by Bunch, Chris
“If you wish,” I said. “But if there’s no one … so be it.”
I think the walls moved out a bit on that second gust of wind.
• • •
“Where shall we start?” King Bairan asked, with some bemusement at my lack of ceremony. We were in a small conference chamber in his palace. There were six of us — the king, Ligaba Sala, Ambassador Boconnoc, myself, and a small, worried-looking man introduced as the Patriarch of Ebissa.
“At the beginning, Your Highness,” I said. “You said two days ago you were confused by the signals Numantia is sending. First war, then peace.”
“Yes. We are.”
“Let us begin, then, by not only clearing the table a bit, but possibly showing our sincerity,” I said. The Patriarch, hardly looking like a representative of his warlike and barbaric people, was sitting very straight. “The country of Ebissa has announced claims on a certain amount of Maisirian soil,” I said. “Some time ago, the Emperor Tenedos announced that Numantia would support those claims. I now affirm that the emperor was misunderstood. In fact, all he wished to say was that he hoped you, King Bairan, would deal with their claims in an honorable manner, as the benevolent monarch you’re considered.”
“And if I simply renounce them?”
“You have never dictated to the emperor how he should rule,” I said. “How, then, should we have any right to presume?”
The king regarded me solemnly. “Continue.”
“There’s nothing more to be said, at least not from the viewpoint of Numantia,” I said coldly. “Ebissa is, and remains, an independent kingdom, with well-defined borders that have been agreed upon by mutual treaty between your two lands. If you wish to change them, that is a matter between you and Ebissa.”
The Patriarch was goggling. “Perhaps, Ambassador,” I said to Boconnoc, “you would assist the Patriarch from this chamber, as the matters to be brought up next no longer concern him.” The man rose by himself and, trembling, shambled from the room. For an instant I felt a twinge, but steeled myself. Ebissa, an unknown jungle, or Numantia? There was not even the shadow of a choice.
The king sat quietly for a time. “You’ve certainly cleared a bit of air,” he observed.
“I’d like to deal with more, in just as direct a manner, in the days and weeks to come,” I said. “First is the matter of our mutual borders. Second is the always-vexing matter of the Wild Country on your borders, and the Border Lands on ours. Some time ago, you suggested we should reach some sort of mutual agreement and possibly jointly deal with the bandits of those lands.”
“That’s a complex issue,” he said.
“It is. Perhaps, though, it’s only complex because we’ve allowed it to be so. Your Majesty, I’ve spent time in those lands, and with those people. They are not fit subjects for Numantia or, if you will allow me the liberty, for Maisir. They prefer to spend time cutting each other’s throat when they’re not slitting the weasands and purses of any merchant or wayfarer passing through their domain.”
“True.”
“This is foolish, and expensive,” I went on. “It seems there should be an easy solution, if two great nations wish there to be one.” The king nodded. “Thirdly is a very old matter, but I might as well bring it up. For centuries, since before your father, before your father’s father, Maisir has claimed a certain part of Urey, which is generally considered a state of Numantia,” I said. “When you consider that Urey has the kingdom of Kait between it and Maisir, not to mention the most rugged mountains in the world, it seems this claim should be questioned by all parties.”
“I’ve heard Urey is very beautiful,” the king said.
“It is,” I said. “But what are the chances of you taking a summer sojourn there any time in the near future?”
The king looked hard at me, then a smile moved under the beak of his nose. “Very well,” he said. “Let us concede I’m not likely to go, what, three hundred leagues, then weave my way through a trap of bandits, to see any countryside, no matter how lovely. I’d say the matter of Urey could be resolved.” He went to a window, then turned. “This brief meeting has been very interesting. I’m starting to feel that something other than words will be exchanged, Ambassador.”
“Such is my hope as well.”
“This is a beginning,” the king mused. “A good beginning indeed. The future is starting to brighten in my eyes.”
• • •
The signals went north, somehow made it across Kait in record time, then were heliographed on to Nicias. We had a reply within sixteen days. The emperor agreed Numantia had no reason to support Ebissa, and papers to that effect were being drawn up. He also said the Border Lands should be settled at once, in whatever manner King Bairan and I deemed fit.
He’d announced two feast days throughout Numantia, when sacrifices and prayers would be made for peace.
To further ensure his good faith, he was ordering the staff of the embassy to return to Jarrah.
The best thing was last: The units in Urey that had been built up to wartime footing were to be reduced to peacetime strength. All recently formed units were to begin demobilizing as rapidly as possible.
In a personally coded message for me, he said:
You’ve done it, Damastes, or so it appears. Both Numantia and I owe you the greatest debt. Peace now, peace forever.
T
“There was an incident some time ago,” Ligaba Sala began delicately, “between some of our soldiery, supposedly in the province of Dumyat.” He’d asked for a private meeting, and I’d wondered what it would be about. Now I knew, and decided to use truth as my first weapon.
“You’re somewhat incorrect, Ligaba,” I said. “There was great confusion in Nicias about the matter. We investigated, and found our patrol was across the border, well into Maisir, not far from the Maisirian town of Zante.”
