“Look…” Jaryd shook his head in exasperation. “The only reason the priests and the Black Order aren't crawling all over this city, smashing its statues and burning everything, is because they're all up in Shemorane, returning that damn holy star of theirs to the Enoran High Temple. But as soon as that's over, they'll come back here, and there's not a lot your husband can do about that. This is a holy war, being fought to cleanse these lands of any trace of serrin influence—”
“And that is why I must work fast,” Sofy interrupted, “to secure an arrangement within this city before they arrive. Even the Archbishop of Sherdaine cannot argue with the word of the Regent, through me.”
“I wouldn't be so sure of that.”
“Besides which,” Sofy continued, “I do not believe that my husband dislikes the serrin as much as some others. He speaks that language because it is the language his allies and his priests demand, but I have heard him speak of Saalshen's achievements on occasion with admiration.”
“Aye, the way a bully lad will admire another lad's apple, then punch him in the face and take it from him.”
Sofy glared at Jaryd. He was truly being difficult, and she didn't think there was much more to it than his dislike of her being in charge. They had had adventures together, yet in all of those, he was the man with the sword, and his way was always the way taken. Here, he was in her territory and subject to her command. That, of course, and the small matter of jealousy….
Jeddie leaned forward. “I do not see how my people could visit a city such as this,” she said earnestly, “and not be moved by all that the serrin have inspired and created.”
Jaryd smiled humourlessly. “Then I suppose you also fail to see why in this city with its huge serrin population, there's not a single serrin or halfserrin come out to cheer for you today.”
Jeddie frowned. “You're right, I'm not sure I do see.”
“For the gods’ sakes, woman,” Jaryd retorted, “they think they're going to be murdered! You've convinced all the humans, but the one group of folk who most need convincing of their protection are now somewhere on the road to Saalshen.”
“Jaryd, you're being very rude,” Sofy said coldly. “There is no cause to speak to Jeddie like that.”
“Fine,” Jaryd muttered. “I'll take my concern for the serrin elsewhere, you keep on being concerned of your manners.”
He opened the carriage door without bothering to ask for it to slow, and skipped easily to the ground. Behind him, in the clatter of hooves and wheels, remained an uncomfortable pause.
“Very well then,” said Sofy. “There is one place in Tracato I should love to see, but have not yet visited. Jeddie, won't you tell the driver to take us to the Mahl'rhen?”
Jaryd told himself he was only venturing inside to make certain his friends were not going to end up in trouble. The brothel was to his mind a dank and gloomy place, its narrow lobby filled with bored girls dressed in poor imitation of noble ladies. Asym and Jandlys did not care, and approached the girls with the enthusiasm of men gone months without female company. The madam interposed herself, somewhat nervously as Lenay customers were doubtless rare in these parts, but Asym and Jandlys showed her their coin and made their selections, joking that it had been so long, perhaps they should take two girls each.
“And you, good sir?” the madam asked, turning to Jaryd. “My, aren't you handsome? I'll warrant it will take a particularly high-class girl to please your tastes.”
She called in Rhodaani, and a girl emerged from another room, looking irritated. Then she saw Jaryd, and her irritation faded.
“This lovely girl is Elene,” said the madam. “Her price is of course a little higher, but you have the look of a man prepared to pay for the highest quality.”
The girl was truly beautiful: her dark hair bound up to reveal a white curve of neck and shoulder, her waist narrow in the lady's corset. She sauntered to Jaryd, and trailed her fingers on his chest, gazing up at him with sultry fire. Jaryd did indeed feel the stirring in his loins. But mostly, he thought that her cheeks were fatter than Sofy's, and her lips did not quirk with crooked humour, and her eyes did not sparkle as Sofy's did.
“I'm sorry,” he said flatly. “Perhaps another day.” And to his friends as they ascended the stairs, “Take your time, I'm going to explore.”
“Aye,” said Jandlys, admiring the girl beneath his arm, “me too!” The girl looked a little nervous with the big, bearded Lenay, but Jaryd knew she had little to fear from Jandlys. Save for what was in his pants, which he supposed for a girl accustomed to less might be somewhat frightening.
