A robed man, his face hidden deep in a cowl, shuffled up to the WeavePasha and whispered to him. The WeavePasha listened, but his eyes never left Mattias.
When the aide withdrew, the WeavePasha stood. “Alas, I must leave you to your own devices for now,” he said. “The demands of the city’s citizenry must be met, even when there is the pleasant diversion offered by honored guests to consider.”
He bowed to each of them in turn, and took a deep formal step back from the table. Cephas mimicked the nod and folding of hands he saw Ariella make out of the corner of his eye.
The WeavePasha yet had words for the travelers, though, at least for two of them. “Northerner,” he said, addressing Mattias, “the prices I demand for my work are always paid in full, even those not measured in coins, and even when the payment is owed by Corvus Nightfeather.” Then he turned to Shan. “And speaking of that worthy one, you, adept, will no doubt discover his whereabouts long before my guardsmen do. Send him to me at once.”
Mattias threw his hand up in a casual wave as the absolute master of the city departed. He pulled another slice of spiced meat from the tray, and for the first time, Cephas noticed there were flies buzzing around the heaps of food.
“Always good to be back in Almraiven,” said Mattias. “Did he tell you how old this place is?”
Ariella’s fellow Akanulans came to the garden before Corvus returned. Except for the absent ringmaster, Ariella was the only one of the travelers from Argentor free to leave the WeavePasha’s gardens. But she had chosen to spend the night in one of the tents and stayed on after the morning meal.
“They’ll come and find me soon enough,” she’d told Cephas and Tobin, after Mattias and the twins withdrew to their tents. “They can only plot against each other for so long before they realize that plotting requires wits. Much easier to chide me for my many lapses.”
Chief among these, apparently, was that Ariella was not firesouled like the two genasi who were soon after escorted into the gardens. One of the men was barely taller than Corvus, and the other was almost the same height as Cephas, but each was enormously fat, and both had flickering flames dancing from the glowing orange szuldar lines that webbed their ruddy bronze scalps, the fire mimicking hair. They wore fancifully tailored breeches of a dark orange weave, detailed with red gemstones patterned as flames. These were tucked into high, black leather boots that matched the greatcoats spilling down from their rounded shoulders, boots and coats alike also decorated with fiery patterns.
Tobin eyed the men dubiously as they approached. “What is their act?” he asked.
This delighted Ariella, who clapped. “Oh, let’s allow them to demonstrate for themselves, why don’t we?”
The two men strode toward them in a curious, halting gait. After a moment, Cephas realized that they were attempting to walk in lockstep, but the differences in the length of their strides were so great that this was nearly impossible.
“They must have to practice walking like that,” he murmured to himself, but Ariella heard him.
“You have no idea,” she said.
“Ariella Kulmina,” the tall one said, while Cephas happened to be looking at the shorter one. He was speaking simultaneously, more or less, with his taller companion. But they were not speaking in chorus. The shorter man was speaking a different language, one Cephas felt he would recognize if the man would speak louder. “You stretch the bonds of propriety, again.” The taller one waited for a moment for his fellow to catch up. “You flout the rules of diplomacy, again. You abandon your chambers unannounced, again.”
With the repetitions of “you” and “again” and the curious halt-and-go manner the firesouled had of speaking, Cephas was able to hear the shorter one well enough to recognize individual words.
“He’s speaking Alzhedo,” he said. “Like the freedmen. Or almost.” Cephas frowned. “It is something very like it, anyway.”
Both of the firesouled stopped speaking and stared at him, aghast.
“You … what? How dare you suggest-” The short one snapped his chubby lips together briefly on his companion’s outburst, then dutifully took up his simultaneous translation.
“Save the outrage for your letters to your superiors, Lavacre,” Ariella said. “Cephas is not a citizen of Akanul-or of anywhere else as far as I’ve been able to determine. He has no reason to know about your sect’s linguistic pretences.”
The taller man’s bright eyes darkened. “Flamburnt speaks the sacred language of Fire, earthsouled. You named a human tongue.”
Cephas shrugged. “You’ll perhaps be interested to know that the sacred language of Fire is very like Alzhedo. They could be related.”
Lavacre sputtered again, and Ariella motioned for peace. “The Firestorm Cabal believes that the various languages of the djinn, the efreet, the dao, and so on, are holy tongues given to the genasi as tools to help keep the bloodlines apart and incorruptible,” she said, and this calmed the men more than her placating gesture.
Cephas asked, “So, these languages are not related to the one spoken by humans from Calimport?”
“Oh,” said Ariella, “they certainly are. But try convincing one of these fools of that and you’ve set yourself an impossible task.”
The firesouled spit with outrage. Tobin, who had watched the entire exchange silently until then, spoke. “If it is a clowning tradition, I am sorry to say it is one I do not know. I do not think it a very popular one.”
Ariella frowned. “More popular than one would hope, unfortunately.”
When Lavacre responded, he spoke the supposedly holy language. Cephas understood what he said because the shorter firesouled, Flamburnt, began speaking in the Common trade tongue, and finally took care to project. The man’s voice was unexpectedly high.
“The Firestorm Cabal, windsouled, owes its popularity to the justness of our cause.” The short man paused, then spoke on after exchanging a glance with Lavacre. Some shift in their responsibilities had occurred, because now it was the taller man who muttered translations a half syllable behind Flamburnt’s pronouncements.
“The Firestorm Cabal stands the long watches, the Firestorm Cabal keeps the history of the genasi as writ and rule, the Cabal assumes the risks in ensuring our future.”
The last part of the little man’s speech had the sound of a story, and it was clearly something familiar to Lavacre, since the taller man finished his translation before Flamburnt stopped speaking. “We are heroes to the common people, and examples to our youth,” the short man finished.
“By which he means,” said Ariella, “that these two are even worse troublemakers than most Firestormers, and when our government heard they were claiming their exile was instead some sort of diplomatic mission, my guild was charged with sending someone to balance their lies.”
Cephas asked, “So you are an ambassador?”
Ariella grinned. “Not a bit. Just a courier and sworn witness who drew the short straw back in the guildhall of the Airsteppers. To be honest, this part of the world is considered a barbaric wasteland by most in my homeland.”
To Cephas’s surprise, the two firesouled nodded in agreement with Ariella, though they also took her explanation as their cue to switch off speaking roles again.
“The stewards of Akanul consider us troublemakers because our activities expose their incompetence. Their spies decided our arguments were convincing too many among the young!”
“These two worked the street corner outside the Cabal’s Motherhouse in the capital, Airspur,” Ariella explained. “People had started avoiding the area. Local merchants complained, mothers worried about their children passing by, that sort of thing.”
“So, to the people in power,” Cephas said, “you were … annoyances?”