Sung In Blood

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 Amor Ocean with the Middle Sea. 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.

Rider strolled toward the Citadel. The sun was into its westward plunge. About time he sought an audience with the King. The man needed to know, to prepare for the storm. And Rider hoped for his blessing in his assumption of the Protector's role.

He decided he'd better get himself a chariot. All this walking and running—even he was subject to cumulative fatigue.

But first, before anything—even before seeing the King-be had to restore the web. When an enemy could bring a pirate airship within a few hundred yards undetected, the situation was desperate.

Just how tired he had become, and thus unalert, was demonstrated when he reached his father's laboratory. He failed to notice the pop-seeds scattered in the hall. His feet stirred a rapid-fire racket.

The door swung inward. "Rider!" Chaz said. "We've got company."

He saw the golden-skinned woman in the doorway to the library. She saw him for the first time.

Her eyes widened.

"You catch him?" Greystone asked.

"Yes. It was Vlazos."

"And?"

"He died before he could say much."

"Oh."

Rider heard the hollow sound in Greystone's voice. "No. Not me. His confederates. With a strangulation spell. They fled in an airship."

Greystone looked properly astounded.

"Yes. First order of business now is to restore the web. Where are the others?"

Chaz explained about Emerald.

"I told them to stay here. Well. I suppose they have to learn the hard way."