Jaryd retreated onto the road. This was Reninesenn, or Renine's Town, in literal Rhodaani. These were the docks, just a stroll from the harbour, and territory loyal to Family Renine. Those who knew the place insisted that, like most of the city, things were very quiet lately. It did not look very quiet to Jaryd, as people went about their business, a bustle of commerce and tradesmen, officials, merchants, dockworkers, and sailors.
Jaryd stretched his shoulders and looked at the clear sky. He knew he was a fool. He had coin, and like his friends, he hadn't been with a woman in months. The last woman, in fact, had been Sofy. And now here he was, passing up a high-class, if expensive, fuck because he couldn't stop thinking of the impossible.
A man was approaching him. Or was he? For a moment, Jaryd was not sure, for the man wore the wide-brimmed hat common to the lowlands, beneath the brim of which he was glancing from side to side. But now he looked straight, and met Jaryd's eyes. Jaryd put a hand to his sword hilt. The man extended his own hand instead.
“Master Jaryd Nyvar?” Jaryd nodded. “My name is Zulmaher. I am a general in the Rhodaani Steel.”
Jaryd blinked. “General Zulmaher? Who led the invasion of Elisse?” Zulmaher nodded. Jaryd shook his hand. “That was quite a feat of arms, I hear. Though of course, we should be enemies.”
“Many things are not as they should be,” said Zulmaher. He was slightly taller than Jaryd, which was considerable for a lowlander. “You are allied to the Army of the Bacosh, whose allies—the Elissians—I defeated. But now the boot has shifted to the other foot. I hear you are a friend to the Princess Sofy?” Zulmaher's glance shifted to the brothel entrance, and the red lanterns hanging at the threshold. Jaryd wondered how much he guessed.
“I am. I hear you are Lord Alfriedo's right hand these days?”
“The Lord Alfriedo may be young, but he has two hands of his very own. I give him guidance.”
“I see,” said Jaryd.
“He would like to speak with you.”
“With me?” Jaryd frowned.
“Your princess is walking onto very thin ice. Lord Alfriedo and I would like very much to see her succeed, but there are many others who would not. If you wish to safeguard her life, there are things you will need to know.”
Sofy had never seen a place as extraordinary as the Mahl'rhen. Tracato's house of the serrin was less a building than a collection of open spaces, interlinked by chambers, gardens, paths, and low buildings that could not seem to decide where they ended and began. Sofy walked with her grand entourage along winding ways, beneath lattices overgrown with vines and dangling fruit, past semicircular courtyards overlooked by open chambers, and past public pools seemingly suited for bathing that became water features and little falls in the gardens into which they flowed.
She was taken by the pride with which ordinary Tracatans showed off this jewel. As though it were not some alien imposter within their human city as the priests might suggest, but rather an ornament for all Tracatans, human and serrin alike. There was a sadness too, Sofy thought, in that there were no serrin here. Most had fled to Saalshen, as Jaryd had suggested, though Sofy guessed that many more were merely hiding, in safe houses or with sympathetic human families. But the Mahl'rhen was not empty, for in every courtyard or open space there were people, guarding the place from looters and now welcoming these royal guests.
“Did Maldereld build this?�
� Sofy asked Premier Chiron as they walked.
“Oh no,” said Chiron, “Maldereld spent much of her time at the Justiciary. She was many things, but she was no architect. This was previously the land of a castle and great surrounds belonging to a family wiped out in King Leyvaan's invasion of Saalshen. Many serrin wandered Rhodaan, Enora, and Ilduur for years after, and those architects with the most inspiration gathered here, and made something peculiar to human and serrin styles.”
“A tapestry,” Sofy murmured. “Or perhaps a fusion. The serrin mind is surely not like the human.”
“No,” Chiron agreed, a little uncomfortably.
“In a good way,” Sofy hastened to assure him.
As they stood to marvel at a small amphitheatre incorporated into a garden and overlooked on another side by a wall and balconies, Jeddie arrived somewhat breathlessly at Sofy's side.
