Tsecha swept his right hand across the table. Not strictly a negative gesture, but not one that allowed for much hope either. “Shai does not wish the Haárin to trade with humanish, especially materials as sensitive as those that treat water. It is more blending than she can bear, and truly.”
“It is a vast step.” Feyó leaned forward so she could speak to them both. “Since we ourselves will not be drinking this water or attempting to reclaim the filter assemblies, we do not feel there is a violation of our dietary protocols. But nìaRauta Shai is born-sect, and as such is conservative in the extreme. We are at a loss, and truly, as to how to convince her to reconsider.” She looked up at Jani and held out her hand. “Ná Kièrshia. It is a pleasure to meet you at last.”
Jani hesitated before shaking hands. “Glories of the day to you, ná Feyó.” She seemed to be trying not to smile, but since Feyó smiled at her, what difference could it make? “May your gods and mine allow for a seemly outcome to this muddle.”
Then Anais Ulanova reentered the room, followed closely by Li Cao, and brought an end to all smiles. Cao held her hands in front of her, as would a youngish who reached for her parent. She appeared as surprised, even angry. Tsecha had seen her look as such before, but never had her good friend Anais been the cause for her alarm.
Tsecha watched the women take their seats, then he looked up the table at his Jani. She had already sat down, her balance easy and sure. Angel on a pin. She watched the women, as well, her face as stripped of feeling as her voice had been when she told Tsecha what she had done. No more than was necessary. Whatever that was.
Then Anais lifted her gaze. She and Jani looked at one another in that intense humanish way that said something had occurred between them. Tsecha tried to analyze the look, define it as his handheld defined words, but the challenge of spoken humanish language was as nothing compared to this, their language between the lines.
His pondering was interrupted when Daès returned, followed by Shai. The Suborn Oligarch offered him her own intensity, a subtle rounding of her shoulders that foretold the tone of their next encounter.
Papers shuffled. Shai’s suborn raised her head to speak, a sign that decisions had been made and this meeting neared its end. “It is considered that the contract signed between the representatives of the Elyan Haárin enclave and they of the Commonwealth colony should be set—should be—” The suborn’s voice faltered. The murmurs from the banked seats rose once more as Anais Ulanova raised her hand.
She did not sit straight and tall as she spoke, as she had before. Her words did not emerge strong, but came softly, almost as a whisper. Several times, the swell of sound from the other humanish overwhelmed her, compelling her to repeat herself. “…reconsidered the Exterior position,” she said as Cao watched her, her own confusion displaying itself in the constant working of her fingers. “…safety of the Karistos water supply is of paramount importance…needs of the citizenry….”
Tsecha looked out at Burkett, who sat with his hand to his face, finger curled over his upper lip, his eyes on Jani. The other Cabinet suborns watched her as well, Standish from Treasury and all the others who found her during every recess or questioned her in the hallways. They did not appear triumphant, though. They did not seem pleased. Surprised, yes, as Shai appeared surprised, shoulders straightening in puzzlement as her suborn took notes, flowing script coursing across the surface of her recording board. For while it was Anais Ulanova who spoke as herself, it was Jani Kilian’s words that she uttered, the same words heard in this room only a few days before. Words that Anais herself had denied as foolish and without merit.
Anais completed her mouthing of Jani’s words. Then came the scratch of styli, the rustle of documents, the occasional swallowed cough.
The waiting.
Tsecha watched Shai. He had known her since their youngish days, when he lived at Temple and she schooled there. They had despised one another from their first meeting. But it had been a dull, simple dislike, not the pitched battle of wills and ideologies that would have led to an offer of challenge. Until now. If you challenge my Jani, I will challenge you. He watched her page through her documents using only her thumb and forefinger, as though she picked petals from a thorny bloom. You even fear paper, Shai. How do you think to govern Haárin?
“I am surprised, Your Excellency, at your most sudden change of mind,” Shai finally said, after she had plucked the last of her pages. “I have known since my arrival of your distrust of idomeni, and I felt most sure of your decision in this.”
