'Who is Ilya, and why was he studying in Jeds?'
'Ilya Bakhtiian? He is my cousin, first, and also the dyan of our tribe's jahar.. You would say in Rhuian, perhaps, the leader of our riders. Why he went to Jeds? You will have to ask him. He's the one who found you, if Yuri did not say.'
Tess, remembering that dark, aloof, censorious man, and their ride together, flushed a furious red.
Sonia merely laid a soft but entirely reassuring hand on Tess's arm, guiding her, supporting her. 'Come, you're tired. Eat and sleep first. Then we can talk.'
So Tess did as she was told, and was relieved to be treated both kindly and firmly. Sonia took her to a huge, round tent, I gave her warm stew and hot tea to drink, chased four inquisitive children out of the curtained back alcove of the tent, and helped Tess out of her boots and clothing. Then, giving Tess a yellow silk shift to wear, she pointed to a pile of furs and left, returning once with a small bronze oven filled with hot coals. Tess lay down. The furs were soft enough, but they smelled-not bad, precisely, but musky, an exotic, overpowering scent. Outside, children laughed and called in some game. A woman chuckled. Pots chimed against each other in the breeze. More distantly, a man shouted, and animals bleated and cried in soothing unison. A bird's looping whistle trilled over and over and over again. Tess slept.
Charles Soerensen sat at his desk, staring out at the mud flats of Odys Massif that stretched for endless miles, as far as one could see from this tower and farther yet. While his companion spoke, Soerensen sat perfectly still, engrossed in the scene beyond. But Marco Burckhardt knew that Charles Soerensen listened closely and keenly to everything he had to report.
'… and while I was in Jeds, Dr. Hierakis isolated another of the antigenic enzymes in the native population that has been puzzling her. Which reminds me, this lingering illness that the Prince of Jeds is suffering is either going to have to get better or you're going to have to kill yourself off and let your sister take over, or some invented son, once she can be fetched back from whichever damned place overseas you supposedly sent her to study. It's been over two years since you've appeared publicly in Jeds, or even been downside at all.'
Charles reached out and with one finger rotated the globe of Earth suspended to the right of his desk a quarter-turn, revealing the Pacific Ocean. 'Eighteen months. And in any case, I just inherited twenty years ago. We've got a while before we need a new prince down there.'
'If you say so. I think I'll sail the coast up north from Jeds next. Northeast, that is, up the inland sea.'
A soft click sounded, barely audible, but both men stilled, and Marco turned expectantly toward the tiled wall opposite the huge open balcony that looked out over the tidal flats.
A seam opened. A woman dressed in an approximation of Chapalii steward's garb appeared.
'Visitors,' she said, low, and quickly. 'The Oshaki, in from Earth. Hao Yakii Tarimin.'
Charles nodded. He did not stand, but Marco did. The woman backed out of the room. A moment later, Hao Yakii entered and paused on the threshold. Marco gestured for him to enter, and Yakii came forward and with a precise, deep bow, presented himself to Charles.
'Tai Charles,' he said in formal Chapalii. 'I am thrice honored to be allowed into your presence, and I beg leave to thank you again for your generosity in letting my ship transport cargo and passengers through your demesne.'
Charles inclined his head the merest degree. He folded his hands together, one atop the other.
Marco echoed the folded hands. 'The Tai-en accepts your thanks. Is there any news to report? Have you your manifest for the Rhui cargo?'
Yakii produced a palm-thin slate and offered it to Marco, and bowed again to Charles, retreating a step.
Marco studied it, puzzling out the letters of formal merchanter's Chapalii. 'Laboratory equipment,' he said in Anglais. 'The usual kit for the good doctor. Forty boxes of bound paperbooks for dissemination. Silk bolts. Iron ingots. Spices. Some luxuries from home for the personnel. Pretty sparse for a cargo, I must say.' He glanced up. Charles rubbed his chin with his left forefinger. 'Nothing missing that I can see,' Marco added in Ophiuchi-Sei, the only human language they were fairly sure the Chapalii had not learned, since its structure and cadences were decidedly and pointedly egalitarian.
