Children of God (23 page)

"Mine?" Sandoz asked with amused detachment. "Well, I admire your ambition, if not your methods, Father Iron Horse."

"They wouldn’t have hurt John," Danny said. "That was a bluff."

"Really?" Sandoz shrugged, mouth pulled down in thought. "I’ve been kidnapped and beaten senseless twice in a month," he pointed out. "I’m afraid I’m inclined to take Carlo’s threats seriously."

Wretched, Danny said, "I am sorry, Sandoz."

"Your sorrow is of no interest to me," Sandoz said softly. "If you want absolution, go to a priest."

Disgusted, Sean went to the galley. When he returned to the table with a glass and a bottle of Jameson’s, Danny was still standing there, bleak eyes locked on Sandoz. "And what about Candotti?" Sean snapped at Iron Horse. Danny drew in a breath and turned to leave, but not before picking up the knife and laying it down in front of Sandoz.

Which, in Frans’s opinion, must have taken a fair bit of nerve. The Puerto Rican was unsteady from weeks of confinement to bed and, of course, his hands were crippled, so it was hard to distinguish inaccuracy from intent, but Frans had the impression that Sandoz could have nailed Danny to the wall if he’d felt like it. Carlo had Candotti for insurance, but the Chief was on his own…

"Well, now, like it or not, here we all are," Sean said, pouring himself a drink. He tossed it off before looking at Sandoz with humorless blue eyes. "It’s just a guess, but I’m willin’ t’bet nothin’ in God’s wide universe would make that man feel worse than your forgiveness. It’d be coals on his head, Sandoz."

"Well, now," Sandoz said dryly, mimicking Sean’s accent, "that’s worth considerin’."

Frans was hugely entertained. "You play cards?" he asked Sandoz.

"I wouldn’t want to take unfair advantage," Sandoz demurred, unruffled by the drama. He stood and carried his dishes back to the galley. "I have always heard that the Dutch Reformed aren’t much for cards."

"We aren’t much for liquor either," Frans pointed out, pouring another round for everyone but Nico, who didn’t drink because the sisters had told him not to.

"This is true," Sandoz said, returning to the table. "Poker?"

"It’ll make a change from that bloody scopa," said Sean.

"How about you, Nico?" Frans asked, reaching for a worn deck that was always on the table.

"I’ll just watch," Nico said courteously.

"I know, Nico," Frans said patiently. "I was only being polite. It’s okay, Nico. You don’t have to play."

"I’d like to send a message home first, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble," Sandoz said.

"Radio’s right through that hatch, to your left," Frans told him. "It’s all set up. Just record the message and hit ’send.’ Yell if you need help."

"Not bloody likely," Sean muttered as Sandoz left the commons.

He sat down in front of the communications equipment and considered for a while what he would say. "Fucked again," came to mind, but the message would arrive when Celestina was still very young, and he rejected the remark as too vulgar.

He settled on eleven words. "Taken by force," he said. "I think of you. Listen with your hearts."

"I WON’T HAVE IT," THE AMBASSADOR FUMED, CLAWS CLICKING AS HE paced from one end of the embassy’s innermost courtyard to the other. Ma Gurah Vaadai came to rest in front of his wife, his ears cocked, and defied her to argue. "I’ll resign before I give my daughter to that beast. How dare he ask for a child of mine!"

"My lord, Hlavin Kitheri hasn’t asked for our Sakinja," soothed the lady Suukmel Chirot u Vaadai as she lifted a graceful hand and with a gesture of melting beauty, pulled a simple silken headpiece back into place as though she were wrapping her soul in calm. "His invitation was simply—"

"He is a coward," Ma snarled, swinging away from her. "He assassinated his whole family—"

"Almost certainly," Suukmel purred as he stalked away, "but unproven."

"— and then lied about it! As though anyone would believe that vaporous nonsense about a merchant—a midlands peddler! — bringing down the whole of a lineage like the Kitheri. And now he dares to ask for my daughter!" Face twisted with disgust, Ma turned to his wife. "Suukmel, he buggers animals—and sings about it!"

