Amberlight

by Sylvia Kelso

  A very, very costly, perhaps humiliating defeat. A tactic they have never tried again.

  Rubbing her squinted eyes, Tellurith wonders anew about that attack, as she has wondered for the last two months. So costly. So extravagant. So unimaginative. So out of character for the mind behind this campaign. Which otherwise has preferred to trap and slap and anticipate, never to stake pride and human lives in a situation where only brute force and massive losses can prevail.

  Was it an aberration? A loss of patience? An unschooled arrogance?

  Or something else?

  * * * *

  Shia has cleared the table. Only the delicate glasses, the chilled white wine, remain.

  Tellurith pours a glass and takes it back to the window. Trains her eyes, watering still, but not now with sun-glare, down the river’s curve.

  That glittering serpentine is empty now. Empty as her heart, as she mourns yet again, in the hollowness of useless grief. For Wasp, and Hornet and all the rest of them, and the tough, brave, stubborn women who were the Navy’s inner core: the love band, one in death as they were in life. The core whose spirit and expertise and experience they miss so bitterly, far more than the mere presence of another fighter at your shoulder, another hand for gun-pad or bowstring, another occupied space.

  At first, when the enemy did not repeat their assault, they thought they were safe. “They can sit there till winter comes,” Denara of Winsat proclaims triumphantly from the Arcis parapet, “and they’ll get no nearer than they are.”

  But of course, as the morning shows them, the mind behind the campaign is not intending to come nearer.

  Not yet.

  The siege-wall’s beginning alarms but does not frighten them. What is it, except a ratification of defeat? If the enemy is prepared to admit he cannot get in, Amberlight need only ward its defenses against surprise attack, keep its waterways open, and wait. “What good,” wonders Denara scornfully, “is a siege-wall with a river on both ends?”

  Denara’s answer arrives a week later. When the forced laborers rounded up across the Kora, not to mention Dinda’s protesting rabble, stop their basket-carting and barrowing and stare open-mouthed downstream.

  At a Dhasdein military fleet.

  Ten galleys. Tellurith numbers them in memory, sipping on the bitterness of white, chilled wine. Little enough, we thought, with Hornet and Mosquito and Wasp. Especially after we sank two, with no losses, in the first fight.

  Until the auxiliaries arrived. Until the galleys, with a wall of floating refuse—dinghies, ruined freighters, rafts—between them and us, began to haul out the chains.

  Massive, double-strength harbor chains. Anchored to rock-piled moles, the most impressive bastions Amberlight watercrew have seen, and they remember the construction of their own flood-proof quays. Fixed across the river to points beyond Dead Dyke, where only costly, too costly assaults will let Amberlight cast them loose.

  Not that Amberlight does not try, council of desperation before their Navy is trapped in its pond. One try. Before Averion decrees it is too high a price.

  “They have the numbers. We don’t.”

  * * * *

  The glass has made a ring on the shining mahogany, unshielded, protected, usually, by Shia’s utmost wrath. Tellurith shifts it, the word echoing in her head.

  Numbers.

  Numbers enough for extravagance even by that thrifty antagonist. Despite various attempts to cut the chains by light-beam, to portage Navy ships over their ends—Tellurith puts the glass down at the bitter, bitter taste of that, half Black Widow’s crew caught and slaughtered on the beach—to draw off the defenders by sham and ruse, to land desperately grudged guerillas to attack the siege wall, even, at wildest aphelion, an attempt to kidnap the enemy general—despite all this, numbers enough for the day when he fills that circumscribed pond with eight Imperial galleys and every other scrap of junk provided by an army’s ingenuity, down to saboteurs sent to jam the Amberlight waterwheels, floating on inflated skins.

  So those in Amberlight can only watch, watch helplessly, as the remaining six Navy ships and their auxiliaries are crowded, im­mobilized, fought over, the crews killed, or captured, drastically wounded. Finally, at least three times by their own folk’s volition, sunk with their secrets still aboard.

  Despite a slaughter with those light-guns that Tellurith’s spine shrinks now to contemplate.

