Amberlight

by Sylvia Kelso

  Those eyes are a duelist’s with blade poised. He could almost be back across her dining table. Except this time the only constraint on his answers is his own choice.

  A gamble to follow other gambles. Yet here, now, perhaps, there is just enough mutual leverage, in her moral high ground, in his military superiority, to ensure the truth.

  “And did you have a contact—inside Amberlight?”

  The eyes flare like a black corona. “You mean a House?”

  Testament enough. Before the head-shake, understanding now, from past experience, from burnt-in knowledge of the Thirteen’s tie-webs, grim, but not with disbelief.

  “No, Tel. Inside Amberlight—I never had any contact at all.”

  Greater irony, that in the pit of nightmare, there can be relief. Carefully, Tellurith eases her shoulders. Lets that shift signal a change of topic, before she speaks.

  “And this time?”

  Now there is wariness. An answer in itself.

  “I asked for the command.”

  Very softly, Tellurith says, “Oh?”

  The eyes flash. Sun on turned steel. And as suddenly there is all Alkhes’ killer ice in the corners of the mouth.

  “Come out here.”

  Four swift strides from among his subordinates. Round the side of the tent. Into full sun. Full view of Amberlight.

  He has swung round. More than challenge in the stare.

  She takes the four steps after him.

  “I know what you’re damn well thinking, and you’re wrong. I did not do this for revenge. Not on you. Not on Amberlight.”

  “Then what?”

  And more suddenly the eyes soften. He half reaches out. They are closer now, no table between them. It is a patent effort to withdraw his hands.

  “Damn it, Tel—I did it for you, that’s why.”

  “For me?”

  “That’s what I wanted to say. I’ll make you an offer. Safe conduct. Clear passage through the lines. For all of Telluir House.”

  It is too astounding for riposte. Tellurith can only stare.

  He takes a step closer. Now it is definitely a struggle with his hands.

  “Tel, gods damn it, I didn’t want to go. I knew what you’d think—what you’d feel—I know I can’t make you believe me, but I never deceived you, not like that. What we had—what we were—that was real.”

  Surest balm. Sweetest consolation. The ulcer salved at last. It was no deceit in the deepest truth. If they have played at intelligencers’ commerce, they have been honest in the trading of the heart.

  “I knew what it would do to you—in the House—with the Thirteen—gods’ eyes, I sweated all the way down river, every time I thought of what that bitch Maeran might—” he shudders, and actually shuts his eyes. “Even knowing what Zuri would think of me . . .”

  The eyes open. “You may not believe it—but it hurt.”

  As much as to break those unremembered bonds of secrecy. Because these bonds of trust and faith were equally binding. And to a man who respects his word, in breaking, equal pain.

  Her hands ache to reach out, to take him as she did for love or comfort in her arms. But they are on a quayside before the as­sembled eyes of his army. Not to mention Amberlight.

  “Then in the Mother’s name—why?”

  “Because I had to! Because I’d made promises and contracts—I couldn’t have stayed and been who I am—or been someone else, if it was a lie!”

  The sun is beating on her head, her shoulders, a downpouring relentless fire. Sweat rolls down her back. And in that unforgiving furnace she feels her muscles relax. Testing, accepting the truth.

  Silently, she sees him sigh. You understand. You do understand.

  “Tel . . .”

  I want to touch you, the eyes say. I want you here between my hands, to hold you and feel your physical reality as much—no doubt about it—as you want me.

  And only a siege-wall, and a city, and two or three nations, and eighteen inches of empty air, lie between.

  Tellurith gathers herself up. Finding the old tactics for the old commerce, which has only now begun to matter again.

  Says very softly, “Then why?”

  “Why what?” A genuine frown.

  “Why are you offering—these terms?”

  The flick of the eyes is a sword engaged.

  “It’s a siege, Tel. I’ve seen sieges before. I care about you. I want you out of there.”

  More softly, Tellurith says, “So why these terms?”

  The eyes fix. The body goes still.

  “You know they’ll never take them. Not in a million years.”

