He looked at her frankly. “Beg pardon, Ambassador, but I’ve learned to mistrust any announcements from diplomats.”
“You can trust this one.” She paused, then frowned at him. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell Necias. He’d try to take advantage.”
“Yes. He would.” Flatly. “I will keep this in confidence, Ambassador.”
“Thank you.”
He fell silent for a moment, then reached for his rucksack. “Beefsteak pies,” he said. “Necias’ cook is a good hand with pastry. Sweet noodles for desert.” He raised a bottle. “And wine. It’s loot, from a country house we passed. For some reason the mercenaries didn’t get to it first.” He smiled in satisfaction. “I’m becoming an old campaigner. Heading for the cellars first thing.”
She looked at the luncheon, then again at the enemy walls. “Shall we go to my quarters for luncheon, Campas?” she asked. “I’m not in a mood to move out forward of the lines, not if it means going closer to Calacas.”
Campas did not seem surprised. “As you wish,” he said briefly, and returned the bottle to its rucksack.
They walked to her tent in silence. Guarded by dozens of soldiers, it was in an area reserved for officers and diplomats, including the Government-in-Exile of Neda-Calacas, a heterogeneous, bickering group that consisted of members of purged trading houses who’d happened to be in Arrandal during the coup, plus a number of diplomatic personnel. Her tent was an anonymous cone-shaped structure, unmarked by any flag or banner to proclaim her ambassadorial status; it was larger than those used by most of the soldiery, but far smaller than Necias’ grand pavilion, or the Government-in-Exile’s canvas palace. She’d hired a male servant to keep it clean, and to buy fuel and food, and since she did most of the chores herself he found it easy work.
Her servant wasn’t there at present; he was probably gambling his wages away with a crowd of his comrades. There were four Brodaini stools and a short folding table standing neatly by her pallet; she let the tent flap fall behind her, and gestured Campas to one of the stools.
“I’m sorry that you’re not used to eating sitting up,” she said.
“I’ve lived among Brodaini, remember,” Campas reminded her. “I can digest at attention if I have to.”
There were plates, cups, and knives in one of her trunks; she got them out. The wine splashed into the cups; it was a dark-red claret that the deissin made fortunes exporting abroad, and it went down well. The pastry was lovely, but as always the filling lacked spice. At least, she thought resignedly, she hadn’t landed in a culture where they boiled things.
“Reports from the city indicate our new ships are performing well,” Campas said. “The new sails can point into the wind with amazing ability.” He paused. “They’re called fiono sails, after you. The sailors gave the name the feminine ending.”
How would Tyson take that? she wondered. He would disapprove, she thought, as usual. She was supposed to be invisible, always the observer, never a participant.
“That’s nice of them,” she said.
Campas leaned back on his stool, regarding her carefully as if deciding whether or not to speak. “That sail,” he said finally. “It will change everything, that’s obvious. But since then you haven’t...” He paused a moment, choosing his words. “You haven’t given us anything. Just put out a list of things you can’t or won’t do, and spent the rest of your time visiting people, finding out about things.” He fell silent again, then leaned forward and quickly took a drink of wine, as if frustrated by his inability to phrase his thoughts with the precision he demanded of himself.
“You’re wondering when I’ll give you more suggestions?” Fiona prompted.
He blinked. “Yes,” he said. “I didn’t want to sound too eager.” He gave a nervous smile. “It might sound as if I — we — were ungrateful.”
She shook her head. “It’s an understandable question,” she said. “I’m asking questions, as you put it, because we want to find out more about you before making any more suggestions. But it’s not exactly my task to give you things, not as I did with the sails. That was simply to help establish my credentials. My job is more to... to be a kind of guide. To help your people move in a more fruitful direction. To help you to avoid dead ends.”
Campas knit his brows in thought, uncertain. Fiona searched her mind for an example. “As I did with your poetry, Campas,” she said, and saw his surprise. “I didn’t tell you how to write it; I didn’t tell you the themes to use. You understood that you had a problem, and I offered... I offered a structure that helped you think about it.”
“I see.” Slowly, with a frown.
“I’m here more to teach a mode of thought,” Fiona continued. “That things may not be assumed, that suppositions must be tested.” He looked at her blankly, and she gave it up: another attempt failed. Philosophy, here including natural philosophy and what they knew of science, was a sport of gentlemen and professional rhetoricians: their tests were not whether a thing was objectively true but whether it followed from its premise and made a consistent philosophical whole; the premises themselves were never tested. She could teach them otherwise, she knew, given enough time, given enough practical examples. But here she’d failed: Campas simply hadn’t seen her method in use often enough.
“I suppose I know what you mean,” he said. She knew he was merely being polite; she sighed and told herself it didn’t matter. He raised a hand. “But you could give us more, Ambassador,” he said. “Why not simply do it? We would — we would move more quickly that way. No dead ends at all.”
Fiona shook her head. “It wouldn’t work, Campas. It would destroy you.” She saw his surprise and spoke quickly. “Everything you’ve made here, all the relationships in your society — they’re based on how you’ve adapted to your capabilities, to your environment. If you change too fast, things can crumble.” He still seemed unconvinced. She took a breath and plunged on. “We could give you all our knowledge,” Fiona said. “But it wouldn’t turn you into us. Profitable change has to come from within, not be imposed from without — we’d be worse than conquerors, then. Making you conform to our pattern, abandon all that you know, all that you are. It’s what you accused me of, once. Making your world over, making all that you’ve done and become irrelevant. It would destroy you, in the end.”
“So we must do it ourselves, because that’s the only way it’s meaningful,” Campas said, frowning. She was uncertain whether he believed it, or was merely parroting her ideas.
“We Igaralla have the time,” Fiona said. “We can wait for you. There’s no hurry with us.”
Campas shook his head. “If you say it’s so, Ambassador,” he said doubtfully — and then he looked up, his blue eyes challenging, forthright.
“Do you know this?” he asked. “Have you tried it with others?”
Fiona felt a stab of alarm. She had forgotten how acute the man was.
Challenged this way, she could not lie. She was sick of evasion.
“Yes,” she said. “Our first star ships — they caused chaos. Change happened too fast. It was like handing swords and spears to a people that have only thrown rocks at one another. There were terrible wars, and other changes — nations fell apart, vast numbers of people lost their occupations. Terrible. They recovered eventually, but it took generations. This slow way is easier.”