  Far less vengeful, even now, than Averion, red-eyed at her balustrade next morning, when from the farther bank comes that searing flash, the thunder crack, and then the spouting pillar of black smoke. And Averion laughs, murderously as a widow avenged, and shouts, “Meddle with that, you whores!”

  Both of them knowing that a captured light-gun, or a power-panel assembly, with or without its engine, has met outland meddling with its own revenge.

  Except, of course, Tellurith thinks wearily, the numbers are still there.

  And now they can reach Amberlight itself.

  Which perhaps, and perhaps not, makes less astonishing this offer, a mere four days after the siege wall closed.

  For the nine-hundredth time her brain asks, Treat for what?

  For all we could do, he had too many hidden dice, and too much advantage, for us to overcome or anticipate. Why does he stop? With our ships gone and our supplies blocked, and no sign that he ever worried about losing men, why does he simply not attack? Pour men at those open quays, that dyke and defense wall, absorb the losses, and get what he wants?

  Alternatively, why doesn’t he sit and wait?

  Shia comes down the corridor and stands, hesitating, at the inner door. Tellurith sends another glance through the balcony window. The sun’s limb is just beneath the eave.

  By the time she is dressed and down to the Dead Dyke, it will be middle afternoon-watch. The appointed time.

  * * * *

  In the torrid heat of the glacis behind Dead Dyke wall, the other entourage has already disembarked. Emerging from her vehicle, Azo and Verrith fanning ahead, Zuri herself at her back, Tellurith catches breath in a gasp. But the other Head leans on her stick and greets confederate and heat with equal disinterest.

  Like her, Tellurith is wearing the summer uniform of wide white muslin trousers, tiny gold-thread silk top and open white muslin robe. Let the enemy have armor, swords, bows. She does not intend to compromise her trust in her troublecrew or her Ruand’s dignity. Nor to let this outland dangle suppose her fearful if she raises a sweat.

  A narrowing of eyes is all the greeting Zhee vouchsafes. Her troublecrew are twitchy enough for three. Tellurith feels Zuri’s scowl. Composure is compulsory; for the honor of Amberlight.

  It is Dhasdein’s request that the negotiators be the heads of Hafas and Telluir House. Mother forbid, shudders Tellurith, that I have to suffer such another fuss, when even Maeran’s accusations of treachery and desertion hold less malice than fear. It is Averion’s wary generalship that ordains they shall in no way reveal ingress, egress or even ladder height of the new dyke wall. Instead, they are to take an ancient and pitiful rowing boat round the head of the canal to the meeting place.

  Which, as Averion points out, allows a thrifty blend of their own transport in case of flight, and a hefty rower-load of troublecrew in case of fight. “I’m well aware, and they may be too, that we’re hazarding half the brain of our defense.”

  To which Tellurith’s sole, flattered reply is that the safeguards are ample. Two high officers to stand as hostages. And the safe-conduct under a pledge Dhasdein soldiers have been found to honor more often than break. The general’s personal word.

  Assandar. She tries it on her tongue to the oars’ creak. A scribble at the document foot that the envoy has to decipher, the mark of a seal. A desert hawk. No noble Dhasdein family badge. Possibly a personal emblem, maybe awarded by the emperor. Some stolid career soldier, some ambitious noble scion, some pam
pered Imperial favorite?

  His tactics, she considers, hardly suggest the latter two. A veteran commander, then. She wonders what he knows of her—what Alkhes has told him of her—and her stomach rolls over as if she is preparing to approach the face. The boat-nose turns. Mud and reeds and stone-protected river edge are bisected by a vivid, staring stripe.

  Carpet, a long hall-runner such as are used in noble Dhasdein houses, stretched to the water’s edge.

  Zhee’s lips twitch. Tellurith lifts her eyes and blinks, dazzled by more than sky.

  The pavilion almost occupies the wide bridge-head square. Double thickness white linen, twin-peaked, wide-eaved, with outrageous tasseled emerald and purple side-ropes, and more outrageous emerald and purple pennons cavorting overhead like lazy exotic flames. A great many shiny metal lobsters seem to be crowded inside, but midway their mass opens on a muted gleam of crimson and white. The double-cloth spread of a proper negotiators’ table. With the backs of tall chairs showing on the nearer side.

