“I thought so.” She asked the ambassador a question, and listened to his reply. “Yes, he heard that, but thought it was a joke—sarcasm. You liked the gifts so well you told him to die.” Luap thought about that. What kind of people would think that way? Did he want to befriend people who thought that way?
“Tell him,” he said carefully, “that among our people we do not make such jokes—we do not lie about things like that. The gifts pleased me. And among our people the gift of a sword is a gift of trust. Do you think he will understand that?”
“I hope so,” Seri said. She talked, and the ambassador spoke to her, and she talked again. Luap watched the servants, who knelt motionless all this while. What kind of people had such servants? Abruptly, the ambassador yanked his arms free of the two young men, as if they had not been holding him at all, and threw himself at Luap’s feet. All down his back, Luap saw, his outer robe buttoned with tiny black buttons . . . he realized the man could not reach those buttons himself; he could not get dressed without servants. Luap looked down; the ambassador had taken his boots in his hands and was kissing them. He felt sick.
“Tell him to rise, and sit in his chair,” he said to Seri. He could feel the hot flush on his cheeks. “Does he still think I’m angry?”
“He thinks he’s disgraced his king, and will bring war on his people,” she said, before speaking again to the ambassador. This time he rose, shook himself to resettle his clothes, and sat once more in his chair, his hands linked in apparent composure. Those strange amber-yellow eyes stared at Luap as if trying to penetrate his mind.
“I’m sorry,” he said, directly to the ambassador. “I am not angry with you. Please do not injure yourself. As you can see, I am not hurt.” Bloody, yes, and confused, but not hurt. “Please ask your servants to rise; I will have someone show them where to take the gifts.”
Seri translated that, and the ambassador spoke a few phrases to his servants. They set to work repacking the gifts, without looking up. The ambassador continued, speaking slowly, and waiting for Aris to translate each phrase. “It is my shame. It is my mistake. Do not be angry with my king. Great lord, let your vengeance fall on me, and not on my king. Great prince, your wisdom excels all; be merciful.”
Luap put out his hand; the man flinched but did not pull away when Luap touched him. “Do not fear. I am not angry.” He smiled, and thought of a joke of Gird’s. “Don’t worry: when I am angry, you will know it.” Seri gave him a look, but translated that. The ambassador blinked, and stared, and then essayed a tentative smile. “That’s right,” Luap said, as he would have encouraged a frightened child crossing the rapids.
The ambassador spoke again, this time more fluently. “He asks about the healing,” Seri said. “And perhaps I should have told you before, but Aris healed a soldier: the captain may have mentioned that.”
“Tell him we have various powers, but this we consider the gods’ gift,” Luap said. The man listened to Seri, and made a curious but graceful movement with his hands as he spoke again.
“He says his king would be honored by our friendship,” Aris said. “But, sir—there’s a problem with that word. The captain told us there were different words for friends—if I understood him—according to rank and intention both. I’m not sure what this one really means.”
Luap smiled at the ambassador again. “I’m not sure we need to know at the moment, and any kind of friendship is better than war. Tell him I wish to bathe and change, and have the blood cleaned up; perhaps he would like to rest, or walk outside, for awhile, and we can meet later.” This suggestion, translated, seemed to calm the man more than anything else. He rose, bowed deeply again, and seemed rooted to his place. Luap finally realized he was waiting for the “great lord” to leave first. He was afraid to insist on anything else, for fear of causing another dangerous misunderstanding.
Even a bath and a change of clothes did not completely dispel his shakiness. Seri had evidently assigned her entire group of trainees to help him; one of them took his blood-stained clothes away to wash, and two more hovered outside his door, eager to help with anything he could imagine. He asked for something to eat, and got a tray of bread, sliced meat, and fruit. While he was eating, Aris came in.
“Seri or I will stay with the ambassador until we’re sure he’s not going to hurt himself,” Aris said. “He seems better, but—”
“He scared me,” Luap said. “I never saw anything like that.”
“You saved his life,” Aris said. “We were impressed.” Luap found himself smiling. “You never saw me in the war, did you? I spent most of it as Gird’s scribe, but he trained me, and his training stays.” He looked at his hand. “And I’m glad you were here, Aris; I’d have lost those fingers. I hope I’m doing the right thing.”
“Saving him?”
“No. Talking to him at all. Making agreements, or thinking about it.” Luap shook his head. “What kind of people can they be, to take a gift as a command to kill themselves?”
“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.”