201 - Prospective allies

I got another dispensation to go up on the rock again to meet with Segiddis in the formal palace. (The informal one is below.) It’s surprisingly plain, built in the same style as the ancient buildings. I was shown into a simple, even sparse room, with one wall that was an open row of fluted columns, overlooking a cliff that faced the sea. There was no desk, only a pair of chairs. A sea breeze that had picked up the scents of woodsmoke and stone and cooking from the city blew in, cooling. In one corner, a man in a elegantly-draped scarlet satin tunic, with a row of gold rings along the edge of one ear, sat plucking quiet and delicate music on a harp.

Segiddis was tall even for a Hyerne woman, a good three finger-widths taller than me. Her color reminded me a little of Niku, but she was built more tiger-massive than panther-sleek, with thighs that were astonishingly thick with muscle, when I saw them flash through the side-slits of her long tunic, which was a brilliant turquoise. Her face had a kind of banked fierceness underlying its surface calm, black eyes that did not hesitate to gaze unwavering into mine, and a ruby stud in the narrow nose. Her black hair was braided in perfect rows that turned into long ringlets. She had plenty of war-scars. Her bearing was as unassailable in its pride as a Goddess’s.

“I thank you for—”

“Semanakrase—”

It was inevitable, I guess, that we’d both try to speak first. Stifling a grin, I held my tongue to let her. She looked down her nose as if to say, ‘that’s better.’

“Semanakraseye, you are welcome. I understand you wished to speak to me. I listen.”

“I thank you for welcoming and hearing me, Your Fecundity,” I said, having been taught that was the best Enchian translation for the proper style of address to the Queen. “Unless we may use names...? That is my preference, if it is yours.”

“As long as I may pronounce yours correctly...Chevaga?”

“Close enough,” I said. “I hope I do as well... Segiddis?” She didn’t grimace too badly, but perhaps that was for diplomacy’s sake, same as me. “I’d like to commend you,” I said. “I’ve never seen a person looking so well after having had her head chopped off and sent to Arko.”

She laughed at that, with a tone of thanking me for the compliment. “She whose head impersonated mine is my sister now,” she said.

“My condolences,” I said. “Nor a province of Arko looking so... free and sovereign. With its women holding their heads so high.”

“We would be defeating them anyway,” she said. “But it makes it easier that the governor is a self-indulgent fool,” she said. “Kurkas actually had the breasts—or perhaps the effrontery, you would say”—she put a hand under her sword-side breast and lifted it for emphasis—“to say he’d like to see me, and all my people, purified. I sent a letter to the Pages saying I’d like to see him and all Arkan men gelded, but of course they never printed that.”

“I read the story where he said that,” I said, truthfully. Of course I’d thought it was being done, because I’d thought them conquered, my mind shrinking away from the thought. He had said no such thing, fortunately, about Yeola-e. “Well… you know he is stretched thin, but he is stretched thinner than he knows, yet, or than you know, right now, I would think. He’s got twenty-one fewer ships on the Miyatara—Mid-world Sea, I mean—than he did five days ago.”

By now she had motioned me to one of the chairs and sat on the other herself. Against it leaned an ancient, gnarled, worm-eaten stick, which was her sign of office. She leaned forward, intrigued. Her hands were thick and squarish, and she wore a heavy golden ring on each thumb. “Truly? How do you know? Did you manage to see this battle yourself, somehow, Chevaga?”

“See? I fought. I was the first boarder. It was near Niah-lur-ana. I have”—I took up my crystal—“the A-niah as allies, now. Second Fire come if I lie.” Of course the shark-tooth was next to it.

She looked at me amazed, her raised eyebrows lightening the skin between them and her eyes. “Allies? Not just hired scouts? How on the Earthsphere did you manage that?” I got the first sense that it had slipped her mind I was of an inferior sex.

“I can’t tell you everything,” I said. “But I will say one thing; love led to it. They are going to send a full one-hundred and twenty-eight, to scout and do the rest of what they do, once their commander recovers from the wound she took. How well do you know them? Have you heard of Niku Wahunai? If you read the Pages, you might know her better as the one woman who was in the Mezem.”

“Where you were… ah, I begin to understand. I also heard she escaped somehow, from a song sung by a Niah bard. So you must have been the man she loved who she tried to take out with her, and couldn’t, to her sorrow.”

I wondered how maudlin the song was. “One of two men; with the other, she succeeded, though he was recaptured later,” I said. “Though she carried out yet another person who was never recaptured... in her womb.”

“Truly!” Her eyes grew more appreciative. “Your child, or his?”

“Mine. They were just friends.”

“So I wonder just how stretched thin the Arkans are,” she said thoughtfully. “It would be nice if they turned away from their war on us.”

“My privateers and the A-niah, who are fighting together now, will know it better,” I said, turning the topic more to where I wanted it. “The war I will fight personally is the land-war.”

Segiddis leaned back in her chair, her face sobering. “You are doing well at the sea war, now,” she said. “But—let me be gentle with you, Chevaga—the land war...”

“You needn’t be gentle stating the truth, when the truth is not gentle,” I said. “It’s not as if I don’t know it.” But now we were talking about more sensitive things, and I would soon make my bid, I flicked my eyes to the musician in the corner and back to her. We should be speaking alone.

