Finally Rhillian paused atop some steps where a big tree grew against one wall, spreading thick roots through the surrounding stone. Terel helped Vinae to rest against the tree and tended to his injury. The bolt had struck him from behind, lodging through one shoulder blade. Terel took a knife to his clothes and began to relate his findings to Vinae in some Saalsi dialect Sasha could make no sense from at all. Vinae seemed somewhat reassured, pale and gasping, but alert.
“Those didn't look like family soldiers,” Sasha murmured to Rhillian as both of them crouched atop the uneven stone stairs. “All that clumsy armour, and silly weapons for city fighting. Halberds.”
“They were men of Danor Province,” said Rhillian. She seemed barely even out of breath, her green eyes sharp and calm, cutting through the dark. “That fool Duke Tarabai has been itching to have at us within the city for a while now. He disdained Patachi Steiner's warnings. Now he learns the patachi's wisdom.”
Sasha raised an eyebrow at her. “That's the only nice thing you've ever said about Patachi Steiner.”
“Nice? The wise are rarely nice, in this city. Petrodor wisdom is the mother of Petrodor brutality and intelligence its father. These terms are strange to serrin philosophy. No, I'm sure Patachi Steiner was pleased to set traps along the ridgetop after Riverside, and in light of the increased Nasi-Keth and serrin activity. But I don't think he'll shed tears for his upstart duke to learn his place, either.”
“I'm sure he'd rather have killed us all even more,” Sasha remarked.
Rhillian shrugged. “Tian'as fahr.” One could have said, “that meant, if one could know everything.” “Although captured for torture might be even more preferable to him.”
“Serrin are very good at assassinations,” Sasha remarked. “Why not just kill him?”
Rhillian shrugged. “Patachi Steiner is not the easiest target. Our numbers are not enormous. And there's no guarantee Symon Steiner will be any better. Patachi Steiner is at least open to more subtle forms of persuasion, and he is not yet in a state of total war with Saalshen.”
“Just limited war,” Sasha muttered.
“A perpetual state in Petrodor,” said Rhillian. “Today is just another day of business to the Big Patachi.” She eyed Sasha sideways. “You show distaste.”
“Say what you like about we highland barbarians,” said Sasha, “but at least we take war seriously. Here, it's just another transaction.”
“Honour,” said Rhillian, dubiously.
Sasha nodded. “Yes, honour. It's not such a bad concept, Rhillian. It imparts a price for every action.”
“And a reward for every crime,” said Rhillian, taking some dead leaves off the top step and wiping her bloody sword with them. “Lenays place honour on codes of behaviour in order to maintain the social order and hierarchy. Patachi Steiner places honour on power and wealth. It is a flexible concept, this ‘honour,’ neither inherently good nor evil. Like your blade, it depends on the hand that wields it.”
“At least Lenay honour is gained from the means rather than the ends,” Sasha insisted. It seemed important that Rhillian should understand. This woman was the most powerful and influential serrin in Petrodor. So much rested upon her decisions. The fate of humanity, in many ways. “In Petrodor, the ends can impart any crime with honour, should they be rewarding enough.”
“If you're asking for my personal preference of Lenay honour above the Petrodor variety,” said Rhillian, “then you have it. But I shall always dislike ‘honour’ as a concept. Too often it serves to impart respectability upon the most vile of crimes. King Leyvaan's men gained great honour murdering serrin children two centuries ago. Even your wonderful Lenays have a long, bloody history of pillage, murder and rape, all in the name of honour. You are better behaved these days, and honour means different things to you, but that only proves the dangerous ambiguity of the concept.”
Rhillian's emerald gaze fixed onto Sasha with spine-tingling force. There was a droplet of blood trickling down one pale cheek. These beautiful people, this beautiful civilisation, was a shining light for all the world, Kessligh insisted. They are peaceful and good because they are philosophical, and do not to leap to conclusions. They neither hate nor fear easily. They do not kill on a whim. They are frequently long-winded, gentle and indecisive.
