Read Online Armada of Antares by Alan Burt Akers - Free Book Online

it. I had an idea that the box would collapse, for it was of exceedingly thin metal, tinned, as I have said. I grunted and Evold went on, excited by his work.
    “The next time I collected the steam in this amphora, inverted it, and drew off what was there through this pipe. It must, my Prince, be the true cayferm!”
    In that he was wrong, but we were both engrossed now and so I sniffed. There was the scent of ripe squishes. He had been unable to get to me through all the ceremony and knowing the urgency of the work had gone ahead alone. I did not fault him in this. Instead I said, “So it does work!”
    “Aye, my Prince. And yet there is a strange discrepancy in the action. It does not operate as the others do.”
    I heard a shout from the long hall of the images.
    “Dray! The Emperor is waiting.”
    If I did not care for my skin, Seg Segutorio, the Kov of Falinur, most certainly did.
    “Two murs, Seg, and I am with you.” Then, to Evold: “Explain!”
    “I have placed the new boxes in their correct positions in the orbits taken from a flier.” These circles of sturm-wood, their bearings of balass and bronze, revolved intricately and so carried the silver boxes into different aspects with each other. By these movements the upward and forward directions of the flier were controlled, as the backward and downward.
    “Hurry!”
    “Their reactions are different. There is no directional control . . .”
    I kept my face impassive. “You mean these boxes —
our
boxes — will only rise in the air? You cannot make them move forward?”
    He nodded, and his lumpy nose glowed in the samphron-oil lamps’ gleam. “That is so, my Prince.”
    “By the disgusting, worm-eaten kidneys of Makki-Grodno!” I was furious. All the work, all the pain, all the indignity — only to be rewarded with half the answer at the end!
    “Very well. Have supplies made up. I will talk with Erdgar the Shipwright. We must change the plans again.”
    “But, my Prince—”
    “Dray!”
    “Do it, Evold!”
    “Yes, my Prince.”
    I went out, my long white robe swirling, feeling thoroughly annoyed.
    All my pretty schemes were falling in ruins around my head. There were a few farsighted men of Vallia who could see what the future portended, could understand that the insane ambitions of Queen Thyllis of Hamal would not be slaked when all of Pandahem lay under the sway of her iron legions. But for every such one there were a hundred, no, a thousand, who could not see. These proud men of Vallia put store in their great galleons, in the mercenaries their gold could buy. These men would never see — let alone acknowledge — that Vallia might be threatened by any other country or empire.
    Now would not be the time to tell the Emperor the true situation. I would not tell him I could build fliers that would rise in the air but would not fly forward or backward!
    Later, when I had him alone with Delia, then would be the time to broach the subject. Such were the powers of nepotism already swaying me. I have said earlier that nepotism in theory is loathsome, but in practice it often works. Without it and its concurrent corrupt practices of selection and advancement Nelson would never have risen to command at Trafalgar. That it had kept me as a mere lieutenant was the reverse of the coin.
    The drinking and argument were well underway when I returned to the Chavonth Chamber, but my heart was not in them.
    And now I must tell you of an occurrence which at the time struck me as singular, and the answer to which was not vouchsafed me for many a long season. I will keep the account brief. Suffice it to say that it began with Jiktar Exand informing me that he had unearthed a certain man who swore by Diproo the Nimble-Fingered.
    Those of you who remember Nath the Thief from Zenicce, who had assisted my wonderful clansmen in the rain, and ever since swaggered a little as he remembered those golden days, will recall that Diproo the Nimble-Fingered was that saint or