Sala hid surprise. “That was not what we thought you believed. We understood you thought your forces were ambushed.”
“As I said, there was confusion. I’m sorry, but to speak personally, your soldiers were punished for defending their terrain, although perhaps they might’ve reacted too quickly.”
“Such might be the case,” Sala said. “None of their officers are alive to debate the matter, however.”
“Might I ask why you chose to bring it up? I thought the matter was settled.”
“The king wanted me to ask about it and, depending on what you said, either to have no response or to make the one I’m about to present: It is terribly early in the proceedings to sound optimistic, but King Bairan wishes there to be no impediments to the process of peace. For this reason, he’s once again withdrawing all Maisirian troops three days’ travel from the border until negotiations are complete. This should ensure that no new problems, whether overreaction or whatever, occur in the next few times.
“I can also assure you that, if negotiations continue as begun, the king will be releasing the classes we recently called up for military training. If there’s to be no … trouble, what these men cost the state could be best spent elsewhere.”
I felt happiness and, yes, pride swell within me. In spite of my fears, perhaps I would do a great service for my country. “Thank you, Ligaba.”
“If things continue at this rate,” Sala said, “we’ll be quickly back to Damastes and Khwaja, eh?”
“Let us hope.”
• • •
Word of this also went north, and, in fifteen days, the emperor responded: He, too, would withdraw Numantian units from the border. The only soldiery allowed in these lands until a treaty was made would be those on hot trod, pursuing bandits. We’d taken another step back from the chasm.
• • •
Waiting for two to three weeks between each step, as messages went back and forth between Nicias and Jarrah, could have been maddening, but it wasn’t as if there was nothing to do. Alegria and I became the center of the Jarrah social whirl, Something New.
The nobility in the ca
pital were as stultified as their country cousins. Everyone knew, and was somewhat related to, almost everyone else, and they’d gone to the same parties with the same people, and ended up drunk and in bed with the same wrong people, year after year, decade after decade. It was no wonder the grand balls presenting the pubescent noblewomen and -men were so well attended. I went to one, and it reminded me of a pack of vultures, waiting around a dying gaur to swoop on her calf.
It became fashionable to grow one’s hair long and even, in some cases, to use harsh minerals to bleach it as blond as mine. Alegria suggested that I should be ashamed of myself, being responsible for a new spurt of baldness among the older men who miscalculated the strength of the bleaching potions. I said I was no more guilty than she, for the women were dressing as she did, in clinging, body-revealing garments. This was fine when the woman was younger. But when she was a waddling behemoth, I had to repress the urge to wince and turn away.
The Time of Change ended, the Time of Storms began, and arctic tempests crashed in from the south.
• • •
There’d been a party planned, a masked rout, that had to be canceled because of the weather. Jarrah was paralyzed by the storm, so there was nothing to do but fall back on our own resources. I was quite content, lying on pillows in our “tent.” We were on the “summer” side, and birds were chirping in the garden, bees buzzing in the warm stillness.
I was studying maps of the Border Lands, trying to determine if an idea of mine made any sense at all.
Alegria lay on the floor on three gigantic pillows. She wore no more than a tie around her breasts and another around her loins, and was reading some very fat tome, a work that portrayed the gods and goddesses as being as goatish as the men and women they created. Of course the work was banned by the Maisirian priesthood, so naturally those who could read couldn’t get copies fast enough.
She saw I was looking at her, smiled at me, and returned to her reading.
Suddenly I realized something. I was falling in love, perhaps was even in love, with her. Now I wonder why it took me so long to recognize this, but I know the answer. It was of course Marán.
There were still unfinished feelings, words I longed to say to my wife, or ex-wife, whichever she was by now. But why did that matter? The past was past, dead and gone. Why didn’t I get up, go to Alegria, kiss her, and let what should have happened happen? I didn’t know, and I don’t now.
• • •
I finished a dispatch and the courier took it away. I suddenly realized I was exhausted, and could stand neither the embassy, my quarters, nor a city any longer. I needed to get out, to spend a few hours in the country. I told Alegria, and she winced, then bore up bravely. “Very well, my lord. We’ll go out into the tempest, and if I freeze anything off, you’re to blame.”
An hour later we were muffled, cloaked, and shivering in the stables. Alegria mounted her horse and looked down plaintively. “So where are we going to go to die?”
“Hells if I know. You’re the Maisirian, not me.”
“Permitted out of my order into the capital no more than a dozen times. This is idiotic,” Alegria said.
“I know … but isn’t it fun?” Indeed, the sharp wind from the north was freshening my mind, my spirit.
“Shall we go to the embassy and get some outriders for security?” she asked.
“Why bother? Doesn’t everybody in Maisir love us? No, I don’t need any other company than what I’ve got,” I replied.
Alegria sat indecisively on her horse for a moment. “I have an idea. But it’s an hour, maybe more, away. And I’ll have to ask the way.”
“I am yours to obey, woizera.”
“So when we’re found as frozen corpses, it’ll be all my fault in the eyes of the gods.”
“Of course. Don’t you understand men by now?” I offered. She hmmphed, and off we went.
