While this had been going on, Okapa, the madwoman, had crept stealthily toward Yuri’s body with a view to securing the rifle which he had dropped. Seizing it, she leaped to her feet with a shriek.
“You too!” she cried, pointing at Lilla with one skinny finger. “For it was you who took my babe from the orphanage and exposed him to danger. You are joint murderer with Yuri. Him I have slain, and now it is your turn.”
But Myles stepped between her and the princess and wrenched the gun from her poor mad hands, whereat she flung herself upon him, clawing and biting like a demon. It was only the work of a few minutes, however, to get both her wrists behind her back.
Lilla, sensing the need, ripped some strips from the hanging draperies; together they tied the woman and seated her to one side. Then once more the long separated earth-man and his Cupian beloved started to embrace, while Okapa glared at them with baleful eyes.
“Just one paraparth!” he said; and, stepping over to Okapa, he spun her around until she faced the wall.
Then he clasped his princess to him in a long embrace.
But at last a pang intruded in his bliss. “Lilla dearest,” he asked, “where is our little son?”
“I know not,” she replied, “They would not let me know, for fear that the usurper—may he rest beyond the waves—might force the secret from me. But our country is more important than our child. While we tarry here the battle rages. Quick, to the upper levels, and let us take control.”
“We cannot do so without a message from their king,” her husband asserted. “Let us therefore bring them one.”
Stooping down, he picked up the dead body of Prince Yuri and flung it across his shoulder.
As they emerged up a flight of stairs into the main hall of the palace they saw a frantic throng of palace guards piling tables, chairs, and other furniture into a barricade across one of the doorways. Evidently the troops of Emsul and Hah Babbuh had penetrated the palace and had driven the defenders back to this point.
The golden-curled Lilla, standing straight and slim in her black gown, stopped all this work of fortification with an imperious gesture.
“Desist!” she cried. “I, your princess, command it. The war is over. Yuri, the usurper, is dead.”