Irona 700 (26 page)

“General,” she said, giving Furnas his onshore title, “send forty men to that red building, and bring me Ambassador Golovnin.” She did not add “dead or alive,” but she was thinking it.

“Aye, Marshal!” He had a ferocious bare-knuckle fighter's gap-toothed leer.

Golovnin arrived at a run, bleary and unshaven, wearing a rumpled, sweat-stained tunic and, with his remaining tufts of white hair awry, generally looking as if he had been dragged out of bed, which he probably had. He was florid, corpulent, jowly, pompous, and stank of wine. Coming down the gangplank from the quay, he stumbled, and a marine caught him just before he fell flat on the gratings. Everyone from Podakan up was grinning by then.

Irona received him under an awning at the stern, having dismissed everyone else to what had to count as a respectful distance, but was certainly not out of earshot aboard a small galley. She read out her commission, which handily overrode his, but her jade collar alone did that. Then she invited him to sit down. He did, glowering at her resentfully.

“Report,” she said. “Where are the Gren?”

“Last I heard, Your Honor, they were three days' walk from here. But they could be here in a half a day. They ride on the backs of these giant lizards of theirs, far faster than people can run.”

“And what are they doing?”

“Think they're waiting for you, ma'am. … I mean, Your Honor. They were told that you're coming.”

“So you can converse with them?” This was like skinning a live bull with your teeth.

Yes, he said, some of the Gren understood Benesh. He couldn't explain how they had learned it, since no one had ever heard of a Gren until this summer, when they came storming in from the Grensdalur desert. No, he did not know how far east the Ramparts extended. Yes, it was true that the Gren ate human flesh. They had been seen doing so, and leftovers had been found.

“What are they eating now?” she asked with distaste.

Cattle, he said. They were being provided with cattle.

And what do they look like? Tall, gray, scaly. No, not human. Swords just bounced off their hides. No one knew how to kill them. Golovnin did not say he had seen any with his own eyes, and Irona would have bet her collar that he had never been closer to them than he was now.

“You can provide accommodation in your palace for me?”

Her Honor would be most welcome in the Benesh embassy.

Her Honor was heartily sick of living on a galley and camping on seashores and riverbanks. “I shall require a suite of four rooms, close together. And inform Vice President Semeru that I shall expect him at sunset.”

Um … protocol … invitation from the president …

“Arrange it,” she snapped. “Expect me at the embassy within the hour. Dismissed.”

If this wretch was the best the Empire could find to look after its interests, then the Empire was growing dangerously complacent.

Achelone “City” was almost as repellent as Vult, if not worse. There were serpents and scorpions on land, snakes and alligators in the river. The nights were hot and the days hotter, with a vicious wind. The palace was airless, although the accommodation provided for Irona was acceptable once it had been cleaned to her standards. She took Podakan and Fiucha with her and put them in the room next to hers. She used the other two to billet some of Furnas's men, who manned a checkpoint in the corridor. No one could approach her unbidden.

Fortunately her stay seemed likely to be short, although whether she would depart alive or dead was still to be determined. On the very first night, runners were sent to inform the Gren that the imperial commissioner had arrived. The Gren rode in the following evening—causing a panic in the town—and agreed to meet with her the next morning.

If the lizard men knew anything about acoustics, Irona decided, they would not have demanded that their leader's entrance be preceded by a fanfare of war horns. Or perhaps they did know and were deliberately trying to stun her. The cacophony seemed endless, echoes bouncing around the marble senate chamber like clouds of bats. The senators pulled faces and covered their ears. There were at least two hundred of them, an absurdly large number for a thinly populated land.

Mercifully the clamor died. The trumpeters marched out, their robes swirling around their ankles, and for a moment there was blessed silence. Irona had been given the throne, which she assumed was where the president—Sakar Semeru's current puppet and future scapegoat—normally sat. Semeru himself was humbly seated down on the front bench, among the lowliest senators. As he had nominated them all himself and arranged their elections, they could hardly object. Even Golovnin agreed in private that he was a revolting man to support, and that the Geographical Section's reports of his personal habits were more flattering than exaggerated.

