A Life for Kregen by Alan Burt Akers Page B

promising Wizard of Loh, Khe-Hi-Bjanching, going by a few splutters and sneezes and a whisk of bright cloth.
    “I hear your words, Pallan Archolax, and they are indeed worthy of note. The embassy from Jhansi revealed their true purpose, and have left, with a zorca hoof up their rump.” One of the Kregish ways of saying with a flea in their ear, that charming expression, and the others smiled. “But that does not tilt the balance down in favor of the Racters.”
    “Their gold tilts the balances.”
    About to give what I considered a stiff reply, Barty saved me the trouble, saying what was in my mind.
    “But honor will tilt the balance back!”
    So we wrangled for a space, and I think they could all see already the way my mind tended. Finally, I said, “We have the resources if we plan carefully. Gold to buy mercenaries will not set Vallia free. Our country must be set free by her own efforts. This is a cardinal principle.”
    Archolax opened his mouth ready to sneeze, saw me watching him, and merely swiped the yellow silk over his nose.
    “Your commands, majister,” he said. And then he added: “My fingers itch to feel Racter gold. But my heart would not be in it.”
    “Of course,” put in Nath Nazabhan. “We could take the Racter gold, anyway.”
    “What, Nath!” exclaimed Barty. “Double deal ’em?” He screwed up that incredibly naive face, and one could almost see the wheels whizzing around in his head as he once more confronted the thrill of skullduggery in action.
    The idea was intriguing; but it would not do, and we all saw that. Nath’s flyer remained unsaddled.
    Pallan Myer walked over from the door, and coughed, and stood waiting. He was youngish, stooped over from long hours of reading, with always a book or a scroll tucked under his arm or, to be honest, more often opened as he walked along reading, a constant terror to anyone else who did not look where they were going. I had put him in charge of education, the Pallan of Learning, and I was due to go with him to see about a group of new school buildings being fashioned quickly from materials left over from a slave bagnio, after it had burned, and many of the poor devils inside it, too.
    Acknowledging Pallan Myer, I said: “Educating the children of Vallia is more important than wrangling. Nath. Do you go and see Strom Luthien and give him our word. And, Nath. Try to be gentle with the rast.”
    “Aye, majister. I will try.”
    Barty chuckled. “That’ll be a pleasant surprise for him.”
    Myer started in eagerly talking away about the plan to give each child in the new building his or her very own desk. That way, he said, they’d do a lot more work without the jostling and larking you always found when the children sat on long benches, all scrunched up. I nodded, agreeing, and figuring out where we could find the artisans and the wood. Barty fell in with us as we went. Delia called across, saying she had work to do, and I smiled at her as we went out.
    His face shining like one of those fabulous polished apples of Delphond, Barty Vessler strode along with us out into the suns shine. I saw Delia looking after him as I turned to give her a parting smile. Barty was deeply in love with Dayra and she was off somewhere adventuring on her own account and had been numbered in the ranks of those who opposed us. She had been or was still, for I did not know, a boon companion to Zankov and that crowd of cutthroats. Now that the Hawkwa country had declared for Jak the Drang and I was emperor in Vondium, now that Phu-Si-Yantong had withdrawn from this area, what in a Herrelldrin Hell Zankov was about posed a prickly problem.
    Zankov had slain the old emperor. That emperor was Dayra’s grandfather. I wondered if she knew that her comrade Zankov had murdered her grandfather.
    Attitudes are easy to strike and damned difficult to un-strike.
    Barty burbled on about the coming campaign as we mounted our zorcas to ride out to the new schools. We had already