“That’s nice of them,” she said.

  Campas leaned back on his stool, regarding her carefully as if deciding whether or not to speak. “That sail,” he said finally. “It will change everything, that’s obvious. But since then you haven’t...” He paused a moment, choosing his words. “You haven’t given us anything. Just put out a list of things you can’t or won’t do, and spent the rest of your time visiting people, finding out about things.” He fell silent again, then leaned forward and quickly took a drink of wine, as if frustrated by his inability to phrase his thoughts with the precision he demanded of himself.

  “You’re wondering when I’ll give you more suggestions?” Fiona prompted.

  He blinked. “Yes,” he said. “I didn’t want to sound too eager.” He gave a nervous smile. “It might sound as if I — we — were ungrateful.”

  She shook her head. “It’s an understandable question,” she said. “I’m asking questions, as you put it, because we want to find out more about you before making any more suggestions. But it’s not exactly my task to give you things, not as I did with the sails. That was simply to help establish my credentials. My job is more to... to be a kind of guide. To help your people move in a more fruitful direction. To help you to avoid dead ends.”

  Campas knit his brows in thought, uncertain. Fiona searched her mind for an example. “As I did with your poetry, Campas,” she said, and saw his surprise. “I didn’t tell you how to write it; I didn’t tell you the themes to use. You understood that you had a problem, and I offered... I offered a structure that helped you think about it.”

  “I see.” Slowly, with a frown.

  “I’m here more to teach a mode of thought,” Fiona continued. “That things may not be assumed, that suppositions must be tested.” He looked at her blankly, and she gave it up: another attempt failed. Philosophy, here including natural philosophy and what they knew of science, was a sport of gentlemen and professional rhetoricians: their tests were not whether a thing was objectively true but whether it followed from its premise and made a consistent philosophical whole; the premises themselves were never tested. She could teach them otherwise, she knew, given enough time, given enough practical examples. But here she’d failed: Campas simply hadn’t seen her method in use often enough.

  “I suppose I know what you mean,” he said. She knew he was merely being polite; she sighed and told herself it didn’t matter. He raised a hand. “But you could give us more, Ambassador,” he said. “Why not simply do it? We would — we would move more quickly that way. No dead ends at all.”

  Fiona shook her head. “It wouldn’t work, Campas. It would destroy you.” She saw his surprise and spoke quickly. “Everything you’ve made here, all the relationships in your society — they’re based on how you’ve adapted to your capabilities, to your environment. If you change too fast, things can crumble.” He still seemed unconvinced. She took a breath and plunged on. “We could give you all our knowledge,” Fiona said. “But it wouldn’t turn you into us. Profitable change has to come from within, not be imposed from without — we’d be worse than conquerors, then. Making you conform to our pattern, abandon all that you know, all that you are. It’s what you accused me of, once. Making your world over, making all that you’ve done and become irrelevant. It would destroy you, in the end.”

  “So we must do it ourselves, because that’s the only way it’s meaningful,” Campas said, frowning. She was uncertain whether he believed it, or was merely parroting her ideas.

  “We Igaralla have the time,” Fiona said. “We can wait for you. There’s no hurry with us.”

  Campas shook his head. “If you say it’s so, Ambassador,” he said doubtfully — and then he looked up, his blue eyes challenging, forthright.

  “Do you know this?” he asked. “Have you tried it with others?”

  Fiona felt a stab of alarm. She had forgotten how acute the man was.

  Challenged this way, she could not lie. She was sick of evasion.

  “Yes,” she said. “Our first star ships — they caused chaos. Change happened too fast. It was like handing swords and spears to a people that have only thrown rocks at one another. There were terrible wars, and other changes — nations fell apart, vast numbers of people lost their occupations. Terrible. They recovered eventually, but it took generations. This slow way is easier.”

  She could not, of course, describe it fully. Instant communication on worlds that had depended on footborne messengers. Modern weapons on worlds that had depended on armored horsemen to keep the peace. Practical medicine introduced in countries that had depended on periodic epidemics to prevent overpopulation. Chaos, followed by utter demoralization; entire cultures devitalized by contact with a superior technological power that abolished their civilization virtually overnight.

