“I don’t really mind what they’re doing, Garion,” he said, idly stroking the head of an orange kitten who lay purring in his lap. “They’re confusing all the insects who scurry around in the dark corners of the palace, and a confused bug can’t consolidate his position. I like to keep all these petty bootlickers frightened and off balance, since it makes it easier to control them. I really must object to poison, however. It’s far too easy for an unskilled poisoner to make mistakes.”
“Sadi could poison one specific person at a banquet with a hundred guests,” Garion assured him.
“I have every confidence in his ability,” Zakath agreed, “but the trouble is that he’s not doing the actual poisoning himself. He’s selling his concoctions to rank amateurs. There are some people here in the palace that I need. Their identities are general knowledge, and that keeps the daggers out of their entrails. A mistake with some poison, however, could wipe out whole branches of my government. Could you ask him not to sell any more of it here in the palace? I’d speak to him personally, but I don’t want it to seem like an official reprimand.”
“I’ll have a talk with him,” Garion promised.
“I’d appreciate it, Garion.” The Emperor’s eyes grew sly. “Just the poisons, though. I find the effects of some of his other compounds rather amusing. Just yesterday, I saw an eighty‑five‑year‑old general in hot pursuit of a young chambermaid. The old fool hasn’t had that kind of thought for a quarter of a century. And the day before that, the Chief of the Bureau of Public Works ‑a pompous ass who makes me sick just to look at him‑ tried for a solid half hour in front of dozens of witnesses to walk up the side of a building. I haven’t laughed so hard in years.”
“Nyissan elixirs do strange things to people.” Garion smiled. “I’ll ask Sadi to confine his dealings to recreational drugs.”
“Recreational drugs,” Zakath laughed. “I like that description.”
“I’ve always had a way with words,” Garion replied modestly.
The orange kitten rose, yawned, and jumped down from the Emperor’s lap. The mackerel‑tabby mother cat caught a black and white kitten by the scruff of the neck and deposited it exactly where the orange one had been lying. Then she looked at Zakath’s face and meowed questioningly.
“Thank you,” Zakath murmured to her.
Satisfied, the cat jumped down, caught the orange kitten, and began to bathe it, holding it down with one paw.
“Does she do that all the time?” Garion asked.
Zakath nodded. “She’s busy being a mother, but she doesn’t want me to get lonely.”
“That’s considerate of her.”
Zakath looked at the black and white kitten in his lap, who had all four paws wrapped around his hand and was gnawing on one of his knuckles in mock ferocity. “I think I could learn to survive without it,” he said, wincing.
CHAPTER NINE
The simplest way to avoid the omnipresent spies infesting the imperial palace was to conduct any significant conversations out in the open, and so Garion frequently found himself strolling around the palace grounds with one or more of his companions. On a beautiful spring morning a few days later he walked with Belgarath and Polgara through the dappled shade of a cherry orchard, listening to Velvet’s latest report on the political intrigues which seethed through the corridors of Zakath’s palace.
“The surprising thing is that Brador is probably aware of most of what’s going on,” the blond girl told them. “He doesn’t look all that efficient, but his secret police are everywhere.” Velvet was holding a spray of cherry blossoms in front of her face, rather ostentatiously inhaling their fragrance.
“At least they can’t hear us out here,” Garion said.
“No, but they can see us. If I were you, Belgarion, I still wouldn’t talk too openly ‑even out of doors. I happened to come across one industrious fellow yesterday who was busily writing down every word of a conversation being conducted in whispers some fifty yards away.”
“That’s a neat trick,” Belgarath said. “How did he manage it?”
“He’s stone‑deaf,” she replied. “Over the years, he’s learned to understand what people are saying by reading the shape of the words from their lips.”
“Clever,” the old man murmured. “Is that why you’re so busily sniffing cherry blossoms?”
She nodded with a dimpled smile. “That and the fact that they have such a lovely fragrance.”
He scratched at his beard, his hand covering his mouth. “All right,” he said. “What I need is some sort of disruption -to draw Brador’s police off so that we can slip out of Mal Zeth without being followed. Zakath is rock hard on the point of not doing anything until his army gets back from Cthol Murgos, so it’s obvious that we’re going to have to move without him. Is there anything afoot that might distract all the spies around here?”
“Not really, Ancient One. The petty kinglet of Pallia and the Prince Regent of Delchin are scheming against each other, but that’s been going on for years. The old King of Voresebo is trying to get imperial aid in wresting his throne back from his son, who deposed him a year or so ago. Baron Vasca, the Chief of the Bureau of Commerce, is trying to assimilate the Bureau of Military Procurement, but the generals have him stalemated. Those are the major things in the air right now. There are a number of minor plots going on as well, but nothing earthshaking enough to divert the spies who are watching us.”
“Can you stir anything up?” Polgara asked, her lips scarcely moving.
“I can try, Lady Polgara,” Velvet replied, “but Brador is right on top of everything that’s happening here in the palace. I’ll talk with Kheldar and Sadi. It’s remotely possible that the three of us can engineer something unexpected enough to give us a chance to slip out of the city.”
“It’s getting fairly urgent, Liselle,” Polgara said. “If Zandramas finds what she’s looking for at Ashaba, she’ll be off again, and we’ll wind up trailing along behind her in the same way that we were back in Cthol Murgos.”
“I’ll see what we can come up with, my lady,” Velvet promised.
“Are you going back inside?” Belgarath asked her.
She nodded.
“I’ll go with you.” He looked around distastefully, “All this fresh air and exercise is a little too wholesome for my taste.
“Walk a bit farther with me, Garion,” Polgara said.
“All right.”
As Velvet and Belgarath turned back toward the east wing of the palace, Garion and his aunt strolled on along the neatly trimmed green lawn lying beneath the blossom-covered trees. A wren, standing on the topmost twig of a gnarled, ancient tree, sang as if his heart would burst,
“What’s he singing about?” Garion asked, suddenly remembering his aunt’s unusual affinity for birds.
“He’s trying to attract the attention of a female,” she replied, smiling gently. “It’s that time of year again. He’s being very eloquent and making all sorts of promises -most of which he’ll break before the summer’s over.”
He smiled and affectionately put his arm about her shoulders.
She sighed happily. “This is pleasant,” she said. “For some reason when we’re apart, I still think of you as a little boy. It always sort of surprises me to find that you’ve grown so tall.”
There wasn’t too much that he could say to that.
“How’s Durnik?” he asked. “I almost never see him these days.”
“He and Toth and Eriond managed to find a well-stocked trout pond on the southern end of the imperial grounds,” she replied with a slightly comical upward roll of her eyes. “They’re catching large numbers of fish, but the kitchen staff is beginning to get a bit surly about the whole thing.”
“Trust Durnik to find water.” Garion laughed. “Is Eriond actually fishing too? That seems a little out of character for him.”
“I don’t think he’s very serious about it. He goes along mostly for Durnik’s company, I think ‑and because he likes to be outside.” She paused and then looked directly at him. As so many times in the past, he was suddenly struck to the heart by her luminous beauty. “How has Ce’Nedra been lately?” she asked him.
“ She’s managed to locate a number of young ladies to keep her company,” he replied. “No matter where we go, she’s always able to surround herself with companions.”
“Ladies like to have other ladies about them, dear,” she said. “Men are nice enough, I suppose, but a woman needs other women to talk to. There are so many important things that men just don’t understand.” Her face grew serious. “There hasn’t been any recurrence of what happened in Cthol Murgos, then?” she asked.
“Not so far as I can tell. She seems fairly normal to me. About the only unusual thing I’ve noticed is that she never talks about Geran anymore.”