by Patty Jansen
I nodded.
“So when this information goes to the assembly, be careful not to stir up too much anger. Very careful.”
* * *
“He is right,” Veyada said when we were out of the apartment. He had that tone in his voice that spoke of his experience of guarding gamra’s most powerful leader. “There are a hundred reasons why Chief Delegate Akhtari should resign, and a hundred and one why she shouldn’t be allowed to. The assembly will ask for her resignation. We should do our best to prevent that from happening.”
“Probably. But I think people asking for her resignation have a point. I don’t trust her.”
“Would you trust Delegate Ayanu more?”
“Crap, no.”
“There is your reason,” Thayu said. She flicked her eyebrows.
“All right. But it may not be in our power to prevent it. Any bright ideas about how to prevent two thousand people from asking for her resignation?” Because really, that wasn’t up to me. And anyway, I was much too tired to have bright ideas. “Sure, I could be really careful and try not to accuse her directly, but the fact remains that she is Aghyrian and she has never come clean about her involvement with Federza’s group. The assembly has a right to know what’s going on there, especially in light of what we’re about to tell them—”
“Pronouns,” Veyada said.
“What do you mean?” What the hell was he talking about?
He explained. “I watched Ezhya do this time and time again. When the situation is serious, he drops the formal pronouns and uses colloquial ones. Not only does it make people listen and take notice, it also gives them the feeling that they’re being actively included and they’re a lot more likely to listen and do as they’re being asked without objection.”
“But these aren’t Coldi people.” What was more, Asto wasn’t a democracy, not by a long shot, and what Ezhya said was pretty much law anyway.
“I know, and it may not work, but it’s worth a try.”
At this point, anything was worth a try. Veyada was absolutely right in saying that Delegate Akhtari’s resignation would paralyse the assembly at a crucial time. Oh, hell, I thought she should resign, but I could be made to agree that right now was not the best time for that to happen.
“So what, I talk to the full assembly using nyo pronouns?” Those were colloquial, the most common pronoun form since it was the default at Hedron and in Coldi spoken by non-Coldi people.
Veyada shook his head. “Dhoya.”
What? “Those are for intimate friends.”
“Intimate friends, and very serious situations.”
Well, that was not what I had learned, but I’d take it from the expert. Seriously, this language was shifting under my feet. How could I be expected to keep up with it? And did he really want me to speak to the entire assembly using dhoya pronouns? If Delegate Akhtari wasn’t going to resign, she was going to have a fit instead.
Maybe that’s the point, Thayu said. I swore she was secretly laughing at me.
All right, all right.
* * *
With that process set in motion, we went to the accommodation of the zeyshi Aghyrian delegation to see who would turn up for today’s preliminary meeting.
With all the things that were going on, we got to the apartment late and the delegation already sat at the table, with the refreshments that the gamra staff had brought. They had poured themselves some tea and looked relieved when we came up the stairs.
“No one here yet?” But that was evidently clear.
“I was wondering if we understood the time wrong,” Nayu said, holding a cup. She was wearing a pristine white shayka with tiny gold flecks woven in, and looked very traditional and very out of place. As it was customary with zeyshi, she used nyo pronouns, and yes, I could see why Ezhya would use dhoya forms. The nyo form was bland. It was just about as inoffensive as one could make it, and emotionless as a result. Using it would ruffle some feathers of the gamra officials, but would do little else. Everyone heard nyo pronouns on the streets and the courtyards and in the corridors of the gamra buildings every day.
Dhoya pronouns would make people sit up and take notice. In a good way, I hoped.
I asked the delegation, “Nicha was supposed to come here this morning. Have you seen him?”
“Oh, yes, he was here briefly. He told us that you were coming, else we would have gone for a walk.”
“Have you heard anything from the others?”
Nayu snorted. “Those people wouldn’t let us know if they’re not going to turn up.”
I ignored the barb. “They’d let someone know, and that someone would let you know. This is gamra. We’re not into favouritism.”
“No?” Sadet snorted. She wore a dark blue shayka today. Her hair hung loose to her shoulders. It made her face softer. “It seems that something is going on, and no one cares to tell us what it is. There are all these people walking past our apartment and standing out there gawking at us. Also, the Exchange doesn’t work half the time and there were some guards out the front of the building this morning who said that we couldn’t go out.”
“You shouldn’t need to go out. If you need something, let the caretaker know and it will be brought here.” I’d explained that before.
“We’re not allowed to go for a walk?”
“You are, but you may be asked to turn back or show your identification at any time. Security does things for reasons that are not always clear to us.”
Sadet snorted. “It’s worse than in our city.”
Nayu said, “Anyway, where are the others? I thought we had a meeting this morning? It’s not just you that’s supposed to be here. Where is that Trader? Where is the crazy witch?”
Damn it, did she really need to talk like that?
All her rudeness is in the pronouns, Thayu reminded me through the feeder.
Yeah, I’m already in favour of taking Veyada’s advice.
