Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [445]
‘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.