It should have been ridiculous. Without the music it would have been ridiculous, but the swift, insistent rhythm was working some magic all of its own. Che felt something catch at her emotions, even though this entire spectacle was for a purpose to which she was purely incidental. He wants to reach out to her so much… But that great-framed man could not just bare his heart. Behind the armour of his office and the worship of his troops, he was as human as them all. He was dancing to display his vulnerability, even as he danced to show his skill.
Che glanced over at Praeda; the woman's face still showed nothing. The Cold One, that's what they called her. It seemed impossible that Amnon would not injure himself, or kill one of his soldiers, but the music forced him on and on. The sweat glowed on him, and Che wondered if there was an end to this, or whether he would go on until he took one wrong step and drew blood.
The music was still building, she realized. There is more to come. Amnon's feet moved in a rapid patter, yet every step in perfect place. There was no margin for error in his dance, no chance to recover from placing a foot wrong. The spears glinted ivory in the red light; the swords seemed already stained with blood. Even the musicians seemed gripped by the same frenzy that made Amnon leap and spin.
He gave out a cry that must have come echoing back from the river, then sank down on one knee within the fence of spears. The swords, still unstained, were raised above his head, but the spearheads, all four, lay severed about him on the ground. At last he was looking down. At last he had freed Praeda from the barb of his attention.
Praeda had one hand to her mouth and there was a colour to her cheeks that seemed alien to her. Che's first thought was that she had found the whole thing embarrassing. Praeda would not meet anyone else's eyes, as she hurried inside.
Below them, with Praeda gone, Che saw Amnon finally allow himself to relax. His bare back heaved for breath, and he lowered the swords to the ground.
What would I feel, if that had been for me? Che wondered, and felt, at the edge of her mind, just a flicker of that fierce attention. In the face of the brief stab of envy she felt, despite herself, she wondered whether her assessment of Praeda's reaction had been correct. She's cold, but you'd have to be frozen through not to feel that warmth.
'Remarkable customs,' Berjek said, returning inside himself, giving every impression of being the muddled academic missing the point of everything he had just witnessed. In his wake, Che was now left with only one person on the balcony beside herself.
'Help me,' Petri Coggen implored her, as she stood there in her nightshirt, hands clutching each other before her. 'Please, Che, before it's too late.' It had not occurred to her that the First Minister of Khanaphes would be waiting for her. Of course, he made a great show of finishing up business first. When she stepped into the great hall of the Scriptora, with its traitor fountain playing its serenade to the Aptitude of its creators, she found him at the far end, giving quick instructions to a clutch of clerks. Even as Che approached him, though, the menials began to disappear, bowing backwards off into oblivion, leaving Ethmet to turn and beam at her politely. She knew, then, that he had been here for this reason only: to meet with her.
'O Beautiful Foreigner, O Ambassador,' he said to her, 'what favour may the city of Khanaphes enact for you?'
'I need to speak with you,' she said. She had resolved to be blunt, because she needed answers both for herself and for Collegium.
'Of course. Nothing would be of more pleasure,' he assured her. 'Would it displease you if I pass about my duties as we speak?' If he had been a younger man, and of another city, she might have accused him of mockery. The Khanaphir could revile you to your face, though, and you would never know it for sure.
'We would need privacy, I think,' she said. He was already turning away, pottering off into the next room, so she was forced to follow.
'Ah, well, there are only servants to hear us, and they know their duty is to keep their ears close about them,' Ethmet said absently. He plays the part of the avuncular old man so well.
The room he had passed into gave her a moment's pause. It was a library, she guessed, or perhaps just some grand office of government. The circular floor was picked out in an intricate mosaic design devoid of meaning, and the walls were lined with wooden racks, criss-crossing diagonal beams that reached up to the high windows visible far above Che's head. Steps on either side led to balconies for access to the higher shelves and, when they entered, there were at least two score clerks removing scrolls, filing them, or amending and updating them. Within a minute of Ethmet's entrance, and without any signal that Che could discern, they had all carefully rolled up their work and departed from the room. Each one's manner suggested merely that they had been about to do so in any case, and that Ethmet's entry had not swayed them in the least. A moment later, as the shuffling of sandals receded, Che and Ethmet were left alone in the echoing room.
'You wished, I believe, to have words with me?' the old man enquired. He was standing at the nearest desk, a simple slab of stone with some half-furled scrolls resting upon it.
Che seized her courage in both hands, determined to crack the First Minister's shell. 'What happened to the scholar, Kadro?' she asked.
Ethmet did not even blink. 'We have been unable to locate him, I am sorry to say.'
Che gritted her teeth. 'It has been… suggested to me that he may have been asking awkward questions, that the Ministers of Khanaphes may not have approved of his researches.'
Ethmet's smile remained distantly polite. 'I understand only that your compatriot was given to asking his questions, impolitic or not, in unwise places. He was seen much in the Marsh Alcaia, even out in the desert, where the writ of the Khanaphir Dominion runs regrettably thin. In seeking such company it would seem most likely that the manner of his researches, and not the subject of them, proved the cause of his difficulties.' He gathered up some of the scrolls and made his patient way towards a flight of steps.
'You're telling me that you gave no orders…' Che trailed off. In the face of such denial, such a wall of denial, what can I say?
'None at all. Why should we?' Ethmet replied, taking the stairs one at a time. Even in those few words, Che had the absolute certainty that he was lying. I can prove nothing, but Petri is right. She was becoming used to intuitions that arrived without logic, with nothing but an assurance of their own truth.
She followed him up the steps, trying to formulate the words that might trip him up, expose the man behind the mask. Then he remarked, as blandly as ever, 'I understand that you have succumbed to the vice of Profanity.'
She stopped, as thoroughly thrown as she had ever been, ice coursing through her veins. This trap has sprung the wrong way. Ethmet was not even looking at her, carefully filing the scrolls, one by one.
'I…' she began, her heart hammering. She waited for the guards to suddenly spring out from their hiding places, but guards there were none, just herself and the old man within the big, echoing chamber.
'We make it a crime,' Ethmet continued, still at his deliberate filing, and she thought, The First Minister does not do a clerk's job. He has brought me up here for some reason.
'I… I know,' she stammered. 'What…What will you…?'
'Do not fear.' He looked at her directly then. 'It is a law that is enforced only against those who are not… worthy.'
'I do not understand.' And she genuinely did not understand. He was waiting for her, testing her.
'Word has reached us, O Foreigner, of you and your unusual heritage.'
'They thought I was of the blood of…' She could not bring herself to say it, but he completed the thought for her.