To the delegation I said, “I don’t know where the others are.” I was going to tell them that I had yet to sleep, and wasn’t up to keeping up with everyone’s appointments, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to complain. “The Trader and Delegate Ayanu live on another part of the island. They may simply be late. Let me ask my security if they have heard anything about where they are.”
I went into the hallway, where Veyada was shaking his head. “You know you are the most incredible bullshit merchant I have ever come across?”
I raised my eyebrows. “It works.” I’d rather talk nonsense than be beaten to pulp.
We went a bit down the stairs, where Sheydu and the two youngsters sat on the balustrade. Sheydu was giving an instruction on a selection of goodies that she had produced from her pockets and laid out on the floor. Explosives for blowing up walls, explosives for opening doors, explosives for creating a diversion. Sheydu loved it, as long as it went bang. The bigger the bang, the better.
But when we came down, she jumped down from the balustrade with more grace than people half her age, and swept the entire lot off the floor and into her pockets. Lesson over.
She gestured, Listen now.
Nicha had been sitting on the stairs with his reader and he got up.
The rest of us gathered around. Veyada sat on the steps; Thayu leaned against the balustrade. I ended up standing in the middle. I began, “I have no idea what’s going on. I expected Federza not to be here. We’ll have to find out where he is, but we don’t have much time for that. I’m really surprised about Delegate Ayanu’s absence.”
“Maybe she is also asking for an emergency meeting,” Nicha said.
“No,” Sheydu said. “I have it from reliable sources that Ezhya is dealing with her.” There was a kind of smugness in that sentence that chilled me. Dealing with in Coldi understanding often involved guns.
“Then what are we supposed to do now?” Nicha said.
Thayu said, darkly, “Go home and go to bed?”
If only. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? “I suppose
we better tell the zeyshi what we know. Better than that they hear it for the first time from someone else.”
Nicha grumbled. “I went to the Exchange this morning and got clearances for all of the delegates to use the gamra system. Does this mean that I’ve been wasting my time?”
“No, not at all,” I said.
The zeyshi probably wouldn’t be allowed in an emergency meeting so Nicha’s efforts meant that they could follow the meeting from anywhere within the complex. I didn’t think that the public gallery was open for emergency meetings. There had been only one such meeting since I started working for gamra, but it had been held while I was at Asto.
Nicha said, “Do you need me today, because . . .” He gestured at his reader.
Xinanu? I met his eyes.
“No, not yet. She’s just feeling bad. But I’d rather be there than be accused of not caring.”
“All right.” Poor Nicha.
Nayu came to the door of the meeting room. “I don’t know what’s going on, but the Exchange has just shut us out again—”
My reader pinged. I slipped it out of my pocket.
A message from the official gamra channel. Request the attendance to an emergency meeting of all delegates.
There it was.
I showed the message to Thayu.
Sadet was watching us with an expression of suspicion. “What’s going on?”
“I’m afraid we’ve been called away immediately.”
“See? There is something going on.”
“We have been called to an emergency sitting of the assembly. We have to attend. I don’t know if you can come.”
“I think they should,” Veyada said. He sounded like he was serious about it, too.
“But what if the meeting is closed to all outsiders?”
“I’ll explain at the door.” He seemed confident that he could get the delegation in, so they went downstairs to get ready. Did they need weapons, Sadet wanted to know. Sheydu said bring some and wear armour and they went into a little bit of discussion about weapon types and what would be acceptable.
Sheydu sucked in a breath once Sadet had gone downstairs with her fellows. She exchanged a look with Veyada.
They got some serious stuff, huh?
Damn, what did she think was going to happen at that meeting? Wherever I turned, there seemed to be an ever-increasing escalation of firepower. When I started working in Barresh, I would be shocked by the sight of a single gun, and now Thayu wanted me to carry one.
“Any news from Federza yet?” I asked Thayu.
She shook her head. Her eyes met mine in a worried look.
“Maybe we should send someone to look for him.”
“Why did he ever leave the apartment? I offered him a safe room.”
“The guards said that he’d been picked up by some gamra guards.”
“And we didn’t check that, didn’t we?” What if they had been Tamerians in disguise? I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but after tonight I could believe anything.
“We had no reason to doubt it.”
“Damn it. We have to find him.” If anything happened to Federza, it was my fault. I shouldn’t have let him leave.
“Don’t worry. He’ll have received the call for the meeting as well. He’ll have to be there.”
The delegation members came upstairs. Nayu was the only one who wore nominally normal clothes, although I could see the glint of armour underneath her tunic. Sadet wore a skin-fitting suit with built-in armour and pockets for things that required antennas and wires. She eyed Sheydu as if matching her in strength. I had no doubt that Sheydu was the superior. The other three were all in dark clothing. Their non-descript gear made me think strongly of the Asto army. I had to push that thought away. It would be ridiculous if this delegation contained army people, wouldn’t it? Well, wouldn’t it?
But damn it, last year, during the upheaval caused by Ezhya’s absence, Ezhya’s second had fled to the zeyshi warrens. Who was to say where the army had its ties? The reason that Coldi had little conflict between groups within their population was that they had ties and networks everywhere.
