“Loyalty,” said Kiel, in Torovan.
Errollyn snorted. “Well may you change tongues,” he told Kiel, in Torovan. “And you accuse me of becoming more human?”
“We serve the serrinim,” said Kiel, in Saalsi once more. “The serrinim cannot be disunited, or we shall fall. Such have we decided, and such does our vel'ennar tell us. Will the du'janah follow? Or do we have to drag you?”
Errollyn gave Kiel a look that was almost…anger. Amongst serrin, in debates, it was rare indeed. “When charging headlong toward a cliff, disunity is no bad thing.”
“When the cliff charges toward us,” said Kiel, utterly unmoved, “then disunity will kill us all.”
“And I tell you that debate has saved us in the past,” Errollyn said firmly, “and shall do so in the future, if we are to survive at all.”
“No one doubts your conviction, Errollyn,” said Rhillian, more gently this time. “Your opinions have always been respected.” Kiel, Sasha saw, nearly smirked. “But these are not the councils and teahouses of Saalshen. This is Petrodor, and I lead. We are talmaad. You swore an oath.”
“Another foreign concept,” said Errollyn. “You accuse me of foreign thinking, but your own is worse. I learn sarcasm. You learn fear and cynicism.”
“Come down from your lofty mountain, great mind,” Rhillian said more coolly. “You're right, we do live amongst humans and their ways at times dictate ours. I can give an order if I must, Errollyn. Do you say that I must?”
Several questions to dockside residents told Sasha of Kessligh's whereabouts quickly enough. She walked along the dock, with only Liam for company, and listened to the creak and heave of the boats tied along the piers. Some folk wandered in the warm evening, unaware of commotions elsewhere in the city. Here, some wealthy types with a foreign look about them-Ameryn, perhaps, walking with several prominently armed guards. There, some rowdy sailors, singing as they wandered from bar to bar. Some men played a loud game of dice before their doorway. Some others sang songs to the accompaniment of guitars. They paid little attention to a couple of passing Nasi-Keth.
“You did well,” Sasha told Liam as they walked. “Up there, and at Riverside. I was impressed.” Liam said nothing. Sasha thought she knew the cause of it. “You were right about Yulia. She should not have come.”
Liam gave her a hard, suspicious stare. “Now you admit it. After Rodery's dead.”
“And what good would it have done to admit it at the time? We were stuck in a situation, Liam. Yulia was there, frightening her further would have only made matters worse.”
“Kessligh should never have selected her for the mission,” Liam said darkly.
“It wasn't entirely his choice. His seconds chose the personnel, Kessligh cannot know the standard of every Nasi-Keth on the dockfront. Besides, her technique in training was not so bad; she should have been all right against mudfoots. But she panicked and her technique deserted her. That's one thing training can never tell. But now we know.”
They arrived at the entrance to The Fish Head where some sailors and locals were having a loud, drunken disagreement, with much shouting and fingerpointing. Sasha and Liam slipped past, down some steps and into the gloomy, lamplit interior.
The space was crowded, with as many Nasi-Keth as Sasha had ever seen gathered in one place. From the stairs, she could see that there appeared to be three sides to the gathering-a triangle, some fancy, serrin-educated folk called it. Near the middle, men were sitting, tables shoved aside. Further back, men stood, perhaps fifty in all. The air smelled staler than usual, hot and musty. The conversation was loud and animated, and so intense that no one saw her enter.
She left Liam, pushed past men along a side wall and headed for the bar where Tongren the Cherrovan waited and watched, a scowl on his dark face. Sasha nearly smiled. She rapped on the bar and his face lit up. Sasha put a finger to her lips to quiet his exclamation.
“What's going on?” she asked him as he leaned close.
“You're alive!” he exclaimed softly. He clapped her on the shoulder-her sore shoulder-and she winced. Tongren ran a finger on her swollen eyebrow. “What man dared do this to your pretty face?”
“Probably some kid with a rock,” Sasha murmured.
He made a dismissive gesture. “You're always beautiful to me. I worried so much for you! Though not as much as one I could name…” He jerked his head toward the group. Sasha looked, but could not see Kessligh amidst the crowd. “Kessligh's in trouble. Alaine and Gerrold made lots of noise. Now they challenge him, say he made a big mess in Riverside, lost precious men.”
“How many did we lose?”
“One less now we have you back…Who else?”
“Liam and Yulia, two more,” said Sasha. “And one confirmed dead. Rodery.”
Tongren shrugged. “Sharl,” he said. “War,” in Cherrovan. One of her small handful of Cherrovan words; the ones every Lenay knew from four centuries of occupation. “That would be thirteen dead, I think five badly wounded and still two missing.” Sasha exhaled hard. It was not as bad as she'd feared. But it was still bad. The whole thing had been bad; there was just no way around it. “Alaine blames Kessligh. Gerrold doesn't blame anyone…he's a good man, sensible. But still, he argues. You'll hear.”
Sasha pulled herself onto a bar stool. “Get me a drink, will you?”
“Ale?” said Tongren, brightening.
“Juice, please.”
“Bloody Nasi-Keth,” Tongren muttered, going to do that. “Take over my bar, scare away my customers, but you don't drink. How can you be real fighting men if you don't drink?”
“I never claimed to be a real fighting man,” Sasha said pointedly.
“Just my point.”
“The plan would have worked,” one of Kessligh's men was saying. It sounded like Bret. From her seat, Sasha could not see him. “I'm telling you, our plans were sound, we had good numbers for the assault, Steiner's men would have had no chance against us…”
“Would have this, could have that!” That was Alaine, loud and angry. Alaine was always loud and, for a Nasi-Keth, frequently unreasonable. “We hear excuse after excuse from you and your great warrior hero!” Sasha bristled. “Did he make this many excuses when he drove the Cherrovan invaders from Lenayin? You complain like an old woman, and make up fantasies like a child! I don't care what you could have done, it only matters what did happen! And this attack was a disaster!”
“Because we were compromised from within,” said Bret, from between what sounded like gritted teeth.
“So you say! How long have we been trying to expand the Nasi-Keth's influence into Riverside? The poor, the hungry and dispossessed are our natural allies, and yet you kill them in their dozens, and set fire to their houses-”
“Rubbish…”
“And now you sit here and declare before us that you have done nothing wrong! Riverside is lost to us now, for years at least…”
“And a great pity,” said someone else, sarcastically, “because you were making such wonderful progress there too. Its inhabitants positively reek of wealth and enlightenment.”
“You make fun,” Alaine retorted, “but thanks to you, now they likely never will!”
“We do what we can for the poor,” said Bret, attempting reason. “The odds against our success are huge, yet we make small progress every year. Not every poor child's blistered feet, nor his mother's hacking cough, is our fault.”
“Normally, yes, I would agree!” said Alaine. “But now, with Kessligh at your helm, you make a bad choice of priorities. The Nasi-Keth has whatever power and support it has in Petrodor thanks to the poor. Most of us are drawn from the ranks of Petrodor's poor. It was the sons of poor families who died in Riverside in this ill-advised attack. They support us because we do good things for them. We give them knowledge, and medicines, and ways to improve their living so they don't get sick. And we defend them from the cruelty of the families.