The Grand Ellipse Read online

  He must have sensed the pressure of her regard, for he turned his head and looked straight at her. Luzelle felt the embarrassed color flood her face. Caught, undeniably caught staring. Well, this particular man was surely used to being gawked at by women. He probably imagined she was about to swoon over him, for good-looking men were so conceited—

  He smiled slightly across the room at her, as if they shared a small joke, and it was such an engaging expression, so devoid of affectation or presumption, that her discomfort vanished at once and she smiled back at him, holding his eyes for a moment or two before breaking the voiceless contact.

  It took considerable self-control, but she did not glance in his direction again until he and his companion paid their bill and rose from their chairs. She risked a final covert peek then, and saw that he was splendidly tall and broad shouldered, with the trim, powerful build of an athlete. And she saw something more. The stranger wore the smartly cut grey uniform and insignia of a Grewzian overcommander. He was a servant of the Imperium, which meant that he was a pig in human form. So much for all ridiculous thoughts of fine faces reflecting fine character.

  The blond officer and his older companion—a civilian, clad in faultless evening wear, she dimly registered—exited the restaurant. The remaining patrons, even the noisy twins, faded into obscurity. Luzelle sipped a frolloberry liqueur, and considered. She was annoyed with herself. Her heart had quickened like a silly schoolgirl’s when that gorgeous Grewzian swine had smiled at her; at her age she should have better sense.

  She finished her drink, paid her reckoning, and walked out into the lobby, where she purchased a newspaper. For a while she entertained herself by riding the wondrous lift up and down. When the novelty began to pall, she returned to her own room, there to settle down with the Toltziancityspeakerof. At least that was how the nameplate literally translated into Vonahrish. She could read Hetzian, more or less. There was news of the Grand Ellipse, news of King Miltzin’s activities, news of a thoroughly illegal duel in some local park, and above all, news of the Grewzian campaign. The Imperior Ogron, it seemed, had fixed his attention upon the small, essentially defenseless principality of Haereste. Which shared a border with Vonahr. Even now the imperior’s troops were advancing upon the latest target, which would undoubtedly fall without a struggle. And then?

  Luzelle tossed the newspaper aside with a scowl. She undressed, washed, donned a nightgown, climbed into bed, and occupied herself for a time with her maps, lists, and timetables, which proved dependably soporific. When her lids began to droop, she extinguished the lights, but did not fall asleep at once, for her mind was too active, too filled with anticipation of the contest that she would win, the competition so soon to begin—

  Tomorrow.

  SHE HAD TIPPED ONE OF THE CHAMBERMAIDS to knock on her door at seven in the morning, but she woke spontaneously at the break of dawn. Much too early, but she hadn’t a prayer of resuming her slumbers. Luzelle rose, washed, dressed in her practical grey-green traveling suit, coiled and pinned her curls into submission, and repacked her suitcases.

  Still too early.

  Descending to the nearly deserted lobby, she checked out at the desk, then repaired to the hotel restaurant, just now opening its doors for the day. There she sat for the next hour, gulping cup after cup of milky coffee, scrutinizing fellow customers, and periodically consulting her watch. She knew she ought to order a solid Hetzian breakfast, but her stomach fluttered at the notion.

  Outside, the sun climbed. Inside, the seemingly petrified hands of the watch progressed a couple of degrees, liberating her at last. She carried her own bags out to the street, where the doorman summoned a cab for her. She entered, issued a command, and the vehicle set off along famous Toltzcutter Street.

  The window displays in the world-renowned shops lining the avenue would ordinarily have claimed her attention, but she scarcely troubled to look at them today, nor did she cast more than a cursory glance upon any of the old city landmarks that she passed. Presently the cab entered old Irstreister Square, named after the first elected mayor of Toltz, and there along the eastern border of the square loomed the pompous city hall, her destination. And there, cramming the open space in front of the building, waited a sizable, holiday-spirited crowd. Spectators gathered to see the racers off, she decided, and it seemed odd, for there wouldn’t be much to see—just a group of competitors, each sprinting for his or her conveyance of choice and pelting off down the city streets, most if not all of them headed for the train station. But the event had caught the public imagination.

