Taksayu did her best, pointing out landmarks Suukmel knew by reputation and familiar objects. Buildings looked like toys, and a’aja trees like those that shaded Suukmel’s own courtyard seemed to be twigs or seedlings, or could not be picked out at all in the nonsense of shapes. The Runa were nothing but dots of color, like knots in a patternless carpet. Enraged and nauseated by the senseless jumble, Suukmel gave up and retreated down the ramp to her refuge at its base.
It was her last bastion of privacy, this small stone room; the embassy was packed with refugees. Following Hlavin Kitheri’s example, Ma Gurah Vaadai had done his best to take in as many people as could be fed, but it was Suukmel who had to live with the consequences. Nonessential Runa had been slaughtered to stave off starvation; there were very few domestics left in the city, and those few were so overworked that one could understand why so many left to join the rebels. Not even the Paramount’s reforms had prepared Jana’ata women for life in close quarters among strangers. No one knew who held rank anymore. Snarling squabbles were as constant as the rain, and all too often escalated to slashed faces and bleeding bellies—
"That must be the foreigner Fia!" Taksayu cried, her arm flung out over the tower’s stone edge.
"Truly?" Suukmel breathed, moving back to the tower ramp and looking up, throat stretched. "What does it look like?"
"Very small—like a child! How can it breathe? It has no nose! And no tail." Taksayu shuddered. "It must be deformed. Hair only on part of its head." Taksayu was briefly distracted by the idea of the Paramount mounting such a freak. "A monster," she confirmed, "as our lord the ambassador has always said."
"Can you see the other one?" Suukmel called. No one spoke the traitor’s name any longer. Supaari VaGayjur’s existence was being expunged from memory; his entire clan had been executed long ago. Today he will die at the hands of Hlavin Kitheri, Suukmel thought. The Runa say his daughter is already gone, which leaves only the foreigner, Fia, who cannot live forever. Then, Suukmel thought, we will let the rebels have the south and leave them to their fate. The Paramount will build new cities and get these strangers out of our compounds. We will be poor, perhaps, and hungry, surely, but the time will come again for beauty and civility, for learning and song…
"There! The nameless one is coming forward now." There was a cautious pause. "He is without armor," Taksayu reported, voice pitched low so it would not carry this news beyond the tower to those who should not hear such things. It was a terrible insult to the Paramount, to appear on the field without armor: I have no need of defense, the challenger was saying.
The battle hymn began, a roaring chorus of men preparing for death or victory—ranked duelists, readying themselves to step forward one by one, taking on an opposing champion until one side or the other yielded. Today, this preparation was merely ceremonial. There was only one warrior who could champion the Runa, so this would be a battle of two men only—of the Paramount and the nameless one: single combat agreed to by all, witnessed by all, its outcome affirmed by all.
"And then this will be over," Suukmel whispered, leaning against the cool stone of her tower. And she tried not to hear the desperation in her words.
"SUPAARI, HE’S WEARING ARMOR," SAID SOFIA, ACROSS THE VALLEY, IN sight of Suukmel’s tower.
"But I have none, so he will remove his," Supaari told her, eyes calm as gray-blue stones under a still lake. "It’s cowardice to meet a challenger with more than the opponent brings to the field. Kitheri cannot be seen to be a coward."
"It will make no difference," Djalao said, standing next to Sofia, her contempt for this dumb show plain. "Armored or naked, the outcome will be the same."
"If they would just let their Runa go, we wouldn’t have to do this!" cried Puska, at Djalao’s side. "They can’t win. Why don’t they let their Runa go?"
Without another word or gesture, obeying some inner sense of time, Supaari left them then, walking alone down the hill toward the battlefield. Voice shaking with anger, Djalao shouted, "You throw yourself away!"
Puska keened at the sight of his back, but Sofia snapped, "Don’t weaken him." And watched Supaari go, her halved vision blurred only by myopia.
THIS WOULD BE THE FIRST STATE-LEVEL COMBAT IN FOUR GENERATIONS and it had taken the combined memories of all the remaining protocol Runa in Inbrokar to stage it. They had outdone themselves this time, and felt it was a fitting way to conclude their lives.
From childhood, such women had taken pleasure in seeing their masters properly dressed, properly adorned, tiny pleats lying neatly on a broad shoulder, jewels sparkling in the proper settings. It was a protocol specialist’s satisfaction to know that she had prepared her lord for each new encounter so that no offense would be given or taken, without intent. Before the war, each had been consulted, sometimes hourly, and her advice taken. The living repositories of Jana’ata genealogy, such women knew the historic deeds and present importance of each sept, and were clever in their suggestions for defusing useless conflict or for heightening disputes that could be turned to their masters’ advantage. They often lived longer than the norm for Runa because it took so long to train their successors, but they willingly suffered the griefs and debilities of old age, even knowing that their toughened, stringy meat would be eaten by the lower ranks when the time came. Their work was the foundation upon which Rakhati civilization rested.
In the crowded streets and jammed compounds of the last few cities, their advice was now more crucial than ever—there were so many strangers, so many people thrown together! Starving and confused, Jana’ata would lash out in anger and fear, tearing without warning at the throat of any Runa porter who refused them entry. Protocol Runa took over at the gates, listening to stories of old alliances, deciding whom to admit. They chose only the best of the Jana’ata, the highest, those of the oldest septs to defend Inbrokar; sent the others on, farther north, to survive as they might.
Now, looking out across the valley at the gathered host of their own kind, they busied themselves with the floating ensigns and the flashing armor, with the ordering of the Jana’ata warriors in riverine ranks, and prepared themselves to witness, with their masters, the combat. But when it was time for the challengers’ response, the rebels did not sing, their distant high cries of derision spoiling the lords’ harmonies with a dissonant, droning sameness.
The protocol Runa ignored the screaming taunts flung at them by their conspecifics on the hill. They had devoted their lives to the stately ballet of rank and respect. Their profession was about to become extinct, but these women would leave the realm of light and movement knowing that they had done their duty to the last.
INSIDE THE WALLS, MORE PRAGMATIC PEOPLE HAD PREPARED DIFFERENTLY for this day, years in the making, and were preparing even now. Loyalty ran as deep in some Runa as their very veins, and when this loyalty had been repaid with kindness or even simple decency, such Runa saw no reason to abandon their families.
So they looked to the north, and wondered if the snow in the high mountains was melted by now, and packed hoarded food, and shared desperate rumors.
"There is a safe place in the mountains."
"They have their own foreigner there."
"They turn no one away."
THICK-MUSCLED ARMS HELD AWAY FROM A TAUT BODY, HLAVIN KITHERI felt the weight of his overgarments—stiff with gold embroidery and glittering with jewels—taken from his shoulders. He was not large nor was he young, but he had hunted for food and wrestled for sport frequently throughout his middle years, and now he breathed with ease and confidence as his armor was unbuckled and laid neatly on the ground nearby. He paid no heed to his attendants. Instead, he concentrated on the walk, the build, the scent of the man who approached him now from the south, armed only with the weapons phylogeny had provided them both: grasping feet and bludgeoning arms with slicing claws; heavy, powerful tails; jaws capable of ripping a throat away from its spinal column.