Only to find that the palace had its own diversions. In the alley that ran outside the northeast side of the palace, a wagon, drawn by six hoxneys, arrived. Four burly men climbed down. One held the lead hoxney, while the other three set about sliding wooden bars away from a side door. They flung the door open and shouted to someone inside the wagon. When there was no answer, two of the men climbed in and, with blows and curses, dragged a bound figure out into the street. A rug had been tied over the captive’s head. When he groaned too distinctly, he was fetched a blow across his shoulders.
Without hurry, the three toughs unlocked an iron door and passed into an outbuilding of the palace. The door slammed shut behind them.
JandolAnganol watched this event from the concealment of a portico. Beside him was the fragile figure of Milua Tal. From where they stood, beside the wall, they could smell the heavy fragrance of the zaldal, to which Sayren Stund had drawn JandolAnganol’s attention earlier.
In the pavilion in Whistler Park, which they called the White Pavilion, they established their refuge. They would be safe under the protection of the Phagorian Guard. The king was still preoccupied with the sight they had just witnessed in the street.
‘I think your father means to kill me before I can escape from Oldorando.’
‘Killing’s not so bad, but he’s determined somehow to disgrace you. I’ll find out how if I can, but he gives me only black looks now. Oh, how can kings be so difficult? I hope you won’t be like that when we escape to Matrassyl. I’m so curious to see it, and to sail down the Valvoral. Boats going downstream can go at a fantastic speed, faster than birds.
‘Do they have pecubeas in Borlien? I’d like some in my room, just like Moth has. Four pecubeas at least, maybe five — if you can afford it. Father says that you intend to murder me in revenge and cut my head off, but I just laughed and stuck my tongue out — have you seen how far my tongue comes out? — and said, “Revenge for what, you silly old king-person?” and that got him so mad. I thought he’d have apolloplexy.’
She chattered away happily as she examined the apartment.
Carrying their single light, JandolAnganol said, ‘I intend you no harm, Milua. You can believe that. Everyone thinks me a villain. I am in the hands of Akhanaba, as we all are. I do not even intend your father harm.’
She sat on the bed and stared out of the window, the beakiness of her face emphasised in the shadows. ‘That’s what I told him, or words to that effect. He was so mad, he let one thing slip. You know SartoriIrvrash?’
‘I know him well.’
‘He’s in father’s hands again. Father’s men found him in that hunchback’s room.’
He shook his head. ‘No. He’s still bound and gagged in a garderobe. My captains are going to bring him over here for safekeeping.’
Milua Tal gave her bubbling laugh. ‘He fooled you, Jan. That’s another man, a slave they put in there in the dark. They found the real SartoriIrvrash when everyone was greeting fat old Prince Taynth.’
‘By the beholder! That man has trouble for me, that man has trouble. He was my chancellor. What does he know?… Milua, whatever happens, I am going to face it out. I must face it out, my honour is involved.’
‘Oh, zygankes, “My honour is involved”! You sound like Father when you say that. Aren’t you supposed to say you are mad about my infantile beauty or something?’
He caught at her hands. ‘So I may be, my pretty Milua! But what I’m trying to say is that that sort of madness is no good without something to back it. I have to survive dishonour, to outlive it, to remain uncontaminated by it. Then honour will return to me. All will respect me for surviving. Then it will be possible to form an alliance between my country and yours, as I have long desired, and I will form it with your father or with whoever succeeds him.’
She clapped her hands. ‘I succeed him! Then we’ll have a whole country each.’
Despite his tension, his premonition that further ills were about to befall him, he burst into laughter, seized her, and pressed her delicate body against him.
The earth shook again.
‘Can we sleep here, together?’ she whispered.
‘No, it would be wrong. In the morning, we go to see my friend Esomberr.’
‘I thought he wasn’t your friend.’
‘I can make him be my friend. He’s vain, but not a villain.’
The earth tremors died. The night died. Freyr rose in strength, again hidden from sight by the yellow haze, and the temperature climbed.
That day, few persons of importance were seen about the palace. King Sayren Stund announced that he would hold no audiences; those who had lost a home or a child in the tremors wailed in vain in the stagnant anterooms, or were turned away. Nor was King JandolAnganol to be seen. Or the young princess.
On the following day, a body of Oldorandan guards, eight strong, arrested JandolAnganol.
They caught him as he descended the staircase leading from his room. He fought, but they lifted him off his feet and carried him to a place of imprisonment. He was kicked down a spiralling stone stair and thrown into a dungeon.
He lay for many minutes panting on the floor, beside himself with anger.
‘Yuli, Yuli,’ he said, over and over. ‘I was so sick at what they did to you that I never could think through to see what danger I was in… I never could think…’
After some minutes of silence, he said aloud, ‘I was overconfident. That’s always been my fault I trusted too much that I could ride with the circumstances…’
A long while later, he picked himself off the floor and looked helplessly about. A shelf against one wall served as bed and bench. Light filtered in from a high window. In one corner was a trough for sanitary purposes. He sank down on the bench, and thought of his father’s long imprisonment.
When his spirits had sunk still lower, he thought of Milua Tal.
‘Sayren Stund, if you harm one lash of her eyes, you slanje…’
He sat rigid. Eventually, he forced himself to relax and leaned with his back against the moist wall of the cell. With a roar, he jumped up and began to pace about, up and down, between wall and door.
He ceased only when he heard the scrape of boots coming down the stair. Keys rattled at the lock, and a black-clad member of the local clerisy entered between two armed guards. As he gave a scanty bow, JandolAnganol recognised him as Sayren Stund’s axe-faced advisor, by name Crispan Mornu.
‘Under what devious law am I, a visiting prince of a friendly country, imprisoned?’
‘I am come to inform you that you are charged with murder, and will be tried for that crime tomorrow at Batalix-break, before a royal ecclesiastical court.’ The sepulchral voice paused, then added, ‘Prepare yourself.’
JandolAnganol advanced in a fury. ‘Murder? Murder, you pack of criminals? What new scoundrelism is this? Whose murder is laid at my door?’
Crossed spears halted his advance.
The priest said, ‘You are charged with the murder of Princess Simoda Tal, elder daughter of King Sayren Stund of Oldorando.’
He bowed again and withdrew.
The king remained where he was, staring at the door. His eagle eyes fixed upon its boards, never blinking, as if he had vowed they should never blink again until he was free.
He stayed almost motionless throughout the night. The intense active principle within him, being confined, stayed coiled within him like a spring. He maintained a defiant alertness throughout the hours of dark, waiting to leap to attack anyone who ventured to enter the dungeon.
Nobody came. No food was brought, no water. During the night there was a remote tremor — so remote it might have been in an artery rather than the earth — and a powder shower of mortar floated down to the stones. Nothing else. Not so much as a rat visited JandolAnganol.