  The driver halted in front of city hall, as near the building as the crush of humanity permitted. On impulse Luzelle ordered him to take her around to a side entrance and to wait for her there with her luggage, then paid him generously enough to ensure his compliance. She went in, asked directions of a bent-backed sweeper, and made her way along the confusing corridors to the registrar’s office, where she handed in her completed application forms, receiving in exchange a certificate of participation, together with a raised stamp upon her passport; hour, date, and location—Toltzcityhouse, Lower Hetzia. A second such stamp, placed at some unknown future date, would mark her completion of the Grand Ellipse.

  Proceeding to the lofty foyer, official starting point of the race, she found the vast space teeming with visitors. She glanced about in momentary doubt, then noted the seething density of the crowd gathered about a gold-fringed scarlet canopy set up near the foot of the grand marble staircase upon which King Miltzin IX himself was shortly scheduled to appear. Beneath that canopy, the registrar had informed her, the Grand Ellipse contestants were to gather. She pushed her way toward it through the throng, but long before she drew near enough to glimpse the group assembled there, the crowd seemed to contract around her, and she heard her name spoken aloud, followed by a fusillade of questions chattered at her in Vonahrish, in Hetzian, and in several other languages that she did not recognize.

  Luzelle halted, bewildered. The questions—those that she understood at all—made little sense. “How do you view the competition, Miss Devaire?” “Luzelle, do you believe that a woman has any real chance of victory?” “Ca’lorphi gi nava re’flonvisse ghia, Mees D’va’r?” “Miss Devaire, have you consulted a prognosticator?”

  Prognosticator?

  They had her closely surrounded. She couldn’t move, and the din was appalling. She could barely think, much less answer. A few feet away some stranger with a notepad stood sketching her likeness, and then she understood. Journalists, dozens of them, scribbling reports for their various publications. They doubtless hoped for some sort of scandalous or at least controversial comment from her, but she was not about to oblige.

  “Let me through, please,” she requested politely. Nobody budged.

  “What do you regard as the greatest obstacle you’re likely to encounter en route?” “Foru, Luzelle-ri, sakaito ubi Grand Ellipse-jho, chokuni okyoshin?” “Miss Devaire, what is your estimate of the—” “Tell us, Miss Devaire—” The questions overlapped crazily. Her head was spinning.

  “Please let me through,” she repeated, and it still didn’t work. They were crowding around her like hyenas, so close that someone’s charnelhouse breath was actually stirring her hair. She was growing angry and a little afraid.

  “Mees D’va’ar—”

  Trapped. She resisted the impulse to hit or kick someone.

  “Miss Devaire—”

  “Must take her place with the other contestants,” broke in a voice unmistakably Vonahrish, and impossibly familiar. “Gentlemen, if you will stand aside …”

  She turned to the source and for a moment doubted her own eyes, for she looked up into a face that couldn’t be there, a face she had excluded from her sight and her life years earlier. Excitement had surely overstimulated her imagination, for it couldn’t be—

  “Girays?” Her voice emerged in a small and idiotic squeak that would have embarrassed her, had not incredulity eclipsed all rival sensati
ons. “Am I dreaming?”

  “Of me? Honored indeed, Miss Devaire,” replied Girays v’Alisante.

  “A nightmare, then,” Luzelle rejoined at once.

  “Now, there we see the amiable disposition and exquisite manners I recall so well. You haven’t changed in the least, Luzelle.”

  “You have,” she returned maliciously. “You’re looking older.” This was somewhat true. His face—a little too long, a little too angular, a little too intellectual—with its deep-set dark eyes that missed nothing and its lines of agreeable fatigue—was a whisper wearier than she remembered. His hair, the color of unadulterated coffee, was thick and careless as ever, but a few silver threads glinted at his temples. Well, he was ten years her senior, after all. Be that as it may, he hadn’t gained an ounce of weight—his frame was still elegantly lean as a dancer’s. Skinny, she told herself. Inconsequential.

