by David Weber
He even managed to take his hand away from his pistol.
"Show how?" he asked skeptically.
"Please, bag," Skirvon said, pointing to his own briefcase. chan Tesh cocked his head for a moment, then nodded and said something to the big chief sword. Although Skirvon's Ternathian language skills were far better than he was prepared to admit, they weren't good enough to follow the rapidly spoken sentence. On the other hand, they didn't need to be, as the noncom handed him the briefcase.
Skirvon opened it cautiously, then withdrew his PC. To his surprise, chan Tesh tensed obviously, and the diplomat found it less than easy to ignore the half-dozen rifles which were suddenly pointed in his direction once again.
"What is that?" chan Tesh asked sharply.
"Is only personal crystal," Skirvon said soothingly, once again using the Andaran words and holding the crystal up. chan Tesh looked blank.
"What does it do?" he demanded.
"Rock hold talk. It records talk."
"What?" chan Tesh blinked.
"Hold talk," Skirvon said again, and murmured the activating incantation. The PC's glow as he initiated the spellware was lost in the brilliant sunshine, of course, but it was angled so that he could see its display. He tapped the menu with the tip of his stylus, calling up the special, limited word list they'd manufactured from Magister Kelbryan's primer specifically for this exchange. Then he touched the playback command.
"Shaylar," a woman's voice said.
Putting together that word list had required days of careful work. He and Dastiri had deliberately limited the audio recordings Magister Kelbryan had downloaded to them, choosing individual words on the basis of how clear Shaylar's voice had sounded when they were recorded. All of them were recognizably her voice, but distorted by fatigue . . . or pain. In some cases, he knew, the pain had been purely emotional, but that didn't matter for his purposes. What mattered was that the chosen words sounded like someone who'd been severely injured. Like someone who was muttering to herself, wandering through her own injury-confused thoughts.
He'd expected a powerful emotional reaction, but not the one he got.
chan Tesh's jaw fell. Literally.
Skirvon stared at him and experienced a sudden epiphany. Despite everything Olderhan had told him, despite his study of the notes Kelbryan had meticulously recorded, despite even chan Tesh's obvious reaction when his chief sword had found the PCs in the first place, he hadn't really believed until that moment that Sharonians had no experience with magic. He couldn't believe it, because no one could possibly build a real civilization without it. He'd been absolutely convinced that Shaylar and Jathmar had been shamming in a successful effort to confuse and mislead their captors.
But chan Tesh wasn't shamming. The company-captain was clearly a disciplined, confident officer, and what his forces had done to Hadrign Thalmayr's command was brutal evidence of his competence. Yet his astonishment at hearing a simple recorded word played back from a completely standard personal crystal was total. Indeed, it appeared to border on superstitious terror, and deep inside, Rithmar Skirvon grinned like a kid with his daddy's jar of accumulators.
Olderhan had been right. They had no magic!
Why, they weren't nearly as formidable as he'd first believed. If they couldn't do something this simple, they were babes in an adult world—a mean and nasty one. mul Gurthak had been right, too. All they had going for them was their machines, the "guns" they'd used—used by surprise—in both violent encounters. And, as mul Gurthak had pointed out, it was only that surprise, that totally unanticipated ability of theirs to throw not a spell, but a physical projectile, through a portal which had defeated Thalmayr.
Skirvon had been convinced these people must actually have their machines and their "Talents" in addition to the magic which was the necessary foundation for any advanced civilization. But they genuinely didn't have it, and that reordered everything he'd thought about them.
But first things first, he told himself firmly. First things first.
He waited until chan Tesh shook himself.
"How did you do that?" The Sharonian's voice was ever so slightly hoarse, Skirvon noted with carefully hidden satisfaction.
"Rock is personal crystal," he repeated the Andaran phrase carefully. "Shaylar talk, it record—" again he used the Andaran "—her word. Then spellware—" yet another Andaran word "—work words. Make . . . list our words, your words."
He tapped the menu again, bringing up the Andaran and Ternathian word for "word" side by side in the display, then angled it so that chan Tesh could see it. The company-captain's eyes narrowed once again. Clearly, the phonetic spelling of the Ternathian word meant no more to him than the totally unknown characters of the Arcanan alphabet floating decided. Equally clearly, he was intelligent enough to realize what he was seeing. He stared into the crystal for several seconds, then shook himself and looked back at Skirvon.
"So you say this . . . 'personal crystal' of yours let you capture Shaylar's words and then analyze our language?"
"Please," Skirvon said, summoning up a pained expression, "too many words. Not have big number."
chan Tesh scowled in evident frustration.
"If you could do that," he gestured at the PC," why couldn't you save Shaylar?"
"Tried. Tried hard," Skirvon insisted soulfully. He remembered Olderhan's account of the prisoners' reaction to magic healing. Given these people's total ignorance about magic, it would undoubtedly be even simpler than he'd expected to convince them that Shaylar had died of her injuries. Especially since she undoubtedly would have without the Healers' intervention.
"Head hurt bad," he said once more. "Our healer killed in fight. Tried walk to second healer, but many, many days. She die before we reach. She very brave," he added sadly. "Arcana much grief."