“Princess, there is someone you should meet. He is asking for you in person.” She pointed to a doorway. “Just in here, it's perfectly safe.”
Two knights insisted on walking with her regardless, and looking inside. Within was an extraordinary room, like many grand chambers save that there was a wide, circular hole in its roof. Beneath that hole was a corresponding wide circle on the floor, ringed with a balustrade. Upon that balustrade were many symbols engraved on copper and inlaid into stone, and across the tiled floor were strange shapes, like angular sculptures, some as tall as a man, but in abstract form.
Jeddie went to an old man who sat overlooking the odd circle, and murmured to him. The knights checked that there was no other way into the chamber, then at Sofy's insistence left them alone.
Jeddie assisted the old man to stand. He wore lordly clothes, a fine silk shirt and boots, and his hair was long and white. But when he faced her, Sofy could see that he was serrin. The knights had not seen his face and eyes, so long was his hair, and so human his clothing.
“Princess Sofy,” said Jeddie, “this is Ambassador Lesthen. He is Saalshen's senior representative in Rhodaan.”
Lesthen made a light bow. Sofy hurried to him and grasped his hands.
“Ambassador. Where are your people? Are they well?”
“I cannot say,” said Lesthen, and his eyes were apologetic. And yet, quite firm. “I am sorry.”
He would not say, Sofy realised. She was the princess of a people whose religious folk swore to destroy all serrin. Whatever intentions she professed, he did not trust her.
“Of course,” she said. “You have decided to remain?”
“I am too old to sacrifice what life I have left on the battlefield,” said Lesthen. “If sacrifice is required, I shall sacrifice here. As ambassador, it is my task to meet with you. My uthis'ul…I am sorry, there is no precise translation in any human tongue. A purpose greater than oneself.”
Sofy sighed. “I have long been envious of my sister Sashandra, that she speaks your tongue and I do not. It does seem precisely the linguistic task I would enjoy most in all the world, whatever its challenges.”
“Sashandra,” said Lesthen with a faint smile. It wrinkled his face, with lines more dry and flat than human wrinkles. “She does speak the tongue well. Of all the humans I have met, I feel that she is perhaps the best equipped of all to understand the serrinim.”
“The best?”
“You are surprised.”
“Well, I admit I do not always think of Sasha as a greatly cultured person,” Sofy said in humour.
“But why should it require great culture to comprehend we serrin?”
Sofy blinked at the old serrin. There was a calm to him that was mesmerising. A presence that was not fearful or anxious, nervous or embarrassed, neither wishing anything from her nor desiring to do anything to her. It was an absence of edges, she realised, the kind of sharp and uneasy edges that characterised so many of her meetings with humans. To him, she was not any of the things that she was to those people, and her being a princess affected him perhaps least of all.
Perhaps this was why Lenays and serrin seemed to get along despite their most obvious differences, she thought. Lenays cared little for rank either. Serrin neither cringed nor begged favours, and as such were perhaps the only foreigners a common Lenay could immediately respect.
“Well,” she answered him, “the serrin are a very cultured people, are you not?”
“If you feel pride in it,” said Lesthen, “then it is not culture.” Sofy frowned, baffled. “What you call culture is like a pretty jewel to wear upon your collar to tell lesser humans that you are superior to them. There is more culture in a farmer's song as he pulls his plough, or in a sailor's game of dice on the dock front. To build it so large as humans do, to make it the preserve of the wealthy and high status, that is not culture. That is pride and power, masquerading as such.”
“Yet your people build such grand institutions of culture in Tracato!” Jeddie protested.
Lesthen smiled. “Do you think that our presence here has nothing to do with pride and power? We are here to impress, and sometimes even to frighten. That much at least have we learned of your ways.”
“And why does Sasha understand you best?” Sofy asked.
“Because she sees our flaws, and distrusts our wisdom, and curses us for the fools we often are, even as she takes one of us into her bed.” Lesthen sighed, and leaned on the balustrade railing. “She does not gaze in amazement at all we have built, rather she despairs that we have built all of this without first testing to see that the foundation is firm. As I do now.”
