"Tharius Don," boomed Jondrigar, "Propagator of the Faith. This young person is a strong warrior for the faith, Tharius Don. She is a great soldier for Lees Obol!"
This said, he peered intently at Tharius Don to see how it was received. The general had already determined that his view in the matter was to be the only one permitted.
From a window above them in the palace, Gendra Mitiar and Shavian Bossit stared down, Gendra's nails raking her face in agitation; Shavian, as usual, was inscrutably calm. Behind them in the room, Bormas Tyle strained for a glimpse of the ceremonial group assembled in the square, but his line of sight was obscured by the fountain which threw a curtain of spray across the assemblage. He grimaced, his knife sliding ominously in and out of its sheath as he stared at Gendra's back. No matter. Soon things would be arranged differently. Soon enough, no one would place himself so impolitely relative to Bormas Tyle, so carelessly respecting his dignity.
Shavian Bossit turned from the window and winked at him, only a twitch in that impassive face, but enough for Bormas Tyle to understand. He took his hand from his knife and went to find another window.
Soon it would not matter. Meantime, he, too, would observe the spectacle.
In the square below, Tharius Don blinked away the spray of the fountain and replied, "I know she is a soldier for Lees Obol, General. Pamra Don cares greatly for the Protector of Man." He stared at the child. It looked deeply into his eyes, making him uncomfortable.
The general shifted from foot to foot a little uncertainly. His imagination had carried him no further than this formal declaration, though he now felt that something more was warranted. He had feelings inside himself for which he had no name, feelings of anxiety, perhaps even of fear, as though recent events presaged dangers that would be inevitably derived from them, yet which he could not foresee.
"What is she to do here?" the general demanded, coming to practical matters.
"She is to be my guest," said Tharius Don. "She and the child. I have had a suite prepared for her . . . them. We will talk of her crusade. Perhaps she should meet with Lees Obol."
"Yes." The general nodded, his face clearing like a lowering sky after storm. "Oh, yes, she should meet with Lees Obol." Thus relieved of responsibility, he stepped back, satisfied for the moment, though Tharius Don knew his natural and chronic paranoia would overtake him before much time had passed.
Tharius Don offered his hand, courteously. Pamra Don took it, shining-faced. She turned to bow toward the general. "Thank you for my armor, General Jondrigar. We will talk again of this great war we fight together."
In the guest suite, high above the courtyard, Pamra Don went immediately to the windows to fling them wide. Neff had not followed her through the corridors, as her mother and Delia had, but he stood at once on the ledge outside the window, smiling through it at her, his radiance lighting the room.
"Would you like to put the baby down and put on something a little more comfortable?" Tharius Don suggested.
"I didn't bring any clothes," she said simply, not seeming to care.
He opened the armoire, showing her a rack of soft robes and shoes. "These would fit you, Pamra. They belonged to the lady Kesseret, of Baris. She wore them when she was here."
"The Superior!" Her eyes flashed and her lips twisted. "Liar!"
Tharius sighed. He had wondered whether Pamra held some such opinion. "When did Kesseret ever lie to you, Pamra?"
"The Awakeners lied. About the Holy Sorters. They lied."
"When did Kesseret ever lie to you?"
"Full of lies and filth about the workers, none of it true. I have come to appeal to Lees Obol, the Protector of Man. It is better if man knows the truth."
"When," Tharius repeated patiently, "did Kesseret ever lie to you?"
The glaze left her eyes and she looked at him uncertainly.
He said it again. "When did Kesseret ever lie to you?"
"She was Superior."
"When did she ever lie to you?"
"Not she," Pamra admitted, "but ..."
"Kesseret would never have lied to you," he concluded. "Ilze lied to you, I have no doubt. But it is unfair of you to blame the lady Kesseret, my dear friend, your cousin."
"Cousin?" She had not expected this, this homely word from a long-ago childhood, before the Tower. "Cousin."
"Cousin, yes. Can you remember your grandmother?"
Pamra's lips twisted again, but she nodded, yes.
"Her father was my son. And Kesseret is my cousin."
She did not make the connection at once. It came only gradually, almost against her will. "You are - you are my great-great-grandfather?"