  Silence.

  “And you won’t take ours.”

  Something turns in the blackness like a flicker of steel. “Blast it, Tel, I thought you were the trader? Of course we won’t take yours, any more than you’ll take ours! Did you ever take first offer when you buy?”

  Her heart thumps. Almost, it sings.

  Almost.

  “You expect us to bargain?”

  “If Hafas House-head don’t expect to bargain, I’ve never seen a better double-finger in my life.” The River gesture for obscenity. She very nearly hiccups on the laugh. “God’s eyes, Tel!”

  Bargain. Not lunacy, revenge, final insult. They expect to offer leeway. “And you want me to argue . . .”

  “If they’ll listen, yes!”

  Bait. Dizzying possibility, heart-stopping temptation. Life. Hope.

  “But still—you wanted us out.”

  The shoulders collapse. Inside the shell of military magnificence is a tired, strained, desperately worried man.

  “I told you, Tel—I care about you.”

  The mouth tightens. “And you know—I know—what could happen . . . if they won’t play.”

  Their eyes meet. She has never seen those eyes look like that, never felt so fiercely how he wants to touch her, to reach out, merely to touch. Or felt such a matching desire.

  “Tel, just do it, will you? I can protect the whole House. Send you wherever you want to go. Money. Transport. Anything. I can do it. Just let me get them out.”

  Doubt flares, a black and sickening flare, saying, screaming, If this is not revenge or insult there is still some other deadlier, undisclosed trap. Something he has side-stepped, something he will not disclose. Even to you.

  She opens her mouth. And the qherrique, or Amberlight, or someone retorts, And is there nothing you have kept from him?

  She shuts her mouth.

  “I’ll speak to the Thirteen.” Voice lifted now, formal enunciation. A perfect pretext to detain me, she thinks, what damnable wits that can set three goals in one: see me alone. Make the House its offer. Seem to make clear that these terms are only a starting point. “I’ll do my best to see that they—consider your terms.”

  The eyes flare. His hands jump, a half-reach that cannot be controlled.

  “But Amberlight is my city.” Quieter now, for his ears alone. “Whatever terms we make, we make for us all.”

  Distress, consternation. Alkhes’ black anger sparked with the imperial affront of Assandar. And then a wry, more than ironic smile.

  “How did I know you’d say that?” He asks it with pure resignation. Inclines a head, Assandar’s permission. And goes on with Alkhes’ unstoppable presumption, “I’ll see you to the boat.”

  CHAPTER VII

  “Well, ’Rith . . . after all, it’s nothing we didn’t expect.”

  Sunset on Amberlight, the long parched day fading, reluctantly, from a suffused dusty-rose sky. A prickle of early lights below them. And beyond that the noose, the fiery necklace of enemy fires.

  Nothing unexpected, no. Soundlessly, Tellurith sighs. Seeing that other sunset on the Arcis council-chamber, in transit from ruddy sun to pale qherrique glow. H
earing the interminable, predictable, futile uproar, Sevitha and Eutharie bleating about Amberlight tradition and the honor of the House, Damas and Falla fulminating amid Denara and Liony’s, “I told you so’s.” Ti’e’s silence. Averion, chin on hand, thinking furiously. Maeran’s glare.

  And the more than inevitable outburst when she herself says, “We should consider these terms.”

  Before the three-day word war that leaves Tellurith and her backers, Averion, Ti’e, Jura, and press-ganged Ciruil of Terraqa, deadlocked with Maeran’s supporters who will consider no terms at all.

  Until Zhee’s first words fall like ice-drops into the quiet.

  “We should hear Telluir.”

  A measure of Zhee’s unacknowledged leadership, that Maeran herself only gasps.

  “We can afford to cancel recompense—except for the Navy ships. We can afford to—consider—changed negotiations over price. We can afford to promise consideration of a Council with foreign representatives.”

  A pause.

  “We do not, naturally, consider vassalship. Or abolition of any House. Or failure to produce the assassin’s source.”

