Zheron lunged forward, his stave horizontal, aimed at her chest. As his left leg stepped forward, Raincloud advanced with her left, turning slightly to her right. His stave slid harmlessly across the front of her shirt.
With her left hand Raincloud caught hold of the stave between his two hands. In the next instant, she deflected the thrust upward above his left shoulder; little force was needed, as Zheron’s own momentum flung him headlong. Meanwhile, her right leg stepped backward and drew her torso around, cementing her own position.
With a deep bow, Raincloud brought the stave down, including the man who still wielded it. Zheron fell to the floor and tumbled sideways, tearing the stave from her grasp.
The onlookers shouted and cheered. Zheron had kept hold of his stave, a feat she admired, but its tip had fallen across the line. Raincloud had won.
Breathing heavily, Raincloud watched him snap back to his feet. Nothing looked so appealing as a man who just lost a hard fight. Her first thought was to help tend his bruises, an offer a rei-gi assistant would have appreciated, but she thought better of it.
Zheron stood tall, admitting no injury; no servo medics were in evidence. “Lord Raincloud honors our household,” he announced. More quietly he added, “Next time request, ‘Spirit only.’ Then we’ll have a better show.”
Raincloud smiled to herself, and made a mental note of it.
“Not bad,” observed Lem. “I’d like to learn your style.”
She said nothing, rather doubting her clan would approve teaching rei-gi to a man of such loose morals.
The Urulite warriors were rising from their seats and coming forward. Introductions followed, with much clasping of the shoulders. Musicians appeared with flutes and metal drums, playing traditional tunes in an eerie eight-tone scale. The company soon progressed to the dining hall. Raincloud went along, her arms shaking now that the tension was gone. Now she could wonder, at last: What were they really up to?
The dining hall had an oval ceiling hung with heavy crystal chandeliers. The long table upon the dais was set with porcelain and silver of a quality that her brothers would have loved to see. Beyond the table, richly colored silk curtains hung to the floor. From between their folds Raincloud caught a glimpse of a face mask on a pole, customarily carried by every Urulite female. It fascinated her, despite her revulsion, to see the things Rhun had told her come to life.
She was led to her seat across from Zheron. An Urulite man poured wine; there was not a mechanical servo to be seen. Raincloud wondered to what extent the rejection of servos reflected custom, or relative cost. She refused the wine for herself.
“A vow to your Deity?” Zheron asked.
“Yes, indeed,” she said.
At this admission, Zheron, too, turned back his wine and requested water for both. This unexpected token of respect impressed Raincloud.
“So,” Zheron asked, “what brings a warrior like you to this world of soft cushions?”
Raincloud was not a warrior. “I come in peace,” she said.
“Peace, peace; what peace? Where is peace? Death and abomination fill the skies. Your Elysian hosts live in a ball of crystal.”
With his last remark, she was tempted to agree. But the Free Fold had made genuine progress, for its members. In any case, it would not do to dishonor her employer. “Our hosts treat us with great courtesy,” she insisted.
Zheron’s eyebrows knitted, and he exclaimed, “Courtesy is what these people lack. How dare they interfere with our Imperial affairs.” He referred to Verid’s summons following the destruction of the L’liite freighter.
The first course was brought, a plate of unidentified meats arranged upon grape leaves. The waiter had thick fingers with stubby thumbs. He was probably a sim—and therefore a slave.
Raincloud swallowed doubtfully before she tasted the dish. To his last retort, she told Zheron, “The Elysians see things differently. ‘Compassion anywhere breeds caring everywhere.’”
Zheron waved a hand as if brushing away an insect. “Compassion is for females. How can you deal with women who won’t even put up an honest fight to the death? Elysians cling to life for centuries. They live in eternal shame.”
“Why are you here?” Raincloud asked suddenly. “What’s here for you, Lord Zheron?”
He did not answer right off, but drew back as if to protect his thoughts. “Elysium is small,” he offered, “the smallest of the Fold’s worlds.” She realized, he meant population. “Elysians know little of us; they are the last people likely to gain advantage. If we start here, we have little to lose. If they betray us, a mere squadron could eliminate them.”
