Gebrem and Eshana were among the last to arrive. As he sat down on an intricately carved stool, Gebrem sensed a sharp glance from the Emperor. The Leba looked at Alemeyu, then looked away. If Alemeyu wanted to take him to task for his tardiness, so be it ....
When the last of the Jassi arrived, Alemeyu spoke without the formalities that usually opened a session of the Degen. And he came directly to the point of the meeting.
“The past has paid us a visit,” he said. “A forgotten people have returned.”
He paused, and looked around the table, meeting the eyes of each Jass in turn before speaking again.
“Why did the Fidi come here?” the Emperor asked. “And what should we do about them?”
Silence greeted his questions. Gebrem felt Alemeyu’s eyes on him again. He knew the Emperor was waiting to hear from him, not anyone else. Gebrem spoke without looking at Alemeyu.
“It is obvious, Mesfin, that they have come here for a purpose that is of utmost importance to them,” Gebrem said. “Why else would they have risked their lives by sailing on the Sea of Storms? My counsel is that we should treat them as honored guests while we learn what that purpose is.”
“But they interrupted your Calling,” the Emperor said. “And they nearly killed your daughter.”
“Do you suggest they intended those things, Mesfin?” Gebrem asked.
This time he met Alemeyu’s gaze.
The Emperor paused before replying.
“I am suggesting that the timing of their arrival may not have been coincidental. I am suggesting that the white-haired one – the one who held the Ishimbi statue in his hand – possesses ashuma of a power far superior your own; otherwise you would have detected the coming of his ship. I am suggesting a person who wields such power could be dangerous to our Empire.”
Gebrem’s brows lowered in reaction to the sting of the Emperor’s barb about the weakness of his ashuma. But before he could retort, a new voice cut in.
“Do we kill all the Fidi now? Or do we kill only the white-haired one, the one who’s got the power?”
Gebrem and several others winced. The new speaker was an Imba Jass named Hirute, a woman who ruled a collection of farming villages close to the land of the Thabas, the hill-dwelling tribesmen who constantly encroached on Matile territory. Her harai, slung loosely over her breasts, still carried some of the dust of her long journey to the capital for the First Calling ceremony.
“The Thabas are troublesome, like weeds,” Hirute continued. “If these Fidi, too, are weeds, we should pull them up before they, too, become trouble.”
Although the Imba Jass’s lack of tact grated on the sensitivities some of the more sophisticated Degen Jassi, her sentiments were understandable. The Uloans were a threat to the capital and other coastal areas; they seldom ventured far inland, and they had never struck deeply enough to harm the frontier Matile. For them, the more immediate threat was raids from the Thaba tribes that came as regularly as the rainy season.
In the days when the Empire’s power was at its height, the Thabas had been forced into slavery, laboring in Matile fields and mines. Although they had long ago freed themselves from the Matile yoke, their hunger for vengeance for their earlier captivity remained unabated, and their attacks were ceaseless.
Now, the Thabas and Uloans were slowly closing like the jaws of a trap on the ragged remnants of the Matile Mala Empire. If the Fidi represented yet another source of danger, the days of the Matile people could well be done ....
The Emperor looked at Gebrem. Although the two had known each other all their lives, the Leba gathered nothing from Alemeyu’s gaze. Had the Emperor already decided the Fidis’ fate? And if so, would Gebrem suffer if his counsel did not coincide with whatever it was Alemeyu already had in mind?
Gebrem spoke – not to Alemeyu, but to Jass Hirute, who looked as though she wasn’t particularly impressed by either the Leba or the Emperor.
“I would understand your feelings if there were not outlanders, but Uloans – or Thabas – on that ship,” he said. “In that case, this council would not have been necessary. We would have taken the appropriate action.”
Hirute nodded. Then she narrowed her eyes and waited for the Leba to continue.
“The Fidi were never our enemies,” Gebrem said. “History tells us their ships came only to trade. Can any of you think of a single time the Fidi did harm to any Matile?”
Neither Hirute nor anyone else answered him. If they remembered the Fidi at all, they remembered that relations between the Matile Empire and the distant country from which the Fidi came had been better than those with some neighboring parts of Abengoni. A number of Fidi had even settled in Matile lands, where they were welcomed, although their bloodlines had long since been absorbed into the general population. On rare occasions, a Matile child was born with lighter hair or skin, or strangely colored eyes. Such infants were called “Children of the Sea.” But no one in the chamber could recall the last time they had heard of such a birth in Khambawe or other parts of the Mala.
Hirute spoke again.
“We have changed a great deal since those days, Mesfin. They may have changed, too.”
Jass Eshana broke in.
“This – power – that brought them here could be put to use against the Uloans and the Thabas. I would say that is a good reason to keep our visitors alive. Perhaps we can learn something useful from them.”
Although the words came from Eshana’s mouth, the thoughts echoed those of Gebrem, which he had mentioned during the gharri-ride to the Palace. Had the Leba spoken them, however,
