The Forlorn(7)

The boy felt at the small hole. Stuck. At this point! In frustration he pounded at the edge of it. The concrete crumbled slightly, and small stones fell to splash into the unpleasant liquids that trickled below. The concrete was centuries old, and the pipe juncture had been cut through the steel reinforcing once hidden inside the concrete. Now, exposed to oxygen and often wet, rust had slowly eaten at the steel and the expanding rust had cracked the concrete along the reinforcing lines.

Pounding with a broken slab of tiling, he broke a larger opening. It was still not very wide, but from years of burglary, Keilin knew that where his head and one arm could go, his body could follow. He squirmed through, down into the fetid trickle.

On hands and knees he crawled to where the pipe joined a larger canal. He dared not stop down here in the noisome darkness. The roaches presumed that meat that didn't move was dinner. Ahead he saw light. Distant daylight shone down in a barred pattern through a street grating. Above was the shaft that could take him out of here. He climbed the rusty staples towards it. And stopped. He could hear voices.

He couldn't go up. Not while there was someone out there. But here in the light, the roaches were wary. He hung waiting, waiting for the speakers to move. One voice was high-pitched and lisping. He remembered being herded along to listen to it, just before he ran away from his mother. Only then the man had sounded arrogant, and almost infinitely powerful. Now the voice was wooden, and afraid. ". . . The magicianth dead, I tell you. Nothing could live through that fire!"

The reply was also high-pitched but too full of clicking sibilants to make sense to him, but it was enough to make Keilin begin to retreat.

The Patrician spoke again. His girlish lisping voice, usually so haughty, actually trembled. "I have ordered treble guardth on the wallth and fourfold on the gateth. Thereth patrolth on the coatht roadth. The caravanth have been thtopped. No thips will thail. You can't put your," he hesitated, "men on the gateth. The people would get to hear of it and . . . they'd revolt. I couldn't thtop them. They fear you more than death itthelf!"

Keilin didn't wait for the reply. With infinite care he began to lower himself back down into the dark. He knew now why the Patrician had offered a reward for his capture. Fifteen years ago Port Tinarana had been flooded with a tide of terrified refugees from across the shallow sea. They were fleeing the Morkth and their zombielike troops. These refugee-settlers still made up the bulk of the Port's underclass. Mothers used tales of these Morkth to frighten their children into good behavior. Yet one of these awful creatures plainly had the city's overlord as its inferior partner. It was plain that the Morkth hunted him too.

Why? Why him? Vague fantasies, fuelled by his favorite books, of him being the lost true heir to some great kingdom flitted briefly through his head as he followed the filth stream into the dark. Regretfully he dismissed them. He knew perfectly well who his mother was, and who his father had been. Yes, they'd both claimed to be of Cru blood, but up north, according to his mother, every man and his damned donkey claimed that. Resolutely he put the thoughts away from him and followed the flow of liquid and semisolid dreck. Eventually it had to come out somewhere.





CHAPTER 2


Shael Cimbelyn Xylla-Marie Ensign, Princess Royal of the Tyn States, and holder of a further sheaf of lesser titles, had absolutely no doubts about her near-pure Cru blood. She was indeed the true heir, through her mother, to a kingdom. She was also an only child. Her father, a man who openly bragged of the title "Tyrant," wielded vast power as the absolute ruler of a string of conquered states and principalities. Her own power, as a result, was near absolute too, but it was untrammeled by even the smallest shred of responsibility. She was blessed with perfect features and a good, if immature, figure. She was a spoilt, poisonous little bitch. It is impossible to say what her friends called her, for she had none.

The reams of golden bracelets on her arms tinkled musically as she moved. Their sweet sound failed to enhance the performance of a royal temper tantrum. It was indeed a magnificent theatrical display, otherwise. From a safe distance, say a hundred miles, it had all the elements of a farce, but to those unfortunate enough to be involved in it, it was undoubtedly a tragedy. Five foot two of concentrated ennui and pique was likely to mean at least pain, or even death, to them.

She stormed and ranted at the unfortunate majordomo, her potentially beautiful little face screwed up into a mask of rage. "How dare you deny us!" A stamp of a small foot, "We want them! You will get us some, now!" she screamed as shrilly as any fishwife. Even in her fury the royal "we" was maintained.