"Admittedly." She did not object to her husband’s vulgarity. It was an ambassador’s daily burden to speak always with forbearance and tact; Suukmel was happy to afford Ma this small relief. "Hlavin Kitheri is, as my lord husband points out, many remarkable things," she continued with pacific confidence, "but he is also a man of admirable breadth of view, a great poet—"

"That rubbish!" the ambassador muttered, glaring past her in the direction of the Kitheri palace, dominating the center of Inbrokar. "He’s mad, Suukmel—"

"Ah, forgive your poor wife, my gracious lord, but ’madness’ is a word used imprecisely, and too often. A careful person might say discontented or desperate or extraordinary instead," Suukmel suggested. "Have pity on anyone whose nature is not well suited to a role decreed by birth, for it is a difficult life." She rearranged her gown and settled into a new posture, more graceful but subtly more commanding as well. "Hlavin Kitheri has acceded to his Patrimony, my lord. Whatever his past, whatever the circumstances of his rise, whatever your private reservations about his character, it is your public duty as Mala Njer’s ambassador to treat the forty-eighth Paramount as the legitimate ruler of Inbrokar."

Her husband growled at that, but she continued thoughtfully. "Kitheri is a man worth studying, my lord. Even apart from the poetry, his years of exile in Galatna Palace do not appear to have been wasted. He has, shall we say, intimate contacts all over his territory?" Ma grunted, amused, and she continued smilingly, voice light. "Men of ability and energy, men who now bring to Kitheri information and insight. Ideas. Perspective. Already, in the first season of his reign, he has created new and unprecedented offices and appointed such men to them, even thirds, and he has done this almost without opposition from those who cherish tradition."

Ma Gurah Vaadai’s prowling ceased and he turned to stare at his wife. Her eyes dropped becomingly only to return to his with a gaze that seemed both direct and curious. "It is interesting, is it not? How has he managed this?" she asked in a voice full of wonder. "Perhaps my dear lord will discover something of value in your observation of him at court?" she suggested. "In any case, Kitheri is no longer looking for a wife."

"Of course not. He’s probably looking for more tailless monsters to couple with—" Then the news sank in. "What have you heard?"

"He is affianced, my lord husband. A VaPalkim child. The regent’s eldest."

"Elli’nal? She’s hardly out of swaddling!"

"Precisely." Ears falling, her husband gaped at her. "It is a masterly stroke, don’t you agree?" she instructed him. "Inbrokar is the central state of the Triple Alliance, with Mala Njer to the west and Palkirn to the east. A marriage contract with Elli’nal leaves the Palkim government quiet at Kitheri’s back while the child grows. Then he may deal with his western neighbor, Mala Njer, on pragmatic grounds." A moment passed, but he understood. "Mala Njer can be many things to Inbrokar, my lord husband. Protector. Partner. Prey. Perhaps Kitheri wishes to reconsider the terms of our alliance."

"I have not been informed of this Palkirn marriage," Ma said.

"Nevertheless…"

He followed her glance to Taksayu, her Runa maid, sitting in a corner: the very model of silent, deferential attention to her mistress. Who could be trusted to make friends among others of her kind. Who spoke K’San well; who heard things and reported them. Who had the intelligence required to appear stupid when it was useful.

"Well, then!" Ma burst out, flummoxed. "What does Kitheri want with my daughter?"

"Nothing at all, my own dear master," said Suukmel sweetly. "It is not your daughter whom Hlavin Kitheri wishes to meet but your wife."

Ma threw his head back and roared. "You can’t be serious," he cried.

"Quite serious, my lord. Furthermore, I should like to meet him."

It was hard to say which was more shocking: a woman’s use of the word «I» or the notion that her husband would permit her to meet any unrelated male, let alone one of Kitheri’s revolting nature. "Impossible," Ma said at last.

"Nevertheless," she said, eyes steady.

It was common knowledge that more than half of the uxorious Ma Gurah Vaadai’s considerable success as a diplomat, and nearly all his satisfaction in life, was his wife’s doing. Hidden away, gathering information, judging, measuring, working twice removed—after sixteen years of marriage, the lady Suukmel Chirot u Vaadai continued to surprise her husband, to horrify and challenge him. Not beautiful but knowing, adroit, desirable. Not mad, he thought, and yet what she proposed certainly was…

"Impossible," he repeated.

