02. Riders of the Winds (6 page)

He said it with such casual confidence that Sam really believed him, and that made her even angrier at the kids, who were acting very irrationally considering the circumstances. The first real break in a long time and they were screwing it up. And Boolean was counting on
her
to help save this damned Akhbreed culture!

"Let's go," she told him. "They can come, or not. Is it far?"

"Not very. About an hour and a half at a regular pace. You just take the trail until it splits off, the main trail following the river and the other going into a steep-walled side canyon. The imperial seal is on a post at the trail branch to note what it is. Follow that branch and you will quickly come to the ducal residence. It is green there and quite grand, really. You can't miss it."

"You're not walking with us?" Sam asked, suddenly apprehensive about that "protection."

"I cannot possibly walk that distance. I will cover you all the way from the air, and if anyone should challenge you I will be instantly there. I am well known here, and I know most of the vermin who lurk about. There is a certain—agreement— between us. They will not break it for their own sakes."

That told volumes about how things worked around here. She would never have suspected that such a terrible place as this would have a governor, but if there really was one then he was damned sure corrupt as hell. This was not merely a refuge or hideout for unfortunate changelings and those cursed by magic, she remembered Navigator Jahoort saying. It was also a hideout and hangout for criminals and political exiles.

"Uh—you say your father has some troops?" she prompted, hoping against hope.

He nodded. "Yes. Enough."

"Do they wear dull green and black uniforms?"

He frowned. "No. Blue with gold trim, as with all Mashtopol forces. Why?"

"The men we lost everything trying to avoid were in those black uniforms. They stole everything we had."

"That is not good. There should be no foreign or irregular forces in here. My father will want to know this. And they went downstream?"

"Yes."

"I shall have a look for them from on high, if they are still anywhere in the area." He made ready to take off.

"Wait! You said you found some other refugees! Did you find any down here? A tall woman with tattoos all over and a young, pretty girl with designs like a butterfly?"

He started at that. "Urn, I am quite certain that had I encountered either of the ones you mention I would have remembered. All the rest were discovered above. You are the first and only in the river canyon area."

Shit! Well, half a loaf is better than none, but where in hell could they be?
"They were with us when this all started. Yesterday, maybe, or maybe the afternoon of the day before. I don't know how long we were out."

He nodded. "Well, once we have you safely at my father's, I will make certain that the word gets out. If they are anywhere in the district I am certain we will be able to locate them." And, with that, he began to run, picking up a fair amount of speed, wings outstretched; and then, suddenly, he rose into the air, perhaps only a few feet at first, but curving, swirling, and with each maneuver gaining altitude.

Sam sighed and turned to the girls. "Well? Are you coming or not?"

Rani looked at Sheka and Sheka looked at Rani and both sighed. "Yeah, I guess so," said the older girl. And, together, they started off down the trail.

They didn't see the winged man anymore, although they occasionally looked around for him, but the trail division was pretty easy to spot. True to the instructions, right at the division was an imposing stone pillar on which were written in professional carved type some very fancy pictographs—Sam knew how to speak Akhbreed but had never learned to read and write it—and a very fancy seal of metal mounted with strong masonry bolts that had obviously been made elsewhere and brought in.

Rani looked at the words. "Well, at least he's telling this much of the truth," she said, studying the monolith. "It says 'Seat of the Royal Governor, Yatoo Canyon District, Commonwealth of Kudaan, Kingdom of Mashtopol.' That's fancier than the one
we
had."

"Well," Sam sighed, feeling a bit irritated that she had to depend on a thirteen-year-old to read her a sign, "at least we now know where we are." She looked down at herself. "Great outfit to meet a royal governor," she added sourly. A year with Boday had destroyed any sense of modesty she ever had, but she sure as hell was gonna make one great first impression.

The difference in the canyon area was apparent almost immediately. Here was the first tributary they had seen running into the main river. It wasn't much more than a creek, maybe ankle deep and six feet wide, but it was real running water and it was coming from someplace, and it appeared to be supporting a fairly large amount of vegetation. It wasn't exactly a jungle, but there were groves of tall, thin trees and other areas obviously cultivated. The trail passed over a number of irrigation canals that had the remnants of water in them, and there were actually some birds and insects about.

And there were people about in those cultivated areas, doing something that farm types might do, whatever that was. Sowing or irrigating or picking or whatever, maybe fertilizing. They were a strange crop; many of them were less human than
creatures,
at least in appearance, with all manner and variety of strangeness. Ones with saucerlike eyes and others with trunklike noses and ones with fur and tails and some too downright weird to categorize easily. They worked well together, though, and with humans. Both males and females seemed to wear only skirtlike garments, the men solid colors, the women colorful patterns, kind of Hawaiian, like before the missionaries had ruined it. There were enough bare breasts that Sam felt a little more at ease, anyway. They were loose here. Well, how strictly religious could a governor be whose son wore feathers and nothing else.

There was something odd about most of the humans, too, though, that she only realized after they had gone a ways in towards the residence. Many bore ugly scars; others had peg legs or one leg and a crutch, or had one arm or even no arms.

"Worse than I thought," Sheka whispered loudly to Rani. "Gives me the creeps. They're all freaks or cripples or worse."

"You watch that kind of talk!" Sam warned. It
was
a little discomfiting, although she wouldn't admit it to the girls, but it was kind of like touring a hospital's worst wards. You felt sorry for the people and at the same time you were damned glad it wasn't you. That's what this place was, really—a hospital, or, more properly, a sanitarium for those with disfigurements that could never be reversed.