Tsecha felt the clench in his soul as his shoulders rounded. “You hoped for her to take action so you would not have to take it yourself. You wished her distrust of idomeni to obscure your distrust of humanish and of your own Haárin. You are dishonest, Shai.”
No murmurs followed Tsecha’s words. No sound of any type, or movement, either. He could sense Jani’s stare from downtable. But he knew that if he turned to her, she would try to compel him to silence, and now was not the time for such. She had already done what she felt was necessary, and bent Anais to her will. Now, it was his turn to bend Shai to his.
Shai’s fingers shook as she reached for a piece of paper that she did not need. Such had been her way at Temple school, when she nursed her angers until they caused her stylus to shake and blot her writing. “Your opinion has no place here, Tsecha.” Her voice shook as well, as it had always done. “Your right to speak for Vynshàrau is no more.”
Tsecha gestured insignificance. Next to him, he could sense Feyó’s surprise, the sudden spark of tension. “I have said already that I do not speak as ambassador.”
“Then you will speak not.”
“As Tsecha Égri, I will speak as Haárin. The Elyan Haárin traveled here to speak for themselves, therefore Haárin are allowed to speak!”
Shai’s shoulders curved in extreme upset—if she had been humanish, one would think her violently ill. “You cannot speak as one, then the other, Tsecha—such is as ridiculous!”
Thank you, Shai—in your clumsiness, you provide me the opening I require. “But Vynshàrau and Haárin have always worked together, Shai. Haárin served us most well during the war of our ascendancy. Many of our military strategists have stated that without their assistance, we would not have won. That without their actions during the Night of the Blade, we would not have maintained that victory.”
“Vynshàrau have always acknowledged the acts of Haárin, Tsecha. You are not the only one in this room who remembers the war. Godly though it was, it changed us all.” Shai looked in Jani’s direction, but so far had she come down the damned path of discretion that she did not mention Knevçet Shèràa. “We who honor our traditions wish to mend all that fractured during that time, and to reaffirm the pact between Vynshàrau and Haárin.”
“Tradition.” Tsecha tugged at his red-trimmed sleeves, as he had at every meeting. His own tradition—he took comfort in it now. “In our born-sect tradition of dominant and suborn, we offer respect for respect, protection for honor. Even as a dominant compels obedience, so must their domination be as godly, as seemly. We do not misuse our suborns as humanish have at times misused those who served them.” That comment drew a rise of discontent from the banked seats, but such did not bother Tsecha. He liked humanish a great deal, but he had read their histories and he knew their faults. “We reserve that misuse for our Haárin. We send them to fight when it suits us. To kill. To die. We send them into this city, demand that they forfeit their souls so that our utilities function and our gardens remain alive. And then when they take one action to help themselves maintain the life they have, we demand that they cease, because we suddenly fear them when they do what they do.”
“To live with humanish!” Shai’s humanish restraint shattered. She bowed her back and twisted her neck in an extreme exclamation of outrage as Tsecha had not seen since Temple. “To sell them the mechanisms of our food and water!” She flicked her hand in disgust at the Elyan Haárin. “To dress as they do, ta
lk and act as they do! To behave in godless ways and then come here and demand our benediction as they do so!”
As one, Feyó and the other Elyan Haárin slumped into postures of extreme defense. “Such have we always done!” cried the male in black and orange.
Tsecha raised a hand, gesturing for the male to restrain himself. “Indeed. Such have they always done. The Haárin serve as our blade, and a blade does no good in its sheath. It only serves when it cuts, even when it cuts the one who wields it. Such is as it is—it knows no other way!” He sagged back in his chair—the act of blessed disputation drained so. “To live as idomeni is to live in balance. Within our skeins, our sects, our worldskein, all must be as symmetrical. Cooperation occurs, even between the most opposite. Differences are acknowledged, but they do not eliminate collaboration. Or as the humanish say, give and take.” He bared his teeth at the phrase, since it reminded him of Hansen.
