“If you go, they might keep you as well,” Cantara said. She was holding tight to Arjan’s hand and her whole body was rigid. “We cannot do this.”
“They’re not going to keep me. And the alternative is Ransom sits there in prison until he dies. This is the only way.”
Belinda stood and paced from her chair to the one small window and back. “You’re right,” she said. “This isn’t something we can do. But surely there’s someone else? Someone who speaks Karitian, for heaven’s sake!”
“If there were, they’d send him. And I’d let him go. Trust me, Belinda, I know how ridiculous this sounds, but I have to do this.”
“You’ll do it,” Theo said. “We saw you talk down that man. If any of us have a chance, it’s you.” He took off his belt and began picking at the seams. “I wish I knew how much these were worth.”
“Maybe someone here can tell us,” Belinda said. “You’ll need to know how much to ask for in reimbursement. Those, plus the two Ransom—” She stopped and turned away.
“Excuse me,” James said from the doorway. “I’m to take you to your rooms now. Feel free to bathe and change your clothes before supper.”
“I have to go now,” Zara said.
“You have to wait until morning,” said Blackwood, coming up behind James. “The Karitians won’t see you at this hour of the afternoon, and I’ll need to prepare you anyway. I’m sorry,” she added, holding up her hands when they all began to protest, “but that’s the way it is. De Witt should be safe until morning.”
“You don’t believe that,” said Zara.
“No.” Blackwood turned away. “But there’s nothing more to be done, save pray the Karitians listen to you. For his sake, I hope you’re persuasive.”
“So do I,” Zara said.
Chapter Sixteen
After the chill of the embassy, even the muggy coolness of a Karitian morning had Zara sweating before she reached the end of the drive and had the gate opened for her by a subdued Mister Dyer. A woman dressed in a loose tunic and wide-legged linen trousers, both of them a soft rose, waited there with a carriage built like a teacup, fancifully painted with silver flowers on a pale green background. There was nothing about the woman or the carriage to suggest they had anything to do with Tremontane’s government. Zara herself was dressed in a white sleeveless tunic and trousers similar to the woman’s, though hers held a number of secrets Zara suspected the woman would never guess. More to the point, she hoped the Karitians didn’t guess them either.
She climbed into the carriage without assistance and brushed her hair back over her shoulders. It felt so good to be clean, even if she was sweating. She’d wanted to put her hair up, let the breezes cool her neck, but Blackwood had warned her that would make her appear to be putting on airs. Only upper-class Karitians wear their hair up, she’d said, and you don’t want to look like you’re saying you’re their equal.
She’d had any number of other warnings. Let the Karitians speak first. Give direct answers. Don’t let them see how much money you have—Zara hadn’t needed to be told that. She crossed her legs and leaned back, feeling the little pouch—Ransom’s pouch—settle between her breasts. She’d been coached in how much to offer and whom to offer it to, in what to say and what not to say (You’re bribing them, but that’s crass, so you never suggest it’s a bribe, Blackwood had said) and now she was as prepared as she could be. She watched the flowering trees pass and tried not to think about the price of failure.
She saw other carriages like hers passing, more than they’d seen the day before. Apparently they’d arrived during the hottest part of the day, when most people were napping indoors, which was just another way in which this adventure had gone wrong. The woman flicked the reins at the horse, who stepped out more spryly. The heat didn’t seem to bother it, but Zara still felt sorry for it. She plucked at the neck of her tunic and fanned herself with it. Definitely Veribold after this. She’d just have to make her apologies to Mistress Falken and make Jeffrey give her enough money to repay her fare and take a ship back north.
The horse’s hooves went from clopping on the hard-packed earth to tapping on the wooden docks, and the wheels rattled more loudly. Then the carriage was pulling up to one of the piers, and Zara hopped down. “The third boat, ma’am,” the driver said, pointing. “She’ll be waiting for your return.”
“Thank you,” Zara said, and strode briskly toward the indicated boat. It was painted lemon yellow and its Device shone bright brass. The pilot was lounging with her feet on the gunwale and a bright red woven hat shielding her face, but sat up quickly when Zara cleared her throat.
