This hidden roof garden rioted in a thousand perfumed blooms, shady trees bowed in the breeze, marble statuary stood in niches of the walls where vines looped, water fountains tinkled. Natema waited for me reclining in a swinging hammock-type seat facing a rail overlooking a sheer drop of a thousand feet. Gulls whirled there, shrieking.
Delia of Delphond, clad in pearls and feathers, crouched by her jeweled feet.
I kept my face expressionless. I had sized up the situation instantly, and the danger made me tremble for Delia.
For Delia had uttered a low gasp at sight of me, and Natema’s proud patrician face had turned to her, a tiny frown indenting her forehead above her haughty nose.
The interview wended its way as I had expected. My refusal astonished Natema. She bade her slaves retire out of earshot. She regarded me tempestuously, her hair ruffling in the breeze, her cornflower blue eyes hot and languorous, together, so that she seemed very lovely and desirable.
“Why do you refuse, Dray Prescot? Have I not offered you everything?”
“I think,” I said carefully, “you would have me killed.”
“No!” She clasped her hands together. “Why, Dray Prescot, why? You fought for me! You were my champion!”
“You are too beautiful to die in that way, Princess.”
“Oh!”
“Would you offer me all this if I were not your slave?”
“You are my slave, to do with as I will!”
I did not answer. She looked back to where Delia sat, idly sewing a silken bit of tapestry, and pretending not to look at us. Her cheeks were flushed. Natema’s ripe red mouth drew down. “I know!” she said, and her voice hissed between her white teeth. “I know! That slave wench-Here! Guards-bring me that wench!”
When the Chuliks stood grasping Delia before us, she lifted her little chin and regarded Natema with a look so proud and disdainful all my blood coursed and sang through my body. Delia did not look at me.
“This is the reason, Dray Prescot! I saw, in the corridor where you slew the five treacherous guards! I saw.”
She gave an order that froze me where I stood. A Chulik drew his dagger and placed it to Delia’s breast, over her heart. He looked with his oily yellow face to Natema, stolidly awaiting the next order.
“Does this girl mean anything to you, Dray Prescot?”
I stared at Delia, whose eyes now remained firmly fixed on me, her head lifted, her whole beautiful body taut and desirable and infinitely lovely. Queen among women is Delia of the Blue Mountains! Immeasurably the most beautiful woman in all Kregen and all Earth, incomparable, radiant, near-divine. I shook my head. I spoke roughly, contemptuously.
“A slave girl? No-she means nothing to me.”
I saw Delia swallow and her eyelids blinked, once.
Natema smiled, like one of those she-leem of the plains, furred, feline, vicious, against which the clansmen wage continual war in protection of the chunkrah herds. She gestured and Delia returned once more to her tapestry. I noticed her fingers were not quite steady as she guided the needle; but her back was erect, her body taut, the pearls taking all their luster from the glowing glory of her skin.
“For the last time, Dray Prescot-will you?”
I shook my head, thankful that, at least for the time, Delia had been spared from immediate danger. What happened next was quick, brutal and, given the circumstances, expected. The Chuliks at Natema’s fierce, broken-voice command, seized me, ran me to the rail, thrust me half-over where I hung suspended over that gulf. Below me the water curled away from the long sandspit tailing at the end of the island. The air smelled very sweet and fresh, tanged with salt.
“Now, Dray Prescot! One word! One word is all I ask!”
I was not such a fool as to imagine I might easily survive such a dive; it would be a gamble with the odds heavily against me. I could easily throw these Chuliks off, snatch a rapier, fight my way through them and hope to escape into the warrens of the palace. But I did not think Natema would have me tossed into eternity. And, thinking that, I realized I was a fool, that she had been accustomed to doing anything at all and having anything she wanted from birth. But, if she did fancy she loved me, would she destroy me?
I braced myself, ready to twist like a zorca and fling these two yellow-bellies into space.
“One word, Natema, one word I spare you! No!”
I heard Delia screaming, and the scuffling sounds of a struggle. I dragged up one arm and the Chulik gasped and tried to hold me down. I was ready to turn and rend them…
“What is going on here?”
The voice was harsh, strong with the tone of habitual absolute authority. The Chuliks hauled me back inboard. A tableau was frozen on that scented roof garden.
All the slaves were at the incline. Delia was held down by two Chuliks. Natema was gracefully inclining her head in a semblance of a curtsey. The man to whom these obvious and immediate marks of servile respect were addressed must be Natema’s father, the Head of the House, the Cydones Esztercari, the Kodifex of the city himself.
He was tall, gaunt, with a grim pucker in the lines around his mouth, an arrogant black light in his eyes. His hair and beard were iron-gray. He stood tall, clad all in the Esztercari emerald, a jeweled rapier and dagger at his side, and I wondered how many slaves he had had killed, how many men he had spitted in duel and bravo-fight. In his face showed clearly the fanatical obsession of power, the greed to possess power and to exercise it ruthlessly.
“It is nothing, Father.”
“Nothing! Do not seek to fob me off, daughter. Has the slave interfered with your girl? Tell me, Natema, by the blood of your mother.”
“No, Father.” Natema resumed her natural arrogant stance.
“The girl means nothing to him. He has said so.”
The hooded black eyes pierced into me, into Delia, into his daughter. His hands, gloved, gripped the weapon hilts.
“You are pledged to the Prince Pracek of Ponthieu. He is here to speak to you of the wedding arrangements. I have, as is proper, attended to the financial bokkertu.”
A man stepped forward from the mass of emerald green clothing in the rear of the Kodifex. I saw Galna there, his face as white and mean as ever. This young man wore the purple and ocher of Ponthieu. His rapier was over-ornate. He took Natema’s hand and raised it to his forehead. He had a sharp-featured face, with that kind of lopsidedness to it that offends some people; but he was most polite.
“Princess Natema, star of heaven, beloved of Zim and Genodras, the crimson and emerald wonders of the sky-I am as dust beneath your feet.”
She made some formal icy reply. She was looking at me. The Kodifex saw that look. He gestured and men-human men-seized me and Delia. They hustled us to stand before the Kodifex. Natema cried out. He silenced her.
“Do not think I am not aware of what the frippery this slave wears means, daughter! By your mother’s blood, do you think I am a fool! You will obey! All else is nothing!” He gestured, a familiar, habitual movement. “Kill the man, and the girl, kill both the slaves. Now!”
Chapter Fourteen
“Kill both the slaves. Now!”
I kicked the noble Kodifex in the place where it would do him the least good, dragged the two guards around before me and hurled them staggering into the emerald green knot of nobles, snatched the Kodifex’s rapier from its scabbard, slew the two guards holding Delia with two quick and savage thrusts, and seized her hand in my free left hand and dragged her running toward the stairs at the end of the roof garden.
“Dray!” she said, sobbing. “Dray!”
“Run, Delia of the Blue Mountains,” I said. “Run!”
At the foot of the stairs where the doorway, ornate this side, plain the other, separated the noble area from the slave quarters beneath the roof, two Ochs tried to stop me and died for their pains. I slammed the door shut after us. We ran.