspicion that Emerald had been too easily spotted. Maybe he was leading them into another ambush. If so, he would get a surprise of his own. Soup would materialize after the trap was sprung.
Emerald began to slow and his pursuers to gain. The looks he cast back seemed genuinely desperate. He whirled around a corner, knobby limbs flailing.
Rider's men rounded the corner and drifted to a halt. "Where'd he go?" Spud demanded. "He couldn't disappear into thin air."
"Look around," Preacher said.
"I know. 'Seek and ye shall find.' Su-Cha, do your stuff."
There was no place for the gnarly man to have gone. The street was just a wide alleyway between two doorless walls. It dead-ended in another brick wall.
"Dig through that trash," Soup said. "Maybe he's under it." He had arrived to find his friends baffled.
The usually loquacious Su-Cha said nothing for several minutes. Then he grunted, snatched up a broken brick, flung it at the alley-spanning wall. It did not rebound. It simply vanished.
Soup howled. "We've been hornswoggled! The wall is an illusion."
He charged forward—and through. His hair stood up and crackled. When he looked back he saw no evidence of the illusory wall, just his comrades looking baffled.
There was no sign of Emerald.
The others joined him. "What now?" Spud asked.
"We still have a trick," Su-Cha said. He grinned and tapped his nose.
The others chuckled. "Is he going to be surprised."
Soup, though, recalled his earlier reservations. "He may be leading us away from the laboratory."
"Maybe," Spud admitted. "But Chaz and Greystone are there. And he expected to lose us here. Let's go, imp."
There was a delicate tap at the laboratory door. Chaz and Greystone exchanged looks. Greystone whispered, "I'll cover," and stepped into a contrivance of mirrors from which a man could watch the doorway without being seen.
He picked up a light crossbow. The tapping was repeated. Chaz pulled the door inward.
His eyes grew huge. He gasped, "I think I'm in love. The heavens have opened and shed an angel on my doorstep."
The woman was startled, not just by this remark but by the barbarian's size. Then she glanced over her shoulder fearfully, as if expecting peril to overtake her any moment. "May I come in?" she asked breathlessly.
"A godsend," Chaz said. "I have to be dreaming. Do come in. Do sit down. Just anywhere."
The woman did so, her gaze fixing upon the cadaver of Protect
or Jehrke. Her mouth opened and closed several times. Nothing came out. Horror flooded her face.
"More like a devil in disguise," Greystone said, stepping out of the mirror contraption. "This is the witch Soup told us about."
"Mercy," Chaz breathed, startled. "It isn't possible. The gods could not be so cruel as to make something so gorgeous so wicked."
"Horsefeathers," Greystone countered. He prided himself on his immunity to the glamor and wiles of the fair sex. "Bet that Emerald character was supposed to draw us off so she could get in here and unravel what's left of the web." The scholar kept his weapon aimed at the woman's heart.
Chaz was smitten but not blind. "Well? What about it, Sweetheart?"
"The Master planned that. But not I. I knew you would not all pursue Emerald. Your reputations say you are too wise."
Greystone snorted and muttered.
The woman continued, "I hoped to be captured."
"Why?" Greystone demanded.
"Because that is the only way I will ever escape him."
Chaz drifted to the window. Below, the festivities were approaching a roar. The rope divers had begun jumping. He saw nothing alarming. He moved to the doorway, checked the hall. Nothing. From a shelf nearby he took an earthen jar, scattered part of its contents outside. Tiny seeds rolled around. He stomped one. It exploded with a loud pop. "Good enough." He closed and locked the door.
"Tell your story, Sister," Greystone said. His crossbow remained unwavering. "I haven't heard a good fairy tale in years."
"Kralj Odehnal—the sorcerer who had you captured, and would have had you killed had he taken Ride-Master Jehrke into his power ... "
"We know all that. We want to know about you. Who are you?"
"Easy, Greystone," Chaz said. "Would you care for something to drink, sweet lady?"
The woman glanced at the remains of the Protector. "I couldn't."
"Going to have to do something about him," Chaz muttered. "Starting to spook me, hanging there. Like he was watching everything we do."
"Tell your story," Greystone snapped.
"I am Caracene, a slave of Kralj Odehnal, who is known to his creatures as The Master. I was given to him as part payment for his joining the scheme to destroy Protector Jehrke and unseat Shasesserre as mistress of the world."
She was no Shasesserren, nor had her like appeared among the city's slaves. At least openly. Such beauty was too rare and precious to be allowed public display. Nor did she dress as, or have the manner of, a slave. Those eyes ... She was a slave-taker.
Puzzled, Chaz asked, "Who gave you to him?" He found that name Odehnal vaguely familiar. He could not imagine anyone bribing such a monster.
The woman stared at the cadaver on the wall. "I cannot say. One greater than he. One from whom none escape."
"Horsefeathers," Greystone said again. "We're being stalled, Chaz. It's time for a truthcasting. I'm no sorcerer, but I can manage that much."
The woman bolted to her feet. "No! It would kill me! I must go. I was wrong to come here. There is no hope here, either." She looked at the dead Protector once more. "Not even he ... "
Chaz moved to comfort her. As he reached out, a loud pop! pop! pop! came from beyond the door.
The woman gasped, "He knows I thought to betray him!"
Greystone jerked his crossbow irritably, indicating that she should retreat into the connecting library. Chaz moved to a peephole that, through a succession of mirrors, would show him who was outside without his having to reveal himself.
