Delia of Vallia (16 page)

At least she retired behind a screen to wash. Delia did all that was necessary. In truth, compared with the muck and mess she’d scrubbed up in Mellinsmot, this was a mere tiresome chore. Throwing the soiled linen into the basket and washing her hands before fetching fresh, she debated if she should break this Nyleen’s neck now. No. Perhaps it would be better to unriddle the puzzle first. Nyleen, aloof, her platinum hair in the almost capable hands of Sissy, returned more than once. Delia soldiered on, nursed on, sistered on.

There were no men in close attendance on Nyleen.

She managed to snatch a bite to eat now and again, for any idea of the Kregan’s regular six or eight meals a day was quite out of the question. Only when Nyleen slept was Delia free to sleep. Common sense made her decide not to escape that night. Sleep was the first priority. After all, she wouldn’t run far when she could barely drag herself to her new cot and fall, flat out.

The next few days witnessed a gradual improvement in her bodily strength. Soon, she bubbled with confidence, soon she’d be back to her full natural vigor.

Kovneva Nyleen’s routine varied but little. When she went out riding she left her handmaids in the fortress and rode with Nadia and an escort. No banquets were held. Dancing was arranged for the next evening. On the appointed hour people began to appear in the wide hall which, now cleared of its benches, normally served as the refectory. Not a single man was present.

Being cut off from news of the outside world always gave Delia a claustrophobic feeling. What was going on, right now, in Vondium, in Valkanium, in Delphond? Had there been any news of her husband? Were her children still well?

Had the Shanks attacked again from around the curve of the world? There were a million and one items the answers to which she desperately required. Yet during this time she remained calm. She planned her escape. She stole food and clothes and found a loose flagstone and scooped a hole and hid her loot there. She was ready on the night of the dance.

The slaves with whom she had worked in the kitchens could only stare enviously. Only Silly Nath yelled out, some nonsense about cuddling that night. Nan the Bosom thwacked him over the head with her second largest ladle.

These slaves had been trundled in to stoke up the fires and provide hot food from a railed area at one side. They kept looking at the piles of food and racked amphorae, and licking their lips. Depending on what manner of slavemistress Nyleen was, they might this evening get a wet or get a thrashing.

Nan the Bosom started a racket among the slaves, fiercely accusing some scoundrel of stealing her best onion-slicing knife. “How can I make soup if I can’t slice onions, and how can I slice onions if I don’t have my best onion slicer?”

The knife — it had a black handle and was thin and exceedingly sharp — was not found. Naturally. By that time it lay snugged under a flagstone.

If any wight was foolish enough to try to stop Delia, then she or he or it would serve in lieu of an onion.

Nyleen showed no great discrimination among her women as to rank. All those who were free danced. The slaves slaved. Forming an opinion about the inclinations of Nyleen, Delia grasped at another thread. Nyleen detested men, clearly, and surrounded herself with women. That was her privilege up to a point. But Silly Nath was here, and other male slaves. They were not seen as men. They were seen as slaves.

The orchestra proved abominable.

Five women scraped and blew and banged away, and Sissy jangled on the great harp made by Nalgre the Strings over three hundred seasons ago. The superb instrument had been carted down to the converted refectory. Delia chose not to listen to the so-called music. But it served to provide a background and a tempo for the various dances. The lines formed and broke apart and reformed, hands joined and parted. Couples gyrated in the waltz brought to Kregen by the emperor. Eyes sparkled and teeth glistened and the glowing aromas rose.

They were circling in the dance called the Broken Vaol Paol when Delia slipped away unnoticed. In this dance the circle is broken at a certain point and a general excuse me follows as partners change in order to reform the Vaol Paol, the great circle of life of the philosophers. Delia hurried away.

Down through ways she now knew well she pattered on bare feet. Her flagstone would yield a pair of stout sandals one of the Jikai Vuvushis had spent one hell of a time yelling over and searching for. Torches cast their streaming orange hair in the night breeze. Stars prickled above. In the yard the well looked lonely without Silly Nath as its constant companion.