“Oh.” She made a brush-off motion. “Tirothuli is the most level-headed of my husbands.” She didn’t drop her voice at all. “He never chatters or gossips about my business.” The man gave her a obsequious white-toothed smile without missing a note. I would just have to trust. “They have at least two good—no, I correct myself—excellent generals, and I’ve heard that there is possibly a third. And the heart of your country is lost to them.”

“It is,” I said. “Triadas, Larianas and Perisalas, you refer to, I assume. But what is lost can be won back. I have several prospective allies, and I will contract mercenaries as well.”

Her eyebrows rose, lightening the skin, again, and she laughed. “Chevaga! You have come to seek my alliance, haven’t you! What an exceptional man you are!” Man, I thought. Bad sign that she called me that. “We’ve never allied with Yeola-e, and only a handful of times in all our history with anyone, and you come thinking you’ll persuade us! You amaze me. Why do you try?”

Because I need all the allies I can get. I heartened myself by telling me that this might be a bargaining ploy on her part. “Because no one nation can stand against Arko. The mistake we have all made is trying to. You’ve done well because Kurkas sent his weakness against you, while against us he sent his strength.” Probably she thinks it’s that we have too many men among our warriors, I thought. “Things might go differently when he finds out the truth, decides Triadas is done with us and sends him against you. If you study Arkan history, you see the pattern clear: one nation at a time. This is exactly the argument I’m going to make to everyone else I talk to.

“Besides, alliance has benefits besides risks. I am very strong on the sea now. That can translate into territories. I’m not asking you to do this for nothing.”

“Of course not.” Her face turned more thoughtful. “If you control the sea, you can cut off the grain shipments to the City Itself through Fispur... and to other supply ports.” Hah, I thought. It was a bargaining ploy. But she is thinking like a conqueror, and I am not that.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I control it,” I said. Not a moon ago I was a lunatic on Haiu Menshir who wasn’t even deemed competent to meet the Speaking Elder, I thought. I’m not doing too badly. “They defend Fispur very well indeed, navally, as a warrior defends his—or her—throat.” And yet I am not thinking large enough, I thought. The A-niah could scout the entire Miyatara, could they not? And do a complete count of all ships? I wondered if Breicia had thought of that. Niku had given me the name of the Niah in Pirai by whom I could write Niah-lur-ana. I’d write her suggesting this tonight, I decided.

Segiddis tapped her fingers against her lips, thinking. “If I look at the whole of it, Chevaga: you have no other allies, but the A-niah, yet. You need funds for sufficient mercenaries. Even as enraged as I am against the Empire, I would be unwise to send my warriors to fight Arkans with things as they are. We are not so many that we can stand against the rejins Kurkas can muster.” She shook her head, frowning. “It is a matter of numbers.”

“Well, yes and no,” I said. I was sweating under my shirt. I hoped she’d blame the heat. “First, you’re assuming—naturally enough—I’m without funds, which isn’t so. I’ve got enough to hire a good contingent of mercenaries already, and good prospects for more funds. Everyone, rich and poor, knows what it would do to the whole eastern Midworld, if we went down entirely.” Brahvniki, I was saying, between the lines. Of course there was no truth to this but the likelihood in my head, but she didn’t know that.

“Second: the other alliances I seek, as well as funds, are with friends of mine.” She kept her ear to the ground, so she’d know I’d visited Ivahn and Kranaj, and fostered with Astalaz. “Third: numbers aren’t everything. Good general-craft can overcome them.”

“You think you’re as good a general as Triadas, Chevaga?” Her eyes flashed down my body, and I knew she was thinking, at all of twenty-two? At least my disadvantage of maleness would be offset, in her mind, by his disadvantage of maleness.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have not tested myself against him yet. But I’ve had more victories generalling than most my age. You know about the one and only, and may it forever be the one and only, battle on Haiu Menshir?”

“I do,” she said. “Again, not from the Pages, but a Niah bard.” I wondered how accurate that could be. “You traded a bit of protection for your sanity, I understand.” She was teasing, though, by her quirk of a grin. It was odd, how she could go from serious to that in a breath. It’s because I am a man, I thought.

I laughed. “Actually I paid for that in gold. My protection, I rammed down their throats. Would you like to hear the whole story?” Not half as much as I want to tell it, no matter how much you do, I thought. I took up my crystal again. “Second Fire come, not a word even shading it.”

“I would. Would you like something to eat while talking?” She didn’t wait for my answer, but sent her husband to fetch.

I left only one thing out of my account: the green ribbon. “Wonderful fight,” she said appreciatively. “Very well done.” For a man… I told myself firmly, she didn’t say that; it’s just me thinking it. “And Haians… imagine them being so fussy over sovereignty, when you defended them from those ball-worshippers!” Ball-worshippers? Was that was referring to the sun, Arko’s most sacred symbol being round? It’s said that it is a sphere, like the Earthsphere. But she pursed her lips and said, “Pardon my words. Present bodily parts exempted from any slight, of course. I wouldn’t insult your equipment.” I sat baffled for a moment, until it occurred to me that sometimes in older Arkan, testicles are referred to as balls. She’d probably try to take my head off with her teeth if I said it, I thought, but in some ways Hyerne and Arko are identical.

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