BroadWing EvenBeat. “Remembering your manners is surely a low priority right now.” He
looked at Egalion. “This is a mess.”
“Aye,” said Egalion. “Please, if you can aid us—”
“We will do what we can,” said BroadWing, “and be glad of it. You have made a ground
search of the area about Kyros, yes?”
“Yes,” said Maximilian. “I do not think her anywhere near Kyros.”
“Then where?”
“Either north or south,” Maximilian said. “They would not take her toward Escator, and I
think it unlikely they would take her back toward the troubles in the Central Kingdoms. But
which? I can”t decide which way to—”
“We will divide up,” said BroadWing. “I will lead four of my fellows south, and
EverNest can take two north. Maximilian, try not to worry. One of us shall find her.”
“Ishbel is trouble,” said StarWeb. “Too much trouble.”
“For gods” sakes, StarWeb,” Maximilian said. “She is pregnant. Does that mean nothing
to you?”
Garth thought Maximilian”s judgment of character had been severely clouded by his
anxiety if he thought he could speak such words to his only-barely former lover. StarWeb didn”t
like Ishbel, was jealous of her, and would resent the fact she was pregnant. Icarii found it
difficult to achieve a pregnancy, and that Ishbel had managed it so quickly would not endear her
to StarWeb at all.
Suddenly Garth wondered if it was a good idea sending StarWeb to find Ishbel, after all.
“Maxel—” he began.
“We”ll leave immediately,” said BroadWing. “Maximilian, we will do all we can, I
promise.”
Maximilian nodded, but there was no hope in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said.
[ Part Five ]
CHAPTER ONE
Palace of the First, Yoyette, Coroleas
Leave now,” the Duchess of Sidon told the man sitting naked on the edge of her bed,
and he rose silently, dressed, and did as ordered.
Salome lounged back on her pillow, sated with sex, glad the man had left without
wanting to, of all things, talk.
She hated talkers. They invariably wanted something, or, even worse, thought they could
mean something to her life.
Salome much preferred not having a man as a permanent fixture in her life. She loved sex
and took lovers as she wanted them, or used some of the more attractive servants in her palace as
she needed, but had no other need for men. Her husband, the late and never-to-be-regretted duke,
had died within two years of their marriage, leaving her, a sixteen-year-old widow, to nurture an
infant son, and to wield the political power that an enormous fortune and possession of the most
powerful deity in Coroleas gave her.
His death had been a remarkable relief. Now Salome allowed no man to get near her
emotionally, nor, apart from sex, physically.
Her son, Ezra, now Duke of Sidon (although held under the regency of his mother until
his nineteenth birthday), was Salome”s pride and joy. She meant him to be emperor one day, had
schooled him in the alphabet and in intrigue, had loved and coddled him, prodded and
encouraged him, bribed anyone who could aid her ambition, and smoothed the path forward to
the emperor”s throne with a few judicial murders along the way.
He would be emperor by the time he was twenty. Salome would let nothing stand in his
(her) way.
It was close to dawn now, and Salome rose from the bed, the marks of her lover still on
her, and went to stand naked by the open full-length window.
She was a striking woman. She had enormous strength to her face, an exotic lift to her
cheekbones and eyes, and such long and glamorous (and, for Coroleas, unusual) white blond hair
that men invariably found her irresistible. Naturally Salome was aware that her position as the
most powerful woman in the empire (no one but a fool ever considered the current empress more
powerful) also had its attractions, but men found it no hardship to be invited (or commanded) to
her bed. Neither the marks of time nor childbearing had left their scars on her body, and it was
still as straight and slim at thirty as it had been when the duke had first lusted for her as a
fourteen-year-old girl.
Content with her world and her lot, Salome lounged against the window frame, as
uncaring of any who might look up and see her as she was at the twenty-pace drop immediately
below her feet.
The Palace of the First spread out below her: naturally Salome had one of the best
apartments in the palace, high in the Tower of the Beloved, beneath only the emperor”s
apartment. Corolean society was divided into three castes: the Forty-four Hundred Families, also
known as the First, who commanded the majority of the wealth and power in the empire—the
emperor and nobles could only come from this caste; the Thirty-eight Thousand Second
Families, or the Second, who made up the educated intelligentsia and traders and minor
landowners of the empire; and the Third, the name given to the mass of men, women, and
children who worked to serve the First and the Second.
Beneath the Third, living a life so wretched they did not even have a caste, were the
slaves, who lived and died at the discretion of any who owned them.
Salome loved to stand at this window in the early morning, looking down over the Palace
of the First (a sprawling complex of palaces and apartments that housed the members of the First
when they were in Yoyette to attend the emperor”s court), and reminding herself of her authority.
“Most powerful of all in this empire,” she murmured, “save for the emperor himself, and
then, within a few short years, not even he.” Salome might love Ezra, but she wouldn”t allow
him to stand in her way. When Ezra commanded the vast Corolean Empire as its emperor, then
she would command him. After all, the boy would have a vast debt to repay his mother.
The sun was well above the horizon now, and Salome stretched, catlike, in the window,
before turning back into the room to prepare for her day.
As she did so, the sun caught her back and for an instant illuminated the faintest of scars
that ran down her spine from the center of her shoulder blades to the crease of her buttocks.
The court of Coroleas at the Palace of the First in Yoyette was known over the entire
civilized world for its elegance, its richness, its entertainments, its murderous intrigue, and its
breathtaking, uninhibited immorality. That immorality did not merely encompass sexual conduct,
but the way in which members of the First valued human life overall—generally with the utmost
contempt. The court was a frightening, powerful, exhilarating, alive place in which to hunt or to
enjoy oneself, and it drew to itself not only the members of the First (who could hardly imagine
life without it), but also adventurers and fortune-hunters from countries across the Treachery
Straits. The First tolerated them, allowing them generous access to the court, and accommodation
within the palace. After all, it was the adventurers and fortune-hunters who provided the First
with much of their amusement.
StarDrifter SunSoar had lived here, off and on, since the fall of Tencendor five years
earlier. He loathed Corolean society, and was repelled by the manner in which the First
mistreated everyone below them, but he had nowhere else to go. Somehow, during those
cataclysmic events that had culminated in the loss of Tencendor beneath the waves of the
Widowmaker Sea, StarDrifter had found himself still alive, and inexplicably at the Corolean
court.
To be completely factual, he”d found himself sprawled on the floor of a corridor just
beyond the kitchens, bleeding to death from the terrible wounds in his back where the demonic
Hawk Childs had torn out his wings.
He would have bled to death save that two male slaves had wandered by, discovered his
barely conscious body, and had, without comment (finding the half murdered lying unattended in
the corridors of the Palace of the First was hardly a remarkable event), dragged StarDrifter to a
physician, who had managed to close his wounds and usher in their healing.
StarDrifter had not been grateful. He wished he had died. In the frenzy that had mutilated
StarDrifter, the Hawk Childs had also murdered his granddaughter, Zenith, who StarDrifter had
loved. Loved, that is, as a man loves a woman, for it was no sin in Icarii society for a grandfather
to bed a granddaughter. They only balked at first blood: children or siblings. StarDrifter had
lusted for Zenith for years, but she had continually rejected him, to his enormous frustration. It
was that frustration, in the end, that had caused Zenith”s death, for he had inadvertently set the Hawk Childs loose on her by his thoughtless words.
It was not just Zenith whom StarDrifter had lost. It was everyone and everything. Once a
proud prince and Enchanter of Tencendor, and father of Axis, StarMan and Star God, StarDrifter