"Say merely 'ancestor,' it is easier. Yes. Which is one of the reasons I have brought you here. We are family. Indeed, we are the only remnants of the family. Your half sisters are dead, so I am told. Without children. You and I, Pamra, are all the Dons."
He did not want to talk with her about her crusade. He did not want to talk with her about the lies told in Towers or the obscene stupidity of the workers. He did not want to defend the status quo or to tell her the truth about the cause, for she might blurt it all out, unwittingly, even angrily, and then where would they be? He wanted to talk to her about the Dons, about Baris, about easy, sentimental things. It was a need in him.
But Pamra did not help him. She turned to the window where Neff blazed in the air, hearing his voice ringing in her ears. "I must see Lees Obol," she said, putting aside everything Tharius had said as though it had been wind sound, the chirping of swig-bugs, meaningless. "Since you are family, you will help me see him."
"Of course." He sighed. "Tomorrow. He is a very old man; he sleeps much of the time. Tomorrow morning, very early." If one was to get any sense out of Lees Obol, the very early morning was the only possible time, though in recent months even that was unlikely.
"Not now?" She was disappointed, but not angry at the delay. She had come almost to welcome delay, so long as it was inevitable. Things had gone at such a pace, such a headlong plunge, that at times she felt she could not encompass all that was happening. Delay gave a space. Inevitable delay could not be questioned, not even by the voices. Sighing, she sat down.
"Would you like to take off your armor?" Tharius Don asked again. "Put on one of these robes, Pamra Don, and we will have something to eat together. It is time you and I spoke, don't you think?"
Yet still she looked past him to the window, not seeing him, and he gave it up, sending in one of the servants instead, a heavy-bodied woman who would peel Pamra out of the tight fishskin armor and the high helm at Tharius Don's command. As she did, coming grim-lipped from the room.
"That's no dress for a woman. What kind of heretic is this? What's the matter with that child?"
"Never mind, Matron. Just see that the luncheon I've ordered is sent up promptly."
The thought of food made him slightly ill. He had not eaten for days, perhaps for weeks. His body refused food, even though he was light-headed sometimes from hunger. He told himself it was only the imminence of the strike, the ultimate victory of the cause, but even telling himself this could not make his tongue enjoy the taste or his throat want to swallow. He had always felt his vision was clearer while he was fasting. Perhaps he fasted instinctively now, desiring the resultant clarity. Still, Pamra had to eat. The child had to be fed. Pamra seemed to be mostly skin stretched over slender bones. He did not look into the mirror to see how this description suited himself as well. "Send up the luncheon," he repeated to the servant's departing back.
She was gone with a fluster of skirts and a tight-lipped grunt. To spread more rumor, no doubt, thought Tharius. Rumor, the blood of the Chancery. Which we suck together, more, and yet more.
They sat together at a small table set by the window. The child drank water. Pamra ate almost nothing, and that little without any indication of enjoyment.
"What is the child's name?" he asked her.
"Lila," she answered. She told him about Lila.
He understood about one-tenth of what she said, and disbelieved most of that. The child was very strange. Its expression was not childlike. The way it moved was not childlike. It could not be her sister, and yet it could not be what she said it was, either. Tharius turned his eyes away to poke at the food without tasting it, watching this year's flame-bird as it built its tinder nest on the ledge, flying back and forth across the window with beak’s full of fiber from the pamet fields.
"Do you see him?" she asked suddenly, her eyes fixed on the open window.
"The flame-bird, yes."
"Flame-bird," she said. Yes. Neff was a flame-bird, born from the flame of his funeral pyre. How clever of this man, this ancestor, to have known. She reached out to take his hand, wanting to share with him what she knew, what she felt, about Neff, about Delia, about the God of man. Words poured from her, a spate of words, tumbling over one another in their haste to be spoken.
"Tell me," he asked finally, marveling at what he thought she was saying to him, "is Neff in the keeping of the God of man?"
She nodded urgently. "Yes, oh, yes."
