Spider subsided. “I suppose I don’t mind that.” Keylinn said, “What about Adrian?”
“An epic.”
“Tal?”
He hesitated, apparently at a loss for the first time. “Ask me another day,” he said finally.
“A Zen koen?” she suggested, but met blank looks. “Give me some time,” said Dominick. “At the moment he’s the only member of your little triumvirate I can’t get a handle on. Perhaps it’s because I hear about him secondhand.”
“I think he’s just a verb,” said Spider, waving his cup. “A verb?”
“It’s the only word that can stand alone and still make a sentence.” He grinned. “Usually imperative, too.”
On the way to the boulevard she said to him, “I’ve been thinking about the poem for Tal.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I’d been trying on this form for me, but now I think I was wrong. It’s far more Talish.”
Spider’s mind was on Dominick’s face before he’d given him the medicine. His friend didn’t have a lot longer. “Oh?”
“A haiku.”
“Pardon? Did you sneeze?”
“Haiku—another underrated form, with a resonance in the last line.”
He said, “What’s a resonance?”
“It’s a quality that sounds good and has to be there, to make it right and give the whole thing meaning. And it can’t be said in any other words.”
Spider blinked. He was tired, and sometimes Keylinn’s Graykey stuff seemed to be coming from another galaxy.
“I’ve never seen any resonance,” he said.
“Give it time.”
It was two hours past midnight when Adrian entered his bedchamber, his eyes shadowed, his shirt half-buttoned. He stopped short.
Iolanthe was lying across the bed with a stack of books. She’d angled the light to illuminate the pages open before her; a rich illustration in blues and reds covered the righthand side. She glanced up and jumped guiltily.
He said, “I thought you’d be in your own room tonight.”
“I’m sorry—I forgot the time.”
“Don’t apologize. I only meant that since I was working late, I didn’t think you’d want to be disturbed when I came in.” He smiled. “Although I seem to have disturbed you anyway.”
She was busily clearing the books off the bedcovers, “You said that I might read things from the public access paths.”
“Of course—look, you don’t have to—” But she was stacking the volumes beneath the bed, as though she didn’t want to intrude on his attention. Probably some love stories or something she felt embarrassed about his seeing; he was careful not to look closely. Even Fischer had given up the spy idea. “Do you want to go back to your room?” he asked diffidently.
She looked up from where she knelt beside the books, her face breaking into a smile like a twelve-year-old angel. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Ah,” he said, suddenly at a loss for words. And tried to beat down the smile he felt taking over his own face.
The shaded balcony overlooked half a mountainside as well as half the administrative quarter of the city. A long way down, the red, white, and black roofs of governmental buildings spread along the main streets of “the Flat.” Slightly nearer, residences and private clubs nibbled at the slopes, finally to be swallowed up entirely by green as the eye moved closer to home.
Tal sat at a white metal table on the balcony. An untouched glass of tiko was in front of him, and across from him sat Elizabeth Mard and her husband. Hyram Det Arbrith was dark-haired, like most Barets, with a quiet face, a neat mustache, and a pair of data-intaker’s spectacles still hooked over his ears. He was clearly absent-minded.
Elizabeth Mard Arbrith had pulled the hair on one side of her head back and placed a white flower in it. Her skirt and vest were flowered also, in a colorful pattern, and two side slits showed just enough calf when she sat to get the attention of a native Baret. She smiled at Tal and continued to look at the papers he’d brought.
Tal did not always grasp the finer points of Adrian’s policies for dealing with people, but he could learn from them. He had made his aims known to Duke Peter and his daughter, and then dropped the matter and waited for this invitation to Elizabeth Mard’s villa.
His patience with human games was still not the best, however. The Arbriths had had plenty of time to go over his list earlier. He got up—returning Elizabeth Mard’s questioning look with a meaningless smile of his own— and walked to the railing.
A few droplets of rain fell past the striped awning. The balcony was carefully shaded from the sun; since most Barets were dark-skinned, lighter shades were considered more beautiful—as the chief herald had pointed out, it was the usual perverse system of human aesthetics.
“Are we boring you, Officer Diamond?”
He turned back to face her. She had asked the question a half-touch playfully, another half-touch reminding him of his place. She seemed to feel that anything she said could be forgiven her if she smiled brightly when she said it.
Tal smiled back. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”
Her face went blank. He found he preferred it that way.
“I beg your pardon?”
He said, “I’m not a negotiator, you know. I’m only with the trade team as a cultural adviser. I’m afraid the subtle ins and outs of these things go over my head.”
She continued to stare. He went on easily, “I can’t even tell whether you’re interested in selling any of these items or not. If you’re not, please don’t feel compelled to show interest out of politeness.” When the Duke’s sister acted from pure courtesy, the birds would fall from the sky. “Just let me know, and we’ll pick up similar items at our next trade stop. As you can see, none of what’s listed is essential to us. It won’t affect our regular negotiations, I assure you.”
“I wouldn’t say we’re not interested,” she said, back-pedaling swiftly. She’d certainly implied that earlier. In fact, she’d all but danced it out in code.
He could only assume she’d been waiting for him