The kitchens still operated, pre-preparing the food for its final cooking aloft in the refectory. Delia avoided the light, skulked over to her flagstone. She put on the drab brown clothes, girded up the belt, fingered Nan the Bosom’s black-handled onion knife. She put on the sandals and made for the totrix stalls.

The far doors opened on the yard and many torchlights glittered through, blowing in the breeze. The sounds of zorca hooves, the noise of totrixes and the groaning protestations of wheels reached her. A procession entered the yard. She shrank back into the shadows, cursing this inopportune interruption. Now she would have to wait until these idiots had taken themselves off.

The ornate coach which had led her coffle of slaves ground to a halt a scant dozen paces from her. Totrix riders reined in and zorcamen jangled to a halt. Lances slanted, their pennons whipping. The sound of armed men and women surrounded her. She lay as quiet as a woflo from a chavnik.

“They have begun the dance already, blast your eyes, Nath! We are late!”

The coachman turned his head. “Yes, master.”

“You will be given ten strokes, Nath. Ten.”

“Yes, master.”

The coach disgorged a man wrapped in a cloak, a helmet upon his head, an air of force and bluster about him. He stamped booted feet. A totrix rider dismounted, flung the reins to a waiting Jikai Vuvushi, and approached this blustery blowhard of a man.

“Chica! Go and tell my sister I am here. Bid her send her tame slaves to attend me before I dance!”

“At once, jen,” said that same Chica who had been so severe to the slaves in Delia’s coffle on the way here. She strode off, long-legged, virile and potent, a fighting maid from sole to crown. A nasty customer, that one, judged Delia.

Looking from the shadows, listening, cursing these fools for interfering with her meticulously planned escape, Delia waited as the man Nath the Muncible approached this stamping blowhard who was Kovneva Nyleen’s brother. A right pair, then. She eyed the zorcas. One of those, now, under her, and they’d never catch her... Few animals on Kregen were as fleet as a zorca over ground.

“Your orders, jen?” Nath the Muncible spoke in his even voice.

“See to the men. Keep them well away. You know how my sister detests all men.”

“Aye, jen. All save you, thanks be.”

“She cannot do without me.” The words came out big and puffed. Delia felt it time to begin to creep away in the shadows and see about a zorca. The big man went on talking, spitting his words out with venom. “She married that fool Vomanus and so we are one step nearer the throne. The moment the empress arrives and can be killed the quicker we can take the second step.”

Chapter twelve

Just Delia, Playing the Harp

The empress stopped moving.

Breathing evenly, alert, motionless, still as a reptile waiting to strike, the empress crouched in the shadows and the words she had just heard reverberated in her brain.

“The moment the empress arrives and can be killed...”

Escape this night, then, was out of the question.

Delia fancied she wanted to know a little more of the plot to kill her. If she ran off now...? Well, she could always return with the armies, as she had planned. That way something might be decided. But she was Delia. She was Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains. She was Delia of Valka, and Empress of Vallia, and also queen and princess of this and that, and kovneva and Stromni of other fair places on Kregen. She was honest enough to admit to herself that, while all these fancy titles might mean more to her than perhaps they ought, they weighed evenly in the scales beside her sisterhood in the Order of the Rose.

She could remember her father the emperor continually complaining because his advisers and pallans and counselors would protect him and not allow him to go running headlong off into danger. She had had a fair share of danger. But she was Delia. Of course, she was well aware that she had been influenced by her husband. He, the great hairy clansman, had been powerfully influenced by her, to their mutual joy, and he was adjusting nicely to being emperor. In this situation neither of them would be likely to run off.

The blood in their veins might boil hotly at injustice and they would do what they could to set things right. But they were no plaster saints. If they scented adventure, they were after it like a leem after a ponsho.

So, now, Delia waited quietly in the shadows, her decision taken and her mind firmly made up.

She’d dance attendance on this woman and her brother, these two Gillois, and not only would she find out what they were up to — the pair of scoundrels! — she’d see to it that their precious schemes came to nothing. And if the pair of them ended up dead, that would be their misfortune.

Nath the Muncible moved quickly to the steps of the coach. Watching, Delia saw how he moved in a fussy and yet hesitant way. He assisted a cloaked figure to alight. Delia watched avidly. Another member of the cutthroat gang, clearly, come to join in the plot. Well, he’d lose his head as easily as the others.

