by Diane Duane
They lifted off lightly enough, but the flitter then rocketed forward at such speed that Arrhae was hard put to restrain her smile. I must learn not to scold, she thought. But for so long that had been a significant part of her job here…besides keeping her ears and eyes open, of course, on other accounts. The difference was that if a hru’hfe scolded, no one suffered from it but the household’s servants. If a Senator scolded, effects tended to be much more widespread.
And if a Praetor scolds?…
One would expect serious trouble indeed. And this was not just any Praetor she was going to see, not merely some one of the Twelve. Eveh tr’Anierh was what, in the language she had recently begun practicing to think in again after a brief hiatus, would have been called a triumvir. Except that triumvirates in the original context had been directly elected by the citizenry—poor, rigged examples of democracy though those ancient elections had been. These three men had acquired their de-facto position by means of manipulation of the other nine Praetors, and to a lesser extent by favors done for the various power blocs in both houses of the Senate—as many for those who expunged laws as for those who enacted them.
And what in the names of Air and Earth does such a man want with me?
There was, of course, always that one fear, the one that would never quite go away…but probably safer that it did not. The only time in Rihannsu politics that people stopped asking questions about you, normally, was when you were dead…and sometimes not even then, for the actions of the dead could be, and sometimes were, used to incriminate the living. Arrhae, for her own part, was both alive and, if anyone ever got wind of what her other business was, exquisitely incriminable. Even now, in her present position—honored as a hero, elevated to the Tricameron, desired as a possible strategic Housematch—there was always the question: What if someone has found out? What if he has found out? All the rest of it would matter not a straw’s worth in the wind, if that ever happened. Honors bestowed could be stripped away again…and the revenge on the party who had allowed them to be fraudulently bestowed would be most prolonged and painful.
Arrhae let out a long breath and stretched her limbs, then opened the bottom cabinet. Dear Elements, she thought, do they fear I will starve in three-quarters of an hour? The “light collation” looked as if someone had pillaged the Ruling Queen’s cold table. Look at all this! Kheia, roast lhul, sliced cold irriuf mousse, alhel jelly. It was just as well she had eaten lightly before bed, otherwise the sight of all this food could have left her feeling queasy. Still, she reached up for a cup from the top cupboard and poured herself a tot of ale, and then picked up a pair of tongs and smiled slightly. House Khellian was doing better than it had done in a while, but not so well as to afford kheia on a regular basis.
Quite shortly, it seemed, they were landing; either the pilot had made better speed than originally intended, or Arrhae had been paying more attention to the kheia than she realized. She put the eating things away and dusted the crumbs off, making a note to have the House’s new hru’hfe inquire about the recipe. Then she peered out at the compound into which the flitter was settling, out of the glare of the roads and towers of Ra’tleihfi. Paths to and from the landing patch were lit, but the house at the center of it was not; that was a low long dark bulk, only faintly visible by light reflected from other sources, and in all of it Arrhae could see only one light lit in a first-floor window.
The flitter grounded most gently, and the young officer was at the door again for her when it opened, and handed her down. Outside, on the flitter patch, she found a small honor guard awaiting her. In the middle of the night? Arrhae thought. For me, or is someone else more important here? They raised their weapons across their chests in salute, and she bowed to them, another fractional superior-to-inferior bow, another of the things she was having to get used to these days—for a Senator was almost everyone’s superior. There were, however, exceptions.
“This way, if you please, deihu,” said the foremost officer in the honor guard; and he turned. Arrhae followed him as he led the way, and the rest of the guard fell in behind.
They made their way toward the darkened house through the soft summer night. It was not a very old building, perhaps no more than a few hundred years in existence; and as they drew closer to the pillared portico that hid the main doors, the pale beige stone house showed no outward sign of the status of its occupant, which was still something that could happen even in these symbol-conscious days. But there was no missing, on the security vehicles parked outside, and on the side of the one that had brought her here, the taloned, winged sigil that gripped the Two Worlds one in each claw, and the characters scribed around it: Fvillhaih Ellannahel t’Rihannsu, Praetorate of the Romulan Star Empire. If the Twelve themselves sometimes disdained making a show of their power, those who served them usually did not.