“Sorry, ma’am, I was just resting my eyes,” she said, and Zara realized she was barely more than a child, bright-eyed and enthusiastic. She might have been Theo’s twin, down to the closely shorn head. Zara envied her her loincloth and skimpy brassiere. “Let me help you. You don’t mind going fast, do you?”
“I love going fast,” Zara said, and before she was finished speaking the young woman had spun the wheel to full, and the boat zipped away from the pier, knocking Zara back in her seat. She sat up and gripped the gunwale, thinking, Faster, and as if the girl could read her mind, the boat sped up until the pilot had to put her hat under her feet to keep it from flying away.
At this hour, the Amgeli had no tide to fight, and small boats zipped up and down stream, pulling in to shore to hand off parcels and then speed away again. Zara watched them, counting how many times each went between the larger ships and their…might as well call them docks, though mostly they were platforms on the shore of the river. The brightly colored boats were confetti on the waves, the propelling Devices made sparks of gold in the sunlight, and the whole thing was so cheery and indifferent to the injustice of the Karitian government it made her want to scream.
As they approached the Manachen piers, the pilot said, “I’ll stay here as long as I can, but that’s only an hour. Then I’ll have to cast off and return later, and I might not be in the same place. That’s what the hat’s for, so you can see me at a distance. So if you take longer than an hour, you may have to wait for me a bit.” She flapped the hat in Zara’s direction. “Any questions?”
“Yes. What’s your name?”
The young woman laughed. “Cerise. We’re here. Good luck, ma’am.”
They were approaching a pier where stood a couple of female nakati, watching them closely. Before Zara had even set foot on the pier, the taller one said, “Foreigners are not allowed in Manachen.”
“I am here to negotiate a release,” Zara said, speaking slowly enough to be perfectly intelligible, but not enough to be insulting. “I ask permission to be escorted to the godozi for this purpose alone, after which I will return to Tammerek. I will not speak to any Karitians unless I am spoken to. I swear to obey the laws of Dineh-Karit while I am on its ground.”
The nakati looked at each other. Zara waited. Finally, the shorter one said something in Karitian to her companion, who nodded. “Come with us,” the taller one said. So, they were going to pretend only one of them spoke Tremontanese. Zara couldn’t see the point in that, but knowing more about your enemy than she knew of you was always valuable.
This early in the morning, the breeze carried only the faintest scents of brine and tar, and Zara inhaled shallowly and made herself relax. This would work. Bracketed by the nakati, she walked past the ranks of narrow houses, none of which had their windows open this morning, and the identical warehouses, which were already busy with wagons loading and unloading. Only a few of the drovers paid her any attention, and that was in the form of ostentatiously refusing to look at her. Other men and women in the gaudy nakati uniform were more obvious in watching her. They held themselves in readiness to attack her if she stepped wrong. Zara felt the Device in its special pocket brush her leg. She’d left the gun Device behind, obviously, but if anyone thought to search her, she might be joining Ransom in prison.
Beyond the warehouses, a street wider than any Zara
had seen before stretched deep into Manachen. It was big enough a row of houses might be built down its middle, leaving enough room on either side for two ordinary streets. She tried not to gape, but it was hard not to want to explore, to learn more about this isolationist and antagonistic country. To the right, hidden by red-roofed buildings, was the river, whose rushing murmur was the only thing she could hear. Manachen was as silent as if it were midnight.
No one within the city wore the loincloths of the sailors; most of them wore narrow, sleeveless robes in bright colors that brushed the ground as they walked. They draped closely enough to reveal that brassieres were not an invention this country embraced. Filmy gauze coats or cloaks, if you could call anything so lightweight that, were layered over the robes and pulled over the head to obscure the face. These people, unlike the drovers, ignored Zara so completely she was sure they really didn’t see her. It relieved her mind somewhat. That would make the second part of her job easier, if foreigners were invisible.