“Our gods do so,” he continued. “Give and take. Shiou and Caith have walked together on the Way since the birth of the First Star. They battle, yes. Such is their way. But for one to live without the other? Such desolation! How could one define themselves if the other did not exist?” He held his hands out to Shai in entreaty. Think! As you have not done since Temple, think! “How does the order of Vynshàrau define itself if the chaos of Haárin does not exist? And if you compel Haárin to draw back into the worldskein, to cease to function as our blade, where is our balance?” His hands dropped. So quickly he had lost the will to argue, but how long could he posit that air was to be inhaled with one who insisted upon holding her breath? “So speaks the priest, which I will be for not much longer, if Cèel has his way. Yet so I speak, regardless. Order must be maintained, and if the Haárin are not allowed to do as they must, then so ends order. Will you end order here, Shai? In this room, now, will you cause it to cease to be?”
Shai had gradually straightened as Tsecha spoke. Not, he knew, because his words did not anger her, but because her bones were old and she could not maintain the true posture of rage. “You have had your life to practice twisting words as rope around your adversary’s neck, Tsecha. One who has not studied as you have suffers a disadvantage.” She fingered the edge of a document, tapped the end of her stylus on the table, delayed as humanish delayed when the last thing they wanted to do was decide. “If these filters are provided to the Karistos humanish, they will be gone from us. It will be as though they never existed.”
Feyó’s back unbent gradually. “Indeed, nìaRauta, such is so. The assemblies will be turned over to the humanish engineers to reconstruct as they will—we will never see them again.”
Shai sat in silence, until humanish fidgeted and sneaked glances at their timepieces. But in the end, she acceded to the will of the gods, because she was a most orderly Vynshàrau, and as such, it was the only thing she could do.
They stood outside the meeting room afterward, in the huddled groups that humanish always formed after such occasions. Tsecha watched them gather, break apart, then gather once more. Like mist into droplets, Hansen had used to say. Just watch out for the flood.
“I still don’t believe they gave the OK. Shai was one baby-step away from adjourning the meeting.” Standish pushed a hand through his hair, which had grown more curly and unruly in the heat of the embassy.
“She really didn’t have a choice. Neither of them did.” Jani leaned against the wall. Her eyes had dulled. She looked as tired, as pained. “The citizens of one of the largest colonial capitals go without potable water because a Family sweetheart deal prevents them from implementing the quick-fix? That’s a kick in the head to every pro-colonial claim the government has made since the spring, and they can’t afford to act that way anymore.”
“They saw the light?” Burkett wiped a cloth over his face, which shone with sweat. His hair looked as though he had walked in rain. “Somebody saw something, and it sure as hell wasn’t the light. I can’t carry tales of smoke-filled rooms back to Mako, Kilian—I need to know what the hell is going on.”
Jani’s wearied manner did not alter as she regarded the angry general. She had seen him enraged so many times—perhaps she had grown used to such. “What would any intelligent being consider to be the desired outcome of this?” She waited for Burkett to respond, even though she must have known that he would not. “A working water treatment facility for Karistos, right? Well, we’ll have it if we keep on top of it, and I gave nothing away. That’s goal in this game, by any measure.” She pushed off the wall and walked to Tsecha, her step slow. “If you’ll excuse us.” She took his arm and pulled him down the hall. “Let’s see—how much trouble are you in now?” she asked when they had walked far enough away to not be overheard.
Tsecha looked back at their group, which had already re-coalesced. Other droplets formed nearby, with members moving from one to another quite freely. The flood begins… “My theology is quite sound, nìa.”
“Yes, I’m sure it is. Shai has probably already Misty’d a recording to the Temple scholars with an order to come up with a rebuttal immediately.” She turned to watch Anais and PM Cao leave the meeting room; neither looked back at her. “The Elyan Haárin seemed quite pleased.”
Tsecha bared his teeth. “We are to meet after early evening sacrament to discuss their situation.”
“Their situation?” Jani smiled. “Congratulations, nìRau, you’ve become a lobbyist.” She looked at him. Her true eyes had shown for but a short time, yet it seemed as if they had always been such. “You’re lucky that Cèel can’t afford trouble with the Haárin—their support may save your life. That life, however, may be very different from the one you have now.”
