Necias grunted in surprise and sat back in his chair. He saw the two Brodaini guards, startled enough to drop their masks for an instant, give one another alarmed glances — the Clattern i Clatterni, King of Kings, was the Brodaini princeling who had conquered their entire continent, driving Tegestu, his clan, and the other mercenary clans into exile; Necias could well understand the Brodaini being disturbed. But Necias was more appalled by another implication of what the conjuror had said.
“All the cities of the Elva?” he grunted in astonishment. “Including Neda-Calacas?”
Fiona nodded. “Yes. Neda-Calacas as well,” she said.
“Ai, gods!” Necias leaned forward, anger filling him. “What were your people thinking of?” he demanded. “Neda-Calacas is an outlaw city, a renegade! All embassies will be withdrawn. And then the rebels will be destroyed.”
Fiona looked solemnly into his eyes. “Igara has no quarrel with Neda-Calacas, or with any other city or institution. We take no sides in your wars. We will deal with anyone who will deal with us.”
Necias frowned, then took a piece of grilled rampalla and gobbled it while he thought. “Deal,” he said. “You said deal. What kind of deal are you after?”
“Trade,” Fiona said simply. “We are interested in your people, your — your artifacts. Metalwork, painting, sculpture, your ideas, your —” She nodded to Campas. “ — your poetry.”
“And you will pay for this?” Necias asked, still frowning.
“In gold, if you like,” Fiona said. “We have a supply. We also ask permission to make certain — suggestions and criticisms,” she said. “Suggestions and criticisms that may help you, though you may feel free to disregard them if you wish. There are conditions attached to this, however — we insist that any suggestions we make be shared by all, and not benefit any one person or city.”
Necias scowled and shook his head. The girl wasn’t making sense. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What sort of suggestions are you talking about?”
“Suggestions that may alert you to possibilities of which you may not have been aware. Suggestions that may help you with, for instance, trade, or with, say, alchemical knowledge. Suggestions that may, in the end, help you to travel between the stars, as we have traveled.”
Necias drained his mug and held it out to Brito to be refilled, certain there was something wrong with what he was hearing. This was ridiculous — no one offered knowledge like that free of charge.
There was a scratching at the door, and he barked out a curt order to enter. It was Luco, his youngest wife, carrying a tray. She was flushed, and her eyes were wide as she looked at Fiona; then she swallowed and turned to Necias.
“I brought Campas’ tray,” she said. A transparent excuse: clearly enough she’d just wanted to see the woman from another planet, and perhaps hear part of the discussion.
“Our husband sent someone else to that task,” Brito said, her tone sharp. “We do not carry trays for our husband’s employees.”
“I’m sorry, stansisso Brito,” she said, stepping into the room, putting the tray on Campas’ table. She stepped back nervously, her eyes moving from Necias to Fiona and back again, her stance awkward, unwilling to tear herself away. Necias gave her an impatient glance.
“Get out or sit down!” he snapped. “I don’t care which!”
Luco jumped at his tone, flushing, then murmured, “Thank you, husband,” and rushed to a settee, sitting in a rustle of skirts. Necias could feel Brito’s annoyance: it was Brito who had a place here, as official hostess; Luco did not. Perhaps Brito was angry at what she might think was favoritism, but it seemed a small concession for him to make. Luco was curious, and Necias saw no reason to deny her curiosity. Let her listen, and if it would make her happy then he saw no reason to forbid her presence. Happy wives were better than unhappy ones, to be sure.
He turned his mind away from partillo matters and sipped beer while considering what Fiona had said. Suggestions, knowledge, offered by these planet-people. Offered gratis, it appeared; they even asked permission.
Well. He’d approach it one step at a time, until he saw the flaw: then he’d pounce.
“These suggestions you want to make,” he said. “What kind of suggestions are you talking about?”
Fiona inclined her head. “This is a suggestion I have been authorized to make, as an example.” Fiona said. “We’ve observed your ships. They have difficulty sailing into the wind, do they not?”
“True,” Necias said impatiently. It was an elementary fact, known to all. The ships, with their square sails, could only sail efficiently downwind, though with very careful bracing and a heavy hand on the rudder a ship could be brought very slightly into the wind, of not far enough to change the basic fact that upwind sailing was unknown. The fact had brought disaster often enough — sometimes entire trading fleets were pinned on a lee shore, unable to beat away from the rocks, and were torn to pieces when their anchors dragged.
Entire trade patterns were based on these simple facts of sailing. In the spring a gentle, warm southerly wind came over the passes, and the trading cities like Arrandal, their fleets made ready over the winter, sailed north to Gostandu and the northern Elva cities, their hulls bulging with trade goods. Then, after a late-summer period of storms, a blustery, cold northern wind came down from the lands of ice, blowing the fleets back to their home ports with their foreign-made goods, accompanied by fleets from the northern Elva cities which would winter in the south until the winds changed again. In the spring and summer, ships from the north found it next to impossible to journey to the south, beating against the wind the entire way: and in the winter there was no possibility whatever of fighting the hard northern winds to travel across the seas from the south. Urgent messages that had to be sent against the wind had to be carried on oared galleys, rowing madly at a fantastic cost in rowers, who had to be paid well for their efforts.
“We can’t sail into the wind,” Necias said. “That’s elementary. What of it?”
“We can sail into the wind,” Fiona said, “on Igara.”
“With dragonfire?” Necias asked. “Puffing from behind, to fill your sails?” He saw a smile flit across Campas’ face as the secretary wrote down his question.
“You will have to change the style of your sails,” Fiona said solemnly, refusing to rise to Necias’ bait. “You will do better to have the yards of your sails — some of the sails, anyway — arranged to lie fore-and-aft on your ships rather than athwart them.” She looked up at Necias, bright-eyed. “Try it, anyway. Take a small ship and experiment. I think you’ll find that I’m right.”
Necias’ brows came together as he considered the suggestion. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What difference can it make? And how d’you mean, alter the yards?”
“May I have a piece of paper?” Fiona asked. “I’ll illustrate.”
She took pen and paper from Campas and drew some simple figures of ships as seen from the top, little wedges, with dots for masts and arcs for sails. “This is the sort of sail you use presently,” she said, pointing. “Try to arrange the sails more like this. Fore-and-aft, you see?”
Necias ate bits of pork and considered. It sounded absurd to him, but if it worked — if it worked — as she said it would, the results would be stunning. It would be possible to get trade information across the sea, instead of having to wait half a year for the wind to change. Trade could be increased. Could be doubled, perhaps; places formerly inaccessible could be reached in all weathers. If the scrawls on the paper meant anything.