"But he is not a man. Neff, I mean. Treeci, didn't you say. Not human at all." Treeci! His heart pounded. The Treeci existed. They really did. Just as the books had said, just as they needed to be. Beautiful. Civilized. As the Thraish would be, too.
"Neff was a Treeci. Not human?"
"Not then, no," she said. "But now, now he is..." She had not thought of this before, but of course he was. She saw him, radiantly winged, not the Neff of Strinder's Isle, but Neff with arms to hold her and a mouth that spoke to her, kissed her gently through the flames. "He's a man now. Not like I am, or you, Tharius Don. Something finer than that."
"An angel, perhaps." He was trembling, awed, feeling himself in the presence of something exalted and marvelous.
She considered this. "Angel" was a very ancient word, but one that every Northshoreman knew. A kind of beneficent spirit. Without sex or identity or kind.
Suddenly she knew that was exactly what he was. "An angel, yes," in a tone of ringing rapture that made him want to weep.
"And the general saw all this, when you explained it to him!"
She tried to explain this as well, and Tharius Don's soul, ever eager for proof of his thesis; took it in like water upon sun-parched earth. Even in this unlikely soil, goodness would grow! Oh, if Pamra Don could find a soul in Jondrigar and warm it to thaw, what might she not do for the Thraish! He longed for someone to discuss this with. Kessie. Kessie had told him the girl had this talent. Why had he not understood what Kessie meant? She had called it "recruiting' but it was so much more than that! Oh, if Kessie were here. But she was not! No one was. Only himself, and Pamra Don, and the world out there waiting a message from him.
Which he had dreaded to send. Which he had put off sending for some little time.
The cause had been ready for a year or more, ready as it would ever be, and yet he had not sent the word. Why? He had asked himself this, morn and evening, wondering whether his own dedication was as great as it once had been. Was it failing purpose? Or did he fear his own inevitable death when the elixir was no longer available?
Or was his delay, his procrastination, foreordained, perhaps, in order to allow this thing, this miraculous thing, to happen.
"You told the general the truth," he urged, "and the general accepted that?"
She nodded. That was what had happened.
He shook his head, awestruck into silence. She had told the truth, and the general had accepted it. Tharius Don had never doubted the existence of the divine, and her statement confirmed his belief. Yes. He had delayed in ordering the strike because something greater than himself had chosen that he do so. Perhaps the Dons had indeed been chosen for something marvelous, for some great purpose.
But it might be Pamra Don, not Tharius, who was to accomplish this great thing.
He stared at her, watching the glitter of her eyes as though it had been stars, moving in the heavens to spell out a command.
There was a knock at the door, a knock too soft to break through his reverie, which was then repeated until he heard it. A messenger with a letter from Shavian Bossit. He broke the seal and read it, read it without really seeing it. "The Jondarite captain at Split River Pass has received a delegation of Talkers, and they bear a written message as well. Sliffisunda demands Pamra Don be sent to him. The Thraish want her at the Talons for questioning. Gendra and I are inclined to agree it is a good idea, and Gendra offers to escort her and oversee her safety."
Pamra was saying something, but he didn't hear her. He read the message again.
At first it made no sense, but then its purpose bloomed in him like some gigantic, fiery flower, its perfume enwrapping him, spinning him in a sudden delirium.
Pamra Don was wanted at the Talons, by the Thraish. Pamra Don, who had done a thing for the cause that Tharius Don had never thought of doing. Pamra Don, who had converted the general in one day. Pamra Don, who saw the souls of Treeci and people reborn as angels.
And yet, how could he know? How could he be sure? He turned to her with a fierce and longing love to demand the answer.
"If you were to speak to the Talkers - to the fliers, Pamra. If you were to tell them the truth, would they believe?"
She looked at him uncertainly, past him at the glowing figure of Neff, outside the window. Radiant. Breast stained with red, nodding to her as he always did. Yes, yes, anything was possible, anything was conceivable. Yes. "Talkers?" she asked.
"The fliers. The fliers who talk. You know." She did not know. Still, anything that talked should be told the truth.
"It's better to know the truth," she said. Neff would know. Wasn't he kin to the fliers? Wouldn't he know?
"If I send you to them, Pamra? Can you convert them as you did General Jondrigar?"
