She looked up. He was watching her, yellow cat eyes questioning her silence. Momentarily she was afraid, but she thought about Tri and everything and straightened her back. If she could stop it here, if she could make him see… She took a mouthful of air, let it out with a soundless paa. “There’s one thing,” she said. She rubbed at her forehead, pushed her hand back over her hair, afraid again. He saw too much. What if he saw Tie “You let us alone for over forty years. Except for the Lot. And we got used to that and it was kind of exciting coming down to the city and having it ours for three days. You let us live like we always lived. No fuss. And then, no warning, you send your soldiers to the Vales and the Servants. We don’t want them, we don’t need them. We have the Chained God to look after us. We have our priests to bless us and teach us and heal us and wed us each to each. At least, we had them before your soldiers burnt them. Why? We weren’t hurting you. We were just doing what we’d always done. The Servants gave the orders to the soldiers, but they were your soldiers. Why did you let that happen?”
“Let it happen? oh Kori, I couldn’t stop it, I was constrained by things I promised decades ago. Let me tell you. Fifty years ago I took Silagamatys from the king.” He gave her a weary smile. “I had a thousand mercenaries and a few dozen demons and the skills I’d acquired in a century’s hard work. I took the city in a single night with less than a hundred dead, the king being one of those. And it meant almost nothing. He had less say in how Cheonea was run than the scruffiest beggar on Water Street. The Parastes and the vice lords, the pimps, the bullies, the assassins and the thieves, they ran Cheonea, they ran Silagamatys, they ignored me and my pretensions, Kori. It was like trying to scoop up quicksilver; when I reached for them, they ran between my fingers and were gone. All I had accomplished, Kori, was to tear down the symbol that held this rotting state together. SYMBOL! That vicious foulness, that corrupt old fumbler. He was the shell they held in front of them, he was the thing that kept them from going for each other. I had to cleanse the city somehow, I had to put my hand on the hidden powers if I wanted to change the way things were and make life better for the gentle people. I worked day and night, Kori, I slept two hours, three at most. I think I looked into the face of every man, woman and child inside the crumbling walls about
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me what you’ve done and why?”
“No.”
“Do you understand what you are saying to me?”
“Yes. ‘
“It’s war between us?”
“Yes.”
He touched the tips of his lefthand fingers to the stone.
“In one hour Amortis herself goes after your champions, Kori. Would you like to see what happens?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Some hundred years ago it seems to me I asked if you would like to be a scholar.”
“Yes.”
“Does that merely mean you remember the question or is it your answer?”
“I remember the question and yes, I think I would like to be a scholar.” She gazed at fingers pleating and repleating the coarse white wool of her shift. “If you don’t break me getting out your answers.”
He laced his fingers over his stomach, his yellow eyes laughed at her. “Kori, young Kori, there’s no need for breaking. You’ve no defense against me, making you speak will be as simple as dipping a pen into an inkwell and writing with it.”
“Why all this talk talk talk, then? Why don’t you get at it? Do you expect to charm me into emptying myself out for you? You could charm a figgit out of its hole and you know it, but you’ll have to take what you want, I won’t, I can’t give it to you. Why are you wasting your time and mine like this? Do it. Get it over with and let me go.”
“Am I, Kori, wasting my time?”
She looked up, looked down again without saying anything.
“You don’t understand what I’m trying to do? How much it is going to mean to ordinary folk?”
“I do understand. They aren’t my folk.”
“Yes. I thought it was that. Your brother?”
She folded the cloth and smoothed it out, folded and smoothed and tried to ignore the pressing silence in the high moon-shadowed room.
“How is he involved in this? A baby like that.” When she continued to not-look at him, he got to his feet, held out his hand. “Come. Or do you hate me so much you refuse to touch me?”
Her head whipped up; she glared at him. “Not fair.” His rumbling laugh filled the room, his eyes shone with it. He waggled his huge hand. “Come.”
Settsimaksimin ran his tongue over his teeth as he looked round the cluttered workroom. With a grunt of satisfaction he strode to a corner, brushed a pile of dusty scrolls off a padded backless bench and carried it across to the table where the black obsidian mirror waited, dark glimmers sliding across its enigmatic surface. He scowled at the dust on the dark silk, lifted the tail of his robe and scrubbed it vigorously over the cushion. Kori resisted a strong impulse to giggle. He was so massive, so powerful, so very male, but his play at hospitality reminded her absurdly of AuntNurse Polatda arranging a party for visiting cousins. When he straightened and beckoned her over, she gave him her best demure smile and settled herself gracefully, grateful for once for all those tedious lessons.