  “Clear the way, gentlemen,” Girays ordered, and that well-remembered, almost exaggeratedly upper-crust intonation of his commanded immediate respect. Which he, in the objectionable manner of his formerly-Exalted kind, accepted as his natural due.

  A path opened. Girays offered his arm, which Luzelle took reluctantly. She didn’t want to accept his help, or obligate herself to him in any way. Should she refuse, however, she might never make it to the Grand Ellipse starting gate, much less the finish line. The journalists were still yammering, but at a bearable distance. Girays led her forward, and his unsettling proximity prompted her to say something, say anything.

  “What in the world are you doing here?” she asked. “Have you come to see the racers off? Have you placed a wager?”

  “I am a contestant like yourself,” he told her. Her brows arched, and he added, “I am in earnest.”

  “And Belfaireau?” she inquired, still skeptical, for revolution notwithstanding, the ancestral château remained in the hands of the v’Alisante family, and its present master tended the estate with all the devotion of the ideal seigneur that he fancied himself to be. Not often or easily was Girays v’Alisante to be pried away from his beloved Belfaireau for so extended an interval as the Grand Ellipse represented.

  “Safe in the hands of my capable Glimont,” he told her.

  Glimont? His household steward, she recalled, and her surprise deepened, impelling her to demand, “But—why?”

  “A whim,” he replied, to her frustration. “The race promises considerable novelty.”

  “Since when did you ever—”

  “See, there are all the registered racers,” he cut her off. “Do you not wish to inspect your rivals?”

  She did indeed.

  Beneath the scarlet canopy a little enclosure bounded by velvet ropes contained the Grand Ellipse contestants. There were no more than a dozen of them, herself and Girays included—fewer than she had expected in view of the prestige of the event and the magnitude of the prize, but understandable enough; for how many individuals actually possessed the time, freedom, and resources required to run King Miltzin’s course?

  The faces before her were interestingly varied in age, type, and expression. She spied only one other woman, which was one more than she had foreseen. Not entirely to her surprise or pleasure she recognized the youthful, noisy twins from the Kingshead’s restaurant. This morning the lads were identically turned out in sporty checked jackets and matching trousers, with red roses in their buttonholes. Neither seemed visibly the worse for recent champagne-soaked excesses. Behind the twins, his tall form towering over them by half a head, waited last night’s unforgettable blond overcommander.

  She shouldn’t have paused to look, for the journalists were closing in again and one of them was even plucking at her sleeve. Taking note of this, Girays whisked her on to a gap in the velvet ropes, where an attendant verified the registrar’s signature upon her certificate of participation before allowing her into the enclosure, beyond the reach of importunate scribblers. From her new vantage point she could see that additional velvet ropes marked out an unpeopled aisle running through the foyer, straight to the front door opening upon Irstreister Square.

  “Some of these people are known to me,” Girays v’Alisante observed easily. “Those twins over there, for example—Stesian and Trefian Festinette, from Travorn. Eighteen years old, and hungry for excitement. Obscenely rich. Recent coinheritors of a huge copper-mining fortune, which they are spending as hard and as fast as they can. Such is the bulk of the Festinette wealth, however, that even at the present rate of consumption the boys won’t succeed in beggaring themselves for several years to come.”

  Luzelle glanced at him in surprise. His knowledge did not surprise her, for self-education in advance of any large endeavor was typical of this man. But she didn’t understand why he should share the fruits of his research with her. They had not parted on the friendliest of terms, by any means. Certain horrid words still reverberated through her memory:

  “… Childish, immature, stubborn, touchy, hot-tempered, intolerant, razor-tongued little nineteen-year-old SHREW …”

  And her own response:

  “… Arrogant, overbearing, narrow, rigid, reactionary, self-important, self-satisfied, pretentious old DOLT!”

  No, not a happy division, and never a subsequent reconciliation, for she had never allowed herself—

  Why should he be dispensing enlightenment now? Showing off? Demonstrating his own unfailing superiority? Probably.

  “Over there.” Girays pointed.

  Her eyes followed his finger to a squat, well-barbered personage of conspicuous magnificence. The square face and broad torso might have belonged anywhere, but the loose, flowing garments, the high-heeled shoes, and the plenitude of pearl jewelry marked the owner as a citizen of Lanthi Ume.

