by Patty Jansen
She didn’t look at anyone, and her face was absolutely impassive.
There was something dignified about her, as she bowed to delegate Ethvos and walked out of the hall. Her guards wanted to leave with her, but she waved them back.
When the door had shut behind her, people in the hall burst into shouts. Some cheered, some were angry.
Delegate Ethvos rang the bell and said, “In absence of the Chief Delegate, I will chair the meeting. We must now vote for a new secretary as soon as possible. This will be a temporary position pending new elections. The committee will take serious nominations from any members. I call for candidates to come up on the floor.”
In Asto’s box below us, Delegate Ayanu rose. She left her box and went down the stairs.
A few boxes down, so did Delegate Namion from Damarq. He was on the floor before Delegate Ayanu, with his box being closer to the entry point to the main floor. He was a tall man, with the characteristic Damarcian deep-set eyes and heavy brow. His hair was dark brown with lighter streaks that belied his age. The spotlights in the ceiling made the gold striping on his uniform glitter. He walked straight-backed, holding his hands folded before him.
“Not him,” muttered Veyada.
“Not her,” Sheydu said in reply, glaring at Delegate Ayanu.
Both lined up before the dais and were joined by a trio of rogue minor delegates who had no chance of winning the position.
Thayu gave me a penetrating look across the box. She made a movement with her eyes.
What?
She flicked her eyes again.
What the hell? She didn’t want me to stand, did she?
You’d do a better job than either of them.
“You have got to be joking!”
She gave me that I’m serious look.
I would not do a better job. I lack experience—
They don’t need experience right now. Look at all the experience seated around the table. They couldn’t stop the current mess happening. They need someone who most members can support.
That was true, damn it, but . . . no. Just no. I don’t want to do it. That’s final.
Oh, I understood her motives. Standing for the job was a thing a Coldi person in my position would do, even if he had no chance of getting the job. As for me . . . no. There was no way.
Thayu said, It’s only temporary. It’s good for experience.
It would be only temporary until a proper election could be held, but damn it, no. “And that’s final.”
Delegate Ethvos called for silence. He gave each of the nominees a short time to introduce themselves and outline their visions on how to deal with the Aghyrian ship and the situation within gamra.
Delegate Ayanu’s speech was peppered with terms like must defend ourselves against invaders. I had no idea why she thought that this ship was hostile, and it was the first time that I heard anyone refer to the ship as a risk that would lead to an armed conflict. Well, of course it could, but I wondered if there was more behind it than the usual Coldi propensity to posture.
Then she went on about all the injustices served to the Coldi people over the last few hundred years, such as that a person from Asto could never hold the position of Chief Delegate, because the gamra head office couldn’t move to Asto.
Seriously, that was solved about thirty years ago. Why was she still carrying on about it? Delegate Akhtari had been in office all that time, and it was not as if the position had been open during that period anyway. I strongly suspected there could never be a Chief Delegate from Asto, because someone in the position of Chief Delegate may well be considered higher in rank than the Chief Coordinator, and that was impossible.
Delegate Ayanu went on well over the allocated time.
The more she spoke, the more the anger inside me made me feel hot. Fortunately, quite a few people yelled loud enough to interrupt her. Most of those were not Coldi.
Delegate Ethvos—who was really too timid for the job of chairing the meeting—called everyone to order.
Next, Delegate Namion gave his speech. Pompous arse that he was, he dedicated about two sentences to the Aghyrian issue along the lines of “we will negotiate” and then started pontificating on the significance of the assembly.
People grew bored and started talking to their neighbours.
Behind me, Sheydu muttered, a bit too loud, “Do remember to kill me if he wins.”
The three other candidates didn’t make much of an impression either. One from Jeveda, a Coldi-settled world, seemed the most sincere. He spent most of his time assuring us that a vote for him didn’t mean a vote for Asto. Being familiar with the Coldi associations, I believed him. If there was no clear branch of Ezhya’s associations that stretched to Jeveda, then they were truly independent. I couldn’t be completely sure until Ezhya returned and, damn it, he was still missing from the hall.
The other two candidates were even less impressive.
Then we were up to the voting.
A successful bid was meant to have a clear two-thirds majority vote, but the first vote was a mess. Delegate Ayanu got most of the votes, but only twenty percent in total. Delegate Namion got only eleven percent, the others even less, because a lot of people abstained from voting.
Delegate Ayanu went up to the dais and blamed the “anti-Coldi” movement and Delegate Namion declared that the assembly didn’t really want a solution. According to him, the Aghyrian ship had promised favours to key groups, and especially the Asto army was interested in meeting them out of the public eye.
He might be a pompous arse, and there might not be a shred of evidence behind his words, but his analysis chilled me. He might well be right. Of the Asto-born Aghyrians, it was always said that they excelled at manipulating others. It seemed that these ship people were no different.