Nevertheless.

TWO DAYS LATER, MA GURAH VAADAI, AMBASSADOR OF THE MALA NJERI Territorial Government to the Patrimony of Inbrokar, went to the Kitheri compound to present his personal credentials to the forty-eighth Paramount: to this shameless poet, this bald assassin, this perverted prince who wished to meet Suukmel.

The encounter was to be purely ceremonial, yet another tedious example of Inbrokari protocol, as convoluted and nonsensical as the Kitheri compound itself with its mismatched towers, its palisades and balconies connected by swooping ramps, soaring archways, by fretted and carved galleries. Generations of Kitheris had lived here, each new paramount honoring his dead father with a newly winged roofline, a pointless martello, a spiraling turret, a stratum of carving, another tier of covered walkways. The entire palace was physical demonstration of the folly of novelty. It was, Ma Gurah Vadaai thought, typical of the Kitheri dynasty to preach invariance and practice innovation. Bred and trained for combat, Ma hated the place, as he hated hypocrisy and pretense, even though his duty now was to practice hypocrisy and preserve pretense. Only Suukmel’s enjoyment of subtlety made this fatuous game tolerable.

Both the Paramount and the ambassador could sing in High K’San, though Inbrokari custom demanded that they pretend that this was not so, the better to slow and complicate the ritual. But the Paramount’s responsum to Ma’s opening oratorio was beautifully sung, and one had to admit that the Runa interpreters and protocol experts were excellent. Ma’s own women had no reason to correct anything said on his behalf by the Inbrokari Runao assigned to translate his Malanja for the Paramount, nor were there any errors in the translation of the Paramount’s lyrics. And as much as the Runa ordinarily hated music, the Paramount’s staff never so much as flicked an ear during the ceremony. Far more familiar with the procedure than either Jana’ata, they actually seemed to enjoy it, and discreetly led the solemn way through stately exchanges of elaborate greetings, elaborate presents and elaborate promises.

Just as Ma Gurah Vaadai began to wonder if he would sink back against his tail and fall asleep standing in the stifling heat of this princely oven, there was a final exchange of elaborate farewells and he woke up sufficiently to sing, as required, in close harmony with the Paramount. This done, Ma was preparing, with relief, to make his escape when Hlavin Kitheri rose from his pillowed, padded, gilt and jeweled daybed and approached the Mala Njeri ambassador with amused eyes.

"Dreadful, isn’t it?" the Paramount remarked, glancing at the cramped and airless stateroom and displaying a dismay not unlike Vaadai’s own, carefully concealed. "I have begun to hope for a fire. At times, the solution to a maze is to reduce it to embers and walk straight through the ashes." He smiled at Ma’s surprise and continued, "In the meantime, I have caused a summer encampment to be established in the mountains, Excellency. Perhaps you will join me there and we may come to know one another in comfort?"

The formal invitation arrived at the ambassador’s residence the next morning and, six days later, Ma Gurah Vaadai was taken upriver in an embassy barge, accompanied by his official interpreter, his personal interpreter, his secretary, his cook, his body valet, his dresser and his wife’s maid, Taksayu.

He’d assumed that the Paramount was simply indulging in Inbrokari understatement when he referred to his "encampment." Ma expected the place to be as extravagant and awful as the Kitheri palaces but, to his surprise, the camp was a simple series of pavilions, scattered throughout a high valley cooled by mountain breezes. Apart from the fact that the tents were of gold tissue, supported by silvered poles and upholstered with divans of the softest and most finely woven fabric Vaadai had ever felt, the site was as austere as a military bivouac.

"More to a Mala Njeri soldier’s taste, I dare say," Kitheri called out, approaching the dock without an escort as the barge was made fast. Kitheri smiled at the ambassador’s evident surprise and held out an arm to steady Ma as he climbed out of the barge. "Have you eaten?"