  Respectful minions attend their landing, to a flourish from hidden trumpets. Not a national fanfare. Something anonymous. Tellurith has to control a grin. Entering the tent, they find the crowd diminished, space for their troublecrews at either side, the armor almost out of evidence. Taking position by her chair, Zhee stands and waits.

  The trumpets ring again. Not the fanfare of a Dhasdein general either. An invisible but brazen-voiced herald proclaims, “The High Commander of the Worshipful Coalition, Her Excellence’s Zenadar,” a Verrain military viceroy, “His Excellence’s Lieutenant, His Imperial Majesty’s General, Assandar.”

  The male military divide. The sun beyond blinds her on a blaze of scarlet and polished iron.

  The military cloak flares behind him like a forest fire. The embossed and burnished breast-plate is mirror-brilliant above the immaculate dark-red officer’s kilt, the sword-hilt glitters to each pace. But the red-crested helmet is under an arm. Baring the crow’s-wing fall of that black, outland hair.

  Zhee too must know, must recognize, cannot fail to recognize that lithe, supple, troublecrew’s stride. Must recall that face whose every feature is graven on Tellurith’s memory, sharp nose, sharp jaw, fine-cut mouth. Ink and ebony eyes.

  Zhee’s response is one slightly quicker breath. Struggling for equal aplomb, Tellurith already feels the difference. Face, hair, walk, yes. But not merely Alkhes.

  Assandar.

  It is in every nuance of carriage and gesture. Decision. Power. Authority. The wit, the danger of the killer and mercenary. But beyond that, the weight of rank. Dhasdein’s general.

  “Ladies,” the appointed steward of the meeting, an anonymity ushering from the table end. “Please sit down.”

  Zhee does not move.

  “I am not a lady,” she says, when all the eyes are fixed on her. “I am Hafas House-head. I am a Voice of Amberlight.”

  And amid the lackey’s consternation his general intervenes with unhurried swiftness and the merest blank look to imply suppressed drollery, “Ruands. Please sit down.”

  Tellurith is glad of an acceptable offer. More glad of the chair. The sight of him has been a body blow. The familiar slight Iskan burr, with its soft inimitable undernote, is a dagger in the side.

  “Ruands, you have honored our presence for one purpose.” And all Alkhes too is the way, once seated, he gets straight to the meat. “To hear terms of peace, which I ask that you put before the Thirteen.”

  No negotiator has ever said it so easily, so like a native. Tellurith offers a thanksgiving that Maeran is not here.

  Zhee inclines her head. “Amberlight,” that rustling old voice is still perfectly empty, “will hear your terms.”

  Terms? thinks Tellurith, as attention becomes shock, becomes disbelief, becomes outrage. Mother’s blood, is this mockery, an insult, or a jest?

  Effrontery enough to demand that Amberlight recompense the besiegers for their dead, their expense and their time. Insult enough to require that the price of statuettes be fixed by “the Co­alition.” Outrage to propose that Amberlight admit outsiders to its council. Beyond forgiveness to ordain that the city become a vassal of “the Coalition,” administered, like the merest Dhasdein colony, by a governor.

  But to demand that the working of “so-called pearl-rock” be opened to anyone, in or out of Amberlight. And that it be administered by officials of the governor.

  That they abolish every House . . .

  Tellurith hardly hears the end. A red rage has blotted the detail out of everything. She clenches hands in her trousers, digging fingernails into her thigh. She is too far gone even to attend the crucial details: the reader’s tone, his body language, whether he dares—dreams—of meeting her eye.

  The voice-noise ends. Black and red and shining metal swim somewhere beyond her ken. Through it come the measured cadences of Zhee’s reply.

  “You demand of Amberlight . . .”

  Word-perfect, she recites back the terms.

  By their end Tellurith’s eyes have cleared. Vision enough to see across the table. To the blank, respectful stance of standing subordinates. At his leader’s elbow, the waiting scribe. And the quiet posture, eyes courteously fixed on Zhee’s face, lack of expression a perfect armor, of the man in the general’s chair.

  “Man,” yes. Not, to be sure, Alkhes.

  Who would know these terms are entirely impossible. Who, given Assandar’s authority, would never see them voiced.

