"It's the language problem," Aris said. "He seemed nice enough, on the way in. We just didn't understand him, and he didn't understand us. What did you think of his gifts?"
Luap looked at the bundles piled in the corner of his office. "Gorgeous, but the Marshals back home wouldn't approve. Those boots—!" He had a sudden urge to look at them again, and bent to unroll the bundles. "And this fabric—it must be the same stuff as Dorhaniya's dresses . . . silk, I think she said." He felt the scarlet material; it slithered through his fingertips like water, smooth and cool and slippery. "Look at it."
"Mmm." Aris touched it, then stroked it. "Lovely feel. They gave us clothes like this the first night we spent with them, only in gray and white. This would make a fine tunic for Midwinter Feast."
"Only with a fur undershirt." Luap found the boots, gloves, and belt curled together. He tried a glove, and found it short in the fingers, made for a stubbier hand than his. "Can you imagine what the Marshal-General would say if I wore these in Fin Panir?" The boots, he could see, were also too short. He shook them; the gold disks chimed softly together. But the belt almost fit; he could punch another hole in it. It looked garish with his gray and blue, he thought, but against the red silk it looked perfect. He laid the leather things aside, and found the little sacks of spices. "I'll have to take some of these to Meshi, the next time I go back to Fin Panir. I had no idea they had such spices out here."
"I wonder if that's where ours came from," Aris said, frowning. "The spice merchants rarely say."
"Still hoping for a land route? I suppose it's possible. But until we can talk to these people and be sure we understand what they say, we can't know." Luap sniffed the sacks, one after another. "I'm sure this is one of the spices she uses with peaches and pears both. I wonder if she'd come out here, even for a short while, and teach our cooks." He rummaged again, and came up with the little brass pots. Set in a row on his desk, they looked like a set intended for some purpose. Each had a slightly bulbous bottom, eight delicate ribs, and a flat lid. The brightly enameled lids, in blue and white and red, fit snugly, but Luap pried them up. Inside, the pots had been enameled in a dark but brilliant blue. The largest would hold perhaps two handfuls of grain; the smallest perhaps five pinches.
"They would store spices," Aris pointed out. "I've always seen spices stored in boxes, but boxes let in damp."
"I wonder if the designs on the lids mean anything." Those swirls might be letters or symbols, he thought, but in no script he knew. "I suppose we could ask the ambassador, first making sure he had no weapon at hand." Almost before he knew it, he had found the leather sacks of preserved fruits, and dipped into one. It almost melted on his tongue, a confection of honeyed fruit and spice. "Try this," he said to Aris, offering the sack. "Whatever it is, the merchants in Fin Panir would pay dearly for it."
Aris tasted the sticky brown lump and his face changed. "Anyone would. I can't imagine what it is." He began picking up the many little sacks and sniffing them. "Here's another—no—it's not the same. This is plums, I'm sure." Together they explored the contents of each sack with the slightly guilty pleasure of children rummaging in a pantry.
"I suppose these should go down to the kitchens," Luap said finally. He and Aris looked at each, then both burst into laughter.
"Not until Seri's had a taste," Aris said. "And then I think I might classify these fruits as medicinal. At least until we can figure out how to make them."
"You'd better go relieve Seri, then, before I lose all self-control and gobble the lot of them. What I should do is take a sample to Meshi—if anyone can figure out how to copy them, she can."
Aris left, grinning, and said he'd send Seri down; Luap decided he might as well unpack the rest of the presents and figure out where to put them. He had laid out the fur collar on the back of one scribe's chair, the silver tray on his desk, and had the gold necklace in his hands when Seri appeared in his doorway. He grinned at her.
"Did Aris tell you about the honeyed fruit?"
Seri gave him a look he could not quite interpret. "Yes . . . he said I should come taste it. That's—what are you going to do with that?" Luap looked down at the necklace.
"I don't know. I can't wear something like this. Perhaps the Rosemage can. Or perhaps we can use it for trade in your town."
"No, we can't do that. They'll be upset; it's the king's gift. Although you could sell it in Fin Panir." She looked thoughtful. "Although I don't think anyone in Fin Panir could afford it."