Her scalp prickled as she realized his meaning. She repressed the impulse to call him a bully, not a warrior. “Just what do you wish to ‘start’?” she asked.
Zheron shrugged. “Connection. Alliance. Mutual interest.”
Wealth, trade, and capital investment. The fruits of peace, however shameful. After all, Elysium had the greatest excess capital of any world in the Fold.
The other guests were getting livelier as the dinner advanced, not surprising given the size and frequent refilling of their wine glasses. Their jokes and tales grew more outlandish, and more pointed. Invariably the villain of each tale was shown up to be no better than a female in some way.
“You smile,” Zheron observed, watching her keenly. “You disbelieve me?”
“No, of course not, Lord Zheron,” she quickly replied.
“You think we lack the stomach for it.”
“That is inconceivable,” she added politely.
“Well, some of us do lack the stomach for it, by Azhragh,” he volunteered abruptly. “Isn’t that so, Dhesra?”
Dhesra, at his right, nodded vigorously. “Those advisors and sycophants who fawn at the foot of the Azure Throne. They ought to be castrated.”
Unsure what to make of this, Raincloud tucked the comment away in her mind for Verid.
Zheron leaned forward. “I think you barbarians lack the stomach for it.”
Startled, Raincloud knew he meant to provoke her. Facing him sternly, she said, “I do not understand you correctly.” Surely, she thought with exasperation, she would not have to fight again?
He leaned back, chuckling to himself. “Of course I meant not you, Raincloud. I meant your Elysian hosts.”
She considered this. “You might give us a try.”
“You will come, then? You will make a pilgrimage to the Azure Throne?”
Her lips parted without sound, and she shared a startled glance with Lem. Could Zheron really mean a delegation from Helicon to Imperial Urulan? A world which no foreigner had entered officially in the past two centuries?
“Such a…decision shall not be made lightly,” Raincloud replied at last, trying not to stumble over the words.
“Of course not. The Azure Throne must never be approached lightly.”
AS RAINCLOUD LEFT THE DINING HALL, LORD ZHERON was in a jovial mood, that of a man at the end of a good feast. Raincloud had the dizzying sense that she was caught up in a chain of events beyond her control. Perhaps the Urulites wanted her for the same reason they chose Elysium—someone they could relinquish at small cost if things went wrong.
But for her it was not so simple. If either world thought it could use her lightly, it was mistaken. Let Lem and Verid go to Urulan if they chose; Raincloud was no pawn in this game.
As she approached the door through the hall of cultural displays, someone stepped out in her path. It was a goddess; or rather, an Urulite female, draped in a black hooded cloak, holding a white mask on a stick before her face. At her wrists and ankles jeweled bracelets jingled as she moved, like the clanking of chains, Raincloud thought. But the female stood fearlessly, leaning toward Raincloud’s face as if to get a close look at her. Five long seconds passed thus; then the Urulite female withdrew. As she turned, Raincloud caught just a glimpse behind her mask of her dark eye with long black lashes, before she disappeared behind the screen of Azhragh and
Mirhiah.
Chapter 8
VERID ANAEASHON SAT IN A SECLUDED GARDEN AT THE heart of the Nucleus.
The heliconians swirled overhead, their long narrow wings flashing iridescent blue as they settled upon the passionflowers. Verid watched them sip their nectar, then lap up pollen, too, the high protein food they needed to last their six-month lifespan. Then they rose in flight, trembling like an arpeggio in a concert hall.
At the right end of the mooncurve sat the Prime Guardian Hyen Helishon, the golden sash draped across his plump figure, and between them the Subguardian for Foreign Affairs, Flors Helishon. Flors was lean, his cheeks slightly sunken, fair-haired with startling blue eyes—the only thing startling about him, Verid thought ironically.
They were gathered for their daily staff conference. Sharer relations were snarled again over the fruit flies in Papilion, and L’li’s newly announced tariff on imported rice threatened to spark an interworld trade crisis. Yet unexpected hope arose from, of all things, Raincloud’s little “duel” with the Urulites.