It was not the last time that Ma Gurah Vaadai would be thrown off balance by this man. At rest, in informal conversation, the odious Hlavin Kitheri was a person of dignity and presence. The other guests at the encampment were intelligent and interesting as well, and the opening banquet was unusually tasty, its presentation exquisite.

"You are kind to say so," Kitheri murmured, when the ambassador complimented the meal. "I am pleased you have enjoyed it. The result of a new pastime. Or rather, the revival of an old skill. I have established a hunting reserve here in the hills."

"The meat is wild-caught," one of the other guests confided. "Good exercise and excellent eating afterward."

"Perhaps the ambassador will join us in the morning?" Kitheri suggested, his face gilded by sunlight filtering through woven gold, the extraordinary amethyst eyes transmuted to topaz. "I hope you shall not be shocked by our customs here—"

"We stalk naked as the Heroes," one of the younger men told Ma eagerly.

"My young friend has a poetic nature," Kitheri remarked, reaching out to grip the young man’s ankle affectionately. His gaze returned to Ambassador Vaadai, who was trying not to shudder. "As naked as our prey, a practical man might say."

"This herd is aware of us, naturally," an older man commented, "but my lord Kitheri hopes to backbreed to more naive stock."

"To recapture the experiences of our forefathers," Kitheri explained. "One day, the best of our sons will come here to bring to life their heritage, so that they may earn the old strengths in the old ways." But then, surprisingly, he looked directly at the maid, Taksayu, silent in the corner all this time, sitting among the ceremonial interpreters who attended every gathering, needed or not. "The game program would involve utility Runa only. Specialists, I believe, we have bred to a point of intellectual maturity that will allow emancipation soon. But perhaps the Mala Njeri ambassador disagrees?" he said, returning serene eyes to a dumbfounded Ma Gurah Vaadai.

"Fascinating legal problems," one of the others offered before Ma could speak, and the discussion quickly became scholarly and intense.

The evening chorale was glorious. Kitheri, Ma was informed, had studied such things during his exile at Galatna and believed that the melodies were best stripped of accumulated embellishment so that the supple lines of the original harmony could be appreciated, pure and plain, and as clean as the days when men hunted with their brothers and friends simply to provide for their wives and young ones.

Ma Gurah Vaadai went to his tent that night disarmed and slightly dazed, but emerged from it hungry and sharp-minded at first light. Wearing neither robe nor badge of position, he was secretly pleased by the opportunity to reveal that he had maintained himself well during the soft years of peace. Unclothed, one’s character was exposed and, observing the Paramount, Ma was impressed to see that what might have been merely an impression given by superb tailoring was, in fact, genuine. Most reshtars ran to fat in their middle years, but Hlavin Kitheri had remained taut and strong in maturity.

The hunt was exhilarating from the start. Several times Ma found himself paired off with Kitheri, who had a short reach but powerful pedal grasp and a formidably efficient kill. Perhaps more remarkable, Kitheri was generous in his strategy, noting Ma’s position and passing the prey on to him without hesitation, setting up and helping.to execute several exhausting but quite wonderful snares, and Ma Gurah Vaadai’s spirits rose with the suns, doubts dimming in their glare.

Kitheri is right, Ma thought. This is what we need.

To match a Runao, stride by stride, heartbeat by heartbeat, was to transcend the self, to lose all consciousness of separation until you were one with the prey. And then: to reach out from behind, to grip a doe’s ankle and bring her down into a headlock, to lift the jaw and expose the throat, slicing through it with a single clean action—to do all this and to eat the meat in the end—was to survive your own death: to die with the prey and yet to live again.

He had almost forgotten what it was like.

As far as Ma Gurah Vaadai was concerned, the day could have been improved upon only if Suukmel had been there waiting in a tent for him to heave a carcass at her feet as he sang an ancient song of triumph. Kitheri confessed himself a trifle disappointed: some of the Runa had spoiled the hunt by offering themselves. His breeders had ear-notched each lineage and marked the children of these docile females for ordinary butchering later, he told the others. The more sporting individuals, those who dodged away successfully or fought briefly and then eluded pursuit, were also noted. These would be bred to the males who had been most protective of the young, in the center of the herd.