Olrun focused her gaze on a corner of the white wall beyond Sparrow. She asked coolly, "How will you take us to your master's home?"
At the word 'us,' Sparrow quirked a taut grin at the kneeling maid. "The way I came," he said. "A place where the worlds rub together, yours and Saburo's; a discontinuity."
He looked down at Mala. The princess lay limp as a sea creature brought from such depths that its cells burst from internal pressure. "You'll ride with me on the skimmer, princess," he said gently. "There may be some mud and discomfort. But as soon as you reach my master, he will dress you in gold and diamonds—or in flowers, if that's what you wish."
Mala groaned. "I wish," she murmured, "to stay here and live the life I choose to live."
"When we get back, Mistress Olrun," Sparrow said, as if apropos nothing, "I'll remove your slave collar."
Olrun released Sparrow's dog and stood up. The bitch ran to her master, yapping excitedly. She calmed almost at once when she had sniffed the backs of his knees.
Sparrow reached down to scratch her ears, but the dog had already trotted off to resume the course of exploration interrupted by the events in the bower's central room.
As she passed the theatrically-sprawled princess, the dog snuffled Mala's outflung hand. Mala shrieked in despair and flailed blindly. The dog woofed and left the room, her claws clicking.
Sparrow's face was without emotion. Once he too had hidden himself from the world . . . but the world had found him. As if idly, the smith's fingers touched the top of the leg brace he had made with such cunning that he could walk almost as well as a man with uncut hamstrings.
He hadn't made the world; he only acted a part in it. If sometimes he regretted that part, well, there were many things he regretted in life.
Mala got up from the floor. She had no taste for playing a role in a farce.
"What sort of transportation do you have here?" Sparrow asked Olrun.
The maid grimaced. "None," she said. "We never go out. Sometimes Prince Morfari comes by, or the king. . . ."
She let her voice trail off, glancing with concern at her mistress. Mala did not appear to have heard the accidental reference to her brother.
Or perhaps she had. "I want time to see my fam—my father," the princess said with her face averted. Her right index finger stroked the perfect, pumpkinseed nails of her left hand. They were painted a green identical to her innermost garment in hue and metallic luster.
"No, lady," the smith said quietly. "You will come with me to Saburo. My master may allow your kin to attend the wedding—I don't know. When I've delivered you to Saburo, he will choose how you are to be kept. Until then . . ."
Mala covered her face with her hands.
"Why?" asked the maid unexpectedly. "Why don't you let her see Nainfari? You'd bring her back again, wouldn't you, whether he let or no?"
Olrun's face was expressionless, but her eyes reflected the vibrant animation Sparrow heard in her voice. He didn't answer for a moment. The dog returned to the central room, brushed by the maid in friendly fashion, and tapped over to her master to be stroked.
"I would find her if she hid," the smith said carefully. He watched Mala from the corner of his eye.
"I would bring her though she resisted," he continued. His voice was taking on the harsh sense of purpose that Sparrow could not avoid when his mind turned toward contingencies and the ruthless certainty with which he would deal, had always dealt, with obstacles.
"If others tried to stop me—"
His hand played, perhaps unknowingly, on the ivory pommel of the dagger he had taken from a waste of muck and blood.
"—then I would take her anyway. But not even the gods, milady, can bring the dead to life. And that . . ."
He looked squarely, appraisingly, at the princess.
". . . is why I do not choose to leave your mistress to her own devices. Until I've accomplished the task my master set me."
"Your duty," Mala sneered. "A slave's duty!"
"My task, lady," Sparrow said. He smiled, a slowly-mounted expression which finally enveloped his whole bearded face. "A man's task."
Mala turned abruptly away.
The dog whined softly. Sparrow reached down and rubbed the animal's ears.
"We'd best go, now," he said in a detached voice. "I have no wish to harm your kin."
"What should I pack?" asked Olrun. She forced a bright smile to meet Sparrow's eyes, but the smith knew the maid was still afraid that he was going to leave her behind.
His smile and face softened. "All will be provided. There's nothing you'll need, Olrun, you or your mistress either. And besides, the skimmer that we have for transport won't carry but two as it is."
Sparrow gestured abruptly with his chin. "Come," he said. "We need to be going."
Mala said nothing. She remained stiff as a statue, facing the empty wall. Olrun looked from her to the smith.
"Shall I take your arm, lady?" Sparrow asked in a voice as soft as the creak of a catapult being twisted to lock.
The princess turned like a marionette and walked toward the dome's entrance. She took short, precisely-measured steps.
"She will find that Saburo shares a heart and soul with her," the smith said conversationally to Olrun as the two of them followed the princess. "She'll actually be happier than she is now—"
Mala, moving like an automaton, touched the door switch. The panel began to swing down from its housing.
"—but I don't expect anyone to like being coerced," Sparrow continued. "Any more than I did, in my time."
Warm, fetid swamp air oozed through the open doorway. Mala shuddered uncontrollably. She tried to force herself to step into the muddy courtyard. Her dainty foot hung, quivering above the surface.
"I'll fetch the skimmer, lady," Sparrow said with a certain degree of pity. "You and I will ride."
The princess edged aside so that Sparrow could get past her without contact. The dog brushed between the man and android, barking joyfully to be outside again.
"When we reach my master's palace," Sparrow continued over his shoulder, "you'll have luxury that you've never dreamed of."
"I am a king's daughter!" Mala said.
"Ah, but there'll be flowers," said Sparrow from the courtyard gate. "You'll like them."
He got onto the skimmer and lifted it from where it had settled. Mud curled and spattered from the repulsion surfaces. When the vehicle had cleaned itself, Sparrow guided it through the gateposts and up to the dome where the princess waited.
"Milady," he said, grounding the vehicle again.
Mala broke from the doorway. She ran around Sparrow, headed toward the gate. The dog barked and gamboled alongside her.
"Lady!" Sparrow cried. He blipped the twistgrip, lifting the skimmer again. It would be hard to chase the girl down on the vehicle without injuring her, but she was too fleet for him to catch on foot. . . .
"Sparrow!" Olrun screamed. "Get out of the courtyard! She's going to clear the defense controller!"
Mala snatched open the access plate in the back of the left gatepost. Within were banks of touch-sensitive switches and two large red handles.
The upper handle disconnected all the weaponry which defended the courtyard. The second handle, intended for use after the first one had been pulled, cleared the defensive unit's memory completely.
Mala looked at Sparrow. Her face was a skull mask. She reached for the lower switch, knowing that the blast would vaporize her even if Sparrow and the maid managed to fling themselves back into the enforced exile of the dome.
Sparrow's hands were on the ends of his probability generator. It pivoted between his index fingers, glowing indigo and violet.
Mala touched the switch.
A slug of collapsed uranium, moving at the speed of a meteorite, ripped across the courtyard. The gatepost disintegrated with an electrical crash that echoed the thunderclap of the railgun bolt's own passage.
The blast hurled Princess Mala onto her back in the mud. The wall's tough plastic drank the energy from multiple shorts within the weapon-control circuits and melted in on itself.
The black wall lost the threatening glimmer which bespoke weapons live and prepared to rend intruders. The dog was angry and frightened. She barked and feinted attacks in the direction of the smoking, spluttering gatepost.
Sparrow began to laugh. He grounded the skimmer. Olrun looked at him in a mixture of fear and wonder.
"I think . . . ," he said, ". . . that we'll go in a different fashion for safety."
He put his broad right hand on Olrun's waist and guided her onto the skimmer.