  Unless he never meant them to be used.

  Cruel, final jest?

  As she takes breath Zhee speaks again.

  “Here, now, are the terms of Amberlight.”

  That the besiegers withdraw at once. That the city be recompensed for its Navy, its loss of trade, its time and trouble and disturbed dependents, let alone its dead. That “the Coalition” expect no further use of any qherrique until the instigator of the assassination attempt on a Head of Telluir House, “at a House-head’s funeral,” be uncovered, and sent to Amberlight for the Thirteen to decide his punishment.

  “Whatever his rank—or his position—may be.”

  Choking down the bubble of mad laughter, Tellurith cries inwardly, Two can play at insult—bravo, Zhee!

  And without pause, Zhee is levering herself out of her chair. “When you have an answer,” offering the enemy no title, in itself a profound insult, “you may send us word.”

  He rises in turn. Inclines his head. Impervious to affront, maintaining respect for age? Blight and blast it, Tellurith thinks, maddened by bewilderment as a bull by flies, what is he doing?

  “Ruand, if I might have a word, before you go?”

  The black eyes have swung. Are looking straight at her.

  Zhee checks. Do you, asks the backward glance, want help?

  No sign of censure. No sign of doubt. Her greatest accolade, Tellurith thinks, as she makes the troublecrew sign for, No; and tries to keep her heart out of her gullet as she answers, “If my colleague can rest—in the shade.”

  Assandar cocks his head. Invisible orders, bustle of departing aides. From somewhere a madly incongruous parasol, offers of cool tea, Zhee’s diminishing voice.

  Before her, black eyes. Steady as sword-points in the thin, taut, familiar, unfamiliar face.

  “Tel . . . urith.”

  The waver in her perception matches the wobble of that voice. Assandar—Alkhes? Looking at her so weirdly, so hungrily, move­ment just checked before he reaches out both hands. Black circles under the lash-line that are Alkhes resurrected, a set of the mouth that is all Assandar. Before the doubling can disorient her Tellu­rith asks, “What did you want to say?”

  This time the lack of title brings a quirk, so predictable, so demolishing, in a corner of the mouth. The eyes, still devouring her, say something else.

  “I wanted to know you were all right.”

 
Tellurith feels herself swell like a goaded porcupine. Just before the rage bursts, words explode into her mouth.

  “Just tell me, why?”

  More incredible, the little shiver that runs through him, Alkhes to his fingertips. Before he lets his breath out. And murmurs, “Somehow, I knew you’d say that.”

  Still staring across the table. As if, impossibly, ridiculously, he wanted to be closer. Then, collecting himself. “Which—Why—do you want first?”

  So many priorities. Only one matters now.

  “When did you first remember—everything?”

  “When I—”

  He stops. The eyes widen, all Alkhes.

  “Tel, I give you my—”

  Another stop.

  “No.” A deep breath. Arduously, he begins again. “You may not believe this. If you don’t, there’s nothing I can do, no—oath—I can swear to change your mind. But it is the truth. I only remembered—everything—that last night.”

  Amberlight, her House, her people rely on her. Staring across that three feet of white and crimson cloth, Tellurith can only implore the Mother to let her be sure. To look into those eyes, those almost beseeching eyes, so at odds with his military grandeur, and know if it is the truth.

  When she does not speak, he turns his hands out. Takes a deep breath. And bows his head.

  Her throat is dry. It comes flatly, instinctive, involuntary recourse to the commerce in which they have never lied.

  “Where did you come from—first?”

  The head comes up. Alkhes, the light in the eyes, but the assurance is Assandar.

  “I was born”—the tiny glint says, I know what you ask, and I will give it you full measure, overflowing—“in Verrain. My family is from Shirran. My father was a hire-guard for the caravans. Then we went to Dhasdein. I joined the Imperial army when I was fifteen.”

  Dhasdein, and not Dhasdein. Verrain, and not Verrain.

  “And when you came to Amberlight?”

  The eyes meet hers steadily. “I was sent by the Coalition—Cataract, Verrain, Dhasdein.”

  The third—the final?—coalition. An irony, to be proven right by your worst terror affirmed.