"Yes," chan Tesh said harshly, glowering at him. "She was very brave. And my people will demand punishment for whoever killed her."
"Please," Skirvon said again, earnestly. "Too many words. Must learn more. But now, come talk Sharona. No shoot, talk."
"A truce?" chan Tesh sounded massively skeptical, but that was a distinct improvement over the white-hot fury of a few moments before. "You want to negotiate a truce?"
"Truce is no shoot?" Skirvon said, and chan Tesh nodded.
"A truce is a time to talk, yes. A time to talk, not shoot. That's what you want? To talk about not shooting us again?"
"Sharona no shoot, Arcana no shoot. Yes."
"I can't authorize a truce. You understand? I must talk to someone higher than me. With more power, more authority. Understand?"
"Yes. Send talk?"
"I'll send a message."
"Ah . . . message." Skirvon tapped the crystal's menu again, dutifully recording the "new" word into it. The word "message" was already in its real vocabulary list, of course, but these yokels would never know that.
chan Tesh watched as the word appeared in both Andaran and phonetic spelling. Then Skirvon looked back up at him expectantly, and the company-captain frowned.
"You understand you can't talk to me about a truce?" chan Tesh pressed. Skirvon only looked at him and said nothing, and the Sharonian tried yet again.
"I'm not a diplomat. I'm a soldier—a 'diplomat' is someone who speaks for a government. You understand?"
Skirvon nodded sharply, busily coding the "new" words into his crystal.
"I'll have to send for a diplomat," chan Tesh continued. "I'll send a message, and the diplomat will come here."
"Ah!" Skirvon nodded again, more enthusiastically. But then he stopped nodding and shook his head instead. "No," he said. "Not here."
"What?" chan Tesh's eyes narrowed once more, and Skirvon knelt in the mud with a silent apology to his tailor as he contemplated what it was going to do to the knees of his trousers.
"Sharona portal," he said, using a dead twig to draw a circle in the mud. Then he drew another circle, about two feet from the first. "Arcana portal," he said, and indica
ted the portal soaring high above them.
chan Tesh scowled and opened his mouth, but Skirvon held up one hand, gesturing for patience. chan Tesh looked at him, then shrugged and nodded.
"Go on. Say the rest, I mean."
"Arcana, Sharona di-plo-mats meet here."
Skirvon drew an "X" in the mud between the two circles he'd already drawn and tapped it to indicate the approximate spot of the slaughter. He let his face fall into a deeply sorrowful expression which Dastiri mimicked beautifully. Even the Navy petty officer who'd managed the boat for them contrived to look sad.
"Great grief," Skirvon said. "Much hurt." He touched his chest to indicate his heart, then patted the "X" again. "Diplomats talk here." Then he pointed to the portal overhead and said, "Sharona stay here. Arcana want Sharona stay here." He pointed at chan Tesh's soldiers and their sandbagged positions. "But diplomats go, talk here."
He pointed to the "X" again, and chan Tesh cocked an eyebrow at him.
"You mean you're willing to accept that we keep this portal? You just want your diplomats to meet our diplomats here?" It was chan Tesh's turn to point at the "X" in the mud.
"You stay—soldiers stay," Skirvon said, very carefully not answering chan Tesh's first question directly, then indicated the "X" once more. "Diplomats talk here. Me. Dastiri. Sharonian diplomats."
"Under a flag of truce?"
"No shoot, yes. Talk. Negotiate."
chan Tesh gazed thoughtfully at the muddy diagram, then studied Skirvon and Dastiri carefully before he finally spoke once more.
"I'll send a message to bring a diplomat here." He pointed at the "X." "To Fallen Timbers."
"Fall En Tim Burr?" Skirvon asked, this time genuinely puzzled, and chan Tesh pointed at the massive trees behind him on the Sharonian side of the contested portal.
"Trees," he said. "Also 'timber.'" He pantomimed a tree with his arm, positioning his forearm vertically with his fingers outstretched as branches. "Timber." Then he blew hard at his hand and lowered it as if his arm were a falling tree. "Fall. So we call the site where you murdered our civilians 'Fallen Timbers.'"
"Ah . . . grief place." Skirvon nodded. "We walk, negotiate Fallen Timbers."
"Why?" chan Tesh's eyes were cold again, the soul-deep anger back again, burning coldly in their depths. "Why at Fallen Timbers?"
"Sharona fight hard. Arcana grief. Arcana want see, want re-mem-ber—" Skirvon spoke the Ternathian word carefully "—brave Sharona."
chan Tesh's eyebrows soared. Then he frowned thoughtfully.
"You want to meet where they were murdered? To do them honor?"
"'Honor'?" Skirvon repeated.
"If someone does a brave thing and dies doing it, we feel respect. We feel honor. We say they were good and brave and should be remembered with a good feeling here." chan Tesh touched his own heart, and Skirvon nodded emphatically.
"Yes. Meet at Fallen Timbers, honor brave Sharona." Then he gave the soldier a concerned look. "No bad anger, meet at Fallen Timbers?"
