Chapter Thirty-three

"Hello the house!" roared Sparrow in a voice loud enough to wake the stones from their rest. He waited.

The smith had regained his strength from proximity to his goal—and the momentary likelihood of action. He was living on his nerves and he knew it; but he knew also knew he could go on like this with no degradation in his performance until he dropped.

For now, Sparrow stood with his muscular arms akimbo and his chin slightly raised. The dagger in his belt had scales carved from dimetrodon canine and wound with gold wire. The hilt made a show in the sunlight to rival the ovoid glitter of the probability generator on the other side.

Sparrow looked strong and smart and utterly confident. He was all those things, and ruthless besides.

The smith's dog walked an aimless figure-8 in the vicinity of the dome's entrance. She sniffed determinedly, but the mud was absolutely barren.

The door was pentagonal, a facet of the dome rather than a section of a facet. It opened abruptly, inward and down at a 30° angle because the side forming the jamb wasn't vertical.

The maid with her hand on the door switch stared open-mouthed at Sparrow. "Who are—" she began. Then she gasped and blurted instead, "You don't have a collar!"

She was a tall woman, only a hand's breadth shorter than the smith. Her black hair was caught up with pins and ivory combs, and her fingers touched the black plastic ring around her own neck.

"I'm not a slave," Sparrow said. He stepped through the angled doorway before the maid took it into her mind to close the panel again. "My name is Sparrow, and I'm the son of a king. Who are you?"

"No!" the maid said and put her foot out. The dog followed Sparrow anyway, tracking footprints. Her tail wagged further speckles of mud across the antiseptically-white anteroom.

The woman grimaced in amazement, then looked at Sparrow. "I'm Olrun," she said. "I was captured when I was a child. But you're from the Open Lands and you're not a slave?"

"I'm a messenger," the smith said as he looked around him. "From my master Saburo to the Princess Mala."

The anteroom was featureless—except for the mud, the dog's and that from Sparrow's own sandals. The ceiling and walls were of a thin material. It looked translucent, but it probably generated a soft illumination of its own rather than transmitting light from another source. For the room to stay this clean, most visitors must ride their skimmers directly to the dome's entrance.

Though mostly, Mala must not have visitors.

"Saburo?" Olrun said. "The god Saburo? But you—I mean, I don't dare disturb milady now, she's meditating."

Sparrow snorted. "Is she so harsh a mistress, then? Never mind. I'll protect you."

"No, she's very . . . ," the maid said. She patted a curl already precisely skewered by a pin of dark-veined wood. "She couldn't be nicer, really. Much gentler than anyone I knew before the slavers came . . . though I was very young."

Sparrow guessed Olrun was about thirty now, though it was hard to tell in the present context. She wore a robe of brown silk with a white sash, a careful centimeter or two shorter than her white undergarment. The fabric was of excellent quality, but its softness was out of place on a big-boned, strong-featured woman like her.

Olrun could have come from the kingdom of Sparrow's father. . . .

"It's just . . . ," the maid said musingly. Her eyes were on the visitor, but she hadn't fully comprehended his presence yet. "When we were at Nainfari's hold, there were lots of people around—and I was Princess Mala's maid, so nobody bothered me if I—"

Her smile was briefly tender.

"Unless I wanted it." The woman truly focused on Sparrow as a person. The smile that coalesced on her lips was frankly speculative. "But since milady had her bower built out here, three years and more, I . . . haven't seen many people."

The smith returned the smile, but anyone who could read his expression could hear a tree thinking. "That will change," he said and started for the rectangular doorway into the dome's interior.

"But—" Olrun objected. She stepped in front of Sparrow. The bitch barked happily at the movement. She trotted through the door, her nails clicking on the hard floor.

"Oh, North and Penny save us!" the maid cried as she turned to catch the dog.

Sparrow followed the bitch and the woman. He was smiling faintly again.

The center of the dome was a large room suffused with gentle light. A slender woman was seated cross-legged on a mat of russet fibers. She scrambled to her feet as the dog tried to lick her cheek. The dog's tail no longer slung mud, but its furious wagging knocked over foliage arranged in a vase on the low table.

"What?" Princess Mala cried. She looked shocked to the point of fainting. Her eyes stared from their black make-up like aiming circles on the pure white skin.

"Oh, milady—" Olrun said.

"Princess," Sparrow said in a rumbling voice that overwhelmed those of the women, "I bring you the greetings of my master, the god Saburo."

Mala straightened. The room's only furnishings were the mat, the table, and a featureless white cabinet behind the princess. Odd angles and the lack of shadows on the internally-lighted walls made it difficult to judge the room's size and shape.

"How did you get here?" Mala demanded in a shrill voice. The fabric of her robes grew brighter, layer by layer, from the olive-drab coloration of the outermost.

"I walked, princess, and I rode," Sparrow said. "My master sent me to bring you to his palace so that he can honor you by making you his wife."

Sparrow stood like a bear on its hind legs. His visage was neither angry nor threatening, but it was as coldly relentless as the advance of a glacier.

Olrun watched the big man without expression of her own. She knelt by the door, holding the dog with an arm around its chest. The dog licked the maid's wrist as Olrun picked dried mud from the animal's fur with her free hand.

"I don't want a husband!" Mala blazed. "Certainly not—"

Her face blanked. "Where did you get that knife?" she asked softly.

"I found it on the way," Sparrow said. His voice rumbled like steam building deep in the earth. By contrast, the android female chirped like a wren on the geyser's sulphurous rim. "Princess—"

"That knife was my brother's! You've killed my brother, haven't you?"

"Princess," the smith went on, "my master would like me to bring you willingly to him. But my duty is to bring you . . . and so I shall."

"How could you have killed Morfari?" Mala whispered in wonder. "And his whole band?"

"Saburo offers you wealth and power beyond your dreams, princess," Sparrow said. Her questions weren't really directed to him, and he had no intention of departing from the grinding certainty of his demands anyway. "He will—"

Olrun continued to stroke the dog as she watched Sparrow. The slight, crooked smile on the maid's face may have been unconscious.

"I don't want any man!" the princess said. "I'm happy here!"

She added with a vindictive glare at her visitor, "My father will kill you, you realize. You'll die in the way you deserve!"

Sparrow laced his fingers together and stretched his arms toward the princess. The calluses on his palms were as coarse as treebark.

"Lady princess," the smith said, "my master is a god. The emissary a god sends will accomplish his task no matter what must be done along the way. Slave killed or prince, or—"

Sparrow smiled. His expression was not a threat, any more than the maelstrom threatens as it sweeps down a ship for all the screams and prayers of the crew.

"Or the king himself, princess."

Mala stared at the big man. The only sound in the room was the skritch of the maid's fingers on the dog's hide.

"Watch—" Olrun cried.

Mala turned like fluff spinning in the breeze. The cabinet behind her was the size and shape of a coffin on end. She stepped through its face—

And vanished, woman and cabinet together, as if there had never been anything between Sparrow and the white space of the wall beyond.