Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [408]
Lanstatet said sharply, ‘Lady, you’re our enemy, sworn to destroy our native land. You should be below decks in irons.’
‘That’s past,’ said SartoriIrvrash, with dignity. ‘We’re simply wandering scholars now – and homeless ones at that.’
‘Wandering scholars …’ It was too much for the general, so he asked a practical question. ‘How are you to get to Pannoval?’
‘Oldorando would suit me – it is nearer, and I hope to arrive before the king, if he is not already there, to cause him maximum botheration before he weds the Madi princess. You have no love of him either, Hanra. You’ll be the ideal person to take me there.’
‘I’m going to Gravabagalinien,’ said TolramKetinet grimly, ‘if only this tub will sail us there, and we are not overtaken by our enemies.’
All looked back. The Vajabhar Prayer was now in open sea, making laboured progress eastwards along the coast. The Union had emerged from Keevasien Bay, but lay far astern. There was no immediate danger of its catching them.
‘You will see your sister Mai in Gravabagalinien,’ SartoriIrvrash told the general. The general smiled without replying.
Later in the day, distantly, they saw the Good Hope also in pursuit, with a jury-rigged main mast. The two pursuing vessels were lost in haze as thunderheads towered from the western sea, their edges cast in copper. Lightning darted silently in the belly of the cloud.
A second wave of assatassi rose from the sea, like a wing unfurling, to cast itself upon the land. The Prayer was too far from the coast to suffer ill effect. Only a few of the flying fish-lizard darted past the vessel. The men looked on complacently at what that morning had struck them dumb. As they crawled towards Gravabagalinien, thunderous darkness fell and tiny splinters of light showed ashore, where natives were feasting on the dead invaders.
And something without identity made its way towards the place where the queen of queens resided in her wooden palace: a human body.
RobaydayAnganol had stolen a ride downriver from Matrassyl to Ottassol, keeping ahead of his father. Wherever he went now, he went with a special haste in his gait, half-looking back; did he but know it, this aspect of a man pursued made him resemble his father. He thought of himself as pursuing. Vengeance against his father filled his mind.
In Ottassol, instead of going to the underground palace which his father was due to visit, he went to an old friend of SartoriIrvrash’s, the deuteroscopist and anatomist, Bardol CaraBansity. CaraBansity was feeling no great goodwill for the king or his strange son.
He and his wife had staying with them a society of deuteroscopists from Vallgos. He offered Robayday a bed in a house he maintained near the harbour, where, he said, a girl would look after his needs.
Robayday’s interest in women was sporadic. However, he immediately found the woman in CaraBansity’s harbour house attractive, with her long brown hair and a mysterious air of authority, as if she knew a secret shared by nobody else.
She gave her name as Metty, and he remembered her. She was a girl he had once enjoyed in Matrassyl. Her mother had assisted his father when the latter was wounded after the Battle of the Cosgatt. Her real name was Abathy.
She did not recognise him. No doubt she was a lady with many lovers. At first, Robayday did not enlighten her. He remained inert and let her come to him. To impress, she spoke of a scandalous connection with Sibornalese officials in Matrassyl; he watched her expression as she spoke, and thought of how different her view of the world was, with its clandestine comings and goings.
‘You do not recognise me, for I am hard to recognise, yet there was a day when you wore less kohl on your eyes when we were close as tongue to teeth …’
Then she spoke his name and embraced him, exhibiting delight.
Later, she said she had cause to be grateful to her mother,