Sung In Blood

Chaz settled down beside him, Caracene held almost negligently in one arm. "Who was that guy?"

"Shai Khe," Rider replied. "I should have thought of him when Vlazos tried to tell me. He said Shai Khe and I heard shy key."

"That's his name," Chaz said. "But it don't tell me nothing about him." They watched Su-Cha drag Odehnal their way. The dwarf remained imprisoned in his opium dream.

"I know only one thing more," Rider said.

"Uhm?"

"My father was afraid of him."

Chaz looked startled.

"Yes. He wouldn't talk about it. Shai Khe is some great terror in the east. He commands an empire more vast than Shasesserre's. But that does not satisfy him. He wants it all."

Wreckage from the collapsed building drifted away. Rider's men assembled. Neighbors came to watch from a distance safe from shantors.

"More prisoners," Greystone said. The man who had jumped into the river was trying to talk Soup and Spud into turning him loose.

Rider caught his eye. "You're luckier than your friends." He indicated the wreckage. Two men were in it somewhere. To his own men, he said, "We've done what we can do here. Take these people to the Citadel. We'll question them later. Spud, Su-Cha, Preacher, come with me."

"Where we headed?" Su-Cha asked.

"Airship yards. Before we left the Citadel I sent word for a ship to be readied. We'll use it to hunt Shai Khe. Particularly if he runs to his own ship."

Shai Khe, not Kralj Odehnal, had killed Vlazos and escaped in an unlicensed airship.

Chaz stepped close as Rider was about to leave. He whispered, "What about the girl?"

"Treat her the way she wants you to treat her. If she doesn't suspect she's marked for the web, arrange it so she can escape again. She could lead us again."

"Right. Will do."

Rider and those he had chosen hurried a quarter mile, to where a pair of chariots waited. They shed their shantor's robes as they went.

XIII

Rider's ship was ready. It was a light vessel, capable of carrying just a ton of crew and freight, designed for speed. Rider and Spud went to the control array. There were great magicks involved in the airship's propulsion, but much of its control was mechanical. Spud had helped refine the system.

"Ready to cast off," Rider called to the ground. "Dump ballast, Omar." Rider was the only one of the group to use Spud's proper name. And he forgot much of the time.

Spud tripped levers. The ship began tugging at its restraining lines. "Cast off!" Rider shouted.

The ship lurched upward. Rider murmured to the demonic body, spellbound and beguiled, which constituted its motive force. The airship turned toward the river, began to slide forward like a fish through water.

Aft, Su-Cha and Preacher hastened to take in the mooring lines.

"He was headed Henchelside when last I saw him," Rider said. "And downriver. We'll start looking where Deer Creek Drain runs into the river."

"Keep an eye out for his airship, too," Spud said, making an adjustment to levers which controlled flaps on the ship's sharklike fins. "Be hard to hide something that big."

Rider nodded.

The airship's balance shifted as Preacher and Su-Cha came forward. Spud adjusted with the fins. "Any sign of him?" Su-Cha asked.

"Too soon to tell," Rider replied. The river along Henchelside was crowded with the boats of fisherfolk. Rider directed the demon to follow the shoreline south toward the Golden Crescent.

"Take us lower, Omar. I want to see their faces."

There was no tension in the web. Shai Khe was not using his power.

The fisherfolk all looked up as the airship passed over. Rarely did one drop so low.

In time the riverbank curved away westward. The land grew marshy and wild. "Not going to find him this way," Spud said.

"We'll return a ways inland, looking for somewhere where he might have put his ship down,"

Rider said. So they ran inland again, as far as that part of the city on Henchelside opposite the Protte rookery. Still they found nothing.

Rider persisted till nightfall made continued search pointless.

"You could turn a hand with this one," Soup complained to Chaz, as they faced the stair to the laboratory. Soup was carrying Odehnal.

"I could. But I like the one I've got just fine." He had Caracene over one shoulder. She was thoroughly bound despite Rider's admonition to treat her well. She wriggled, and squeaked behind her gag. Chaz just gri

Greystone prodded his man with the tip of a sheathed dagger. That fellow never quit protesting his i

At the laboratory door Greystone said, "Somebody tried to get in while we were out. Evidence of attempted entry was obvious. The effort had been a failure, though."

Chaz said, "Vlazos' friends, no doubt."

Greystone popped a signet ring into a small hole in the wall some feet from the doorway. Each of Rider's men wore identical rings. The door responded with a down-scale, musical whine. "Should have done something like this a long time ago."

Soup countered, "When the old man was ru

It'll be that way again when they get used to Rider."

"Let's hope."

One small lumber room had been converted to a cell for the prisoner already on hand. Odehnal and the other man joined him. "Have you some di

The dwarf's eyes smouldered.

Chaz released Caracene in another room. He told her, "Couldn't give you special treatment in front of the dwarf. Sorry."

She did not answer. There was an odd, measuring look in her eyes. She watched him closely still when she sat down to eat with the three men.

"Shai Khe," Greystone said. "An ill name out east. One that strikes terror everywhere. I wouldn't have thought his interest in Shasesserre to be so intense as to bring him here personally." He glanced at Caracene.

She said, "Shasesserre is all that stands between Shai Khe and creation of the greatest empire the world has known."

"He the one gave you to Odehnal?" Chaz asked.

"Yes."

"What can you tell us about him?" Greystone asked.

"Nothing. While he lives, nothing."

"Me, I lost something somewhere, beautiful lady," Chaz said.

"I am his slave." She said that as though it explained all. In her native land, perhaps it did.

"Who?" Chaz insisted. "Odehnal or Shai Khe?"

Caracene bowed her head. Softly, she replied, "Shai Khe."

"Why? You're in Shasesserre."

"There are no slaves in Shasesserre?"

Chaz had to think his way around the side of that. "He is an enemy of the state. As such he has no rights. You have been freed. We could get you manumission papers by tomorrow."

She looked at him with eyes in which tenderness warred with exasperation. "Paper has no meaning while Shai Khe lives."

Gallantly, Chaz offered, "I'll kick his head in, then. Just tell me where he is."

"I ca

Soup snickered. Even Greystone smirked.

"I give up," the northerner said. He began muttering about "Women!" under his breath. He cleared his plate and cutlery away, then prepared a tray for the prisoners.

During the afternoon and evening he made every opportunity for Caracene to escape. She did not seize her chance.

Rider reached the laboratory quite late. He examined the prisoners while the others prepared themselves a supper. "Any message from the King?" he asked.

"Nary a word," Chaz replied. "Nothing from anybody."

"I suppose that means he's decided to accept me as Protector—to the extent that he'll ignore me. Till he wants something."

"That's what most of them did with your father. How long you reckon Belledon will last?" Few Shasesserren kings fulfilled normal lifespans. Some years there were three or four selfcoronations.