But what if that changed, Sasha wondered, staring at that terrible, beautiful vision of luminescent eyes and trickling blood. What if we pushed them too far? What it we made them so angry, and so scared, that they lost their indecisiveness and replaced it with determination? There was determination in Rhillian's eyes now. Determination and focused, deadly intensity. Sasha had now seen Rhillian fight. She'd seen Errollyn fight, and other serrin too. Saalshen would be a terrible enemy for humanity. Terrible for the damage they could do, and terrible for the simple tragedy of such good and decent people forced into conflict with those who should do far better to befriend them. She could not let it happen. She would not.
“You need honour to confirm your identity,” said Rhillian, unblinking. “Your honour tells you who you are. We serrin don't need it. We know who we are.”
“Vel'ennar?” Sasha asked quietly.
“Vel'ennar,” Rhillian agreed. “The one soul,” literally translated. A concept of serrin unity. Whether it was real or imagined, cultural or merely philosophical, no human seemed to know…and no serrin had yet definitively explained. Not to Sasha's hearing, anyhow.
Vinae hissed in pain as Terel applied something to the wound. He was not removing the bolt, Sasha saw. Probably there were better facilities available to serrin than a dingy alleyway for that. “Do you need any help?” she asked Terel.
“Do you have any skills with medicine?” Terel asked as he worked.
“Um…not for something like that, not really.”
“Then I don't need your help.”
Rhillian's eyes flicked uphill, back the way they'd come. Sasha spun in alarm, but saw nothing. Then, after a moment, a small, indistinct shadow crossed the path. A cat.
“Do you see better,” she asked Rhillian warily, “or do they?” Meaning the cat.
Rhillian shrugged. “I've never asked one. Possibly they do. But do they know what they're seeing?”
“Do you? Maybe the cat knows everything and we're all fools.”
“A serrin answer,” Rhillian said coyly, with an impressed smile. “You're spending far too much time with us. We'll corrupt you.”
“Too late. You remind me of a cat, sometimes.”
Rhillian's grin seemed to light up the dark, flashing white teeth and gleaming eyes. “Meow,” she said with her entire, lean, poised body.
Further down the winding alleys, the party finally arrived at a nondescript gate in the rear wall of a narrow passage. Rhillian reached into a hole beside the gate and pulled something. Faintly, Sasha heard a bell ring. A moment later, a hatch slid aside, and something whispered in dialect. Rhillian replied. Several latches were undone and the gate opened on silent, oiled hinges. Sasha waited until last, passing a serrin she did not recognise, who shut the gate behind her. They made their way through a stone passage with arrowslits at the end, and another gate, reinforced yet open for now.
A turn and then they emerged into a patio centred by a fountain, with gardens about the surrounding wall. The house had broad, slatted doors opening directly onto the patio, behind a row of pillars supporting an overhead balcony. More serrin were waiting, and took Vinae into the house. Sasha followed Rhillian and Terel, and found herself in an adjoining sitting room, chairs about a tiled floor and bookshelves against the walls. Most welcoming of all, Errollyn, Liam, Yulia and Adele were all waiting there.
“Where's Marlen?” Rhillian asked immediately.
“Inside somewhere,” said Adele. “He's fine.” Rhillian looked relieved. Sasha looked questioningly at Errollyn. He'd leaned his bow against a wall and was cleaning his sword. Evidently he'd had to use it. He met her gaze and gave a faint smile. “I never doubted I'd see you here,” tha
t smile said. Somehow, she knew what he meant.
Servants brought them drinks…human servants, dressed much the same as serrin-plainly, with few frills or trinkets, but with quality and style all the same. Upon first visiting a Saalshen property in Petrodor, Sasha had been astonished to find human servants in the house. Errollyn had explained to her that the first serrin talmaad in Petrodor had resisted it at first-service was not a profession nor a social condition of any sort in Saalshen-but it had been a waste of resources for well-trained talmaad to be doing household chores.
The Nasi-Keth had suggested the solution. There were plenty of folk on the Petrodor lower slopes who needed work. Folks with deformities, that often led to them being rejected by their families as cursed. And so the talmaad had taken in many such folk as houseworkers-a term the serrin preferred to “servants.” The houseworkers were undyingly loyal and the serrin were happier. The houseworkers would surely be in a dismal state were they not “serving,” and so “serving” became an alternative no serrin could begrudge them from having.