  As a result, a change of tactics was mandated for all interstellar embassies, resulting in the current emphasis on carefully selective interference, on suggestion, on teaching theory rather than offering practical examples. Ambassadors now were required to live among the primitive cultures, living for years as a native would live — a disciplined body of volunteers, sacrificing their own well-being so that, several hundred years in the future, the descendants of their pupils might climb out into space — and if the ambassadors, with their prolonged lifespan and the ability to freeze themselves, were lucky, and if they survived the changes they had wrought, they would be able to watch the first ships shining as new stars in the heavens.

  Long centuries from now. For the moment Fiona was too discouraged to feel inspired by her work. Campas, clearly, was not convinced; she doubted he had understood anything she had tried to say. This will happen again, she told herself. Over and over. I should get used to it.

  It bothered her. There was so little of her experience that she could share with Tyson, Campas, anyone. Her peers on this continent were buried in their work, showing strain but, it seemed, accomplishing so much more than she. They were stronger, perhaps.

  She could feel the loneliness plucking at her. It was not worth the energy to fight it off any longer.

  Kira, she thought, would have understood.

  They finished their luncheon, then the wine. Watching her hand as if it were foreign to her, a part of someone else, Fiona saw it reach across the table to wrap his fingers in her own.

  She saw that he was not surprised. Clever boy, she thought.

  In this, at least, hands and tongues could speak without misunderstanding. The jacket and upper privy-coat came off with a shrug; his hands touched her shoulders lightly, caressed her arms, the muscles over her ribs, the small brown breasts.

  What would Tyson think? she wondered, standing with her face tilted up, her eyes closed, hearing the whisper of his fingers on her skin.

  Tyson’s opinion, she thought firmly, was not solicited.

  “Your skin is so soft. I hadn’t known.” Campas marveled in her ear. She had herself thought she was harder.

  He even bathed this morning, and let her know it. Clever, clever boy.

  She found herself laughing, her amusement hard to define. I shall keep this data, she thought, to myself.

  This is art, she thought, not science. Poetry.

  The stanzas succeeded one another, slowly.

  To myself, she thought, to myself.

  Clever boy.

  CHAPTER 17

  Standing in the shade of the umbrella that kept the summer sun from his armor, Tegestu slit his eyes against the bright summer sunlight as a long line of barges came up the canal, strings of four or five each warped along by a pair of mules. Supply barges mostly, bringing food and fodder for the besieging armies. The barges flew flags to indicate their ownership, flags of the merchant houses of Arrandal, Acragas prominent among them with its blazon of the god Pastas, flags of minor trading companies, house flags of the independent bargemen who rented their hulls to the city... and flags of the Brodaini kamlissi of Arrandal, marking their own possessions.

  The barge convoy meant comfort, among other things. The siege would be a long one. Part of Necias’ household was being moved in the barges, one of which was fitted out as his private residence, several others for servants and functionaries, another of which was modified as a floating partillo for the benefit of his wives, two of whom Tegestu could see standing on the foredeck in their elaborate, layered skirts, their faces shadowed by their parasols.

  Tegestu’s security people, he knew, would be thankful that Necias’ barge had finally arrived — moored in one of the canals, it would be much easier to guard than his giant pavilion. One of Arrandal’s deissin had been assassinated last week, an ally on the Denorru-Deissin whose absence weakened, albeit slightly, the ruling coalition... the prominent Abessla had suddenly gone security-mad, and it seemed that everyone above the rank of captain was suddenly demanding Brodaini bodyguards. As if Tastis cared for their foolish lives... .

  The Brodaini barges, twelve of them, moved down the canal last of all. They were filled for the most part with Classani, some of them armed but mostly servants of the nonmartial sort: actors, singers, men and women of the Gentle Way to cater to the social and sexual needs of the soldiers — long sieges had a way of being bad for morale, and the Classani were badly needed.

