Yen Olass smashed her fist down on the table as she rose to her feet: Yarglat the Yarglat could do no less when someone used such an obscenity to his face. This brought a roar of laughter from the whole table.
'Sit down,' said someone. 'Have a drink.’
'I only drink wine,' said Yen Olass coldly.
'That's fine, for that's all we've got.’
They sat the foreigner down amongst them, and explained that 'gaplax' was the name the insect owned in one of the languages of the south. No insult was intended.
'That's just as well,' said Yen Olass, 'for I've killed a man for less.’
This brought more laughter.
'Laugh as you will,' said Yen Olass. 'I killed my first man at the age of twelve. I've killed many since.’
That sobered them up a little, for here at the southern border of the old empire it was well known that northerners were casual killers, not to be trifled with lightly. However… there was wine, bread and gaplax, the weather was fine
'This is no day for fighting,' said one of the southerners. 'Share a gaplax with us. Better still, have one yourself.' 'How much do they cost?’
'It's on us. Make yourself comfortable. Come on now, take off your coat.' 'I can't.' 'And why not?’
'Because,' said Yen Olass, sweating, 'the killer of my father rides south, I have vowed to suffer until I have killed him.’
'Where in the south would this gentleman be?' 'With Khmar,'
Conversation faltered. In Gendormargensis, imperial politics was the commonplace of gossip, but under provincial interpretations of the law it was very easy to get oneself accidentally convicted of treason – so one did not speak lightly of the emperor.
Still, the death-vow made the northern stranger even more fascinating to the southerners than before. While they demolished a skin of wine and a brace of gaplax between them, Yen Olass told of the death-fight between Tonaganuk and Lonth Denesk, Chonjara's public penance, the exile of Haveros, and the day the Ondrask of Noth disgraced himself by throwing his mother-in-law in the river.
The last tale was a vile and gratuitous slander, but none of these southerners was to know that. Indeed, they were so ignorant, so naive, so ready to swallow down even the most outrageous improbabilities, that Yen Olass yielded to temptation and indulged in a number of staggering untruths concerning certain high-born Yarglat clansmen.
It was evening when Yen Olass made her way back to the tea pavilion, mellow with wine, and stuffed with bread and gaplax. She knew now that the gaplax lives in the shallowest waters of the sea, the males hiding themselves under rocks while the females recline in nests made of water-twigs, comforting a brood of eggs. If you whistle in a certain way – and Yen Olass had mastered the certain way of whistling – they will march out of the water and line up on the shore before you. Alternatively, they can be secured by knocking two stones together: the sound stuns them, and they float to the surface, paralysed.
The tea pavilion was gaily lit with lanterns. It was crowded with Yarglat officers, heavy with drink, their brawling energies now replaced by drunken nostalgia.
Yen Olass did not want to venture into the company of those drunken animals. She stayed in the gardens, wandering by herself, wishing there was enough light left for her to admire the trees and the fish ponds. Wishing, too, that she could stop being a man, at least for a little while, since she took no pleasure in keeping her breasts bound up, in shrouding her body in concealing furs, in conjuring up aggression to handle minor social contingencies which would have been easily dealt with by way of a little diplomacy.
Alone in the garden, she listened to the music from the tea pavilion. She listened to the music of zither, klon and slubvox, to the atonic wail of a woman's song pitched to heartbreak, and it seemed the song spoke to her, to her alone:
In the river I glimpse my lover's face,
Gone passing, many moons;
In the smoke I glimpse horizons elsewhere,
Gone passing, many moons;
Homeland of my children never born.
And now the moon itself was rising, tangled in the branches of the trees. Yellow moon rising. Yen Olass stretched out her hands to the moon, and said the Old Words, as her mother had taught her:
'Allmother moon…’
That was as far as she got. She could not remember the rest. She had forgotten. She had entirely forgotten. The Old Words were gone, forever. How could she have been so careless?
Yellow moon… yellow moon… a woman singing… wine, which disarms us…
Yen Olass stretched out her arms just one more time, and said, to the moon, to the yellow autumn moon (is it so much to ask?):
'Allmother moon…'
But it was no good. She could not remember. She had lost her mother, and now she had lost even her mother's words.
And suddenly the ground swayed, her legs buckled, and she collapsed. Wracked by agony, she wept, crushed down to the ground, down to the dank of the earth and the smell of loam and leaves.
'Yen Olass…’
With gentle hands, Yerzerdayla raised her to her feet. Yen Olass allowed herself to be folded into the arms of the tall, gentle woman who smelt of the distant spicelands. She clung there, sobbing, while Yerzerdayla soothed her hair, her voice low, a hush of comfort.
Yen Olass wept, as if she would die.
Yerzerdayla held her, protected her, sheltered her, until time and comfort calmed her.
Then:
'Come,' said Yerzerdayla. 'We must talk.’
CHAPTER TEN
Counselled by Yerzerdayla, Yen Olass stayed behind when the slaver moved on. She recognised the truth of the points Yerzerdayla had made. Khmar was capricious, true, and it might amuse the emperor to receive a petition from a woman. However, Khmar would never be free to indulge himself like that.
This was how Yerzerdayla put it:
'A man lives by his image of men. Khmar has spent his life being more a man than other men. Therefore, he is no longer free to be anything else, even if he wants to.
'You must not come to him as a woman alone. He likes people who dare, but he could never allow himself to like a woman who dares in her own right. If you come to him, you must do so under the shield of a man. Lord Alagrace must be that man.’
So Yen Olass waited for Lord Alagrace.
When Lord Alagrace finally came down the Yangrit Highway, Yarglat of the Yarglat was waiting for him, and Alagrace of course recognized her immediately. So did Chonjara and the Princess Quenerain, who were all for denouncing her and having her put to death. But Lord Alagrace overruled them.
As Yerzerdayla had predicted, while Lord Alagrace might have been resigned to death when he left Gendormargensis, death would grow less and less attractive as he approached it. He had not been prepared to raise a finger to help Yen Olass in the north, but, since she had helped herself, he was now prepared to exploit her for his own advantage.
Pleased to be exploited if it. meant she would survive, 112
Yen Olass outlined the campaign she had worked out with the help of Yerzerdayla.
Lord Alagrace should write a report and send it on ahead by courier to the Lord Emperor Khmar. In the report, Lord Alagrace should say that after thinking about the problems in Gendormargensis, he had come to realize that they had all resulted because some high-born Yarglat clansmen had been denied the natural outlet for their
