I flapped my way up into the air, passed over the nauseatingly colored wall of the city, and then zigzagged my way through the stinking alleys toward the grotesque palace that was the center of Sthiss Tor. Then I flew over the wall of the compound and perched – upside down – under a hideous statue of something that’d obviously grown out of the imagination of some drug-crazed sculptor. I watched as assorted functionaries passed in and out through a very large doorway. They were almost all a bit plump, and there wasn’t so much as a single whisker among them. I’d never fully understood the reasoning behind the Nyissan custom of obliging all of the Serpent Queen’s servants to be eunuchs. Given the appetites of that long line of Salmissras, the idea seems uneconomical, to say the very least. It was at that point that I began to reconsider my previous aversion to bats. The bat’s face may be ugly and his jointed wings ungainly, but his ears more than make up for those drawbacks. I could hear every word the palace eunuchs were saying. I could even hear the dry slither of all the snakes creeping around in dark corners. That made me a bit uncomfortable. The bat is a rodent, after all, and rodents are a staple in the diet of most reptiles.
‘It’s absolutely ridiculous, Rissus,’ one shaved-headed eunuch was saying to his companion. ‘Can’t she even read?’ He spoke in a rich contralto voice.
‘I’m sure she can, Salas,’ Rissus replied, ‘but she’s got her mind – or what’s left of it – on other things.’
‘You’d think her teachers would have warned her that the Angaraks have tried this before. How can she possibly be so gullible as to believe that a God would want to marry her?’
‘She’s been brought up to believe that Issa wants to marry her, Salas. If one God yearns for her company, why not another?’
‘Everybody knows what happened the last time one of our queens fell into that Angarak trap,’ Salas fretted. ‘This Asharak fellow’s leading her down that very same path, and the very same thing will happen. We’ll have Alorns swinging through the rafters like apes if this goes any further.’
‘Did you want to volunteer to tell her that?’
‘Not me, Rissus. Her pet snake’s molting right now, and he’s very short tempered. That’s not the way I want to die.’
Rissus shrugged. ‘The answer’s all around us, Salas. Asharak’s going to have to eat or drink sometime – eventually.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s what’s got me so baffled. I’ve laced every meal and every flagon of wine that’s presented to him with enough sarka to kill a legion, but he absolutely refuses to eat or drink.’
‘What about odek?’ Salas suggested. ‘He’d absorb that right through his skin.’
‘He never takes his gloves off! How can I kill somebody if he won’t cooperate?’
‘Why not just run a knife into him?’
‘He’s a Murgo, Salas. I’m not going to get into a knife-fight with a Murgo. I think we’re going to have to hire a professional assassin.’
‘They’re awfully expensive, Rissus.’
‘Look upon it as a patriotic duty, old boy. I can juggle the numbers in my account books enough so that we can get our money back. Let’s go to the throne-room. Asharak usually visits the queen at midnight – between her other social engagements.’
Then the two of them went on inside the palace.
Even though I’d been hanging upside down, I’d found the conversation to be absolutely fascinating. I gathered that the current Salmissra wasn’t held in very high regard by her servants. She evidently had very limited intellectual gifts, and even those had been clouded by whichever of the dozens of narcotics available to her was her favorite. I was really disappointed in Chamdar, though. Couldn’t the Angaraks come up with something a bit more original than Zedar’s tired old ploy? The remark Rissus had made as the two of them were entering the palace seemed to present an opportunity just too good to pass up, though. If Chamdar was still posing as Asharak the Murgo, and if he had a more or less standing appointment with Salmissra at midnight, I could confront the both of them at the same time and take care of everything all at once. Thrift is another virtue like neatness. It does count, but not for very much.
I remembered that when father and I’d visited Sthiss Tor before the Battle of Vo Mimbre, Salmissra’s palace wasn’t very well lighted, and so I kept my disguise and flew in through that wide doorway. The ceilings were high and buried in deep shadows, and I wasn’t the only bat up there among the rafters. I flitted along the vaulted corridor leading to the throne-room, and when Salas and his friend entered, I was able to dart through high above them before they closed the door. Then I circled upward and came to roost – which is awkward for a bat – on the shoulder of the gigantic statue of the Serpent-God, Issa, which rose behind the dais upon which Salmissra’s throne stood.
The Serpent Queen wasn’t there, and the eunuchs lounged around on the polished floor talking idly. Several of them, I noticed, were semi-comatose, and I wondered which was really worse, beer or the assorted narcotics the Nyissans found so entertaining. I suspect that my major objection to beer, wine, and more potent beverages springs from the noise – and the smell. A drunken man tends to bellow like a bull, and he smells terrible. A drugged man just goes to sleep, and he doesn’t usually stink. I think it may be a question of aesthetics more than anything else. I pondered the question of exactly how I was going to approach Chamdar. The notion of assuming the form of an eagle the size of a barn briefly crossed my mind. I could seize him in my talons and soar up with him to a height of four or five miles and drop him.
‘No, Pol,’ mother’s voice said quite firmly. ‘We’re going to need him later.’
‘Spoilsport!’ I accused in my high-pitched bat-voice. ‘Can’t you knock or something, mother? I never know for sure whether you’re there or not.’
‘Just assume that I’m always here, Pol. You’ll be fairly close. Do you remember Countess Asrana?’
‘How could I ever forget her?’
‘You might want to think over just how she might deal with Chamdar.’
I did that for a moment, and then I quite nearly burst out laughing. ‘Oh, mother!’ I said gaily. “That’s a terrible thing to suggest.’
‘Good, though,’ she added.