Kuvrey looked at Giat Jip-hau. He did not cast his eyes downward, but met and held her gaze. According to the customs of the Draconeans—and in some ways, the customs of humans—his boldness constituted a challenge. I understood, however, his unwillingness to appear meek in front of potential allies. This man aspired to be the emperor of one of the most powerful nations in the world. He could not begin by showing submission to anyone. Even his bow at the beginning had been a noteworthy concession.
Finally Kuvrey said, “He will have no answer tonight. No decisions at all will happen until the remainder of the council arrives. But we will consider this proposal, Zabel, and weigh it against what the other human has said.”
Dorson’s offer was not nearly so attractive as this one, and the elders disliked him besides. I could not imagine them accepting his overtures, in preference to those of the Khiam Siu.
But those were not the only two options on the table. The Draconeans might decide to follow some third course entirely—one I could not begin to predict.
Sejeat asked, “Our people you wish to send with him. Would they be safe?”
I translated her question for Giat Jip-hau. He said, “I would do everything in my power to protect them. But I cannot guarantee their safety—any more than I can guarantee my own.”
It was a fair answer. I gave it to the elders, who simply nodded; and then the meeting was at an end.
TWENTY
To say that Dorson was displeased by what we had wrought in the night is a profound understatement, but a more accurate description would entail words I prefer not to use in print.
He was displeased when Giat Jip-hau returned to camp—Andrew having dutifully woken him up when the other sentry spotted the prospective emperor returning. He was displeased when he heard that the leader of the Khiam Siu had met with the Draconeans, and I had engineered it. He was displeased when he realized that he could not punish me by shutting me out of his own negotiations, for without me, there could be no negotiations at all; he even went so far as to question my probity in translating their exchanges, and only desisted when Tom threatened to duel him then and there.
I thought of placating the colonel by offering a different kind of glory: allowing him to claim the credit for engineering the three-way alliance between the Sanctuary, Scirland, and the future Yelangese dynasty. But when I opened my mouth to speak the words, they would not come out. I had finished with such concessions. When others have contributed to my achievements, I am more than willing to give them credit. I would not have come to the Mrtyahaima had Thu not first located the dead Draconean’s remains and identified them as something unusual; I would not have been driven into the Sanctuary, and the hands of Ruzt and her sisters, had Tom not spotted the second body in the col; I would not have been able to communicate half so well with the Draconeans had my husband not unlocked the first doors of their language. There are countless others to whom I owe thanks, ranging from my father to my first husband Jacob to Lord Hilford, from Yeyuama in the Green Hell to Shuwa in Hlamtse Rong. I even owe a debt to that unknown desert drake who laid her eggs atop the buried entrance to the Watchers’ Heart.
Dorson had provided me with transportation into the Mrtyahaima, and had played a catalyzing role in sparking our negotiations that spring, not least of all because he brought Giat Jip-hau with him. But he had no part in the alliance, except to obstruct it—and I would not hand him those laurels simply to win his goodwill. As I said to Tom, “He can either join in and do his bit, for which I will thank him… or he can get out of the way.”
The way in question was, of course, alliance. It did not happen overnight: the remainder of the council arrived on the same day that Dorson finally sent the caeliger back across the Sanctuary wall to inform the rest of his expedition of what he had found, and after that things got very, very complicated. But in the end, the council voted to proceed as we had discussed, blessing the reign of the first Khiam emperor.
Some delusionally optimistic part of me had thought that once this was arranged, I would be able to go home. I have rarely been prone to homesickness, but by then my longing for Scirland was so powerful I could taste it. Although I had been reunited with Suhail and Tom, my son still believed me to be dead, along with Natalie and all my family save Andrew, and all the good friends and colleagues I had acquired along the way. It would sadden me to leave behind Ruzt and Kahhe and yes, even Zam, but the Sanctuary was not and could never be my home.
My rationality soon reasserted itself, though. Suhail was devoting himself to the task of learning Draconean with a single-mindedness that astounded even me, and a rate of success that put me utterly to shame. Giat Jip-hau and several others were also bending their efforts to this task, albeit more slowly; and in turn we were teaching small amounts of some human languages to the Draconeans. Scirling and one or more of the Yelangese tongues were the most useful diplomatically, but the Draconeans made the greatest strides with Akhian, because of its relationship to their own language. As strenuously as we all worked, however, I remained the only person who could converse with both species in anything like a fluent manner (and even then, my limitations remained great). No one else, after all, had endured months in which there was nothing to do but herd yaks and acquire vocabulary.
This meant that any alliance expedition must necessarily have me along—and so it was that, ten years after my deportation from Yelang, I returned to that land in a convoy of Scirlings, Khiam Siu, and Draconeans.
Counting both those who came into the Sanctuary on that initial flight and those who had remained outside, the Khiam Siu accompanying Dorson’s forces numbered just under a score, plus Thu Phim-lat. A pair of these remained behind in the Sanctuary, but the rest formed the core of our laughably small invasion force.
To these we added a round dozen Scirlings, including myself, Tom, and Colonel Dorson, and four Draconeans. The elders had decided upon a suitable punishment for the transgressions of Ruzt, Kahhe, and Zam: they would be the ones to accompany our group, risking themselves in a world full of humans. But in the end they numbered four, not three, because their clutch-brother Atlim insisted on accompanying them.
This occasioned yet another argument—I thought they would never end. To the Draconeans, four is an auspicious number, echoing the four sisters from whom their species is said to descend. But to the Yelangese, four is decidedly inauspicious; in most Yelangese languages, that word is a homophone for “death.” But Atlim would not remain behind. In the end we resorted to numerical sleight-of-hand; there were not four Draconeans, but three plus one. Only the sisters would publicly bless the new emperor, with Atlim standing aloof.
So altogether we numbered thirty-three. This was, of course, not nearly enough to mount a revolution off our own bat. Should it come to that, however, we were already lost; for it would mean the bulk of the Khiam Siu movement, those revolutionaries who had remained in Yelang, had failed to rise to Giat Jip-hau’s banner. Without them, we had no hope of success; more soldiers in our party would not change that.