Emban’s eyes were bulging, and he had half fallen from his chair. Ambassador Norkan tried to maintain his urbane expression, but it was slipping badly, and his hands were shaking.
Talen grinned and began to applaud. The others laughed, and they all joined in.
‘Oh, thank you, my dear ones,’ Flute said sweetly, curtsying again.
‘For God’s sake, Sparhawk!’ Emban choked. ‘Make her come down from there! She’s destroying my sanity!’
Flute laughed and quite literally hurled herself into the fat little churchman’s arms, smothering his pale, cringing face with kisses. ‘I love to do that to people!’ she giggled delightedly.
Emban shrank back even further.
‘Oh, don’t be silly, Emban,’ she chided. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I sort of love you, actually.’ A look of sly mischief came into her eyes. ‘How would you like to come to work for me, your Grace?’ she suggested. ‘I’m not nearly as stuffy as your Elene God, and we could have a lot of fun together.’
‘Aphrael!’ Sephrenia said sharply. ‘Stop that! You know you’re not supposed to do that!’
‘I was only teasing him, Sephrenia. I wouldn’t really steal Emban. The Elene God needs him too much.’
‘Has your theology been sufficiently shaken, your Grace?’ Vanion asked the Patriarch of Ucera. ‘The little girl in your lap who’s blithely trying to lead you off down the flowery path to heresy is the Child Goddess Aphrael, one of the thousand Younger Gods of Styricum.’
‘How do I greet her?’ Emban asked in a squeaky, frightened kind of voice.
‘A few kisses might be nice,’ Flute suggested.
‘Stop that,’ Sephrenia chided her again.
‘And what are your feelings, your Excellency?’ the little girl asked Norkan.
‘Dubious, your – uh …’
‘Just Aphrael, Norkan,’ she told him.
‘That’s really not suitable,’ he replied. ‘I’m a diplomat, and the very soul of diplomatic speech is formal modes of address. I haven’t called anyone but colleagues by their first names since I was about ten years old.’
‘Her first name is a formal mode of address, your Excellency,’ Sephrenia said gently.
‘All right, then,’ Aphrael said, slipping down from Emban’s lap. ‘Tynian and Emban are going to Chyrellos to fetch the Church Knights. Norkan’s going to the Isle of Tega to help Sparhawk lie to my – uh – his wife, that is. The rest of us are going to go get the Bhelliom again. Sparhawk seems to think he might need it. I think he’s underestimating his own abilities, but I’ll go along with him on the issue – if only to keep him from nagging and complaining.’
‘I’ve really missed her,’ Kalten laughed. ‘What are you going to do, Flute? Saddle up a herd of whales for us to ride to that coastline where we threw Bhelliom into the sea?’
Her eyes brightened.
‘Never mind,’ Sparhawk told her quite firmly.
‘Spoilsport.’
‘I’m really disappointed in you, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said. ‘I’ve never ridden a whale before.’
‘Will you shut up about whales?’ Sparhawk snapped at him.
‘You don’t have to get so touchy about it. What have you got against whales?’
‘It’s a personal thing between Aphrael and me,’ Sparhawk replied in a grating tone. ‘I won’t win many arguments with her, but I am going to win the one about whales.’
The layover of their ship at Tega was necessarily brief. The tide had already turned, and the captain was quite concerned about the inexorably lowering water-level in the harbor.
Sparhawk and his friends conferred briefly in the ship’s main salon while Khalad directed the sailors in the unloading of their horses and supplies. ‘Do your very best to make Sarathi understand just how serious the situation here really is, Emban,’ Vanion said. ‘Sometimes he gets a little pig-headed.’
‘I’m sure he’ll enjoy knowing how you really feel about him, Vanion,’ the fat churchman grinned.
‘Say anything you want, your Grace. I’ll never be going back to Chyrellos anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. Make a special point of letting him know that the name of Cyrgon’s been popping up. You might want to gloss over the fact that we’ve only got Krager’s word for Cyrgon’s involvement, though. We are sure about the Troll-Gods, however, and the notion that we’re facing heathen Gods again might help Sarathi tear his attention away from Rendor.’
‘Was there anything else I already know that you’d like to tell me, Vanion?’
Vanion laughed. ‘Nicely put. I was being a bit of a meddler, wasn’t I?’
‘The term is “busy-body”, Vanion. I’ll do everything I can, but you know Dolmant. He’ll make his own assessment and his own decision. He’ll weigh Daresia against Rendor and decide which of them he wants to save.’
Tell him that I’m here with Sparhawk, Emban,’ Flute instructed. ‘He knows who I am.’
‘He does?’
‘You don’t really have to step around Dolmant so carefully. He’s not the fanatic Ortzel is, so he can accept the fact that his theology doesn’t answer all the questions in the universe. The fact that I’m involved might help him to make the right decision. Give him my love. He’s an old stick sometimes, but I’m really fond of him.’
Emban’s eyes were a little wild. ‘I think I’ll retire when this is all over,’ he said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she smiled. ‘You could no more retire than I could. You’re having too much fun. Besides, we need you.’ She turned to Tynian. ‘Don’t overwork that shoulder,’ she instructed. ‘Give it time to completely heal before you start exercising it.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied, grinning at her authoritarian manner.
‘Don’t make fun of me, Tynian,’ she threatened. ‘If you do that, you might just wake up some morning with your feet on backward. Now give me a kiss.’
‘Yes, Aphrael.’
She laughed and swarmed into his arms to collect her kisses.
They disembarked and stood on the pier as the Tamul vessel made her way slowly out of the harbor.
‘They’re sailing at the right time of year anyway,’ Ulath said. ‘It’s a little early for the hurricanes.’
‘That’s encouraging,’ Kalten said. ‘Where to now, Flute?’
‘There’s a ship waiting for us on the far side of the island,’ she replied. ‘I’ll tell you about it after we get out of town.’
Vanion handed Norkan the packet of letters Sparhawk had so laboriously written. ‘We can’t be sure how long we’ll be gone, your Excellency,’ he said, ‘so you might want to space these out.’
Norkan nodded. ‘I can supplement them with reports of my own,’ he said, ‘and if the worst comes to the worst, I can always use the talents of the professional forger at the embassy here. He should be able to duplicate Prince Sparhawk’s handwriting after a day or so of practise – well enough to add personal postscripts to my reports, anyway.’
For some reason Sparhawk found that very shocking.