  “Porb Jil Liskjil,” Girays announced in an undertone. “Prosperous merchant, on his way up. Climbed as high as a commoner might ordinarily hope, and now aspires to that extra social boost provided by a famous victory.”

  “Well, it will have to be some other famous victory.”

  “There.” Girays’s finger altered angle, directing her eyes toward a short, slim, perfectly tailored gentleman, perhaps some thirty-five years of age, but still boyish. “Mesq’r Zavune, an Aennorvi speculator. Looks as if he rides at the top of Fortune’s wheel, but doesn’t. Financially strapped at the moment. Should he win the Grand Ellipse, his fortunes are assured. Otherwise it’s debtors’ prison for him.”

  “Prison?” Luzelle marveled. The well-dressed Mesq’r Zavune hardly seemed a candidate for dungeon confinement. “Couldn’t he just pack up and—”

  “Over there.” Girays’s explanatory finger flicked. “That woman—”

  “The one with the straggling hair and the big yellow over-bite?”

  “Is there any other woman in sight?”

  “You are just as prickly as ever.”

  “That woman is particularly interesting,” Girays resumed. “Her name is Szett Urrazole, and she’s a Szarish inventor.”

  “Really? What’s she invented?”

  “Some sort of new conveyance that she calls ‘Gorashiu qu’Osk Zenayushka.’ ”

  “Say that again, slowly.”

  “It translates to ‘Miracle Self-Propelling Carriage.’ ”

  “And is that title warranted?”

  “We shall soon see. Madame Urrazole intends to demonstrate the capacities of her invention by winning the Grand Ellipse in it.”

  “No, she won’t. Because, you see, I’m going to win the Grand Ellipse.”

  “Such resolute confidence. Formidable.”

  “Stop looking so amused. You don’t believe I can do it? Just wait.”

  “Waiting is the last thing I intend. Remember, I’m competing myself, and I don’t particularly relish defeat.”

  “Does anyone? This time, though, your vanity will have to bear it.”

  “Miss Devaire, you’ll eat those words.”

  “M. v’Alisante, you are hardly the man to serve them to me. But come, let’s return to
your interrupted discourse. I wouldn’t deny you the pleasure of parading your knowledge, so pray inform me—who is that man there?” She pointed discreetly.

  “The giant with the muscles and the black beard? Bav Tchornoi. One of the greatest Ice Kings champions Rhazaulle has ever produced. All but invincible, in his day. But advancing age and cumulative injuries eventually threw his game off, and Tchornoi retired about ten years ago. Perhaps he’s come to Toltz in search of his lost glory.”

  “And what about that fair-haired Grewzian officer over there?”

  “Now, there’s another interesting specimen. That is none other than the Overcommander Karsler Stornzof himself, in the celebrated flesh.”

  “Really?” Luzelle’s eyes widened. Mere fame ordinarily awakened neither her awe nor her admiration, but this time she found herself impressed, for Karsler Stornzof was such a hero, so skilled in the arts of war, so valorous and by all accounts honorable, that even his enemies sang his praises. As for his own countrymen, they revered him to the point of idolatry, their devotion stimulated by the stream of newspaper reports and printed circulars ceaselessly lauding the exploits of Grewzland’s golden son. Now she knew why that face of his had struck her as so familiar yesterday evening. She had seen drawings of it in the popular journals more than once; for even the Vonahrish press paid periodic homage to Overcommander Karsler Stornzof. “What’s he doing here? I mean, he’s an officer in the army of the Imperium, and there are wars all over the place. Shouldn’t he be fighting at the Haerestean front or something?”

  “I gather that Ogron himself has authorized—in fact, commanded—this Stornzof fellow’s participation in the race, the idea being to get out there and garner glory for great Grewzland, or something along those lines. Presumably the imperior means to profit by the huge popularity of his matinée-idol emissary.”

  “Yes, he is rather good looking, isn’t he?” she observed innocently.

  “Perhaps, if you are partial to classical statues.”