One of the minor candidates was made to withdraw and there was another vote, but the result was even more divided if this was at all possible. Officials from both major candidates came around, talking about our concerns and wishes. Several delegations refused to see the opposing party’s representatives, which led to heated discussions. The guards had to step in more than a few times.
Then Delegate Ethvos pleaded for more generally acceptable candidates to come forward. Thayu no longer joked about nominating me. She said nothing about it at all. Every time Delegate Ethvos looked in my direction, I felt like he was saying You were supposed to have stopped this from happening.
A Barresh councillor was the only one who came forward, but since he didn’t gain a lot of votes, and it didn’t solve the impasse.
We ended the assembly with a rather lame decision to keep talking about it tomorrow. I thought of the zeyshi delegation in the stands. What would they make of this? They had the right to be angry with the proceedings. They’d come here to negotiate, not to watch people play nasty politics.
Chapter 18
* * *
“I CAN SEE WHAT you’re thinking about this democracy process,” I said to Thayu when we were leaving the hall. “Don’t even say it.”
“I don’t need to say anything. You know my position on it.”
“But tell me what should happen? How should we solve this crisis?”
“Decisively and quickly. The ship will be here. They’ll want to speak to someone who is going to be in power and has the support of all gamra members.”
“That’s easier said than done. We’re all divided.”
“Yes, we have mess and chaos.”
“What would you do to solve it then?”
She just looked at me with that are you kidding? expression. I remembered during my visit to Asto how Veyada had said No, any of us would just go in and shoot him.
In the end, that was exactly what had happened. Not only that, I had fired the shot.
Damn, I knew what she was thinking, and her expression said that she knew that I had worked it out. The way a Coldi leader would solve this was simply to walk into Delegate Akhtari’s office and seize the position.
I wanted to say, I can’t do that. It flies in the face of democracy. But democracy was not something the Coldi held in high regard anyway. They chose order over democracy. Their system of government was about as undemocratic as they came, but it worked. What we needed now was order. And that thought chilled me. Democracy was failing.
I left the hall in the company of Thayu, Veyada, Nicha and Sheydu, who guided me through the throng of delegates making their way to the door. Everywhere around us people were talking about the candidates. I caught snatches of conversation, mostly what they disliked in Delegate Ayanu.
“Well,” Sheydu said when we were in the foyer. “I’m not sure what that achieved.”
And we all felt like that, and no one was willing to say it. We were now further from a solution than we’d been coming in. We’d gone in to talk about the Aghyrian ship. We came out without a clear leader. It pained me to see Delegate Ethvos swamped with all the work of documenting the session and keeping the delegates from attacking each other. He got landed with the job when the only thing he had done was call the meeting. He was clearly uncomfortable with the job.
“We should send out someone to check on Federza,” I said. How many times had I said that today?
“If he was discharged from his position as Aghyrian representative, there would have been no way for him to attend the meeting,” Veyada said.
“That doesn’t stop me wanting to know if he is all right. Besides, he still represents the Trader Guild.”
“True.” He gave me a puzzled look. There was that Coldi callous appearance again. Federza was not in my association, so I should leave the finding out if he was all right to the people who were. Save, of course, that he wasn’t Coldi and didn’t have an association, and that he had been very frightened of some of his own kinsfolk and damn it, I wanted to know if he was all right.
Thayu touched my elbow and gestured with her eyes behind me.
I turned around and there was Ezhya, just coming out of the door with his entourage. Well, where did he suddenly spring from? He certainly hadn’t been in the hall for the second half of the meeting.
He spotted me and diverted his guards in my direction. There was something very purposeful about his actions. The way I read it was that he’d given up on the meeting, gone to do something else and had come back because he wanted to see me specifically.
That’s probably pretty close to the truth, Thayu said.
Seeing him, surrounded by hundreds of other delegates who already accused me of being in his pocket, was not really helpful right now, but I couldn’t avoid talking to him.
I made the outside signal, hoping that he would recognise it.
He did. We wrestled our way through the crowd. I with Thayu, Nicha, Sheydu and Veyada, and he followed behind. I didn’t recognise any of the guards he had with him. There was a hard-faced woman who looked like a younger version of Sheydu and a couple of men with the typical guard body shape: tall and broad-shouldered. I’d become so used to seeing Natanu, Veyada and Sheydu there that it was very unsettling. Both Veyada and Sheydu kept their faces impassive and acted absolutely professional to the men and women who had replaced them.
We left the building through the arched entrance. There was a little courtyard park outside, surrounding an area of paving, where people were now streaming across on their way home.
Ezhya went into the park. A couple of junior delegates scurried off a garden bench to make way for him.
We sat down, surrounded by guards.
“It’s good to see you again,” I said. It was strange but each time I saw him, I felt like I had to re-establish where I stood and what I could and couldn’t do. Today, he seemed even more distant than usual. I longed to ask him why he had left the meeting and what was going on with him and Delegate Ayanu.
He took my hand and held it in a warm grip. There was something intense about his manner that disturbed me. I didn’t know how to begin.