Sofy walked to his side and gazed upon the odd shapes on the sunlit floor. “What manner of place is this? I've never seen anything like it.”
“This place is to study the sky,” said Lesthen. He pointed up at the rim of the circle above them. “The marks there indicate the positions of stars viewed from a certain point on the floor, at different seasons and periods. Knowing such, it is possible to tell precisely the hour, even in the darkest night.
“And these shapes upon the floor are to measure the passage of the sun by observing the movement of its shadow, and to watch the phases of the moon. If I were more knowledgeable on such things, I could tell you more, but alas, I am but a humble ambassador, and with my head full of languages and strange human customs, I have had not the time of life to learn more. And now that I am old, and the end approaches in a manner other than I had wished, I find that I regret it deeply.”
“And why would you wish to know such things?” Sofy asked in amazement. “Certainly all knowledge is valuable, but this does seem a lot of intricate effort.”
“All serrin thinking is obsessed with the amor'is eden, the great patterns. The patterns rule everything. Did you know that there are other worlds out there? All circling our sun?”
Sofy blinked at him. Sasha had once told her that the world was round, and that some serrin claimed they could prove it. Sofy had not found that speculation nearly as interesting as her latest book of poetry, and had returned to that instead. A round world sounded vaguely blasphemous.
“Some serrin speculate that there may be clues to the greatest patterns, the amor'is eden, to be found in the study of the motion of sun, moon, and stars. Always seeking, are we serrin. Always looking to understand. And yet, so little do we know. If only humans would understand how little they know, and embrace the uncertainty with joy instead of fear, things would be different.”
“Do serrin believe in gods?”
Lesthen smiled. “An old serrin joke says that humans believe in gods the way that horses believe in saddles.” He glanced at her. “But perhaps one must be serrin to find that amusing. Serrin believe in higher powers. Humans call those gods, and give them names and personalities. Serrin find this interesting, perhaps quaint. We do not attempt to quantify that which is so far beyond our ability to comprehend. That would be pretence.”
“I had heard that serrin worship knowledge,” said Sofy, “but in a strange way, it seems to me now that perhaps you worship ignorance.”
Lest
hen raised his eyebrows, faintly. “Perhaps you understand us as well as your sister. Many serrin say precisely that. We worship ignorance as both our enemy and our friend, for without it, we would have nothing to seek.”
“Master Lesthen, I could learn so much from you. I feel we have a meeting of the minds, your people and myself. I too seek to find a commonality between all things, between my people and yours. We must have points of common similarity that can conquer all this hatred! Will you help me to find them?”
Lesthen looked at her wearily. “My child,” he said, “have you heard of the serrin philosophy of the lashka'won?” Sofy shook her head. “The lashka'won describes the natural path of the world, left to its own devices, free from human intervention. Many serrin scholars of the lashka'won argue over its nature. Some say that the lashka'won is brutal, that the natural world is an endless war of living things killing and eating other living things. Sashandra's lover Errollyn is one of those, and in that odd fashion, not so different from archenemy Kiel.
“Others argue that we serrin, and indeed humans, are also of the lashka'won, and we love and laugh, and are capable of great affection and justice…as are the animals, in some ways, by some means. They describe an aspiration…I shan't give you the Saalsi name because it shall become too confusing, but the name means ‘to aspire,’ in the sense that the lashka'won grants us the potential to aspire to something more than the common brutality of eating and surviving.”
“The gods made us with the grace to aspire to goodness,” said Sofy with a nod. “Verenthanes believe in this philosophy too, Ambassador.”
“Serrin philosophers debate this endlessly,” Lesthen continued. “The first group of the lashka'won—and I am of course simplifying here—the first group are of the philosophy that gave birth to the svaalverd, your sister's fighting style. Those who practise the svaalverd understand that certain forces and momentums of the natural world are immutable, and that the greatest power with a sword comes from flowing with these natural forces. Strong men with powerful muscles may try to fight against these forces, but as your sister can attest, the power asserted by mere human muscle is nothing beside the power of momentum and balance properly harnessed.
Haven: A Trial of Blood and Steel Book Four Page 16