But any meeting of substance required reflection, and must commence by viewing the butterflies. These flashy heliconians, their blue wings barred red and edged white, were the favorite of the Prime Guardian; whereas Verid, even after so many centuries, longed for the subtle hues of the leafwings. Nonetheless, she had adapted, learning to release herself and let her lifetime rise upward upon those tiny wings. Her hands relaxed upon her knees, her fingers yielding one by one to memory.
Six centuries before, yet it seemed only last year, she had just “metamorphosed” from the shon, in Anaeaon, home of scholars whose books fluttered as profusely as their butterflies. As her genes predicted, she became a logen. But then, she fell into the arms of Iras, the sparkling visitor from Letheon, and left Anaeaon behind.
As a logen, she took on a Sharer cause: the right of native Sharers to shelter fugitives in the tunnels of their rafts, a tradition dating back to the Valan occupation of Shora. The treaty gave their Sharer hosts the right to harbor even the worst violator of Elysian law. She had won the case; and yet, the friends she had lost…Her eyes burned at the memory, and the flitting shapes blurred before her.
Two centuries later, as if it were yesterday, Verid had returned to the Anaeashon as generen. She had watched her own shonlings grow up and metamorphose, and face heartbreaks of their own. Another two centuries yet, and one of hers, an extraordinary gray-haired child, had succeeded her there…She watched a heliconian take off with its nectar, leaving but a shivering leaf behind.
And then, eight years ago, a mere eyeblink, Hyen Helishon had rotated to Prime, and he called on her to join his staff. Hyen’s star had risen, and hers as well, as they knit the strands of peace and prosperity. But like lightning, what springs up quickly must soon fade away…With a shudder, she lost the soaring butterfly among hundreds.
The spell was broken. She saw Hyen’s hands trembling, for he was moved by his own recollections. How solitary we are, Verid thought, each one of us with our layered histories floating in the sea of time.
Between them, Flors stretched his arms and straightened his back. Clearing his throat, the Subguardian looked sideways at Hyen.
Hyen nodded slightly. “Well, Flors?”
“The Sharers are responsible, all right.” Flors referred to the fruit flies in Papilion.
“They admit it?”
“Of course not. They all enter whitetrance the minute we set foot on their raft. Why would they do that, if they’re not the culprits?”
Verid said quietly, “The Sharers on the raft outside Papilion have ‘unspoken’ Elysian visitors for the past year, well before the fruit flies appeared.” The plague of fruit flies had now spread throughout the floating city.
“The gene analysis is conclusive,” Flors added. “The flies carry the telltale DNA prints of Sharer lifeshaping.” Lifeshapers were the Sharer gene-engineers, whose ancestors had first taught the Heliconians. “It’s time to tell them: Clean up the flies, or else.”
Verid’s lips parted, about to mention the long-standing Sharer grievance about noise pollution. But she saw Hyen lift his head with a thoughtful tightening of the lips, and she kept silent.
“I wonder,” said Hyen. “A quick move is rarely the best response to Sharer trouble.”
“True,” admitted Flors. “It only rewards them.”
“They take us for children.”
Verid smiled to herself. She recalled the Sharer proverb about a hatchling squid—“Ink first, think next.”
“Those flies aren’t exactly lethal, are they?” Hyen added. “Why not raise this at the Sharer World Gathering?”
The Sharers of Shora gathered yearly, sending delegates from rafts all around the ocean. They met at Kshiri-el, a raft descended from historic Raia-el, whose Gathering had led the resistance against Valan invaders before the Heliconians came. The World Gathering took up all sorts of issues, including disputes among raft Gatherings, as well as differences with Elysium. It would meet again in just over half a year.
Flors looked relieved. “The World Gathering—Verid can handle that.” Verid was assigned to represent Elysium at the Sharer World Gathering. Flors privately considered Sharers a domestic nuisance, preferring for himself the “real” foreign affairs of Valedon and L’li.
“The L’liite tariff,” said Hyen, taking up another subject. “What do you recommend?”
The L’liites had just slapped a tariff on imported grain. Bronze Sky and other agricultural worlds strongly opposed the tax. Valedon, of course, opposed any restriction on trade.
