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dram his boots.
Chaz settled down beside him, Caracene held almost negligently in one arm.
"Who wasthat guy?"
"Shai Khe," Rider replied. "I should have thought of him when Vlazos tried to
tell me. He said Shai Khe and I heard shy key."
"That's his name," Chaz said. "But it don't tell me nothing about him." They
watched Su-Cha drag Odehnal their way. The dwarf remained imprisoned in his
opium dream.
"I know only one thing more," Rider said.
"Uhm?"
"My father was afraid of him."
Chaz looked startled.
"Yes. He wouldn't talk about it. Shai Khe is some great terror in the east. He
commands an empire more vast than Shasesserre's. But that does not satisfy
him. He wants it all."
Wreckage from the collapsed building drifted away. Rider's men assembled.
Neighbors came to watch from a distance safe from shantors.
"More prisoners," Greystone said. The man who had jumped into the river was
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trying to talk Soup and Spud into turning him loose.
Rider caught his eye. "You're luckier than your friends." He indicated the
wreckage. Two men were in it somewhere. To his own men, he said, "We've done
what we can do here. Take these people to the Citadel. We'll question them
later. Spud, Su-Cha, Preacher, come with me."
"Where we headed?" Su-Cha asked.
"Airship yards. Before we left the Citadel I sent word for a ship to be
readied. We'll use it to hunt Shai Khe. Particularly if he runs to his own
ship."
Shai Khe, not Kralj Odehnal, had killed Vlazos and escaped in an unlicensed
airship.
Chaz stepped close as Rider was about to leave. He whispered, "What about the
girl?"
"Treat her the way she wants you to treat her. If she doesn't suspect she's
marked for the web, arrange it so she can escape again. She could lead us
again."
"Right. Will do."
Rider and those he had chosen hurried a quarter mile, to where a pair of
chariots waited. They shed their shantor's robes as they went.
XIII
Rider's ship was ready. It was a light vessel, capable of carrying just a ton
of crew and freight, designed for speed. Rider and Spud went to the control
array. There were great magicks involved in the airship's propulsion, but much
of its control was mechanical. Spud had helped refine the system.
"Ready to cast off," Rider called to the ground. "Dump ballast, Omar." Rider
was the only one of the group to use Spud's proper name. And he forgot much of
the time.
Spud tripped levers. The ship began tugging at its restraining lines. "Cast
off!" Rider shouted.
The ship lurched upward. Rider murmured to the demonic body, spellbound and
beguiled, which constituted its motive force. The airship turned toward the
river, began to slide forward like a fish through water.
Aft, Su-Cha and Preacher hastened to take in the mooring lines.
"He was headed Henchelside when last I saw him," Rider said. "And downriver.
We'll start looking where Deer Creek Drain runs into the river."
"Keep an eye out for his airship, too," Spud said, making an adjustment to
levers which controlled flaps on the ship's sharklike fins. "Be hard to hide
something that big."
Rider nodded.
The airship's balance shifted as Preacher and Su-Cha came forward. Spud
adjusted with the fins. "Any sign of him?" Su-Cha asked.
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"Too soon to tell," Rider replied. The river along Henchelside was crowded
with the boats of fisherfolk. Rider directed the demon to follow the shoreline
south toward the Golden Crescent. "Take us lower, Omar. I want to see their
faces."
There was no tension in the web. Shai Khe was not using his power.
The fisherfolk all looked up as the airship passed over. Rarely did one drop
so low.
In time the riverbank curved away westward. The land grew marshy and wild.
"Not going to find him this way," Spud said.
"We'll return a ways inland, looking for somewhere where he might have put his
ship down," Rider said. So they ran inland again, as far as that part of the
city on Henchelside opposite the Protte rookery. Still they found nothing.
Rider persisted till nightfall made continued search pointless.
"You could turn a hand with this one," Soup complained to Chaz, as they faced
the stair to the laboratory. Soup was carrying Odehnal.
"I could. But I like the one I've got just fine." He had Caracene over one
shoulder. She was thoroughly bound despite Rider's admonition to treat her
well. She wriggled, and squeaked behind her gag. Chaz just grinned at his
companions.
Greystone prodded his man with the tip of a sheathed dagger. That fellow never
quit protesting his innocence of anything and everything. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]