A bald, round-faced man with an anxious smile handed Sasha a drink and then shuffled off, one leg stiff, one hand and arm curled tight. Yulia was slumped in a chair in a corner. Liam paced, anxious to be on his way.
Rhillian addressed her fellows in Saalsi. “I must meet with Patachi Maerler tonight,” she said. “Words were exchanged with Duke Rochel. There are possibilities.”
“Shall we send a message ahead?” asked one serrin. “I'm not certain of his whereabouts tonight.”
“He'll be home,” said Rhillian, with assuredness. “He'll be expecting me.”
“What did Rochel say?” asked another man, newly arrived into the room. His jet black hair fell with stylish disarray about a well-formed face. His eyes were a pale, almost colourless grey. Kiel.
“Another time awaits,” said Rhillian, in the most abstract form that Saalsi allowed. “Not with others listening,” Sasha interpreted that. “Adele, Marlen, stay and rest. Kiel, I want you along. Errollyn too.”
“Must he?” said Kiel. The question was blandly put. Much about Kiel was bland, and expressionless. Most serrin were disconcerting to basic human instincts, as was Kiel but in a different way. Rhillian startled with her intensity. Kiel startled in his impassivity. He was the only serrin Sasha had ever met toward whom her instinctive reaction was dislike.
“Must I?” said Errollyn.
Rhillian's stare was displeased. “You know humans better than most. You read Patachi Maerler well. You may notice things others will miss.”
“I don't know humans as well as Sasha does,” said Errollyn. He sheathed his sword over one shoulder. “Why not ask her along?”
Rhillian's stare became even more displeased. She said something in dialect.
“Rhillian says that I'm being difficult,” Errollyn translated to Sasha. “She says I know very well why she cannot ask you along.” Rhillian made a sharp gesture of exasperation. “Why don't you tell us all, Rhillian, why Sasha cannot come along? Why is it that you plot things, in a human city, that do not concern our human allies?”
“He becomes more and more human every day,” Kiel said mildly. He sounded almost amused.
“Sasha has her own people to return to,” said Rhillian, glaring.
“And I'd so much rather go with her.”
“Are you talmaad, or are you not?”
“Do you define the talmaad now?” A human might have folded his arms in defiance. That pose, however, seemed foreign to serrin. Errollyn stood calmly, a thumb in his belt. “You're right, I do read Patachi Maerler quite well. You're a fool to trust him, I said so from the start, and I'm sure I'll tell you the same after this meeting too. What more can I add to your expedition?”
“Loyalty,” said Kiel, in Torovan.
Errollyn snorted. “Well may you change tongues,” he told Kiel, in Torovan. “And you accuse me of becoming more human?”
“We serve the serrinim,” said Kiel, in Saalsi once more. “The serrinim cannot be disunited, or we shall fall. Such have we decided, and such does our vel'ennar tell us. Will the du'janah follow? Or do we have to drag you?”
Errollyn gave Kiel a look that was almost…anger. Amongst serrin, in debates, it was rare indeed. “When charging headlong toward a cliff, disunity is no bad thing.”
“When the cliff charges toward us,” said Kiel, utterly unmoved, “then disunity will kill us all.”
“And I tell you that debate has saved us in the past,” Errollyn said firmly, “and shall do so in the future, if we are to survive at all.”
“No one doubts your conviction, Errollyn,” said Rhillian, more gently this time. “Your opinions have always been respected.” Kiel, Sasha saw, nearly smirked. “But these are not the councils and teahouses of Saalshen. This is Petrodor, and I lead. We are talmaad. You swore an oath.”
“Another foreign concept,” said Errollyn. “You accuse me of foreign thinking, but your own is worse. I learn sarcasm. You learn fear and cynicism.”
“Come down from your lofty mountain, great mind,” Rhillian said more coolly. “You're right, we do live amongst humans and their ways at times dictate ours. I can give an order if I must, Errollyn. Do you say that I must?”
Several questions to dockside residents told Sasha of Kessligh's whereabouts quickly enough. She walked along the dock, with only Liam for company, and listened to the creak and heave of the boats tied along the piers. Some folk wandered in the warm evening, unaware of commotions elsewhere in the city. Here, some wealthy types with a foreign look about them-Ameryn, perhaps, walking with several prominently armed guards. There, some rowdy sailors, singing as they wandered from bar to bar. Some men played a loud game of dice before their doorway. Some others sang songs to the accompaniment of guitars. They paid little attention to a couple of passing Nasi-Keth.