"It's better when people know the truth," she said again, a thing she often said when nothing else seemed to fit, for that is what Neff often said to her. Her voice was calm, her face serene, still colored by the rapture that often came over it. "It's better to know the truth."
He took it for affirmation.
"Rest," he told her with an exultant glad smile. "I'll come back and talk with you more later."
He went down to the council meeting, where Jorn and Mitiar, with their arguments for sending Pamra to the Thraish well rehearsed and arranged, were amazed to find such disputation unnecessary.
"I agree Pamra Don should go to the Thraish. Take her," Tharius said. "Keep her safe, Gendra, but take her along. Take her, and the child, but be sure she talks to Sliffisunda himself."
"I think Sliffisunda will require that," Shavian interjected in a dry voice. "There will be no problem." He wanted to ask Tharius what had happened to him. The man was dizzy with joy, like a child on festival morning when the Candy Tree had grown in the night. Like a young Chanceryman at his first elixir ceremony.
Full of light. Buoyed up. It was almost tempting to delay the meeting a little in order to find out why, but Gendra's offer to leave the Chancery was too much a godsend to risk losing. Easier on everyone if she's away for a while, he assured himself. Gives us time to get ready for it. And he glanced at the chairs against the wall where Glamdrul Feynt and Bormas Tyle huddled together, exchanging occasional whispered words. The perfect picture of conspirators, Shavian thought, shaking his head at them warningly.
The three of them had only the bare outline of a plot as yet. It would require three deaths: that of the general, that of Gendra Mitiar, and that of Lees Obol. One, two, three. Like a starting chant for a race. One to get steady, two to get ready, three to go. Since Glamdrul Feynt was to end up as Lord Marshal of the Towers, he would dispose of Gendra Mitiar. Bormas Tyle wanted to be General of the Armies, which meant Jondrigar was his meat. Since Glamdrul and Bormas had charge of the elixir, nothing should be easier for them than a little selective adulteration.
One, two. And then Lees Obol, with Shavian Bossit to take his place as Protector of
Man - three votes in the council guaranteed: Bormas, Glamdrul, and his own - and the assembly already primed to vote for him.
Shavian started from agreeable visions of this future and was brought to himself.
"It's decided, then," Gendra Mitiar intoned. "I'll take her to Red Talons."
"That's closest, yes," Tharius Don approved.
"You'll keep her safe?" asked General Jondrigar, his voice heavy and obdurate as iron, oily with suspicion. "You, Mitiar, you'll keep her safe?"
Gendra smiled maliciously. "Of course, General. Of course I will. That's why I'm going."
The smile made Tharius wince, but only for the instant. Of course the old fish was up to something, but it didn't matter. What did she think of Pamra Don? Did she think anything at all? How could she know that Pamra Don was the divine intervenor, the peace bringer, the messenger of God, sent to mitigate violence and death? The messenger sent to Tharius Don to say he had been right in holding his hand, right to delay the strike. It would not be needed. The Thraish could be converted. The cause might be fulfilled without violence.
"It's settled, then," said Gendra Mitiar. "We'll leave in the morning." She cast an enigmatic look at Ezasper Jorn, who had been silent throughout the meeting. He and Koma Nepor had exchanged two or three carefully casual glances, nothing more, though inwardly they were jubilant. The old crock had fallen for it. She thought she was going to gain support for herself. By the time she got back - it would be too late. If she got back at all.
So, the Council of Seven adjourned. Both they and their ancillary personnel rose to move about the room. Shavian Bossit rang a small bell, its sound hanging in the hall like a strand of tinsel, a bright shivering of metal. Through the high doors came screeching carts bearing tea; a dozen soft-footed servitors in gray livery to tend the tall silver and copper kettles with handles worked into nelfants and gorbons and other mythical animals, the charcoal stoves below them emitting a pungent smoke. Plates of cakes were passed: puncon tarts, nutcakes, sweetbean, and mince. The council members floated upon an ebullience that was infectious, every member of it assured that his or her own ambition was shortly to be fulfilled.
The Awakeners - Northshore & Southshore Page 34