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That day she remained with him only a little while, and spent the time trying to break through the linguistic barrier. She ran through her short list of hjjk words, and told him the People equivalents, using pantomime and sketches to aid her. Kundalimon seemed to make progress. She sensed that he was deeply frustrated by his inability to make himself understood. There were things he wanted to say, amplifications of the message that Hresh had extracted from him by means of the Barak Dayir. But he had no way of expressing them.
Briefly she considered attempting to reach him by second sight. That was the next best thing to twining. She could send her soul’s vision forth and try to touch his soul with it.
But most likely Kundalimon would become aware of what she was doing and see it as another intrusion, another violation of his soul’s i
“What can you tell us?” Taniane asked her that evening. Brusquely getting right to it, all business as usual. Chieftain-mode, not mother-mode. Almost never mother-mode. “Have you started to talk about the treaty with him?”
“He still doesn’t have the vocabulary.” She saw the suspicion in Taniane’s eyes, and in distress she said, “Don’t you believe that I’ve been trying, mother?”
“Yes. I do believe it, Nialli.”
“But I can’t do miracles. I’m not like father.”
“No,” said Taniane. “Of course not.”
On the evening of the meeting of the Presidium, at the sixth hour after midday, the leaders of Dawi
Taniane took her place at the high table of mirror-bright red ksutwood, beneath the great spiral that represented Nakhaba of the Bengs and the five gods of the Koshmar tribe entwined in divine unity. Hresh sat at her left. The various princes of the city were arrayed along the curving rows of benches before them.
In the front row, the three princes of the justiciary: the dapper, elegant Husathirn Mueri, with the massive figure of Thu-Kimnibol looming beside him, still clad in his flame-red mantle and sash of mourning, and Puit Kjai, the Beng, sitting upright and rigid. Next to them Chomrik Hamadel, the son of the last independent Beng chieftain before the Union. In the row behind them the old warrior Staip, and his mate Boldirinthe the offering-woman, and Simthala Honginda, their eldest son, with his mate Catiriil, who was Husathirn Mueri’s sister. Around them, half a dozen of the wealthy merchants and manufacturers who held seats on the Presidium, and various members of the nobility, the heads of some of the founding families of the city: Si-Belimnion, Maliton Diveri, Kartafirain, Lespar Thone. Lesser figures — representatives of the smaller tribes, and of the craftsmen’s guilds — were in the row to the rear.
Everyone was mantled and robed in finest cloth. And all were grandly helmeted also, in accordance with the formal custom of the day, a congregation of intricate, lofty head-pieces everywhere in the great room. Chomrik Hamadel’s helmet was easily the most conspicuous, a towering agglomeration of metal and sparkling gems that rose above him to an improbable height; but Puit Kjai, wearing one of red bronze with huge silver projections flaring fore and aft, was scarcely to be outdone.
That these Beng princes would be so splendidly outfitted was no surprise. The Bengs were the original helmet-wearers. Nor was it startling that Husathirn Mueri, who was half Beng, should have do
But even those of pure Koshmar birth — Thu-Kimnibol, Kartafirain, Staip, Boldirinthe — were wearing their most magnificent headgear. More unusual still, Hresh, who wore a helmet perhaps once every five years, had one on now: a small one, some cleverly interwoven strips of dark bristly fiber bound by a single golden band, but a helmet nevertheless.
Only Taniane wore no helmet. But one of the bizarre old masks of the former chieftains that usually hung on her office wall was resting on the high table beside her.
Husathirn Mueri said, as the hour called for starting the meeting came and went, “What are we waiting for?”
Thu-Kimnibol seemed amused. “Are you in such a hurry, cousin?”
“We’ve been sitting here for hours.”
“It only seems that way,” Thu-Kimnibol said. “We waited much longer than this in the cocoon before we were allowed to make the Coming Forth. Seven hundred thousand years, wasn’t it? This is only the flicker of an eye.”
Husathirn Mueri gri
Then, astonishingly, Nialli Apuilana came bursting into the chamber, breathless, her sash and mantle in disarray.
She seemed amazed to find herself here. Blinking, fighting to catch her breath, she stood for a moment staring at the assembled notables in unconcealed awe. Then she scurried into a vacant place in the front row, next to Puit Kjai.
“Her?” Husathirn Mueri said. “We’ve been waiting for her all this time? I don’t understand this.”
“Hush, cousin.”
“But—”
“Hush,” said Thu-Kimnibol more sharply.
Taniane, rising, brushed her hands lightly across the chieftain’s mask on the high table before her. “We are ready now to begin. This is the final session of deliberations on the proposal of a treaty of mutual territorial respect that the hjjks have made. I call upon Hresh the chronicler.”
The chronicler got slowly to his feet.
Hresh cleared his throat, looked around the room, let his keen, piercing gaze rest on this highborn one and that. And said, finally, “I’ll begin by recapitulating the terms of the hjjk offer, as I received it by way of the Barak Dayir from the mind of the hjjk emissary Kundalimon.” He held up a broad sheet of sleek yellow parchment on which a map had been sketched in bold brown lines. “This is the City of Dawi
Hresh paused. Looked around again, as if taking the roll.
Then he continued. “The Queen proposes that we set a line passing between Vengiboneeza and the City of Yissou, extending from the seacoast across the northern half of the continent, past the great central river once known as the Hallimalla, and onward to the coast of the other sea that we believe touches the land at the eastern edge of the continent. Can you all see the line?”
“We know where the line goes, Hresh,” said Thu-Kimnibol.
The chronicler’s scarlet-flecked eyes brightened with a
“There are others.
“First, the Queen offers us spiritual guidance, that is, instruction in the concepts loosely known as Nest-truth and Queen-love. These seem to be hjjk philosophical or religious ideas. Why the Queen thinks they’d be of interest to us, I can’t imagine. But it’s proposed that instructors in Nest-truth and Queen-love will take up residence in our city — in each of the Seven Cities — to teach us their meaning.”
“Some sort of joke?” Kartafirain boomed. “Hjjk missionaries living right here among us, spouting their lunatic mumbo-jumbo? Hjjk spies, I should say. Right in the middle of our city! Does the Queen think we’re that foolish?”