Part 58 (1/2)
”Well, take heart. A year or so of penance in the chilly wilds of Rhazaulle should properly atone for your blundering, and after that my intercession with the imperior will serve to curtail your exile.”
”I do not ask your intercession, Grandlandsman. I do not want it.”
”Ah? You prefer a more protracted expiation? Or perhaps you seek to bury your errors in Rhazaullean obscurity?”
”I do not acknowledge specific errors, nor with all the benefits of hindsight would I alter the decisions I made throughout the course of the race. If my reputation has suffered, I will repair it by means of my own efforts.”
”Indeed. You cannot know how pleased I am to hear you say so.”
Karsler glanced at his uncle. The grandlandsman was smiling with an air of inexplicable approval. The apparent cordiality was uncharacteristic and disquieting. He waited.
”You look as if you've swallowed a bayonet. I a.s.sure you, I mean what I say. Your desire to restore the full l.u.s.ter of the Stornzof name delights me, for the opportunity to do so is at hand. You will redeem yourself fully in the eyes of the world this very night. Listen, and I will explain.”
THE DOOR OPENED, and Luzelle rose instantly from the couch. King Miltzin IX stepped into the room and she swept a low curtsy. Chancing a quick glance up at him, she saw that his protuberant eyes were fixed attentively on her neckline. She stood, and the eyes dragged themselves from her chest to her face.
”Miss Devaire. I am so very delighted to meet you at last. Allow me to extend my warmest congratulations together with my deepest admiration.” Smiling, he extended both hands.
She did not know what she was supposed to do. In antic.i.p.ation of this meeting she had studied some Lower Hetzian courtly etiquette, but nothing in the books had prepared her for such casual spontaneity. Acting on instinct, she offered up her own two hands, which were accepted at once. He drew her to him, kissed her warmly on the cheek, and released her. His walrus moustache tickled and she fought down the nervous urge to giggle. She caught the odors of expensive cologne and hair pomade.
Not such a bad start. She must have made a good impression. ”Your Majesty honors me,” she murmured.
”Nonsense, my dear, you grace us with your presence. Do you know,” the king inquired, ”that I was certain from the moment I first set eyes on you at city hall that you would be the winner? The morning the race began, I looked at you standing there so radiantly resolute, and I just knew. Occasionally I am blessed with such flashes of insight, and they never lead me astray.”
”Sire, you astound me,” Luzelle confessed. ”At the start of the Grand Ellipse I stood in the midst of the racers. I never dreamed that Your Majesty had favored me with your notice.”
”Ah, you do not know your own power. My dear, you are all but impossible to overlook. It was all I could do that day to prevent myself from staring, and this evening such an effort is entirely beyond me.”
”Your Majesty is most gracious.” She lowered her eyes becomingly.
”Not at all, I speak the simple truth.” Miltzin planted himself on the damask couch. ”Come, my dear Miss Devaire-ah, ruination, but that's so distant, so chilly. I hope you'll not take it amiss if I address you as Luzelle. That is far more cordial, is it not?”
”If it please Your Majesty.”
”Indeed it does. Come then, my dear Luzelle-sit here beside me. Let us talk, let us discover one another.”
She seated herself with care; not close enough to appear brazen, nor so far away as to seem entirely unapproachable.
”Champagne?”
”Thank you, Sire.”
The small table before the couch supported a big silver cooler containing two iced bottles, a pair of long-stemmed flutes, and a doc.u.ment elaborately stamped and sealed. Miltzin IX filled the gla.s.ses, handed one to Luzelle, and proposed gallantly, ”To victory.”
Whose? she wondered. Gla.s.s clinked on gla.s.s, and she took a small, careful swallow. Not the time to be muddling her head. she wondered. Gla.s.s clinked on gla.s.s, and she took a small, careful swallow. Not the time to be muddling her head.
”Ah. Before I forget.” He picked up the doc.u.ment and handed it to her. ”There, my dear. The writ of enn.o.blement, spoils of the conqueror. Conqueress? I cannot sort it out. Suffice it to say there is no one I will recognize with greater pleasure as a peeress of Lower Hetzia.”
”Thank you. It is too great a reward, far more than I deserve. Sire, I am overwhelmed.” She scanned the doc.u.ment, which was written in Hetzian, a language she comprehended imperfectly, and further complicated with convoluted legal phrases. The royal stamp and seal were elaborately authentic. All in all, an impressive piece of parchment, but what exactly was she supposed to do with it for the rest of the evening?
