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arrows fell away uselessly. Like a parcel of laundry at the end of a rope I was whisked up. Climbing the
chain proved tricky; but without sheathing the longsword I managed that maneuver and tumbled over the
leather-wrapped coaming. Presently I took the flier under command and set the controls for full speed for
Vondium. Udo and Ranjal and Zankov if his headache improved would send the pursuit after me;
but I had chosen exceeding well and the voller outran all pursuit.
When I considered what I had just discovered I was aghast I was beset by confusion, unable to believe
it had really happened, and yet knowing that what Dayra said was true, true, damn the black Star Lords
to hell and beyond.
The only sane course for me to follow was to do what I could for Vallia. I could not put out of my mind
that terrible experience how her claws had slashed but I could attempt to comfort myself with the
reflection that she had lived this long without me and so could live a while longer until I managed to
persuade her I was not entirely the rogue, the cheat, the liar, the deceiver she dubbed me. I was those
things; but not in the way she meant.
That was a dark and dismal flight back to Vondium. The claw cuts in my face could be cleaned up and
in time they would heal without a scar; but the real scars on me they would leave might never heal. My
own daughter! But at the end, she had stood back. She had made no further effort to stop me. She
had bid me go.
Better, I suppose, to be thrown out than to be killed, to a pragmatic kind of fellow, although the more
sensitive might well dramatically prefer death. To me, they are the fools, for although one can see their
artistic point of view, they do rather show their contempt of the gift of life, which is not to be taken lightly.
Perhaps a taste of the Heavenly Mines would cure them. . .
So I forced myself to look at this unnatural situation with Dayra s eyes. She was perfectly entitled to her
view of me. I fancied the company she kept could be revealed to her as the bunch of villains they were
and their dark purposes destroy her belief in them. That was one area in which she could be straightened
out. That was general. In the private and family quarrel she had with me that was something else
again.
Even then, in those bleak moments of near despair, I once again forced myself to consider the concept
that Dayra s companions were honorable people, working for what they truly believed in, and seeing
Delia and the emperor and me and the family as villains overripe for the chopping. It was difficult. But, as
Zair is my witness, I tried.
And, by Vox, it was not too difficult where the emperor was concerned, either. . .
All these worries must for the moment be pushed aside. However difficult that might be, I had to realize
that all Vallia could be drenched in blood. I had to do what I could to prevent that. Also, it would not
hurt to remind myself I had two other daughters, not to mention three sons, to worry over. . .
All the same, the story of how Dayra had spurned the Sisters of the Rose and taken the name of Ros
and learned the trick of using the Claw and become involved with Zankov and that gang would make a
fascinating task to unravel and learn. Like me, she used aliases as it suited her. In that, at the least, the
very littlest least, she was like me.
It was damn small comfort.
Vondium hove into view and the place was burning in many areas, the fierce orange flames reflecting in
the canals, the proud buildings on their hills and islands burning and collapsing. I stared, shocked back to
present crises.
The long straggling black fingers of fugitives clogged roads leading away from the capital, the canals lay
deserted with all the narrow boats gone, and not a flier sped through the sky apart from my own sole
voller I had stolen from Udo.
The palace was not burning and a Pachak guard ringed it to prevent looting. The devoted loyalty of the
Pachaks through their honor system of nikobi was never better demonstrated.
I landed in the great kyro before the palace. A guard checked me quickly and efficiently those guards
again, men, just men, doing a job, and faithful, not mere lay figures to be spitted and chopped and cast
down all bloody and forgotten and I was led off to their Chuktar.
A few quick glances told me that all the Pachaks hired by the emperor for duties in various wings of the
palace had been collected together. Even the Pachaks from the wing given over to the use of Delia and
myself, for with the Chuktar stood our Pachak paktun Jiktar, Laka Pa-Re. He greeted me warmly. The
Chuktar, the highest of the military ranks apart from princes and kovs and generals and kings and their
like, was Pola Je-Du. He looked more haggard than I liked.
Lahal, prince. The situation, as you see, is ripe.
Lahal, Pola Je-Du. Your orders?
To guard the palace. Since the defeats the emperor
Defeats? I had heard of one.
The Hamalese fought well, so I am told. The Vallian army was defeated in detail. The Crimson
Bowmen fought brilliantly, those that marched. The others
I looked at Laka Pa-Re, remembering how he had warned me that the guards were being bribed. Laka
nodded. The guards who took bribes were weeded out. Naghan Vanki saw to that. But the damage
had been done.
And the various elements disaffected in the capital and the provinces took the chance to rise. There has
been much mischief, prince. The Pachak Chuktar pulled his moustache. Smoke billowed up from a
dome across the kyro and the distant sounds of shouting and the crashings of masonry reached us, thin
and attenuated. The emperor marched out with all that was left to him. For us, we guard the palace.
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