“You did well,” Sasha told Liam as they walked. “Up there, and at Riverside. I was impressed.” Liam said nothing. Sasha thought she knew the cause of it. “You were right about Yulia. She should not have come.”
Liam gave her a hard, suspicious stare. “Now you admit it. After Rodery's dead.”
“And what good would it have done to admit it at the time? We were stuck in a situation, Liam. Yulia was there, frightening her further would have only made matters worse.”
“Kessligh should never have selected her for the mission,” Liam said darkly.
“It wasn't entirely his choice. His seconds chose the personnel, Kessligh cannot know the standard of every Nasi-Keth on the dockfront. Besides, her technique in training was not so bad; she should have been all right against mudfoots. But she panicked and her technique deserted her. That's one thing training can never tell. But now we know.”
They arrived at the entrance to The Fish Head where some sailors and locals were having a loud, drunken disagreement, with much shouting and fingerpointing. Sasha and Liam slipped past, down some steps and into the gloomy, lamplit interior.
The space was crowded, with as many Nasi-Keth as Sasha had ever seen gathered in one place. From the stairs, she could see that there appeared to be three sides to the gathering-a triangle, some fancy, serrin-educated folk called it. Near the middle, men were sitting, tables shoved aside. Further back, men stood, perhaps fifty in all. The air smelled staler than usual, hot and musty. The conversation was loud and animated, and so intense that no one saw her enter.
She left Liam, pushed past men along a side wall and headed for the bar where Tongren the Cherrovan waited and watched, a scowl on his dark face. Sasha nearly smiled. She rapped on the bar and his face lit up. Sasha put a finger to her lips to quiet his exclamation.
“What's going on?” she asked him as he leaned close.
“You're alive!” he exclaimed softly. He clapped her on the shoulder-her sore shoulder-and she winced. Tongren ran a finger on her swollen eyebrow. “What man dared do this to your pretty face?”
“Probably some kid with a rock,” Sasha murmured.
He made
a dismissive gesture. “You're always beautiful to me. I worried so much for you! Though not as much as one I could name…” He jerked his head toward the group. Sasha looked, but could not see Kessligh amidst the crowd. “Kessligh's in trouble. Alaine and Gerrold made lots of noise. Now they challenge him, say he made a big mess in Riverside, lost precious men.”
“How many did we lose?”
“One less now we have you back…Who else?”
“Liam and Yulia, two more,” said Sasha. “And one confirmed dead. Rodery.”
Tongren shrugged. “Sharl,” he said. “War,” in Cherrovan. One of her small handful of Cherrovan words; the ones every Lenay knew from four centuries of occupation. “That would be thirteen dead, I think five badly wounded and still two missing.” Sasha exhaled hard. It was not as bad as she'd feared. But it was still bad. The whole thing had been bad; there was just no way around it. “Alaine blames Kessligh. Gerrold doesn't blame anyone…he's a good man, sensible. But still, he argues. You'll hear.”
Sasha pulled herself onto a bar stool. “Get me a drink, will you?”
“Ale?” said Tongren, brightening.
“Juice, please.”
“Bloody Nasi-Keth,” Tongren muttered, going to do that. “Take over my bar, scare away my customers, but you don't drink. How can you be real fighting men if you don't drink?”
“I never claimed to be a real fighting man,” Sasha said pointedly.
“Just my point.”
“The plan would have worked,” one of Kessligh's men was saying. It sounded like Bret. From her seat, Sasha could not see him. “I'm telling you, our plans were sound, we had good numbers for the assault, Steiner's men would have had no chance against us…”
“Would have this, could have that!” That was Alaine, loud and angry. Alaine was always loud and, for a Nasi-Keth, frequently unreasonable. “We hear excuse after excuse from you and your great warrior hero!” Sasha bristled. “Did he make this many excuses when he drove the Cherrovan invaders from Lenayin? You complain like an old woman, and make up fantasies like a child! I don't care what you could have done, it only matters what did happen! And this attack was a disaster!”
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