"Tsaia, then," Luap said. He let the necklace slide through his hands onto the silver tray, and picked up one of the sacks of fruit. "Here—smell this, then taste it." Seri sniffed, then poked in a cautious finger.
"It's sticky."
"Yes, and it's delicious." He watched as she tasted it, but to his surprise she didn't react as he and Aris had.
"It's too sweet; it'd be better spread on bread." She didn't taste the others, but did approve the spices, and looked at the set of pots with interest. "Those could be signs from their script," she said. "I haven't seen much but the captain's watch list and the book we mentioned, but the shapes are similar. Fat and thin squiggles, it looks like to me, but I daresay that's what our script would look like to them."
"While you're here," Luap said, "Can you start telling me about their language? Even a few words would help."
"We started on that back in the town," Seri said. She fished out a grimy scrap of parchment covered with tiny script. "Aris and I used this for notes—it's fairly hard to read, but I can copy it for you." Luap cleared the scribe's desk and chair for her, and decided to have the gifts carried up to his own quarters to get them out of the way. The youngsters were glad to do that, eager to handle things that had come from outsiders.
Luap made sure the ambassador was given the choice of eating in his guest chamber, or with the others; he chose to eat alone. Manners, thought Luap. We've already discovered that we don't have the same manners, and he doesn't want to offend. Luap himself took the note Seri had made and started trying to learn a few words of the Khartazh tongue. He went out in the early afternoon, walking up and down the path reciting to himself. Words were easy; he'd always had a quick ear, so calling a horse a pirush didn't bother him. Seri had marked multiples: one pirush, two pirushyin. He practiced counting: not one or two pirushyin, but nyai pirush, teg pirushyin. The sounds felt strange in his mouth, as they had felt strange in his ears when the ambassador talked. But the structure of the language defeated him. He knew the language of the mageborn, which they thought of as Old Aarean, and the language of the peasants, which they called Speech. In between was the bastard tongue each race spoke to the other, now called Common. Each had its own ways of saying things, some easier than others. But this—this language seemed to make everything difficult. Seri had given him eight ways to say "Please come in"—not just a ranking from simple to ornate, but completely different words. Even the simplest greetings varied widely with the relative ranks of the speakers.
Thinking about the formality of the language, and what Arranha had told him about the Old Aareans, Luap decided that the Khartazh must be an old and very complex society. They would not be the same as the Old Aareans, but surely any old, complex civilization would have some attitudes in common. They were rank-conscious: that much was clear from Seri's first reports, and the language confirmed it. Wealth he could judge from the gifts he'd been sent, and attention to detail by the fine craftsmanship. They might or might not have magery—the ambassador's response to the morning's excitement could be taken either way—but they feared demons and had gods they respected. Arranha should have been here, he thought. Arranha would know how to interpret what they've already said and done.
He knew he could not wait for Arranha or the Rosemage. However the ambassador interpreted the morning's events, those amber eyes had been shrewd. The man would observe closely everything he saw, and report all of it. The longer he thought about the implications of that gold necklace, the silk, the heaps of spices, the set of pots, the more Luap worried that the Khartazh was more than it had seemed to Seri and Aris. What did they know of empires? He himself had read everything in the royal archives; he had listened to Arranha and Dorhaniya; he knew what Seri and Aris could not, how empires dealt with small princedoms on their flanks.
And it had been going so well. Why, he asked himself, couldn't the Khartazh have been some petty dukedom, no worse than a—a Marrakai? Why did it have to be what it so clearly was: a mighty and ancient empire, wealthy and sophisticated? And why did the ambassador have to come while the Rosemage and Arranha were off somewhere in the wilderness? He knew the why of that: he had agreed, in the certainty that nothing was going to happen until fall. So he would have to deal with this ambassador himself, and somehow convince the man that the mageborn were worth befriending and far too powerful to attack.