"Will we be so angry we won't negotiate?" chan Tesh shrugged. "I can't say. I don't have the authority. Meeting there to honor our murdered civilians will help, but it won't be easy to set aside our anger. We didn't start this."
Skirvon cocked his head and smiled gently.
"Arcana no start," he said. "Who start? Two men dead, no man see. Who start?"
chan Tesh blinked, then grimaced.
"So that's your story? You didn't start it because no one saw who killed Falsan? I find that profoundly interesting."
He gazed at Skirvon thoughtfully, but, to Skirvon's surprise, the uneducated rube didn't continue. He neither badgered Skirvon in an attempt to forcibly change his mind, nor pointed out—as they certainly could have—that it was Arcana who had run a party of civilians to ground and then slaughtered them. Skirvon kept smiling, gently, and revised—just a tad—his opinion of this particular provincial rube in uniform. At least the man was intelligent enough to leave that chore to the diplomats.
"When meet?" Skirvon asked.
"Stay here," chan Tesh replied. "We'll send a message. Wait here until the answer to that question comes back."
Either chan Tesh didn't know where the nearest diplomat was, Skirvon reflected, which was an interesting piece of information. Or he didn't want to admit how far away he was, which would be another interesting piece of information.
"We'll feed you while we wait," chan Tesh added stiffly. "We'll give you water and loan you blankets, if they're needed."
If they were needed? Could these thought messages, which Skirvon still found almost impossible to credit, really travel that fast? Or was a diplomat that near? The lack of information was maddening, but at this stage in the negotiations, their best was all they could do.
"We wait," Skirvon agreed.
chan Tesh nodded sharply and turned on his heel as smartly as any Andaran aristocrat on a parade ground. That was interesting, as well. Out in the middle of the godsforsaken wilderness, this company-captain—the equivalent of a mere commander of one hundred, assuming Kelbryan's primer had gotten it correct—was as spit-and-polish formal as some self-important, blue-blooded Andaran.
Either these people were as virulently militant as Andara itself, or else he was putting on a show for them, exaggerating his militancy for effect. Either answer would present its own possibilities, once Skirvon managed to figure out which one applied. It would, he realized with a slowly building emotion almost akin to relish, be a very interesting little exchange all around, wouldn't it?
The possibilities, he thought, licking his mental chops, were boundless.
Chapter Forty-Six
Dorzon Baskay, Viscount Simrath, had dropped the "chan" from his name for his new role. It was possible that the Arcanan diplomats had discovered that the word indicated military service, and Platoon-Captain Simrath wasn't being a member of the military just now. After all, a diplomat as young as he was wouldn't have had time to become a military veteran, as well, so he couldn't be one, either, because right this minute he had to be a diplomat. A very convincing diplomat.
He wasn't at all happy about that, but he didn't have much choice. Sharona didn't have a real diplomat within less than three months' travel, and no one was prepared to admit that to the other side. They'd already delayed for the better part of two days while Company-Captain chan Tesh had conferred by Voice with Regiment-Captain Velvelig, but chan Tesh and Velvelig had both been aware that the possibility offered by the Arcanan contact might well be fleeting. If it wasn't seized now, it could slip away and never be offered again. Neither of them wanted to lose any possibility of avoiding an all-out war, and so Velvelig had finally made the decision which had led to chan Baskay's present unhappiness.
"We don't have an official diplomat, and we don't have time to get one," chan Tesh had told chan Baskay bluntly. "I don't have any idea whether or not these people are sincere. Even if they are, they've made it fairly clear that they're at the end of a long—and slow—communications chain. So whatever they may want doesn't necessarily mean a damned thing about their superiors' or their government's ultimate intentions. But I agree with Regiment-Captain Velvelig that we can't afford to let this possibility slip away if they are sincere. That means we don't have time to sit around, literally for months, with our thumbs up our arses while we wait for a 'real' diplomat—from whatever government we finally wind up with—to get all the way out here to Hell's Gate. Which brings us to you, Platoon-Captain."
chan Baskay had nodded, although he hadn't cared at all for where chan Tesh was obviously headed. chan Baskay was no diplomat; he was a cavalry captain, even if he had been born into the aristocracy, and a cavalry officer was all he'd ever wanted to the. He might be the son of an earl, with a lineage of political service to the Ternathian Empire that could have stretched from Hell's Gate clear back to Estafel, but he'd never wanted that part of the family tradition.
He'd hoped that he'd managed to dodge it when he'd been assigned to the
PAAF. Unfortunately, it appeared his bloodline had caught up with him after all.
"According to your personnel file," chan Tesh had continued, "you've served in the House of Lords. Is that right?"
"Not exactly, Sir," chan Baskay had replied. "My father holds a seat in the Lords. As his eldest son, I've deputized for him on a few occasions, mostly while I was still at the Academy." He'd smiled a bit tartly. "Frankly, I think it was his way of trying to convince me to change my mind and go into the Foreign Service instead of the Army. It didn't work."
"I see." chan Tesh had sat back in his camp chair, considering the young cavalry officer for several seconds. He'd wondered why the platoon-captain went by "chan Baskay" instead of the "Viscount Simrath" to which he was certainly entitled.