The officer commanding the honor guard went up a low flight of steps into the portico. Arrhae followed, and as she came up the steps, the two great doors in the shadows opened outward, to reveal a single tall figure standing there against the light. He was fair; that by itself was a little unusual for her adopted people, but just as unusual was his height, which would have marked him out regardless of his hair. He was dressed casually, but richly, in long kilts and a long tunic, appropriate enough for the time of night, but dark enough that he might have come from some formal engagement earlier in the evening and not bothered to change.
He stepped forward to greet her as she came up to the top of the steps. “Deihu t’Llhweiir,” said tr’Anierh, “you are very welcome to my house, and at such an hour.”
His bow to her was deeper than it needed to be. She returned the compliment, giving him a breath’s more time than he was strictly entitled to. “The fvillha honors me by asking for a consultation,” Arrhae said.
“The deihu is being politer to the fvillha than necessary, given the hour,” said the Praetor, “and probably wonders what in the Elements’ Names causes the Praetor to call the Senator out so late.”
The man’s wry look was open, and invited sympathy. Arrhae simply smiled at him. She was not going to discuss business out here.
“Dismissed,” tr’Anierh said to the guard. They bowed, all, and took themselves away into the silent darkness.
“Please come in,” tr’Anierh said. Arrhae followed him through into the light, and behind them the House’s door-opener shut the great doors and went back into his little room. The hallway through which the Praetor led Arrhae was nearly as wide as House Khellian’s whole Great Hall, all done in polished viridian stone and dimly lit with only the occasional faint star of lamplight as suited the time of night; shadows moved under the high ceilings with the lamplights’ flickering.
“It’s a great barn of a place,” said tr’Anierh as they walked. “Wonderful for entertaining, but a nuisance to heat in the winters. Fortunately I needn’t pay the fuel bills; it would be my whole salary…. Here’s my study, deihu: do come in.”
A door slipped open as they approached one wall. This was the room Arrhae had seen from the flitter, with its light on. Here there was a wide worktable of polished blackwood under the window, and another, smaller, in the middle of the room, with two big black chairs drawn up to it and facing one another across the table, all on a carpet of a beautiful dark blood-green, very thick and soft to walk on. The walls of the room were all lined with blackwood shelves stacked with tapes and books and solids, some of the stacks tidy, some of them looking about to collapse.
“Please, deihu, sit and be comfortable,” tr’Anierh said, going around to the chair on the other side of the table. “May I give you some draft?”
The polished clay pitcher on the tray down at one end of the table was plain reedgrain draft, Arrhae could tell by the scent, and frankly at such an hour she welcomed the prospect; the stimulant content would certainly do her no harm. “Please do.”
“Spice?”
“No, I thank you. Blue, please.”
He poured, handed her the tall
stemmed cup. Arrhae pledged him, drank, and took a moment to look at the table. It was not plain blackwood, as might have seemed the case on first glance, but was inlaid right around its perimeter with one long sentence in dark heimnhu wire. She traced the middle of the passage with one finger. “T’Liemha’s Song of the Sun,” she said. “What a lovely piece of work….”
“They told me you were a cultured woman,” tr’Anierh said, “and I see they were right.”
Arrhae simply smiled slightly at this. Some of her new senatorial confederates had, on meeting her, made remarks to her of this sort. They varied between gracious and subtle to extremely silly, and mostly they factored down to meaning I’m surprised you haven’t come to the Senate carrying a mop. She raised her eyes from the exquisitely inlaid wood, and met his look. “I will not start polishing it, fvillha,” Arrhae said, “if that was your concern.”