VIII
Rider slowed his pace after he had run three miles. Not that he was exhausted. He'd barely worked up a sweat. He ran ten miles every morning. But the tracks he followed were increasingly fresh. He did not want to overtake his man here, between the piers and yards and warehouses and ways of the Golden Crescent, and the strip of ten thousand markets the great ships served. There were crowds like no other city ever boasted. This was the hub of world trade, where the quarters of the earth came together in a frenzy and babble. Here there was no privacy, ever.
Rider's mouth was set in a grim smile. No doubt about it. His father's killer was headed into the trap prepared.
He stopped to purchase a quart of juice and a meat pasty. There had been no time to eat before. When he estimated time enough had passed, he washed at a public fountain, then strode toward the airship yards.
None but guards were on duty there, for it was a public holiday. The gatemen knew him, waved him through. He strode between vast construction docks, mooring stays, gas works where Jehrke's apprentices produced the magical air that buoyed the ships of the sky. All this vast industry was his father's doing. His greatest legacy to the city, perhaps, for it would go on even if his peace failed to persevere. The secrets here would be the first plunder sought by Shasesserre's enemies.
Thus, Rider had altered his father's message, knowing his murderer would believe the airship yards the likeliest place for the Protector to hide something.
The nethermost part of the yards occupied a promontory overlooking the Golden Crescent, the miles of waterfront facing the Bridge of the World, that long, narrow, snaking channel connecting the AmorOcean with the MiddleSea. The ruin of an ancient watchtower stood at the headland's tip. Around it were structures of recent vintage, the Protector's original and now personal shipyard. As Rider approached he saw his father's ships protruding from their cradles like the brightly colored humped backs of whales breaking the surface of a flotsam-strewn sea. Twelve of them, in a variety of shapes and sizes. The family wealth.
The Jehrke yards were more still than the greater yards around them. Here even the guards were on holiday.
A shadow fell across Rider's path. He looked up at the four-hundred-foot mast which rose beside the ruined watchtower. In his youth, in rare moments when he was free of studies, he had climbed that tower and watched the particolored sails scud along the Bridge, outward bound or coming home. So often he had longed to fly away upon those canvas wings, to lands of adventure ... There was adventure enough now. And a lifetime's worth to come.
He entered the vast, long, hollow building where airships were brought out of the weather, making not a sound. He listened. Seconds later there was a pop, like a dry branch breaking, from far down the building. A startled exclamation, then curses, echoed off the empty walls.
Rider began walking, making no effort to keep his heels from clicking on the polished stone floor.
The cursing ceased. It was followed by a rustling, like that of frantic rats in a wall. As Rider neared the doorway beyond which his quarry waited, he heard a sob of frustration.
He stepped through the doorway into what had been his father's shipyard office.
The man caught there, one hand inside a desk that refused to let him go, was not surprised to see him. He had a dagger in his left hand.
"Vlazos!" Rider said, startled. "I thought you were with the army in Kleyvorn."
Vlazos said nothing.
Rider pulled up a chair. "It does come together, though."
Vlazos hammered the desk with his dagger.
"Tell me about it," Rider said. He stared hard at his captive, his gaze like that of the fabled snake. He made a gesture with his left hand, caught Vlazos' gaze and held it.
Vlazos' mouth opened and closed like that of a guppy as he fought a compulsion to betray his confederates. "Tell me who else is participating in this atrocity."
Rider took several measured breaths, counting. His anger threatened to overwhelm him. He could not comprehend why a man of Vlazos' status would betray Shasesserre for personal gain.
Rider's spell took the inhibitions off the telling of the truth. He used it sparingly, for societies are founded upon mutually shared self-deceptions. But in Vlazos' case the spell opened no floodgate. Had the man acted from idealistic, if misguided, motives, he would have defended himself.
Silence, too, is a telling of truth. Greed and powerlust were the foundation stones of the conspiracy threatening Shasesserre
's peace.
"Where, besides your mansion, has your cabal set up?" Rider demanded. "Who belongs?"
Vlazos was under the spell fully now. He began naming names, most of them ones Rider expected. They were men who obstructed the Protector at every turn.
"And Kralj Odehnai? How did he become involved?"
Vlazos' breath caught in his throat. He gobbled, and scratched at his neck. His face puffed and darkened. His eyes grew huge. He was strangling on sorcery.
Rider heard someone move in the great space outside. He did not turn, for he was trying to find the end of the spell killing Vlazos, to unravel it before the man suffocated. He could not ... Vlazos got out one whimper before life abandoned him.
Rider rose. "Shy key?" he murmured. "What would that mean?"
He rushed out of the office. Nothing stirred within the cavernous building. But the far door, through which he himself had entered, stood ajar. It leaked a pane of light. He had not left it that way.
Rider reached it in a time that would have shamed most athletes. He paused before stepping outside, every sense probing for signs of an ambush.
He detected only the fading disturbance of the powerful cycle of magicks that propelled airships.
"Feeble and high-pitched," he murmured. "A small ship driven by someone self-taught." He stepped into the glare of day, caught a glimpse of an airship hurrying down the Golden Crescent, flying low.
He thought about taking one of his father's small ships in pursuit. But none were ready. It would take an hour to charge one with gas. The murderer of his father's murderer was safely away.
He went back and searched Vlazos. There was nothing of interest on the man except a key of the sort which fit the safe chests at the imperial treasury. He pocketed it.
He found no satisfaction in the fact that his father's killer had himself been slain. Vlazos set the wheel rolling, but now it was Odehnal's toy.
Where had the dwarf learned the spells to move an airship? How? That complex was a closely guarded secret, taught only to men whom Jehrke trusted absolutely.