Armada of Antares by Alan Burt Akers

Lykon.
    Now Gremivoh is a wine of Vallia much favored in the Vallian Air Service.
    This Lykon, despite my manner, took the point.
    “I would prefer a more subtle Pastale,” he said, very — smooth.
    I took that point, also. For Pastale — and I admit it is a reasonable vintage — is the export monopoly of the House of Operhalen, whose colors are blue, green, and ivory. And the Operhalens, a noble house of the enclave city of Zenicce, were at that time allied with the Ponthieu and against my own noble house of Strombor. The ruler of Operhalen was a little frog-like man with a stoop and a leer, and a reputation for inspecting his own consignments of Pastale too lovingly and too frequently.
    This damned Lykon Crimahan would know I was Lord of Strombor and that the Operhalens would like to see me dead, so he asked for a glass of their Opaz-forsaken wine.
    I smiled.
    “Certainly, Kov. As it happens, I was able to board and take a ship of the Operhalens. Their wine is yours, freely given as it came to me, free.”
    Seg laughed and then turned away, drinking.
    Tharu did not laugh, but his fierce old whiskers bristled up a little more.
    The Emperor spoke and everyone stopped talking.
    “We are here to discuss serious matters,” he began. “I have said I am not happy with you, Dray Prescot, you whom I made Prince Majister. I would like an accounting of what you have done with the treasures we have poured out for you.”
    The damned old scoundrel! He’d lent me a parcel of fliers, which he had got back, and some of his Crimson Bowmen of Loh, almost all of whom he had got back. As for hard cash, that had been conspicuous by its absence.
    I said, “You found your journey here pleasant, Emperor?”
    He didn’t like me calling him by title, and he knew I knew it.
    “Yes, it was comfortable. The voller you presented me is a fine craft.”
    “It should be. It was taken by the Kov of Falinur and his friends from Hyrklana, and is a first-class voller.”
    “That is as may be. Where are the fliers you promised me? There was much fine talk, I remember,” and here he waxed most sarcastic, “of bringing to us the secrets and the methods of the contraptions inside fliers. We should build our own, you promised me. Well, Dray Prescot? Where are these secrets?”
    Mind you, the old devil had the right of it, for all that he over dramatized his part. I had signally failed to gain all I had dreamed of. But I did know a very great deal now.
    “The wise men are still laboring to reproduce the silver boxes. For reasons I will not go into now, the full secrets did not come my way.”
    That was the signal for the dowager Kovneva Natyzha to thrust up her lower lip and let go one of her famous barking laughs, like the blow of an ax striking a tree.
    “I warrant you do not wish to go into the reasons, Prince! I warrant you enjoyed yourself in Hamal.”
    I stared at her with a cool expression on my face, I hope, my eyebrows raised. This old biddy, this Vallia-renowned Natyzha Famphreon, the dowager Kovneva of Falkerdrin, was a noble woman with whom I had always tried not to cross swords. Her face held that nut-brown, cracker-barrel, experienced look of iron authority exercised over many seasons. Her mouth curved down at the corners, and grooves alongside her chin extended the arc. Her chin thrust forward so that her lower lip was habitually upthrust, giving her a scornful, arrogant look of power. She was well past her one hundred and fortieth year, I knew, and her face showed something of that, although on Kregen people change little from their coming of age to the time when they are battened down for the last journey to the Ice Floes of Sicce. But her body! She had pampered that body of hers, so that it remained firm and pliant, soft and supple. She was known to say that a man couldn’t care less about a pretty face, but no man could stomach an ugly body. She was generally right about it, too, if many of the men surrounding the Emperor at