They walked down the center of the plaza-like street. Zara’s armpits itched and her neck was sweaty and hot. The sandals Blackwood had given her were little better than leather soles with thongs strung through them, and her feet hurt every time she took a step on the hard concrete pavers of the street. Nicer shoes would have been more appropriate as well as more comfortable, but the second part of her job, again, required something different. She resisted the urge to scratch. How much farther do we have to walk? she thought, then felt ashamed of complaining, even internally. This was nothing. Ransom had to endure far worse.
The architecture of Manachen was identical to what she’d seen on Goudge’s Folly. She saw no signs of individuality anywhere, though she didn’t draw any conclusions from that. In large cities in Veribold, home owners were taxed according to the construction of their houses: so much for window boxes, so much more for a blue instead of a brown roof. So the homes were very plain, and you couldn’t assume anything about the owners’ personalities from looking at their houses. Even so, the uniformity unnerved her. It might not say anything about individual Karitians, but it certainly suggested things about their culture.
Something nagged at her, something strange about the city, and it wasn’t until she passed a few doors that looked like shops that she realized she couldn’t smell food. Any Tremontanan city—any northern city—this size would be thronged with vendors selling sausages or fruit or sweets, filling the air with delicious aromas. And the place was virtually silent. There were no carriages, just pedestrians, the shopkeepers didn’t call out to passersby advertising their wares, and she couldn’t see or hear a single person talking to his companions. She became eerily aware of the noise she made, the slapping sound of her leather soles on the pavers, the swish of her trouser legs against each other, and the distant rush of the river, and had to bite back the urge to sing just to break the silence.
The nakat in the lead veered sharply to the left, taking them down a narrow alley between two of the buildings. A woman on a verandah stood up to watch them pass. Zara looked up and met her eyes; the woman didn’t look away. She looked…pensive? As if it mattered to her what happened to Zara. It must look as if she was being led to her doom. Zara nodded to the woman and smiled as they passed her, and got a tentative smile in return. Not all Karitians were bigoted, Ransom had said. Maybe he was right.
The alley terminated at a paved semicircle in front of—Zara stumbled in surprise. It looked exactly like the Tremontanan embassy, down to the bulgy pillars and the exotic hardwood of the door. It was getting harder for her not to be judgmental of the Karitian culture, if it couldn’t produce a variety of architectural styles. “Do not speak,” the tall nakat woman said, and held open the door so Zara could pass.
Even the foyer was the same—fifteen feet tall, many more than that across, big enough to make her feel small, except she refused to be intimidated by it. It was dry and comfortably cool, not as frigid as the embassy, and smelled of dust. Zara rolled her shoulders to shift her hair a bit without looking like she was uncomfortable. The nakati led her to the center of the room, the smaller one made a “stay put” gesture, and the two women went back out the front door. Zara took a relaxed stance that would let her stand comfortably for a long time. She anticipated she’d need it.
About five minutes later, one of the three doors that led elsewhere into this building opened, and a man entered. He wore a narrow, sleeveless robe and gauzy over-robe like the civilians she’d seen, but in nakati blue and crimson, and with his beaky face and too-widely-spaced eyes he looked even more like a ha-ha bird than the nakati did. He regarded Zara with an expression that said he didn’t like the way she smelled, then said something in Karitian.
“I apologize for not speaking your language and beg your indulgence in speaking mine,” Zara said. It was one of three phrases she’d had to memorize. The rest was up to her.
The ha-ha man gave her another long look. “You are a negotiator,” he said. His Tremontanese was precise, though marred by a thick accent. Zara guessed it would be a matter of pride with these people not to speak the foreigners’ languages as precisely as they were able to do.
“I am,” Zara said.
Another pause. “The godozi is busy. Come back in an hour.”
“I’ll wait.” Zara shifted her position to make it clear she was capable of standing there all day.
The ha-ha man regarded her for another moment. Possibly he was lining up sentences in his head that the foreign woman couldn’t counter. Then he turned and left. Zara drew in a deep breath. They’ll try to make you leave and come back later, Blackwood had said, but if you do, they’ll keep putting you off. If you stay, it will make them uncomfortable enough to deal with you just to get you out of there.