Charles returned his gaze to the monotonous gray-green flats and stared, as if he saw something out there Marco did not. Yakii waited with Chapaliian patience for the duke to acknowledge the manifest or dismiss him. Finally, Charles reached out and turned the globe again, and rested his right forefinger lightly in the middle of eastern Europe.
'Is there also a message,' asked Marco in his painstaking but rather rough formal Chapalii, 'from the Tai-endi Terese Soerensen?'
Marco saw the faint flush, the quiet creep of blue onto Hao Yakii's skin before it melted and blended back into white Whether Charles could detect the color shift in the reflection of the glastic pane he could not be sure.
'I received no message,' said Hao Yakii in a colorless voice, 'from the Tai-endi Terese Soerensen to convey to the duke.'
Charles's eyes narrowed slightly, scarcely noticeable, unless one knew him as well as Marco did.
'You may go, Hao Yakii,' said Marco.
Yakii bowed to the correct degree and retreated out of the room. Charles stood up.
'Get Suzanne,' he said. 'I want her to take the next ship back to Earth.'
'Aren't you overreacting?'
'Tess sends a message by every ship that comes through here via Earth. We agreed on that when she decided to study at Prague.'
'Still, Charles.' Marco walked to the desk and laid his palms flat on the satiny surface. 'Wasn't she in the last throes of writing her thesis? Damned linguists. I've studied Chapalii since before she was born, and she still speaks it ten times better than I do.'
Charles had pale blue eyes, deceptively mild eyes except when their full force was turned on an adversary. 'When I have every reason to suspect that Chapalii Protocol officers arranged the accident that killed my parents? I don't think I'm overreacting.'
Marco shrugged. 'I'll go.'
Charles considered. 'No. Suzanne can handle this. I'll have her send a bullet back to us from Earth once she's there.'
'That's pretty damned expensive.'
Charles laid a hand on the north pole of the Earth, gently, reverently. 'Why the hell do you think I accepted this honor? She's my only heir, and you know damned well we're the only toehold humanity's got to the chameleons' power structure. Now.' He removed his hand from the globe, and his tone altered, softened, as he sat down again. 'Is there anyone else from the Oshaki I am meant to see?'
Marco pushed off the desk and went to the transparent wall. The tide was coming in, a low, steady swell that overtook islands of reeds and swallowed them. On the horizon, the towers of Odys Port winked in the light of the setting sun. 'The merchant, Keinaba.'
With a soft click, a door opened in the back wall. The woman came in and walked straight up to the desk.
'Curiouser and curiouser,' she said. 'Marco, haven't I told you that turquoise blue is not your color?'
'You're welcome to undress me, my love,' said Marco with a grin, 'and show me something more appropriate to wear.
'Fat chance, sweetheart. Here, Charles, this is from the Oshaki. ' She dropped a thin slate down on the desktop. 'No sooner did the captain hie himself out of here but his steward comes in with this message from the Chapalii merchant. Hao Yakii and house Keinaba's regrets, but Hon Echido Keinaba has been unavoidably detained and will continue with the Oshaki to Chapal system. I can't believe that anything in this galaxy would drag a merchant from that house off the chance we offered them to tie in with our trade and our metals foundries.'
Charles steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them. He did not look at the formal Chapalii script inscribed on the slate's screen. The tide lapped at the wooden docks built below, stirring a rowboat and a gross of lobster cages tied to the pilings. 'Let's not take offense yet,' he said slowly. 'Let's keep channels open with the Keinaba house.' He glanced up, first at Marco and then at the woman. 'Suzanne, I need you to go to Earth and find out why Tess didn't send her usual message. What's the next ship heading out that way? On second thought, commandeer one. Not the Oshaki, I think.'
Suzanne picked up the slate and keyed in a few quick commands. 'Five days would be easy. But if you really