His eyes widened slightly. Then he grinned at her. “Well enough,” said tr’Anierh. “Doubtless I deserved that.”
She lifted the cup to him and drank again. “How can I assist you, fvillha?” she said. “It is surely late for both of us.”
“It is that,” he said, and rubbed his face briefly before picking up his own cup and drinking. When he put it down again, tr’Anierh looked slightly more composed. “Deihu,” he said, “you will have heard just now of the mission which the Tricameron sends to the Federation.”
She would have had to be deaf not to have heard of it; the racket in the session yesterday had been extraordinary. “Indeed so,” Arrhae said. “A most historic time is upon us.”
“Yes,” tr’Anierh said. “And we have…some concerns.”
She gave him a questioning look as she drank. “That would be understandable,” she said. “But about what, exactly?”
“Do you know the names of the party who are going?”
“A great list of them was read out in session,” Arrhae said, “which the Senate approved by acclamation. I confess I only recognized about twenty of them; but things were happening rather quickly then.”
“The names of the chief negotiators, though, you may have recognized.”
“Oh yes,” she said. Several of the names had figured prominently in the trial of a Federation Starfleet officer here recently, all people who had been profoundly annoyed at having been cheated of the sight of his execution. Others Arrhae knew as jurists, or Senators of considerable seniority; if they shared one characteristic that she knew of, it was a near-hysterical hatred of the Federation. When the Senators in question spoke on the subject in session, they did not so much speak as froth at the mouth.
“How do you like them?”
Arrhae started to have a suspicion where this was leading. She wondered how most safely to proceed. “They are very…emphatic,” she said, “in their opinions.”
Tr’Anierh gave her another of those wry looks. “So they are,” he said. “I would like to add a name to the list of those who will go.” He let the remark hang in the air until she grasped its meaning.
“My name?” Arrhae said. “Fvillha, I beg pardon: but why me?”
He sat back in his chair. “For one thing,” he said, “you are an independent; and genuinely so, for you have had no time to be coopted—not that I think that would come soon, anyway. Even your casual conversations have already made your stance fairly plain.” Once again Arrhae drank, meanwhile reminding herself never to forget how closely she was listened to. “Nearly every other member of the party that will go with this mission is already chained down tight to one or another of the five great blocs. It would, I think, be in the Praetorate’s interest to see that there are at least a few Senators on hand whose perceptions of our enemies, and whose reactions to what they may say, have not already been dictated by someone else.”
Arrhae nodded. “But you have another thought as well.”
“You have had dealings with humans recently,” tr’Anierh said.
It was hard not to freeze. Arrhae put her cup down on the tray, and said, “It is not an easy business at the best of times.”
“I think you may be in a position to understand them better than many of us might,” said tr’Anierh. “And that position might enable you to perceive something, or discover something, about the Federation negotiating position, or their situation, that others of us might miss…and which might make a very great difference to the Empire in the long run.”
The only thing Arrhae could do was laugh. “Praetor,” she said, “a few conversations in a storeroom are all the experience I can bring to this exercise. You honor me very greatly, but I think maybe it would be a skilled translator you would find best fitted to this work.”
He gave her a thoughtful look. “If there are personal reasons you would not choose to travel at this time—”
“Not at all,” Arrhae said. “But I am very uncertain how much good I could do. I would serve gladly, but—”
“But will you go?”
There was something odd about his intensity. Arrhae did not know what to make of it. It came to her, then: I must go. I must find out what is behind this. And I certainly will not find out if I stay here.
“Fvillha, I will go,” Arrhae said, “and I will try to do my Empire honor.”
“Deihu, I think you cannot fail to do so,” tr’Anierh said. “The mission will be leaving tomorrow evening. Can you be ready by then?”
There would have been a thousand things to do first if she were just a hru’hfe; but if she were, she would hardly be being asked to go on a diplomatic mission. Some formal clothes would be what she needed to pack; not a great deal more. “Fvillha, I can.”