The face in the hood of the cloak lay in shadow. Torchlights struck twin gleams from the person’s eyes. The Lord Gillois na Sagaie stamped and turned, his sword swinging.

“Everything will be prepared for you, Sana, immediately.”

The woman in the cloak acknowledged the information. The hood twisted around. For a moment, a matter of a half dozen heartbeats, she looked directly at the spot where Delia hunkered down in the darkness. Delia held her breath. The world fined down to that hooded face and those twin gleams of light from hidden eyes.

The hood turned away.

“Very well, Cranchar. I am in need of a bath and clean clothes. I do not think I shall attend your sister’s dance. Convey my regrets.”

“Yes, Sana, of course.”

Movement followed as the Sana was escorted away by two serving girls from the coach and by Nath the Muncible. If the Sana was a wise woman or a witch, Delia could not tell, the ancient title of sana being used indiscriminatingly for any woman whose powers were beyond those of normal folk.

Time to be moving.

Nyleen would be calling for Sissy and Alyss to go off and assist the new arrivals. Delia moved like a hunting cat of the jungle, smooth and feral, soundless in the shadows.

The flagstone made a faint chiming gong note as the last corner dropped. Motionless, clad once more in her silver tissue and beads, she glared around. A hard shadow moved against a distant torchlight.

“Who’s there?”

Armor clanked. A broad form blotted out the light.

“A Chail Sheom? What are you—?”

Delia leaped.

She was not fussy. She was quick and professional.

The guard’s armor and helmet and sword and shield did not save him. He had marched in with his lord, and now he lay on the ground with a broken neck for all the good his zeal in guarding had done him. Delia flexed the muscles in her arms and shoulders. The fellow had needed a shave. She ran fleetly away, skillfully taking the shortest and darkest route, fled up the backstairs.

She made it back to the refectory with a second to spare.

“Sissy! Alyss! There you are, you ungrateful girl. Attend the lord my brother. Mind you are punctilious.”

“Yes, mistress.”

“Well, then — grak!”

They grakked.

Luckily for Lord Cranchar Gillois na Sagaie, he wanted nothing more from the girls than attention to his well-being. Hot water, towels, wine — these they provided. Anything further would have distressed Delia, for she wanted to find out about the plot against her before she slew him.

She had to allow Sissy to deal with the mysterious cloaked figure addressed as a sana, and when the two girls could talk afterward, she asked the obvious question.

“Oh,” said Sissy, tossing her head, for all her uncertainty determined not to allow this new girl Alyss to oust her from her position as the number one handmaid, “Oh, she’s a witch. No doubt about it.”

“Ugly?”

“She had nice hair.”

“Beautiful?”

“Her body was too thin.”

Delia did not really care what the witch looked like; what counted was her power.

This gave credence to what she had heard at Lancival about sorcery being employed by the Sisters of the Whip, for Delia believed she had stumbled on a hotbed of that order here.

“She complained there was only one handmaid to wait on her. She was horrible.” Truth to tell, Sissy did look upset. “You were lucky with the Lord Cranchar. Now he is here we shall see a few things!”

When they returned to the refectory the dance was the Pandamon Jut Gallop, a dance brought over from the island of Pandahem. Delia did not dance. She wondered just what those few things might be that Lord Cranchar would show them in a household of women. The music grated on her, despite her shutting her ears. Presently she stood up and went across to Sissy. Nyleen was prancing with her brother.

“Sissy. Don’t you want to dance? I’ll play the harp.”

“You can?”

“A little.”

“If you make a mess of it, my lady will have us—”

“Don’t worry. Look, here is a chord—” Delia swept her hand over the strings, and then pressing the round of her palm against two strings finished up with that thrilling vibrato with all its mysterious over and undertones that only a harp can fetch forth from the soul of music.

“We-ell,” said Sissy. “All right.”

So Delia played the harp.

The Strom of Valka had once told her in genuine and abashed amazement that he’d no idea at all that she could play the harp. Well, by Vox, and hadn’t she sweated blood for season after season learning the mystery? She played divinely.