Turmoil on Kregen by Alan Burt Akers

Author:Alan Burt Akers [Akers, Alan Burt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781843197812
Publisher: Mushroom eBooks
Published: 1997-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter fourteen

Ulana Farlan decided she really did not feel well enough to go to the party. She expressed her regrets and asked me to apologize to my friends and to thank them for their kind invitation. She sat up in my bed with a violet shawl draped about her shoulders. Her hair fell freely about her head and, again, I wondered if Yavnin might not reconsider his affection for Ahilya.

Telling her that I understood and that she should stay in my quarters for as long as she wished, I started to take my leave. She held out a hand. “Majister. I must ask you — my Chuliks?”

I shook my head. She put a lace handkerchief to her mouth. Her lips, newly to me, were full and red. “I am so sorry.”

She went on to say that Princess Velia had, on the request of Princess Didi, instructed her bankers to provide funds for Ulana’s upkeep. So Didi had paid for The Chemzite Room in The Zorca’s Horn on Velia Avenue. Well, that was like my girls. I just hoped Didi felt no guilt that Ulana had been removed from her post as nazabni.

Then, in an entirely different tone of voice, all spikes and spitting hatred, Ulana said: “I have never felt so much hatred for anyone as I do for that rast Nath Swantram. I could throttle him!”

“Ah, yes,” I said, warily.

“He’s still after me, you know. Those awful Mothers of Carnage — I’ve told you the truth, majister. You will protect me?”

There was no hesitation as I assured her I would. Whatever happened to Ulana, I knew that I could never allow her to become the victim of those harpies. Anyway, Swantram was due for the chop.

She lay back and closed her eyes. She looked a totally different person from the prim little mouse I’d seen before — who Yavnin had seen before.

“When I see Nath Swantram,” her voice held all the chilling menace of the Ice Floes of Sicce. “Oh, yes, when I get him — when I get him — oh, yes, that heap of manure will rue the day he was born! By Vox! I mean it!”

I believed her.

Taking my leave of this mousey little lady who had been transformed by horrific experience into a spitfire, I went along the busy corridors of the palace. Deldar Nath the Rumphious, on duty, looked remarkably pleased with himself. “Hai, Nath,” I said, cordially. “Have you won a fortune at Jikaida?”

“Ah, majister! Would it be, would it be to the praise of Opaz. No, no. I’ve just signed up four Chuliks, hefty lads, for the guard.”

After the expected Shank invasion of the Chulik Islands had not transpired, the Chulik mercenaries were returning to take up their various positions. I congratulated the Rumphious. Being new, the four Chuliks should be untainted by Swantram’s corruption. They’d come in mighty useful in our arrest of the chief pallan.

Mind you, Nath the Clis, the unhanged scoundrel, must be wondering what had happened to his agent, the polsim Ornol the Slim.

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