“In Dawinno we still allow ourselves only one at a time, cousin,” Thu-Kimnibol replied evenly. “We are very conservative that way.” To Salaman it felt like a rebuke, and some of his good will toward Thu-Kimnibol evaporated as swiftly as it had come. Thu-Kimnibol shrugged and said, “For now the thought of choosing a new mate seems very strange to me. Time will take care of that, I suppose.”
“Time takes care of everything,” Salaman said elaborately, as though uttering oracular wisdom.
He could see that Thu-Kimnibol was growing impatient. Perhaps this talk of sons and mates was troubling to him. Or perhaps his impatience was yet another ploy. He had begun to pace about, stalking the vast room like some ponderous beast, striding past one row of princes, whirling, coming back past the other. Their eyes followed his every movement.
Abruptly Thu-Kimnibol settled on a divan close by the king and said, “Enough of this, cousin. Let me come to my business. Some months back a strange boy appeared in our city. A young man, rather. Riding out of the north, on a vermilion. Barely able to speak our language. Hjjk-noises were all he could manage, and maybe a People word or two. We couldn’t figure out where he had come from or what he wanted or who he was, until Hresh, using the sort of tricks that only Hresh knows, went into his mind with the Wonderstone. And discovered that he was from our city in the first place: stolen, about thirteen years back. When he was just a child.”
“Stolen by the hjjks, you mean?”
“Right. And raised by them in the Nest of Nests. And now they’d sent him back to us as an emissary, to offer us Queen-love and Queen-peace. So Hresh said.”
“Ah,” said Salaman. “We had one of those come to us a little time ago. A girl, she was. She’d spit and rant at us all day in hjjk. We couldn’t make any sense out of it at all.”
“She knew a few words of our language, father,” Chham said.
“Yes. Yes, she did. She’d babble to us about the grandeur of the hjjk Queen, the high godly truth of Her ways. Or similar nonsense. We didn’t pay much attention. How long ago was this, Chham?”
“It was Firstmonth, I think.”
“Firstmonth, yes. And what finally happened? Ah: I remember. She tried to escape, wasn’t it, and make her way back to the hjjks?”
“Yes,” said Chham. “But Poukor caught up with her outside the wall and killed her.”
“ Killedher?” Thu-Kimnibol said, eyes wide, astonishment in his voice.
Thu-Kimnibol’s show of seeming tenderness struck the king as amusing, even quaint in its sentimentality. Or did he mean it as another rebuke? Salaman wondered. He made a broad, imperiously sweeping gesture of his arms. “What else could we do? Obviously she was a spy. We couldn’t let her go back to the Nest with everything she’d learned here.”
“Why not simply bring her back into the city? Feed her, teach her how to speak the language. She’d have shed her hjjk ways sooner or later.”
“Would she?” the king asked. “I doubt that very much. To look at her she was a girl of the People, but her soul was the soul of a hjjk. That wouldn’t ever have changed. Once they get their poison into your head, you’re never the same again. Especially when it happens young. No, cousin, before long she’d have escaped again and gotten back to them. Better to kill her than to let that happen. It’s a terrible foulness, that a girl of the People should live in the Nest. Among those filthy creatures. The very thought of it sickens the gods themselves.”
“So I’d say also. All the same, to butcher her that way — a girl, a young girl—” Thu-Kimnibol shrugged. “Well, it’s no affair of mine. But I think she may not have been a spy. I think she was sent to you as an envoy, just as this Kundalimon — that’s his name — was to us. Hresh says they were sent to all the Seven Cities, these envoys.”
“Be that as it may. We’re not interested in getting messages from the hjjks,” said Salaman indifferently. “But of course Hresh would think otherwise. Does he happen to know why the Queen is sending these envoys around?”
“The Queen is offering us a treaty,” Thu-Kimnibol said.
Salaman sat bolt upright. “A treaty? What kind of treaty?”
“A peace treaty, cousin. An imaginary line is to be drawn clear across the continent from Vengiboneeza to the eastern coast. The hjjks will promise never to come across that line into our territory without an invitation, provided, of course, that we don’t go into any land of theirs. Our territory will be considered to be the region from the City of Yissou southward past Dawinno to the Southern Sea, or wherever it is that the land comes to its end. All the rest of the world is to be considered theirs, and is closed to us forever. Oh, yes, one other thing: we have to agree to let hjjk scholars live among us, so that they can teach us the truths of their religion and the wisdom of their way of life.”
It sounded unreal. It was like something out of a dream.
Were they serious, the hjjks, proposing such an absurdity?
This was all so foolish that Salaman found himself suspecting some intricate trick on Taniane’s part, or Thu-Kimnibol’s. But no, no, that was just as foolish an idea.
“What a wonderful offer,” he said, with a little laugh. “I assume that what you did was to have the ambassador skinned and sent his hide back to the Queen with your answer written on it. That’s what I would have done.”
Thu-Kimnibol’s eyes narrowed: that look of rebuke, again.
He thinks we’re barbarians, Salaman thought.
“The boy’s still in Dawinno. He’s under guard, but being treated well. The chieftain’s daughter herself brings him his food every day and is teaching him our language, which of course he’s forgotten, having been a captive so many years.”
“But this treaty? It’s been rejected, naturally.”
“Neither rejected nor accepted, cousin. Not yet. We’ve debated it in our high councils, but nothing’s decided. Some of us are eager to sign it, because it would assure peace. These people believe you’d ratify it too, what with the hjjks of Vengiboneeza being so close to your northern boundary and you being so uneasy of the possibility of an invasion.”
Amazed by that, Salaman said, with a snort of outrage, “They believe that? That I’d sign such a cowardly treaty?”
“Some do, cousin. I never imagined it myself.”
“You’re opposed to the treaty yourself.”
“Of course. So is Hresh: he can’t abide surrendering the unexplored parts of the world to the hjjks.”
“And Taniane?”
“She hasn’t said. But she despises the bugs. They grabbed her daughter a few years back, you know, and kept her for months. I thought Taniane would lose her mind. She’s not likely to want to do business with the Queen. Especially if Hresh’s already against the idea.”
Salaman was silent. This was astounding stuff. He coiled himself back into the polished curving recesses of his throne, and let his eyes rove down the rows of his sons. Solemnly they returned his gaze, minoring him in gravity and austere concern. Probably they didn’t understand the half of what was at stake, he thought, but no matter. No matter. They’d grasp it soon enough.
It was hard for him to believe that Dawinno hadn’t instantly flung the Queen’s preposterous proposal back in Her face, if a face is what it could be called, without further ado. This so-called treaty was nothing more than a deed of perpetual surrender. And yet there were some down there who actually argued for signing it! Probably the Beng faction, Salaman supposed: the fat merchants, the comfortable politicians. Yes, appease the hjjks, go on living your own easy life in your own pleasant city of the balmy breezes, which in any case lies comfortably distant from the heart of the hjjk territory. They’d want that, yes. Regardless of the long-term risk. Regardless of the ultimate cost.
He said, after a bit, “What chance is there that the cowards will have their way and you’ll sign the treaty?”