Chapter eleven
“Remberee, Pur Dray! Remberee!”I was going home.
I was going home to a place I had never seen.
What was this Vallia like? This Vallia of the island empire, of the fabled opulence: the ocean-spanning shipping, the fleets of airboats, the wealth and power and beauty. What did it mean to me apart from my Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains?
I did not forget that my Delia was known as the Princess Majestrix of Vallia.
Tharu of Vindelka, Kov, the older of the two Vallians, treated me with a grim distant courtesy that puzzled me. He was icily polite. When I asked him about Delia’s father, the emperor of Vallia, he rubbed a reflective thumbnail along a narrow scar on his jaw. “He is a mighty man, sudden, all-powerful unpredictable. His word is law.”
Tharu ha
