Necias resumed his pacing, scowling as he prodded at his rotting teeth with the tip of his tongue. He was, he thought, a practical man; he had risen to power by making practical decisions. He had started as a middleman, priding himself on his contacts among the deissin and the guilds, the color gangs, the pilots’ league — his name had reached its first prominence as a man who knew where a certain thing could be procured, who to go to when a certain favor needed to be asked. From that he’d gone on to a role as a power-broker, acting as middleman in the city’s internal struggles, helping one faction obtain what it needed to triumph over another, collecting favors and eventually his reward. He’d been appointed to the Denorru-Deissin and given, among his other tasks, that of Chairman of the Famine Relief Fund, which had always been considered a license to embezzle and speculate with the vast stores of grain the city maintained as a bulwark against crop failure. He hadn’t held the post for more than three years before the drought struck, ruining the crops across the entire continent, spelling disaster for the population of the cities... but then, to the astonishment of everyone, Necias had opened the granaries and fed the city for the two years the drought lasted. The grain had not, as had always happened before, trickled away into somebody’s pocket, or been gambled away in speculations — it was there in the granaries, where no one, not even the poor whose very lives depended on the grain’s remaining where it was, had ever expected it to be.
People began to talk about Acragas Necias.
It was not that Necias was scrupulous. There had been plenty of fiddles of one sort or another with the grain supply; but there had always been ways of speculating that didn’t require the goods to leave the warehouse. But he had known that a famine was about due, and that the best way to make a name for himself was to do the unexpected and feed the population.
After that he’d used his popularity to become the leader of the city’s war party, and after importing the first Brodaini from the north had forced a declaration against Neda-Calacas, at the time the most powerful city on the continent— and Tegestu had beaten them on land and sea. By the time Neda-Calacas tried again two years later, Necias had imported more Brodaini and the twin cities had been crushed so thoroughly they still hadn’t recovered. After that there had been a purge of the city deissin, and Necias’ faction had emerged as victors; Necias had been made Abessu-Denorru, had launched more wars with more Brodaini, had beaten Cartenas and Prypas and a dozen barons, and he’d revived an old moribund alliance against the barons, the Elva vor Denorru-Dorsu, and turned it into an alliance of all the city-states, and he’d made himself chairman of it.
It hadn’t, he thought, been as difficult as it might have seemed. He’d simply had to reason with people, and point out that their path of advantage lay alongside his own. He believed firmly that if one simply made it obvious to people the course that would bring them advantage and profit, they would eventually follow it. He was, he would point out, a practical man; and he made a point of appealing to the practical side of others.
But that course, he knew, could not be taken with Brodaini. There was a grim kind of practicality about them, to be sure, but it couldn’t be counted on. Their allegiance was not to profit, or even to cimmersan, but to a warriors’ code that made no sense at all — even, Necias suspected, to the Brodaini themselves.
He remembered the horrid experience he had trying to learn Gostu. Tegestu had given him a Classanu tutor and he’d met with the man daily for three months, only to be confronted each time with the same illogical, imponderable, impenetrable language. “Beg pardon, cenors-stannan,” the tutor would always correct, “but you must remember, the indirect object is always placed before the direct object. You cannot place it before the verb, as you can in Abessas, but only before the direct object.” But why? Necias would howl in desperation, flogging his brains in frustration and wondering why the Brodaini couldn’t simply decline their nouns like civilized, sensible people and stuff them into the sentence wherever there was room for them. In the end he’d had to give it up, concluding that Gostu was simply the impractical language of an impractical people, and rely on translators who were paid to understand such madness.
But even through a translator Necias could not talk to Brodaini as he was accustomed to talking to others; he had to feel his way carefully, making certain not to inadvertently offend one of their strange codes of conduct and cause insult. He could not appeal to their practical nature, because often the practical course was denied to them by their beliefs — which, fortunately, at least allowed utter practicality in war.
The Abessla and the Brodaini had always had to be wary of one another; and in Arrandal Necias had tried to minimize the chances of collision by giving the Brodaini possession of what was, in effect, a city-within-a-city, the former Old Quarter, with their own keep. There Brodaini law prevailed, and their oddness, their impractical ferocity, was masked.
But Tastis’ Brodaini had also had their own quarter in Neda-Calacas, newly-built by the Neda Denorru-Deissin outside the former city walls. Yet Tastis and his warriors had boiled out of it, taking both cities, and at a seemingly trivial slight. Did they seriously think that some woman’s distress was justification for the capture of the twin cities, the interruption of commerce, the execution of an entire household, and almost certainly general war within the Elva? Such was the justification offered by Tastis in the communication that had arrived just yesterday, along with a bland, badly-stated wish for peace and normalization. Was Tastis serious in his wishes: was he really that imbecile, to think that the other cities of the Elva would tolerate a coup by Brodaini? By flenssin, mercenaries? — for the Brodaini were certainly mercenaries, even if they insisted they weren’t.
Necias’ fevered pacing was interrupted by a scratching at his door. He gave the door an annoyed glance.
“Who is it?”
“Luco. I brought fresh tea.” The answer brought an unconscious smile to Necias’ lips.
“Come in.” The girl slipped in, carrying a brass teapot and fragile silver cups balanced on a tray; she gave Necias a brief, dazzling smile, carried the tray to the low inlaid table set between Necias’ settee and Tegestu’s low stool, and set the tray down.
“Thank you,” Necias said. “You might ask the servants to bring glasses for the tea. Brodaini prefer to drink tea from glasses.”
“Do they? I’m sorry.” She was a slim, delicate, pale-gold creature, his newest wife, the daughter of his old friend and ally Fastias Castas. She straightened and walked to him, reaching out to brash an imaginary bit of fluff from his broad shoulders. “I’ll bring some myself,” she said.
“You couldn’t have known, hey?” She leaned forward, her cheek on his doublet-front. He touched her hair, smelling the perfume rising from her. She hugged his massive body and Necias felt, in spite of his anxiety, his response beginning to stir.
“Can’t I stay?” she asked. “I’ve never seen a Brodainu scottu.”
He frowned. She was insecure, new to the partillo and her sister-wives, uncertain of her place; he seemed to have to reassure her constantly.
“Brito is hostess, you know that,” he said. “And don’t call a Brodainu a scottu, it’s impolite.”
“Yes, Necias,” she said, with a petulant sigh.
“You can watch Tegestu enter the audience chamber from the balcony of the partillo.” His arms went around her. “It’ll be politics, anyway,” he said. “Boring for you, hey?”