  It would take more than a few entertainers to cheer Tegestu, he knew. The siege would drag on for months, and every week brought several casualties. Two nights ago Tastis had unexpectedly sortied with his rowing fleet, striking by surprise against the deep-sea squadrons anchored off the roads. Arrandal’s rowing fleet had come to the rescue and the attack was beaten off, but over a hundred fifty Brodaini lives had been lost, hacked or drowned when their ships, unable to make sail fast enough and not built to move under oars, were rammed or boarded. His men were being whittled away, Tegestu thought despairingly, dying in small lots — even small numbers of dead could prove tragic. This war of the cities would involve, in the end, all the Brodaini exiles, and the cities would not hesitate to ask the Brodaini to shoulder the main burden of warfare, and the main casualties as well. And why not? The Brodaini were not their own folk, and with Tastis’ rebellion had proved themselves untrustworthy. Why not spend them now, in fighting one another, weakening them so they would not be a threat to anyone?

  Tastis offered me the city, Tegestu thought. But that cannot be. I am Brodaini, and I cannot disobey an order given in honor. My life is my canlan’s; and I knew this when I took service here.

  The barges passed, the Classani on deck halting their busy movements to bow hastily in Tegestu’s direction as they glided past his standard. Tegestu nodded back, acknowledging the proper respect shown by his inferiors, and then glanced out to sea at the long galley that rode just off Calacas’ outer harbor, the summer sun glittering off the gold banner of kamliss Pranoth that fluttered from the maintop, just above the scarlet pendant that signified the presence of a member of the aldran.

  Amasta was aboard, commanding the rowing squadron that had escorted the barges from Arrandal. It was a duty that would normally have been assigned to a subordinate, but Tegestu felt in need of Amasta’s cunning, and also wanted another member of the aldran here, to welcome the commander of Prypas’ Brodaini force. With himself, Grendis, Acamantu, Cascan, and now Amasta, the Arrandal aldran would now have five representatives at the siege.

  The Prypas army had begun arriving two days before, and the vanguard of cavalry and light foot were now setting up their camp opposite Neda, barricading the only safe land approach to the city, the mile-wide causeway of firm ground that stood between a treacherous salt-marsh and the river. Neda was at least much easier to besiege than Calacas, which had miles of wall to guard.

  The main body was expected to arrive tomorrow, its Brodaini contingent commanded by Tanta Amandos Dantu y’Sanda, a Prypas welldran Tegestu had never met. Kamliss Sanda had been allied with Pranoth in the great war, but for geographic reasons their forces had never been able to fight side by side, and Tegestu knew very little of this Tanta’s reputation. He hoped that Amasta, who had once been an emissary to the Sanda court, would be able to assist him until such time as he made his own judgments.

  The last of the barges slid noiselessly past. Tegestu saw the sweeps of Amasta’s galley suddenly flash sunlight as they rose in unison, then dipped water. The galley surged forward, light on the water, a bone growing in its teeth.

  Tegestu heard the sound of a horse behind him and turned: it was Cascan, arriving late to Amasta’s reception. Cascan dismounted from his sweating horse and bowed, then came forward, brushing dust from his surcoat. “Drandor Tegestu, I beg a word apart,” he said, bowing again. Tegestu glanced at Amasta’s galley and saw he had the time.

  “Very well,” he said. “I hope this will be brief.”

  “As brief as I can make it, drandor.”

  Tegestu signaled his umbrella-bearer to remain in place and then walked quickly away from the welcoming party, hearing the rattle of his guards’ armor as they deployed themselves carefully out of earshot, yet between Tegestu and any possible attack.

  “There is a new rumor in the camp,” Cascan said. “Spread by Tastis’ agents, no doubt — he has enough of them.”

  “Aye,” Tegestu said. It was impossible to keep Tastis’ people out, spies who attached themselves to mercenary bands, or who lived among the various unofficial military brothels and commissaries that sold their wares to the soldiers, or who posed as traders coming up and river to buy or sell — Necias had tried to keep all unlicensed persons away, but his own official commissaries were unable to keep the soldiers fully fed and happy, and infiltrations happened. It was inevitable.

  “The rumor states that, in your private conference with the commander of the West Rallandas garrison, you were offered command of the Neda-Calacas, to hold as a Brodaini city. And that you refused.”

