He didn’t know, he thought: he’d have to find out more about her. And until then he couldn’t simply avoid her — she’d get through to him somehow; and if it were revenge she was after, she’d get it without his permission.
Gods, he thought with a shudder, if all he’d heard was true she could burn his barge at its moorings, with all aboard her. He pictured for a terrified, fascinated moment the fireblasts mounting higher, the melting tar raining down from the rigging, his own face and hands blackening in the flames as Fiona stood on the bank, sending her lightnings down...
Put the best face possible on it, he thought, feeling a desperate nausea oozing into his belly. We knew she wouldn’t come to harm, didn’t we? he thought, feeling sweat speckling his brow.
He took another swallow of wine. “Send her in,” he said.
She entered all in black, her hood drawn tight around her face. Her eyes glittered the lamplight; they seemed fevered, not entirely human — transformed, perhaps by what they’d seen, into the eyes of a bird of prey. He rose from his seat and put on a smile.
“Ambassador!” he cried. “Please forgive the untidiness — big doings here tonight, hey?” He propped his arms on his hips, fighting joy as he watched those predator eyes with sickly fascination. She could burn me in an instant, he thought. “I’m glad to see you safe!” he boomed; and wondered if, in his nervousness, he was speaking too loudly.
“You knew,” she said, levelly. He felt his mental rhythms skip a beat at the accusation. His nerves froze. Divine Pastas, he thought, help me.
Necias forced his face into a beaming, benevolent smile. “You were in no danger, I’m sure — if Tegestu had thought there was actual danger to you, I’m certain he would have—”
“You knew,” she repeated. “You and Tegestu used me in your squalid, parochial little war; you deliberately compromised my neutrality, and to my cost.”
“To end the war, Ambassador,” Necias said. His muscles shrieked with the effort to keep the smile on his face. “To end the war, to prevent civil war in all the Elva. We need peace, Ambassador enventan, if we are to listen to your wisdom.”
Fiona took a step closer, her head cocked, her eyes unblinking. “Tegestu,” she said, “offered me his life in apology. What does Abeissu Necias offer me?”
Necias felt his blood freeze. It had to be the truth; Tegestu would offer his life like that, the cold-blooded cunning old murderer. Necias licked his lips. “Ambassador...” he said, and then shook his head.
“I want,” Fiona said, “a building to use as an embassy. I want to be able to hire my own servants and guards — the guards will be Brodaini, I think; Tegestu’s successors will be happy enough to loan them to me. I want permission to bring two more Igaralla into the city, and with the understanding that they may travel anywhere without restriction, and speak to anyone within your area of influence without interference. I also would like permission to open a school.”
Necias looked at her dully. They will come, he thought, they will come, perhaps to overwhelm us as the Brodaini threatened to overwhelm us. Impossible to stop them, as long as they have such power, holding over us their bludgeon of knowledge that none of us dares to allow others to possess alone, lest it make them too powerful. “What sort of school?” he asked.
“An academy of,” she paused for a brief second, as if she were performing a difficult mental act of translation. “Let’s call it... practical philosophy. Teaching useful application of mathematics, philosophy, logic, rhetoric... similar to your academies of rhetoric, but with an emphasis on application rather than theory.”
“You will teach your own — your own system of mechanics?” Necias asked, meaning her systems of communication, of travel... and of war. What demons’ knowledge did she intend to bring to Arrandal?
A slight shake of the head. “No.” Confidently. “We teach no new knowledge, only modes of thought suitable to discovery of new knowledge.”
And what, Necias wondered, did that mean? He sighed, lowering himself onto his settee. “Very well,” he said.
“I will give an agreement in writing to your people tomorrow,” Fiona said. “I hope it will have your signature by nightfall.”
“Of course, of course.” Waving his hand hopelessly. He would submit to the inevitable with as much grace as possible.
For the first time Fiona allowed herself a thin smile. “Thank you, Necias Abeissu. Perhaps some good will come out of this disaster after all.” She bowed, Brodaini fashion, and wished him good-night.
He could not find the energy to rise at her departure. A moment ago he had been gleeful, thinking of himself as the inventor of the future, of the Elva, of the Hundred-Year Peace... and how he knew differently, He was watching the future leave his cabin, small, black-garbed, and confident, with the burning eyes of a killer.
He looked down at his huge, capable hands, the hands that had been unable to keep a grip on tomorrow… I am old, he thought, for the first time. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the cushions.
She has won, he thought, and clutched the table as his mind, unable to help itself, rode a long, turbulent river into a tomorrow over which he had lost all control.
CHAPTER 33
A sweet hymn of the autraldi filled the small domed chamber, a pleasant chapel in his borrowed deissu’s palace. Tegestu stood on a platform, gazing down at Grendis’ body laid before the altar in full armor, the badge of kamliss Dantu blazoned on her surcoat. She had slept, growing ever weaker, two days before infection had taken her; during that time she had never regained consciousness. Below, lain at her feet, were the bodies of those she had, with her sacrifice, triumphed over: Tastis, his son Aptan, his sister and two daughters, all ordered by his aldran to drink their cups of death, that they might with a clean slate begin their negotiations for surrender.
Look what you have accomplished, he thought, looking down at Grendis.
Soon, he thought, his mind soothed by the hymn. Soon I will join you. Have patience.
He looked up at the guests: Acamantu and Cascan representing the aldran, important welldrani and staff, representatives from the kamlissi of Arrandal, autraldi to sing the rites. All had their hair unbraided, styled in the long, elaborate ringlets of the Brodaini, for the war was over. The Elva ambassadors had, in principle, accepted the Agreement over the objections of the Government-in-Exile. Within the next few years all the exiled Brodaini would be living in their new home.
The hymn ended, and the amen chorused by all. Tegestu raised his head.
“Listen, O cousins, to my testament,” he said. He took the scroll handed him by Thesau, opened it, and read it into respectful silence.
It consisted of his political wishes for the future Brodaini state of Calacas, and he knew that such was his prestige now it would be obeyed to the letter. In it he admonished his successors to live in peace with the Elva, and obey the pact by which they would furnish the Elva soldiers. This, he knew, was the only way Calacas would survive its first few years.
He also made mention of the specific political ordering of the city. The Brodaini aldran would constitute the supreme authority within the state — but Tegestu knew that the tidy social structure of a homeland Brodaini kamliss would never work here. The city’s population was too large, too diverse, and too ethnically polarized; and furthermore Tegestu knew that for Calacas to survive and prosper, it needed to retain most of its native population.