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Thu-Kimnibol’s show of seeming tenderness struck the king as amusing, even quaint in its sentimentality. Or did he mean it as another rebuke? Salaman wondered. He made a broad, imperiously sweeping gesture of his arms. “What else could we do? Obviously she was a spy. We couldn’t let her go back to the Nest with everything she’d learned here.”
“Why not simply bring her back into the city? Feed her, teach her how to speak the language. She’d have shed her hjjk ways sooner or later.”
“Would she?” the king asked. “I doubt that very much. To look at her she was a girl of the People, but her soul was the soul of a hjjk. That wouldn’t ever have changed. Once they get their poison into your head, you’re never the same again. Especially when it happens young. No, cousin, before long she’d have escaped again and gotten back to them. Better to kill her than to let that happen. It’s a terrible foulness, that a girl of the People should live in the Nest. Among those filthy creatures. The very thought of it sickens the gods themselves.”
“So I’d say also. All the same, to butcher her that way — a girl, a young girl—” Thu-Kimnibol shrugged. “Well, it’s no affair of mine. But I think she may not have been a spy. I think she was sent to you as an envoy, just as this Kundalimon — that’s his name — was to us. Hresh says they were sent to all the Seven Cities, these envoys.”
“Be that as it may. We’re not interested in getting messages from the hjjks,” said Salaman indifferently. “But of course Hresh would think otherwise. Does he happen to know why the Queen is sending these envoys around?”
“The Queen is offering us a treaty,” Thu-Kimnibol said.
Salaman sat bolt upright. “A treaty? What kind of treaty?”
“A peace treaty, cousin. An imaginary line is to be drawn clear across the continent from Vengiboneeza to the eastern coast. The hjjks will promise never to come across that line into our territory without an invitation, provided, of course, that we don’t go into any land of theirs. Our territory will be considered to be the region from the City of Yissou southward past Dawi
It sounded unreal. It was like something out of a dream.
Were they serious, the hjjks, proposing such an absurdity?
This was all so foolish that Salaman found himself suspecting some intricate trick on Taniane’s part, or Thu-Kimnibol’s. But no, no, that was just as foolish an idea.
“What a wonderful offer,” he said, with a little laugh. “I assume that what you did was to have the ambassador ski
Thu-Kimnibol’s eyes narrowed: that look of rebuke, again.
He thinks we’re barbarians, Salaman thought.
“The boy’s still in Dawi
“But this treaty? It’s been rejected, naturally.”
“Neither rejected nor accepted, cousin. Not yet. We’ve debated it in our high councils, but nothing’s decided. Some of us are eager to sign it, because it would assure peace. These people believe you’d ratify it too, what with the hjjks of Vengiboneeza being so close to your northern boundary and you being so uneasy of the possibility of an invasion.”
Amazed by that, Salaman said, with a snort of outrage, “They believe that? That I’d sign such a cowardly treaty?”
“Some do, cousin. I never imagined it myself.”
“You’re opposed to the treaty yourself.”
“Of course. So is Hresh: he can’t abide surrendering the unexplored parts of the world to the hjjks.”
“And Taniane?”
“She hasn’t said. But she despises the bugs. They grabbed her daughter a few years back, you know, and kept her for months. I thought Taniane would lose her mind. She’s not likely to want to do business with the Queen. Especially if Hresh’s already against the idea.”
Salaman was silent. This was astounding stuff. He coiled himself back into the polished curving recesses of his throne, and let his eyes rove down the rows of his sons. Solemnly they returned his gaze, minoring him in gravity and austere concern. Probably they didn’t understand the half of what was at stake, he thought, but no matter. No matter. They’d grasp it soon enough.
It was hard for him to believe that Dawi
He said, after a bit, “What chance is there that the cowards will have their way and you’ll sign the treaty?”
“That won’t happen.”
“No. I don’t expect that it would. But I’ll tell you what position I’ll take if it did. If Dawi
“You needn’t worry,” said Thu-Kimnibol. “The hjjk treaty’s a dead thing. That isn’t what I came here to discuss with you.”
“What is, then?”
“I’m here to propose an alliance, cousin. Dawi
Salaman sat forward, grasping the sides of the throne. “And what would that purpose be, cousin?”
There was a strange new light in Thu-Kimnibol’s dark chilly eyes. “To make war on the hjjks,” he said, “and slaughter them like vermin.”
The zoological garden, near sundown. It is the eve of the Festival of Dawi
Sometimes, when he was younger, he would go about secretly trying to walk the way he imagined a sapphire-eyes would, slow and heavy, in an attempt to think like one. He remembers that now. Hold yourself like one, move like one, maybe you can make your mind work the way their minds worked. And also trying now and then to walk like a Dream-Dreamer, like a human, when no one was looking: pretending he was long and thin and ski