  Terms on the qherrique need not be discussed.

  Maeran draws an enormous breath. “But, Ruand—”

  Zhee lifts one crabbed, imperative hand. “While arguing, we can also find out—why we are offered these terms.”

  * * * *

  How much, Tellurith wonders again, does Zhee guess? Even accept? Behind that lizard’s impassivity, impossible to tell. Except it is Zhee who decrees negotiations shall be carried forward by Telluir House.

  Freezing Maeran’s protests with, “Are you personally acquainted with the general?”

  Do I alone, she wonders, seeing those black eyes lift across the table, recognize the burning anxiety, the starvation, behind that commander’s face?

  Can I alone decipher the tiny shifts of hope, affirmation, unsurprised exasperation as I speak?

  Or the tap of a knuckle on the table rim, unconscious habit of thought that is not, and yet so heart-shakingly is Alkhes?

  Before he sits back and says, expressionless, “If we cancelled compensation—on what grounds does Amberlight exclude its ships?”

  * * * *

  As well, Tellurith considers, that she is a House-head, proofed against endless negotiations and word-wars from birth. Because Assandar is an opponent who presses her to the wall on every point, with equal wits, and uncanny anticipation, and perhaps greater endurance than hers.

  Then when that first session has left her feeling like a squashed pomegranate, says coolly, “I shall escort the Ruand to her boat.” Leaving her to wonder, Which of us most wants to get the other alone?

  In the preamble to evening their steps clack across the deserted stones. Amberlight’s unofficial market-place, once. Awnings, stalls, small animal pens, swept clean. Briefly, Tellurith mourns. Turning to see aides and troublecrew a decorous ten paces behind. Before she asks, “Why are you bothering with all this?”

  “Tel-l-l . . .”

  The hiss is long-drawn exasperation. Disbelief.

  “You don’t need a siege.” What disadvantage to point out what he must already know? “You could take us any day.”

  “Haven’t you been listening? Can’t you imagine the price? Do you think, in a sack, I could keep this lot,” wave of an arm to the squalid Cataract bivouacs, strewn piecemeal about the siege-wall, “under control? Gods damn it, Tel!”

  “You know perfectly well we will never take those terms.”

  “You’re talking, aren’t you?”

  “But for what?”

  They reach the carpet’s end, swing, part the troublecrew. It is another three strides before he speaks again.

  “Don’t you know?”

  Her eyes go sideways of themselves. It is all she can do not to tear off the burnished breastplate, kilt, officer’s cloak. To reach the slight resilient body underneath, the flesh and blood that is all and only Alkhes.

  Like him, she is out of breath. “You didn’t care before about—price.”

  “What?”

  “At the first assault.”

  “Like you, I tow a cart-load of nincompoops.” Irony. With a hurtful bite. “In particular, the Dhasdein brigadiers. So five hundred men—people—had to die—to prove I spoke the truth.”

  “About the light-guns?”

  Twist of the lips. Ducked head.

  “Pity the lesson couldn’t have been first-hand.”

  A disconcerting revision of view. Grown terrifying. That no more than she does he have absolute control or command. That he has to manage an unruly crew of doubtful allies and pushing subordinates. That . . .

  “Should we be talking like this?”

  Quick glance, doubled irony. Sudden open grin.

  “Oh, they’re as sure I’ll bewitch you as the Thirteen are that you can off-side me.”

  A punch in the heart. Not the anticipation, or the insult, but the smile. That says, And I’ll let them think it. For nothing more than this.

  “Alkhes . . .”

  “Damn, clythx, I never meant to hurt you—oh, damn, damn—” under his breath now, humor utterly gone. “Damn, if we could just—”

  “No. No.” Torment that it must all be public. That they must not stop walking, must not speak openly, touch. Mercy, she thinks, as the knife turns. Because if I laid hands on him I would not let go.

  “Tel, just forget the damn talks—” he has swung round as if he cannot stop himself. “Stay here, I can look after you—Amberlight doesn’t matter—gods’ eyes, every time I think about what could happen in there I go crazy, clythx, please . . .”