”But how thoughtless of me.” Miltzin evidently noted her dilemma. ”This will be delivered to your hotel tomorrow morning.”
”Your Majesty is as considerate as you are generous. I am grateful beyond expression.” She smiled prettily and wondered how to work the conversation around to the subject of Sentient Fire.
King Miltzin furnished unwitting a.s.sistance. Refilling his empty gla.s.s, he urged with enthusiasm, ”And now, my very dear Baroness Luzelle, you must relate the tale of your Grand Ellipse adventures. I've caught a few of the stories at second hand, and they're tremendous. But now I would hear the true and accurate version, straight from the lovely lips of the winner herself.”
Bless him, he was making it easy.
”Sire, I'll try not to weary you.” She meditated a moment and then commenced, ”Perhaps it's best to begin in occupied Lanthi Ume, where the local resistance continues to battle the forces of the Imperium. Just at the time I arrived, the Grewzians were engaged in executing a prominent, popular Lanthian citizen-an elderly gentleman who had been badly beaten, loaded with iron chains, and was subsequently dropped through a hole in the dock to drown in full view of his countrymen-”
”Did you actually see this with your own eyes?”
”I did.”
”But how distressing!”
”It gets worse. The spectacle of the old gentleman's murder,” Luzelle resumed, ”incensed the spectators, and there was some public outcry to which the Grewzians responded by firing on a crowd of unarmed civilians. I myself was in that crowd. The bullets pa.s.sed so close that I fancied I'd been hit. A young boy, little more than a child, standing not an arm's length from me was killed outright.”
”Gad, what an episode!”
”Lanthians fell by the score, and even as they tried to flee the dock, the Grewzians went on shooting them down.”
”Unnecessary. Absolutely unnecessary.”
”Such was my conclusion, Sire. Later that same day,” Luzelle continued, ”I was contacted by several members of that ancient Lanthian society of savants known as the Select, who offered a.s.sistance in the form of an arcane conveyance, a sorcerous gla.s.s of transference-”
”Marvelous!”
”But even as the savants transported me and several others from the city of Lanthi Ume, the Grewzian soldiers burst into the secret meeting place and opened fire. I don't believe that any of the Lanthians survived.”
”What an unconscionable waste of talent. These Grewzians are running amok. I wonder if Cousin Ogron quite realizes?”
”Sire, I've scarcely begun to tell you all I've seen.” Luzelle spoke on. She told of natives tortured by the Grewzians in Xoxo, and of frightful abuses of power in Jumo Towne. She described the ma.s.sacre and the Grewzian atrocities she had witnessed in Rhazaulle, the ugly incidents in the Mid-Duchies, and finally delivered a calculatedly incendiary account of the Grewzian violence inflicted upon innocent civilians in Upper Hetzia, only a few scant miles from His Majesty Miltzin's own borders.
The king's gra.s.shopper eyes rounded as he listened. He sat quite still, his champagne gla.s.s forgotten on the table before him. She had definitely claimed his full attention; in fact, he appeared almost spellbound.
Her narrative concluded. She had daubed the Grewzians in the ugliest colors her verbal palette contained and, she hoped, obliged the king to view them through her eyes. She surveyed him. His expression was not easily a.n.a.lyzed. She decided that he looked stunned.
”Extraordinary,” Miltzin conceded in a hushed tone.
She had moved him. Time to exploit that advantage.
”Sire, these Grewzian barbarians are bent on conquest and empire, they make no secret of it. They'll overrun the civilized world,” she essayed. ”We are all of us their victims, there are no exceptions. Lower Hetzia itself stands at risk.”
”It's difficult to credit.”
”But true. Your Majesty must believe. They'll crush us all, unless they are forcibly halted.” She allowed him a moment to think about it, then suggested quietly, ”It's widely believed that the king of Lower Hetzia owns the instrument of our preservation.” He said nothing, and she prompted cautiously, ”The news of Your Majesty's wondrous possession-the Sentient Fire-has traveled everywhere.”
”You astonish me.”
”Sire, I thought you knew. The hopes of threatened nations near and far-including my own land of Vonahr-fasten upon the Low Hetz. Your Majesty holds the power to save us all. I pray that you will choose to exercise that power.”