Most of the people seemed to live in adobe apartment blocks that reminded Sam of New Mexican pueblos. Most were three levels with those who could climb on top and those who couldn't on the bottom. Most of the changelings, except those whose very form made it impossible to climb, were at the very top. Sam was startled to see some apparently normal human kids around there playing, and there were in fact quite a few who looked like very sun-darkened but otherwise whole Akhbreed. So not everybody here was in an asylum. Perhaps they were staff.

On the side opposite the blocks of pueblo dwellings was an adobe barracks building, stables, and other signs of a small military outpost, complete with two uniformed soldiers standing guard outside the barracks building. They wore the same blue-and-gold uniforms that the wagon train had expected and was almost fooled by, only this time clean and without bloodstains and bullet holes in them. They looked a little hot to wear, but kind of comic-opera snazzy, too.

The main residence, however, was a knockout. It was
huge—
it was nearly impossible to say how huge, but Sam's old two-bedroom bungalow back home would have fit inside the main entry hall alone. Even though it, too, was the pink adobe, it looked more like a grand hotel than anybody's house.

It went up and out at all sorts of angles, with really high peaks and roofs rising at steep angles and then coming down straight. The whole thing was like a geometry lesson, with every shape represented but the triangle as king. There was lots of glass, too, whole walls or roofs of it, and what looked like greenhouses. It was an exotic yet modernist design. The magazines back home would go nuts over it, Sam thought. Even the girls were suitably awed. "That's the biggest damned house I ever seen," Sheka said in a whisper. "This guy must be the richest grafter in the kingdom. No wonder he don't mind livin' out here."

Sam could appreciate the thought. Sanitarium or not, she'd gone from absolute bottom to this in a very short period of time—and in the nick of time, too. She felt like Dorothy suddenly at the gates of the Emerald City. She deserved one like this, one break at least. She and the girls by rights should have been captives in some criminal lair right now. Instead . . . Jeez ...

There was a sudden dark thought.
They
were here, by luck and good fortune, but where were Charley and Boday? Who would be hosting
them
tonight, and under what conditions?

A bare-breasted young Akhbreed woman wearing a red-and-yellow flowered skirt came out from the main doors and walked down to them. She looked very normal, physically, which was a relief to the two kids, and she flashed a big smile akin to an official greeter's for the tourists.

"Hello," she said cheerily. "I am called Avala. Medac said you would be coming. The Lord Governor is busy now, but I will see to you if you will just follow me."

"I am Susama, but most call me Sam. These are Rani and Sheka."

"I am pleased to meet you all," responded the woman, sounding sincerely like she meant it. "Come this way."

They entered the house, now feeling more than a little self-conscious, although none of the people about paid them any notice to speak of. The entry hall was enormous and full of hanging plants and covered by a great angled skylight and really did seem more like a fancy hotel than any home. Of course, Sam thought, this was more than a home, it was sort of the state capitol building as well, and maybe even a bit of a hospital and hotel at that.

Rani and Sheka stuck very close as if they were afraid that some of the people going about their business around them would attack them or even touch them. Most were Akhbreed "normal," if that was the right word for it, but, here and there, there were some of the odd-looking, even bizarre changelings and some Akhbreed who were maimed or disfigured, and more than a few who looked not like victims but rather people of different racial types, some rather bizarre or exotic. Colonial races, here apparently on an equal footing. What was grotesque to the two girls was somewhat reassuring to Sam. Here, for the first time in Akahlar, were people of both the master and subject races, changelings, and people with disfiguring or debilitating deformities who would have little chance to be more than beggars in a city like Tubikosa, all mixing with apparent ease on a more or less equal basis. Maybe this duke had the negatives of royalty and the rest, but in some ways he certainly seemed a visionary, even a revolutionary. Here was the dream that Klittichom promised to buy Akahlar with blood, only realized by a member of the established order.

That did give her a little twinge of worry, though. Duke Pasedo seemed very much the type of man who might be on the side of the horned wizard and his minions, if not openly at least secretly. Sam couldn't help but have a nagging worry that in spite of all this she might well have walked into the front door of the enemy that sought to kill her.

They were led almost immediately to a wing of the building that was obviously used as some kind of transient quarters. The rooms were fairly large and generally resembled a high-class Akahlar hotel, with large feather mattresses and pillows, a dressing table, night stand with cold running water, and what appeared to be a shared toilet. There was even a small balcony nook just out a glass door, with a table and two chairs looking out on the canyon area. The finish was adobe, as were all the buildings, but it felt sound and fairly cozy. No bathtub or shower was provided; as was the usual custom, there would be a common bathhouse for that, usually one for each sex, although as casual as they were around here it might be coed like the lower-class places she was used to.

The room next door interconnected through the shared toilet, and Sam got one room and the girls the other. The pair seemed to be delighted by the room and bed and Sam looked at her own enviously. Still, first things first. "We haven't eaten—maybe for days," she told Avala. Curiously, she felt more dizzy and weak than hungry, but she knew what had to be done to get any sense of normalcy.

The woman nodded. "I will have something sent up to you all. It is between normal mealtimes here, but I am sure we can find something filling. I will also have one of the housekeepers send up some clothing now that I have been able to see you and know what is required. Please just relax and remain here for now. All that you require will be sent up to you, and after a day or so, when you are fed and rested once again, I am sure My Lord the Duke will wish to speak with you all. If you have any needs or requests, just push the button by the door there. That will ring a bell and bring someone. Tell them to ask for Avala."

"You have been very kind," Sam told her. "Thank you."