  The pain burns like fire. Her whole body cries to turn to him, to throw away House and rank and Amberlight, to cross that eighteen inches of impossibility and shout, Yes!

  And what will his unruly wolves say?

  What will Iatha and Zuri say?

  She clenches her fists. Feels the nails, with vague astonishment, go through the skin, and recalls, in some strange corner of her mind, blood on white table-cloth, a black, bowed head.

  “Alkhes.” Where is her breath? “I can’t.”

  “Damn it, Tel . . .”

  “I can’t leave my House.”

  Iatha. Hanni. Shia. Caitha. Ahio. Zuri. Verrith and Azo.

  The names, the presences rise between them. She can see the roll-call in his face.

  Before he bends his head. Says, faint with more than wits’ exhaustion, “I’ll see you to the boat.”

  * * * *

  “It’s not like,” Iatha, valiantly casual, “we didn’t know.”

  That the Thirteen, agrees Tellurith, leaning on the balustrade now, staring out into the slow, slow onset of night, would never accept those terms. That they could not accept those terms. That under them, Amberlight would die.

  That under those terms, whatever I may know about the internal corruption, about the old form of the city, matters not at all.

  “So that is your City’s final word?”

  Zhee to back her, that time. Tellurith demanded it. She needs more than troublecrew to withstand the eyes, named and known and doubly dangerous now, at their general’s back. The Dhasdein brigadiers, big, beefy, confident men whose scowls have darkened by the day. The sullen, black-burnt Verrain cavalry captains, who have had to forage for this extended blockade. The infinite menace of the Cataract officers, whose blank eyes say, We are doing a job. However it is done, we will be paid.

  “Amberlight will agree to cancel compensation claims, even for the Navy ships, to match with yours. We will negotiate a new way to fix prices. We will consider, once the siege is over, admission to City councils of a foreign representative. We will waive identification and punishment of the assassin’s master. But to ask that we renounce independent rule, or change our
Craft-laws, or alter our living ways, is to destroy Amberlight.”

  “You would sooner see your city sacked? Your people dead?”

  “We would sooner die.”

  It resounds into the silence. In Zhee’s remote, silvery tones, the timbre of ultimate truth.

  * * * *

  “You knew it would go this way from the start.”

  “I thought you backed me in this! You listened when I told you what they do with the things! You refused Verrain! I thought you understood—I thought you wanted it stopped!”

  “Not by destroying my city! My life!”

  “Tel—gods damn it—” he swings from the tent wall. His own tent, aides and allies and servants expelled, all camouflage shed. “I thought you knew—I thought you agreed—that it’s bad?”

  “What?”

  “God’s eyes!” A stamp and snatch at his hair that is all Assandar. “The pearl-rock—what’s done with it, what it’s doing—to Cataract, to Dhasdein. What it’s doing inside the City. River Quarter. The Houses. The imbalance of wealth—of power.”

  “Is it so good anywhere else?”

  “Never mind anywhere else! Anywhere else doesn’t turn its men into catamites—doesn’t kill a woman’s child!”

  Tellurith feels her face go white.

  “You must have felt it, Tel. What he—your husband’s like. A pampered stud-horse. And if he gets sons it destroys you both. What it’s doing to you all! Damn it, there are bad customs elsewhere, but not so bad as that!”

  There are no words she can speak.

  “And all for some ingrown goddamned historical—prejudice! Just because the tradition says men can’t work qherrique!”

  The heart dies in her chest.

  “You must understand, Tel. You must see it. You see and feel and know everything else, you cried for those poor idiots in River Quarter, you understood me when I was—can’t you understand this?”

  The eyes, the voice, the outheld hands are tearing the heart out of her. Yes, she wants to cry, to scream, I understand, I know, it should all be changed, I want to give you what you want, yes, yes!

  But I can’t.

  The light is dying, momently. Outside, and in his eyes. Over her heartbeat, she almost hears him breathe. Before he drops his hands.