“We can’t accept the tariff,” said Flors. “It’s contrary to the spirit of the Free Fold.”
Verid asked, “What about those new loans you’ve approved? Perhaps L’li needs the revenue to pay them back.”
Flors gave her a meaningful stare. They all knew that Iras had negotiated the loans. Elysium was a small world. “It is up to Bank Helicon to get their money back. In the meantime, how many L’liites will starve if grain prices rise any higher?”
Verid was silent. She had opposed the L’liite loans, distrustful of the last two generations of L’liite leadership. Over six centuries together, one was bound to disagree with one’s mate now and then.
“Right,” agreed Hyen at last. Elysian opposition would probably weight the balance; L’li would rescind the tax. “Anything new on the Urulite incident?” Hyen referred to the destroyed freighter.
“No,” said Flors. “Only the so-called invitation from the Legate for Cultural Affairs.”
“Ah yes.” Hyen grinned. “Ready to hop a ship to the Azure Throne?”
Flors ignored the Prime Guardian’s remark. “An ‘invitation,’ to a newly hired foreigner, at the end of a drunken feast. When no outsider has penetrated Urulan in two centuries. What do they take us for?”
Urulan had closed itself to outsiders, shortly after the Free Fold was formed. Who could have foreseen how long that self-imposed isolation would last, and how virulent a direction their people would take? Even Verid had been shocked; Elysians found it hard to remember how swiftly the populations of other worlds turned over, forgetting the gains of their ancestors.
Flors went on. “Verid should never have called him in. I opposed calling him in, you may recall. I opposed even the appearance of acknowledging any official status of that legation, which has long outstayed its permit.”
The Urulite legation had originally come as part of an interstellar children’s craft fair organized by the generen of the Helishon. The generen—either out of uncanny foresight or incurable naïveté, Verid had never decided which—had sent an invitation to Urulan. Urulan’s acceptance, and request for a visa for its delegates, had caused shock waves in Foreign Affairs. Verid had fought hard for approval, and Flors never forgave her. But after they came, the bureaucracy conveniently never got around to sending them home. The craft exhibitors had left, but the Legation stayed on, in the hands of the astute Lord Zheron.
“The le
gation covers espionage,” Flors insisted. “Day and night, Zheron taps our transmissions and reports to the Imperium.”
Verid murmured, “The spy is spied upon.” What better way to gain insight into a closed world?
“This would be a good time to deport them,” said Flors. “While memory of the Valan freighter is fresh, even the generen and other bleeding hearts will have little to say. I’ve begun the paperwork; I await only your word, Guardian.”
Verid’s pulse quickened, but she did not rise to the bait. Bickering between subordinates only irritated Hyen.
Hyen pursed his lips and looked around at the passionflowers, as if the matter were of small consequence to him. “You’re right, Flors. Ruthless bastards, those Urulites, nipping a freighter in free space. Still, prudence, you’re always telling me. Do a study, analyze, prioritize. Let’s have Foreign Affairs conduct a study on the costs and benefits of closing out the Urulite legation.”
Flors stiffened, and the hollows deepened in his cheeks. Then he shrugged. “At the very least we must put out a statement, since an official representative of our office visited the legation—without my approval, I may add.”
This last Verid could not let stand. “The translator Raincloud Windclan is no official representative, only support staff. No approval was needed.”
Hyen waved an impatient hand. “Read me your statement, Flors.”
Flors took a lightbox from his pocket and read from the screen. “The Urulites are attempting to paper over their guilt by effusions of false goodwill. The reports we hear from refugees of that desperate world only confirm the impossibility of serious contacts. Any official exchange with the Imperium would have to meet these preconditions: acknowledge and pay reparations for the Valan freighter; cease genocidal repression of rebel provinces; return, in person or remains, the thousand or more foreigners taken prisoner over the last two centuries; accept investigation by the Free Fold Humane Commission of charges of slavery, bestiality, and abuse of women…”
Well familiar with the list, Verid listened in silence. Flors was right, of course, in every detail. And yet, how little he knew of humanity. If people were music, Flors would be “unmusical.”
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