A pair of Gren came striding in and took up positions on either side of the doorway. The agreed terms were that no weapons would be worn, but who knew what was hidden under those robes? Irona chuckled to herself, thinking how Veer would respond to that question. Goddess, but they were tall! And the trumpeters had been tall, too. Had their leader, reportedly named Hayklopevi, combed his tribe for giants, or were the lizard men all that size?

Or bigger. A group of three had halted just beyond the doorway, shadows against sunlight behind. The one in front was likely Hayklopevi himself, standing a head taller than the two behind him. He spoke to one of them, who came marching forward, stopping in the middle of the circular chamber. He might be even taller than Veer Machin.

“The noble Beru bids me say that he does not negotiate with women.”

He? The Achelonians did not regard the Gren as human. To them, Hayklopevi was an
it
not a
he
. Irona was reserving judgment. She glanced down at the back of Sakar Semeru's head, for he had warned her that there would be endless quibbling and posturing. The vice president did not look around.

She said, “You may tell the Beru that he will not be negotiating with a woman, he will be negotiating with the Benesh Empire and its choice of negotiator is not negotiable.”

The interpreter turned and stalked back to report.

And returned to the center again.

“The noble Beru bids me say that he does not negotiate with people sitting higher than himself.”

“Tell him I will meet him on level ground if he promises to kneel, so that our eyes will be level.”

The senators cackled like squirrels. The interpreter started to turn, then changed his mind—probably a wise decision. Judging by the atrocities attributed to him, the Beru had a very bizarre sense of humor.

“That is an insulting and ridiculous answer.”

Irona was not going to play this game all day. She stood up, and the chamber seemed to hush, although it had been quiet before. She walked slowly down the stairway until she was on the second step, which put her eyes not much above the interpreter's, in so far as she could judge at that distance.

“This should make us about level. Tell him to approach now and talk, or go back to his desert and eat rats.”

Hayklopevi took the bait. He emerged into the light, although very little of him was visible in the swirling gray robes. Long sleeves hid his hands, and his hood came forward to shadow his face. Two companions followed him, but even they could hardly match his stride. He slowed for a moment at the center but, as Irona had guessed, he could not resist coming all the way forward to the bottom of the steps, so that he could show how much higher his eyes were than hers. She now had the option of backing up a step, but then he might follow her as far as she wanted to go and make a mockery of the meeting. He was easily a cubit taller than Veer.

The face inside the cowl was gray hued, hairless, and inhumanly narrow, as if his head had been squeezed in a vise—or it was a normal human width and he had been stretched lengthwise. The nose was prominent, but as narrow as an ax blade, and his eyes were set deep in his skull. The irises were yellow, the pupils slitted, not human at all. The tips of his upper canine teeth showed over his lower lip, but were much closer together than they should be. The effect was very disturbing. She could almost believe the Achelonian claim that the Gren were hybrids of men and the giant lizards they rode.

But the sheer hatred in that face … If ever she must look into the face of Maleficence himself, it was now.

She forced herself to ignore that burning gaze. “I am Irona 700, of the Seventy chosen by our goddess to rule our city in her name, and I am plenipotentiary for the First and the Seven.”

The interpreter translated into the Beru's lisping speech, then his reply.

“His Magnificence says, ‘I am Hayklopevi, Beru of the Gren.'”

“Define
Beru
.”

“Warlord,” the interpreter said, “speaker to the spirits, father, protector. All of these. He speaks for the Gren.”

“And I for the Empire. Let us not waste words. Shall we speak here, or send for chairs?”

While that was being translated, the Beru folded his arms and she caught a brief glimpse of a gray hand with taloned fingers, but his sleeve covered it before she could count the fingers.