  Tegestu felt his heart thunder at the news, but he recovered swiftly from his surprise. He looked carefully into Cascan’s impassive face, glaring at him until Cascan’s eyes fell, and when he spoke he spoke harshly. “Why do you ask me this, ban-demmin Cascan?” he demanded. “To quell the rumor, or for your own information?”

  “Beg pardon if I have offended, bro-demmin Tegestu,” Cascan said, bowing. “I wished only to know how to reply to this rumor.”

  “Say that it is false.”

  “Aye, bro-demmin. It is false.” Cascan straightened, licking his lips. “It is a difficult rumor to quell, bro-demmin.” he said. “It speaks to the secret wishes of so many.”

  “Those who possess such wishes are fools!” Tegestu snapped. “Such wishes could never be realized,” he growled. “They would lead to the destruction of all our people. Don’t they realize we have dependents in every Elva city? Thousands of hostages to our good behavior?”

  Cascan hesitated for a moment, then bowed. “Aye, bro-demmin,” he said. “Praise to your wisdom.”

  “Is that all, ban-demmin?” Tegestu asked.

  “Aye, bro-demmin.”

  “Very well.” He turned on his heel and led Cascan back to the group gathered on the canal, awaiting Amasta’s galley. The rumor speaks to the secret wishes of so many, Cascan had said. True enough, he thought regretfully, and some wishes not so secret. If only it were possible.

  Tastis must have tired of waiting for his reply, he thought. He meant to force the issue and so spread the rumor, hoping Tegestu’s own people would force him to act. That was why Tegestu had reacted so coldly, so angrily, hoping to squash any conspiracies before they began. For the good of discipline he had to enforce absolute obedience to the Elva, and do it now.

  He would find it easier, however, if his heart were in it.

  No matter. His heart, like the rest of him, must obey.

  He returned to the shadow of his umbrella and awaited the galley.

  *

  The following night the welldrani of Arrandal played formal host to Tanta of Prypas, who proved to be a middle-aged, well-fleshed man, balding and powerfully built. “He was famous in his youth for his use of the war axe,” Amasta had told Tegestu. “It is said he could wield it so dexterously that he could almost fence with it.” As for his character, Amasta remembered him as a plain-spoken soldier, intelligent but scarcely a reservoir of great cunning. He was a reliable subordinate: that was why he was here, commanding on behalf of the drandor of Kamliss-Sanda-sa-Prypas, who was too elderly to take the field himself.

  “We are honored, bro-demmin Tanta,” Tegestu said, bowing as Tanta and his party approached, “to have as our guest a welldrani of such distinction, and of such peerless fame with the war axe. We would be honored if you would favor us soon by inspecting our forces.”

  Tanta flushed with pleasure as he returned the bow, clattering in his heavy formal armor, steel breast- and backplate, bracers and greaves, plumed helmet tilted back on his head. In return he praised the cunning, sagacity, and ferocity of his hosts. The dinner thereby started off on the proper note, and Tanta was offered the place of honor at the head of the table. He declined, of course; but his hosts insisted and eventually, as manners dictated, he accepted. Two Classani stood behind him, keeping his glass and plate filled, while a third held his helmet.

  The dinner was out of doors, partly because no Brodaini tent was capable of holding such a gathering, but also because security was so much better out of doors, on a flat drill ground well-lit by torches, where no one could approach within two hundred yards without being seen by the cathruni. Conversation was light and inconsequential, consisting mainly of formal greetings sent from one welldran to another, or talk about relations: Tosta, through his mother, was cousin in some obscure way to Grendis. It wasn’t until the meal was at an end that its real business began.

  “Bro-demmin Tegestu,” Tanta said, draining his cup. “I find myself needing to stretch after such a meal. I would be honored if you would accompany me for a short walk.”

  “The honor is mine, bro-demmin,” Tegestu said, bowing. Tanta bowed to each of the welldrani in turn, thanking them, and then signaled to a Classanu for a torch as he rose. Tegestu strained upward, needing the assistance of Thesau’s arm before he could rise, pain shooting through his thighs and hips. He breathed his thanks to Thesau, feeling sudden sweat popping out on his forehead, and wished the occasion hadn’t demanded the formal steel armor rather than the light chain-and-leather he wore in the summer.