I was trying to eliminate Delegate Ayanu’s influence from my association. If I was truly Coldi and I found this influence in my association, I would first secure it to make sure it didn’t feed into places I didn’t want it to go, but then I would embrace it.
Instead, these sorts of thoughts Would the army be involved with the zeyshi? upset me and still, after many years, managed to take me by surprise. If Asha Domiri was smart—and frankly the man scared the shit out of me—then he would have ties with the zeyshi, end of story.
Was it then safe to assume that the zeyshi Aghyrian claim was a move by Asto’s Inner Circle in disguise? I didn’t think so, but frankly this stuff made my head hurt.
We left the apartment not much later and walked as a large group in the direction of the assembly hall. Many other delegates were going in the same direction and the courtyards and passages hummed with an air of excitement. The monsoon was starting to build. Fat clouds with dark grey bases cast huge shadows over the island and surrounding marshland. When a cloud alternately blocked out one sun and then the other, the light grew eerie and wan. Even after having lived here for a couple of years, it always creeped me out a little when the clouds did that. The faint and lifeless light somehow suited the graveness of the occasion.
The air was humid and I was sweating before we’d gone far.
The foyer of the assembly hall buzzed with activity. Groups of the minor delegates and their staff—and I was still coming to terms with the fact that I was no longer a minor delegate—waited outside the main doors to the hall, which were still closed.
Not all delegates were equally prepared. Some went in their day-to-day uniform; others were perfectly dressed for a general assembly meeting. People looked over their shoulders at us. There were fifteen of us and Veyada and Sheydu at the front of our group cut an imposing picture. Maybe some people even recognised one or the other of them. Rumours already went around that I was the man who stole security guards off Ezhya Palayi. And got away with it.
Was Ezhya here yet?
Then again, if he was, people wouldn’t be standing here in a relatively relaxed fashion. They’d have been herded into a corner of the hall by his new guards. I thought. Or maybe Ezhya would be a bit late, as was his habit, to come in at the time that his entry caused maximum disturbance and would be noticed by everyone.
Asto officials were strutting peacocks.
I’d thought this so often that, when we were last in New Zealand, I’d had to go and find a peacock for Thayu to watch. I still remembered her face when it put up its tail.
“That’s gorgeous,” she’d said, and then, “The colours are a bit like my hair.” And for the rest of the time of our visit to the zoo, she hadn’t wanted to leave the peacock’s side. Were they aggressive, she’d wanted to know, and I told her no, they just wanted to bluff their rivals into a corner with a big show of colour. She fed it pieces of bread. I don’t think that up to then she had understood what I meant by likening Coldi behaviour to bluff and peacocks, but it was like seeing the light go on inside her brain.
I smiled just thinking about it.
Damn, I loved that woman.
I touched her arm and she, having followed my thoughts through the feeder, gave me that most gorgeous smile of all the smiles in the universe. That smile that said that I could do anything I set my mind to, as long as she was with me.
Chapter 16
* * *
SHEYDU AND VEYADA made a path for us to the doors of the assembly hall. These days, I came in through the main entrance because I’d been given a box in the lower tiers of the hall. Most minor delegates sat on the unassigned benches at the top of the hall and they crowded up the stairs because apparently someone needed to be found to open the gallery doors.
Veyada went to speak to the guards at the door. There was too much talk in the hall for me to hear wh
at was being said. The guard’s expression was grave. I didn’t think Veyada was successful. He turned back to us. “The delegation can go in the public gallery. They can’t come with us.”
“That’s all right.” Frankly I was surprised that they were allowed in at all, even if only because with all of us here, the box would be very cramped.
“The public gallery will be full of delegates.” The assembly hall was only big enough for all delegates if absolutely none took any staff and that never happened, apart from ceremonial meetings. “It is a security risk.”
“Why don’t we send someone with them?”
“I will go,” Reida said.
I glanced at Nicha. Did we trust him enough?
He nodded.
“You and Deyu,” I said.
Deyu straightened her back and then bowed. The two of them accompanied the delegation to the back of the queue that snaked all the way up the stairs and into the gallery doors.
“Do you think that’s a good idea to send both of them?” Thayu asked.
“She’s very obedient. She’ll keep him in line.”
“I hope you’re right. Because I’m not feeling his loyalty yet.” She glanced over her shoulder. I had spoken to Nicha. Reida had broken with Delegate Ayanu, but Nicha hadn’t spoken to her yet in order to sever his ties with her. That part still remained unsettled, and would probably remain so until Xinanu had left our apartment.
We went into the hall, where the main lights were on and people were settling into their boxes and benches. My box was a familiar place for me these days, considering the amount of time I spent in here. I didn’t just attend the general meetings, but also a good number of committee and subcommittee meetings.
Thayu took the seat in front of me, Nicha next to me, Sheydu and Veyada behind me. I couldn’t see the zeyshi delegation from here. Too dark, too many people. There had to be close to two thousand in the hall.