No one paid us the slightest notice in the streets, intent as they all were on finishing their own business before the storm made the streets impassable. No one but one — and the well-aimed snowball smacked into the back of my neck and sent my shako flying into the ditch. I cursed, turned, and saw an urchin dash into an alley.
“How dare he,” Alegria said, trying to keep a grim countenance. I didn’t answer, but dismounted and picked up my helmet — and something else. The boy, and his three coconspirators, stuck their heads out as I remounted — and hurled the wad of snow I’d surreptitiously molded. It struck the wall next to them, but was close enough to spatter the boys with icy fragments. They yelped surprise and fled.
“If you mess with the bull,” I said, quoting an old Cimabuen proverb, “you shall get the horns.”
Alegria shook her head in despair, and we rode on.
We stopped twice, while Alegria asked directions from passersby, then went on. We reached the outskirts of Jarrah in an hour.
“Now what?”
“Ride on, you weakling,” she said. “We’ve only just begun.”
In truth, I was feeling a bit chill, and dreams of our nice summer garden were floating in front of me. “This woman’s going to feed me to the wolves for neglect,” I said mournfully, but I obeyed. The snow grew deeper, but the road was wide. We passed through open country, then a small village, then were in the country once more. I was about to whine again, when we rounded a bend.
Sitting on a high bluff was a dark stone castle, walls carved from the solid rock. It wasn’t the largest I’d seen, but one of the most forbidding, with tiny barred windows and a gate with guard towers on either side. A road curved up the bluff to the gate.
“Here we are,” Alegria announced.
“Which is where?”
“My home. This is the place of the Dalriada.”
“Great gods,” I mused. “How could something this grim produce anything but muttering monks and sourpusses?”
“Come on. I’ll show you.” We made our way up the winding road, and were challenged by four guards, two in each tower. Alegria identified herself, and me, and one guard went inside.
I leaned over to her. “A question, milady. If you — and the rest of the Dalriada — are as, well, pure as you say, what keeps the guards honest? Or did they have an unfortunate encounter with a very sharp knife and now sing in upper registers?”
“You mean are they eunuchs? No. They used to be, but the order stopped that.” She giggled. “We girls heard stories that sometimes the eunuchs weren’t as eunuched as they were supposed to be. Now volunteers from the army serve for two years here. There’s maybe three hundred of them, and they guard all approaches to the Dalriada. They’re quartered beyond the walls on the far side. During their service, they’re under a spell that renders them not only incapable, but not interested.”
“What a wonderful life,” I said. “Let’s spend two years sitting around talking about … about turnip planting and shining our armor.”
“Better than dying on the border with a bandit’s arrow in your chest.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”
The guard came back, saluted, and said we were welcome. He would take our horses. We dismounted and went through the gates. A woman was waiting. She was in her forties, and very beautiful, almost as lovely as Alegria. Alegria yipped with glee and fell into her arms. The two babbled happily for a time, then I was introduced. The woman, whose name was Zelen, bowed.
“Alegria has indeed been given great fortune,” she said. “And we are honored by your presence.” She led us through a courtyard. A door came open, and seven little girls tumbled out, shrieking laughter. All were unutterably lovely, little dolls of various hair and skin color. They pelted snowballs at one another, saw me, screamed in mock horror, and darted away through another door. We entered a building and started up a long flight of stairs. Zelen was about ten steps above us.
“Zelen,” Alegria explained quietly, “was one of my teachers.”
“Teaching what?”
“Muscle control,” Alegria said, and her
face turned even redder than the icy wind had made it.
“Ah.”
“She was very lucky, and very unlucky,” Alegria said as we climbed. “She was given to a lij, a prince, who’d been recently widowed. They fell in love, and he proposed marriage to her. Before they could wed, he was killed in a hunting accident. So Zelen came back here.”
The next few hours I found very interesting. There were perhaps a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty girls and young women being trained, and about an equal number of Dalriada who’d returned to the castle to teach and serve them. It was like an exclusive girls lycée. Sort of. I saw girls being taught to speak correctly, to sew, to do mathematics. One group listened to a woman poet read, then discussed, as skillfully as any scholarly gathering, what they’d just heard.
There were other rooms I was forbidden to enter, and neither woman told me what the course of instruction within was. I glanced into one deserted room as we passed. Inside, instead of study tables there were cots, and reposing on each of them was a dummy of a naked man with a full erection. I pretended I’d seen nothing.
We ended by having herbal tea and some freshly baked buns with the mistress of the Dalriada. She was in her sixties and, while lovely, was somewhat forbidding. She must have gained that manner after she returned, or else her “master” had been one of those who prefered to take orders rather than give them. It was interesting, but I was very glad to walk out of the gates.
“So that’s where you came from,” I mused, looking back after we’d reached level ground.
“Yes.” Alegria waited for a time. “What do you think?”
“What is there to think? I wouldn’t want to live there,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully.
“Ah. But you have a choice,” Alegria said. “I did not. And,” she said, bitterness in her voice, “there are worse places.”
“You said you came here when you were seven,” I said. “Do you remember anything of your life before that?”