What if they try to remove me by force? Zara had asked.
They won’t lay hands on a foreigner, Blackwood had said, it’s beneath them, but she didn’t look certain. It didn’t matter. If they made her leave, she wouldn’t go quietly.
She waited, counting her heartbeats, examining the identical doors, wondering what kind of wood they were made of. It was a shame the Karitians didn’t want open trade, though so far Zara had only seen ways that trade would benefit Tremontane. Who knew what kinds of things they could do for Dineh-Karit?
The door opened again. The ha-ha man sailed in, his gauzy robe fluttering like wings around him. “The godozi is very busy. He may not be able to see you today.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Come back later. Or tomorrow.”
“I’ll wait.”
The ha-ha man hesitated. This time, it looked as if he genuinely didn’t know what to do. Then he turned around and left again. Zara went back to examining the doors and calculating what kind of profit a company might make in importing the wood. She had to do a lot of guessing, but it kept her from going mad.
A different door opened. This time, it was a ha-ha woman. She wore her dark brown hair piled high on her head and pinned with a pair of long sticks. Jewels dangled from the end of each. “You will come with me,” she said.
The hallway beyond was narrow but tall, arched like a bethel back home, though no place of worship would be built from that exotic wood. Windows near the curved ceiling let in a diffuse light that made the hall seem even cooler than it was. Tremontane really should see about developing those room-chilling Devices. Summers in Aurilien could be brutal, though now that Zara had spent time in Dineh-Karit’s jungles, her definition of “brutal” was somewhat different.
The walls were painted the same red as the nakati uniform and hung with small round paintings Zara didn’t have time to examine. It reminded her of her grandfather’s sitting room in the palace, somber and dark and cluttered with those round miniatures Grandpapa was so fond of, though that had always smelled of cedar and this hall didn’t smell of anything in particular. She hadn’t thought of those rooms in years.
At the far end of the hall, the ha-ha woman opened another door, and Zara stepped through
into a brightly lit round chamber carpeted in white, with a row of circular windows near its domed ceiling. It was empty except for a table and chair identical in shape to those of the woman on the docks, the greedy bitch who’d stolen Ransom’s freedom. These were definitely a matched set in glossy ebony with shining steel legs, like silvery insects making off with planed lumber. A man sat cross-legged in the chair, his narrow robe rucked up around his thighs and his over-robe billowing out around the chair, falling nearly to the floor. “You are the negotiator,” he said. His Tremontanese was better than that of the other two Karitians.
“I am,” Zara said.
“We do not know you.”
“I’m a private citizen negotiating on behalf of the prisoner’s family.”
“You do not have a letter of authority.”
This was the first hurdle. “Those are issued by the government, and we recognize Tremontane currently has no authority with regard to Karitian matters. So no, I don’t have a letter of authority.”
The godozi tapped his fingers on the smooth ebony surface. It was reflective enough to show the shadowy inverse of his fingers, like a pair of hands plotting something diabolical. “Which prisoner?” he said.
She’d sent the official request ahead, earlier that morning. He knew which prisoner. “The man taken at dock seventeen yesterday just after noon. He is accused of trespassing on Karitian territory and refusal to pay the fine.”
“That is a serious crime.”
“Which is why I’m here to make amends. I am willing to pay the fine, plus the administrative costs incurred by the Karitian government in holding him.” Code for “bribe.”
“And you think this will be sufficient.”
“I think reasonable people are always capable of coming to civilized agreement.”
Tap, tap, tap. “The fine is twenty meshet.”
Zara removed the pouch from around her neck and dug into it, coming up with a handful of stones she kept concealed from the godozi. He looked impassive, but Zara knew curiosity when she saw it, and she was even more familiar with greed. This might work out, after all. She thought back over the quick lesson she’d been given in Karitian currency and the relative value of Theo’s gems and plucked one from her palm.
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