Tsecha hesitated, then hunched his shoulders in a humanish shrug. “It is the life I am to have. The life on the edge of the blade.” His soul ached as he pondered the quiet of the embassy, a quiet in which he took comfort, but that he had most assuredly sacrificed. “I will not be alone, nìa, of that I am most sure. You will be there, I believe, if only to anger General Burkett.”
“That’s a full-time job.” Jani looked down at the floor. Some time passed before she spoke. “You still call me nìa. That’s wrong—you should call me ná, in proper Haárin fashion.”
“I shall call you as I wish, nìa.”
Her eyes brightened. Her idomeni eyes. “Does that mean I can still call you Nema?”
Tsecha gripped her chin and tilted her head upward. Gently this time, in deference to her pain. “That is not my name.”
Jani’s eyes filled, mist into droplets. “You know how to reach me, just in case.” She lifted his hand away, squeezing it just before she let it go. “Be careful, ní Tsecha.”
Tsecha watched her walk away. Her strange colonel waited in the entry for her. Pierce, who seemed so much as Dathim. We each have our blade, and truly. He wondered whether he would soon have need of his.
Tsecha met with the Elyan Haárin several times over the next days. He greatly esteemed ná Feyó. She was first-generation Haárin, an agronomist who had been expelled from the Academy before the war. They discussed her theories from sunrise to sunset and beyond. How the idomeni insistence on grown food played a major role in holding back their colonial expansion, how synthesized foods as those humanish used offered the best solution to this problem. Such discourse thrilled him, terrified him, and told him how much he needed to learn to consider himself true Haárin.
The morning the Elyan Haárin departed, Tsecha rose to bid them well. He stood out on the beach in the cold damp as their demiskimmer took to the air and veered toward HollandPort, watching it until it vanished in the glare of the rising sun. When he turned back to the embassy, he did not feel surprise to see Shai’s suborn waiting for him atop the grassy rise. He only wondered why Shai delayed as long as she had.
“Seat yourself, Tsecha.” Shai sat at her work table, the latest delivery of Council documents stacked in piles around her. “So, your Haárin have departed.”
“They are not my Haárin, Shai.”
“Are they not?” She looked at him, her posture still as clenched as it had been days before. “Whose are they, then? Not mine. That I know, and truly.” She paged through one file, then another, as though what she sought was so unimportant that she had lost it. Tsecha had often seen Anais Ulanova do the same—he wondered if Shai had stolen the strategy from her.
Shai finally found what she searched for at the bottom of a high stack of files. She must have worked quite hard, to lose the fate of her Chief Propitiator so completely. “Cèel is most angry with you.”
Tsecha squirmed against the seat back. The discomfort of Shai’s seat aggravated him, for he had grown used to the comfort of Haárin chairs over the past days. “Such does not surprise me.”
“So angry is he that he did not record his own pronouncement of your fate. He had his documents suborn write it out, and sent it to me to read.”
Tsecha laughed. “He thinks he can mislead the gods by obscuring his trail! How humanish he becomes!” His laughter grew even more as Shai’s back hunched. “Pronounce my fate, Shai. In Cèel’s words, which he denies before they are even uttered.”
Shai hesitated before she spoke. When the words sounded at last, they came quickly, as Vynshàrau, showing that Cèel had not yet lost himself completely. “Haárin you say you are. Therefore Haárin you will be, from this time forth.” She closed the file, and pushed it away as though the contents repelled her. “You bring disorder upon us, Tsecha. Chaos. Never has a Chief Propitiator been expelled from office. The humanish will believe us mad.”
“The humanish can match us, madness for madness. Some may even wonder why Cèel waited so long.” Tsecha regarded his red-trimmed cuffs for the last time. “NìaRauta Sànalàn is not ready.”
“Lecturers from Temple will arrive as soon as their absences can be arranged. They will see to her instruction.”
“And you will continue here as ambassador?”
Law of Survival Page 41