“That is good news,” tr’Anierh said. “I will arrange for you to be billeted aboard Gorget, where the most senior members of the mission will also be. There are people attached to the mission, administrative staff and so forth, who will make themselves known to you over the first couple of days in warp; they will have leisure to explain to you the kind of concerns we have at the moment about the conduct of the mission…and I would urge you to do all you can to help them. Other details I will message to you at your House tomorrow, before you depart.”
You have had no time to be coopted, Arrhae thought with some irony. Well, now you have…no matter that it is happening at so high a level. She wondered what she would be called upon to do with the data she would be acquiring…and how she was going to get out of this one, after they were finished with her. It was occurring to Arrhae at the moment that, as the most junior possible member of the Senate, she was probably also the most expendable member possible—no matter who she had been talking to, in what storeroom.
Nevertheless, she finished her cup of draft like a good guest, and stood, knowing a dismissal even if it was being much more politely handled than it would have been for a hru’hfe. “Fvillha,” she said, and bowed to him, “I am at your disposal in all ways.”
“Until tomorrow then, deihu.”
“Until tomorrow,” Arrhae said. The door opened; a servant was standing there to see her out. On the steps under the portico, once more the honor guard was awaiting her, and its officer handed her into the waiting flitter and closed the door. A few moments later the flitter lifted itself up into the darkness, and the night took it.
So it was that deihu Arrhae i-Khellian was sent off to spy on the Federation; and at the back of her mind, Terise Haleakala-LoBrutto, sent off years ago by the Federation to spy on the Romulans, found the jest very choice.
She could only hope, now, that it would not be the death of her.
15 Trianguli was one of those stars that had no particular interest for anyone except because of its position. It was a little type-K8 star, not quite small enough to qualify as a dwarf, orange-red, and planetless. There might have been an asteroid belt around it once, but if there had, long attrition had almost completely destroyed it. All this part of the Empire, on the far side of the Zone, shared the same dearth of resources; an unlucky chance for Ael’s people, but one which circumstance and lack o
f resources elsewhere had forced them to ignore. They had once come a long way out through this region, looking toward space which they could see had more stars, younger ones, stars big enough to have planets that could support hominid life. Unfortunately, it was Federation space they were looking at, those Rihannsu of nearly a century ago. Now this part of space was generally unintruded upon by either side, with the Zone not so far away…a desert again, untroubled, with nothing to attract anyone.
Except for now, as Enterprise and Bloodwing approached 15 Trianguli at warp five, preparing to drop out of warp well away from the star itself.
“T’Hrienteh?” Ael said, standing behind her center seat and studying the viewscreen, which showed stars and nothing else.
“Scan is flat,” t’Hrienteh said, and t’Lamieh, her trainee, nodded agreement over her shoulder.
“But it would be,” Ael said softly. She felt naked, for Bloodwing was not cloaked; in Enterprise’s company, it was for the moment unnecessary.
“Commander?” Jim’s voice said.
“All seems clear, Captain,” Ael said. “No sign of the Federation vessels as yet.”
“They may be running a little behind,” Jim said. “It wouldn’t be unusual, especially if our clocks really are out of synch. I’ve got to mention that to Starfleet. Mr. Sulu, drop us out of warp. Decelerate to half impulse.”
“The same,” Ael said to Khiy, gripping the back of her chair.
The two ships dropped out of warp together, braking to dump down quickly out of the relativistic speeds. Ael swallowed…
…and saw, on the screen, at least one great twin-nacelled form shimmering out of cloak practically in front of them.
“Evasive!” Ael said to Khiy: but he had seen it before she did, and was already doing it. “Captain, ships decloaking—!”
“I see them,” Jim said. “Company. Lots of company—”
The sweat broke out all over Ael to match what was already dampening her hands. Two or three ships, four or five, that she could have understood. But this flock of them, suddenly surrounding her, an open globe, tightening—it put her quite out of countenance.