“I can stand as long as you can,” the Beru said, and together they lapsed into the platitudes that began all such conferences: We seek only peace … You oppress/massacre our people … You started it … No, you did … Let us heal the wounds and bind in friendship … Trade is good, because partners do not fight.

And at last: What will you trade?

Fine rugs and dragon hides, the lizard man offered.

“I will send for merchants from the Empire who will examine your wares. If they think they will sell, then the traders of Achelone will transport them and all will benefit. And in return?”

Before the interpreter had even caught up, the giant spat words at him.

Translation: “Live cattle; swords and spears.”

“We shall be happy to sell cattle,” Irona said, “but the Empire does not trade weapons to any who may plan to use them against us.”

A torrent of words from the Beru almost overwhelmed his interpreter. “His Nobility … He says your weapons are good against animals. We, the Gren, do not fear them. The Gren are strong. You are few and, um, feeble. He says we, that is the Gren, can take what we want and eat you instead of cattle. You taste better.”

“Tell the Beru that he may see us as few here and now. Tell him that Achelone is a big land, but one grain of sand in the great river of the Empire. He counts his followers in hundreds. The Empire has thousands and hundreds of thousands. The Empire never loses. Any more killing and the Empire will come against him in numbers greater than he can imagine.”

“He asks what these multitudes will do to us? Your weapons cannot harm us.”

“We have other weapons that we have never needed to bring here.” Now she was bluffing. A human opponent might be able to tell that, so she must just hope the lizard men did not read human faces well. If they were Shapeless, they might read minds. “The choice is yours: Will you have trade or war?”

“We will trade for weapons or kill you all and take yours.”

“No swords. Spearheads. Knives no longer than my forearm.” Shields could stop spears, and Irona had plans for the knives.

The Beru asked how many, so the dickering was about to begin.

“How many can you use?” she countered. “Tell the Beru that he must withdraw to the first oasis he attacked and we will send our samples there at the time of the new moon. …”

She had known negotiations to be more heated and last much longer. As soon as the meeting was over and the Gren had departed to prepare for a trading session in four weeks' time, Irona interrupted Vice President Sakar Semeru's congratulations to ask how many bronze workers there were in Achelone. It had been too much to expect that he would know, but by evening he had located six, to her surprise.

She ordered a hundred knives of the requisite length and three hundred spearheads, but with enough extra copper in the alloy to make them incapable of holding an edge for long. The spearheads would bend. The Seven had told her to postpone the problem until next year, and she could but hope that this would do it. She could see no permanent solution until some clever human discovered a way to kill Gren.

If war did break out between the impoverished desert nomads and the comparatively rich folk of the Empire, she knew who would win. It was a reliable maxim that those with nothing to lose would always beat those who had nothing to gain.

She ordered Furnas to prepare for an early departure in the morning. Then she went back to the embassy to comfort a boy who was bored to insanity because he wasn't allowed to do
anything
—not poke the scorpions with sticks, nor even go close enough to the river to throw stones at it, because there were snakes in the reeds.

Irona spent the hours until bedtime with Pod, playing board games, eating a lackluster meal, and describing the horrible Beru and his Gren. That part was more to his gruesome juvenile taste.

Eventually she saw him to bed and put Fagatele Fiucha back in charge of him. Then she went to her own room to pack her small personal bag and have an early night, her last chance to sleep in a bed until they reached Sodore. It wasn't much of a bed and would have been seriously cramped by the presence of Veer Machin in it—seriously cramped, but infinitely improved. She fell asleep gloating over the prospect of getting back to cohabitation in a few weeks.

She thought she had barely closed her eyes before she was awakened by screams and the crash of her door hitting the wall. Then Podakan was all over her, babbling and terrified. The corridor came alive with lantern light and guards' voices, which rapidly rose in alarm.

“Citizen Fiucha, Your … Oh, beg pardon. …” The guard hastily turned his back. “The citizen is taken sick, Your Honor. Convulsions.”