By late afternoon, he was ready to try again; he inquired and found that the ambassador had rested, eaten, and was willing to see him once more. His people had managed to get the bloodstains out of his good shirt and trousers, and get them dry again. His Marshal's blue tunic, so much thicker, had not dried; he put on one of the tunics Eris had made him. Remembering the ambassador's elaborate clothes, a length of brocade from Dorhaniya's dress could not be too formal. He wondered if he ought to wear the red leather belt, but decided against it; he had chosen his tunic for its color—the nearest to Girdish blue possible—and thought the belt looked garish with it.
This time, without the awkwardness of the gift exchange, things went better. The ambassador too had changed clothes; Luap realized that his blood must have splattered the ambassador's robe as well. Now he wore an over-robe of glistening black. Luap hoped it didn't portend anything dire. The ambassador bowed repeatedly on entering the room, but once he sat down seemed more relaxed. Luap knew he might be misreading the man's face, but hoped a smile meant the same thing for both of them.
To put his visitor at ease, Luap suggested, through the translators, that the ambassador might want to ask questions—some of which, he admitted, he might not be able to answer. The ambassador stroked his long moustaches and blinked. Then he said something which Aris translated as "Is this formal or informal?"
Luap thought about that. Either answer might be wrong, and give offense, but he had to answer. He turned to Seri. "Tell him it is informal, that I would not require formality from one to whom all our ways are strange."
The ambassador responded with a bow from his seat, and more apparent relaxation. "We are honored to be accepted without formality in your hall," was Aris's next translation of the ambassador's words. Before Luap could consider what that might mean in light of what he'd said, the ambassador went on, speaking in short phrases and waiting for Aris's translation. "It is clear that your people have many powers. Our king asks if you come in peace."
"Yes," Luap said, nodding. "We do not love war, though we are not without warriors." He hoped that would deter any aggressive tendencies; he watched the ambassador's face closely during the translation and his response to it.
"So our captain said." The ambassador let his eyes rest on Seri and Aris, one after the other, as Aris translated. "In our land, powerful lords rarely take the sword . . . it is common with you?"
Powerful lords—did that mean him, or Seri and Aris, or all the mageborn? "All our folk study weaponlore," he said, remembering Gird's sayings about peace and war; he paused there to allow Seri's translation to catch up. "We find it the best way to keep peace."
That earned a blink; the amber eyes narrowed, then relaxed. What he had said had gone home; he could only hope it was in the right target.
"Your folk did not build this hall?" was the next question.
"No," Luap said. "We are—" He had no word for it, really: they had not been given the hall, nor were they renting or borrowing it. "The builders," he said, "were our friends." That ought to make it clear: they had not built it, but they had permission to be there.
The ambassador sat straighter, if possible. After a long pause, during which Luap tried to think what he could have said wrong, the ambassador slid a thick gold ring off his finger and placed it on the table between them. Luap looked at the ring, and then at the ambassador. Was it a bribe? Another gift? A threat? A promise? The ambassador simply stared back at him. Finally Luap spoke.
"Your customs are different." He listened to Seri's words, which seemed a lot longer than that, and fretted at the need for translation. The ambassador looked anxious as he heard his version, then spoke again.
"He says that this ring is only a sign—a token—and that one more suitable will be brought later." A sign of
what?
Luap wanted to say. Aris went on. "He hopes you will permit the king to continue as your trusted steward. If you take the ring, he expects that you will not invade or use magic against them; if you refuse, he thinks you will conquer the Khartazh by force."
Astonishment swamped all other feelings, followed closely by triumphant glee. He had done it; he had bluffed an old, rich, empire into thinking itself menaced. But none of that must show, he felt the years of work with the scribes taking over. Blandly, almost casually, he said, "Tell the ambassador that I have no need for kingship of the Khartazh; his king may rule in peace. But I wear no man's ring—" Some memory of the horse nomad's ceremonial rings for Gird at his death came to him, and he held up his hands, thumbs upward. "—my thumbs are free."
Seri gave him a startled look before she began translating; the ambassador received those words with outward rigidity. Luap could tell he had made an effect. He felt another burst of satisfaction. Perhaps he was only a king's bastard, whose years in a palace had been far in the past—but it came back to those for whom it was natural. He was the prince, a true prince, with all the royal magery and the gift of command. He belonged here, dealing with a royal ambassador; he did not need the Rosemage or Arranha after all.