He said, “I heard say that the move to hold the emergency meeting was yours.”
“I don’t know if it achieved anything.” Useless would have been a better term. I’d been powerless to stop what we all feared.
“Of course it did. Some people have been keen to wrestle the assembly from the stranglehold of the Aghyrians for many years.”
“Others would have argued that they provided a balance.”
“Chief delegates always provide a balance, because they’re rarely ever Coldi.”
“What about Ayanu?”
“She has no chance.”
That had a frightening sound of finality about it. Was that because he’d “deal with” her?
At this level, “dealing with” usually involved death.
He continued, “There are too many who distrust her. No matter how many times she stands, she’ll be voted down again and again from within the Asto delegation.”
I still didn’t quite get what he was hinting at. “Has she been trying to expand her loyalty networks?” Or perhaps calling in favours, from people like Nicha and Reida.
“She was directly tied to Taysha.” And of course we all knew what had happened there.
As I’d guessed, this was still part of the ripple effect through Coldi society, a result of the reshuffles at the top. Cut loose from her association, Delegate Ayanu had found herself floundering and searching, in need of guidance from a superior whom she no longer had. Instead, she made a grab for a higher position elsewhere. But since she was no longer in Ezhya’s association, she would never succeed.
I nodded. I understood. The reshuffle at the top even affected people outside Asto.
“What are you going to do with her?”
“I’ll talk and we make an arrangement.”
“That will involve her retirement?” I cringed as I said that. Retirement also often involved death, often by suicide. Coldi society didn’t deal with loss of face very well.
“We will suggest it strongly to her.”
“What about the negotiations?” With two major parties out of the running, we might as well start all over again, except we couldn’t afford the time because of that ship out there.
“What about them?” He scratched his chin in a so what? gesture.
“You’re not concerned? There is a dangerous ship coming this way, people want to talk about who really owns Asto, we are without leadership, one of the major delegates is about to lose her job and this doesn’t worry you?”
“If they arrive, if they find us important enough to talk to, we will send negotiators.”
“If? They will arrive.”
“We’ll see.” Again with that laconic shrug. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t care.
And when he said we, did he mean Asto or gamra? For him probably Asto.
“When they arrive, the issue of what they want will be between them and the Inner Circle.”
“But what about . . .”
“Zeyshi rebels have nothing to do with it. They may live in the aquifers, but they pay for none of their upkeep and do no maintenance. Thanks to our water authorities their lives have become much better, but for those who do not pay their dues, there is no room at the table.”
I named the originator of the proverb. “Dezhya Azimi, administrator of Beratha.”
“I see you’ll soon be able to give my administrators a run for their money. If only they knew that proverb, there would have been a lot less trouble.”
Was there even more trouble than I knew of? But I didn’t ask any further. He had just shown me a very rare glimpse into the running of Asto. I was sure I needed to know it for some reason, even if I didn’t know yet what it was. “You suggest you want to bypass the zeyshi if the ship turns up? Neither of the parties might be happy with that.”
“We’ll see.” Again, an unusually laconic answer. “We certainly don’t think anyone from off Asto has a right to negotiate over our land.”
Fair point, and one I had expected him to make. Coldi were extremely pragmatic and didn�
�t value the emotional attachment to history.
They simply didn’t recognise the right of other entities to have a say in a matter that concerned Asto, and weren’t interested in negotiating the zeyshi claim because they believed the zeyshi had no basis for their claims.
And that was it. Clear-cut for him. It was pointless trying to engage him in discussion over the gamra leadership. He didn’t really care because it wasn’t in his associations. That was entirely the problem that non-Coldi entities had with Asto. And I was reluctant to tell him off for not showing any interest, because he wasn’t stupid and would have realised the importance of the meeting; so there had to have been another reason that he’d left midway through, and I was quite through with reasons right now.
It would just be awesome if everyone put their cards on the table and was honest with each other.
“Has my daughter been keeping you on your toes?” Total change of subject. A much more comfortable one, I had to admit.
“She seems to have struck up a friendship with my housekeeper. She’s been helping in the house.”
“Good. A bit of manual work won’t do her any harm.”
“Oh but Eirani makes her do her study work.”
“And she actually does it?” He laughed. “Maybe I should borrow your housekeeper.”
“How is Natanu?”
He gave me a sharp look. “Are you developing telepathic skills these days?”
“Um, no. Just wanted to know how she was, seeing as she’s not here.” Nothing had happened to her, had it?
“Do you ever feel that your life is being taken over by women?”
I had to stifle a snort. I could imagine Natanu the dominatrix with a whip standing in the hall of Ezhya’s apartment.
“Another girl,” he said.
I stared at him, and then I understood. That was why he wanted Raanu out of the house for a bit. “Well . . . congratulations. I’m honoured to be informed.” And I was. For all that their public lives were so open, high-ranking Coldi kept their families, even the compositions of those families, well hidden.
