Burning Bright

The sun was fully up now, the rising light pouring in through the seaward windows, casting long shadows toward the city below the Ghetto cliff. The breakfast room, overlooking the gardens that dropped in terraces toward the cliff edge and the Old City, was pleasantly shadowed, only the food tables softly lit by the stasis fields. Chauvelin smiled with real enjoyment for the first time that day, and crossed to the tables to pour himself a cup of flower-scented tea.

“Sia Chauvelin.”

He turned to face the speaker, recognizing his steward’s voice, and saw a second person, jericho-human rather than hsaii, standing beside the steward, so close and so exactly even in the doorway that their shoulders touched. The woman was part of ji-Imbaoa’s household, and Chauvelin set the tea aside untouched.

“Yes?”

“My lord wishes to speak with you,” ji-Imbaoa’s servant said, her voice completely without expression.

“The Visiting Speaker has only just returned from the city,” the steward murmured, under lowered lashes. Her fingers curled with demure humor as she spoke.

Chauvelin lifted an eyebrow, his mind racing. What the ninth hell could ji-Imbaoa want, at this hour, when he’s bound to be hung over, or still drunk, if I’m particularly unlucky? I should change to wait on him, but I’ll be damned if he deserves the honor—“The Visiting Speaker will have to pardon the delay,” he said, and indicated the informal coat.

“My lord will excuse,” ji-Imbaoa’s servant said, still without expression.

“As the Visiting Speaker wishes,” Chauvelin said, and could not quite keep the irony from his voice. “Iameis”—that was his steward, who bowed her head in acknowledgment—“you’ll join me for breakfast after this. We have some things to discuss.”

“Yes, Sia,” the steward murmured, and stepped aside.

Chauvelin looked at the other woman. “Lead on.”

He let her conduct him through the ambassadorial palace, as was proper, for all that he knew the building far better than she ever would. She stayed the prescribed two paces ahead of him and slightly to his right, unspeaking, and Chauvelin watched her back, rigid under the black tunic, and the short swing of her left arm. A conscript’s mark was tattooed into her biceps, just below the fall of the cap sleeve. Chauvelin felt his eyebrows rise, controlled his expression instantly. Why would anyone be stupid enough to trust ji-Imbaoa with pressed servants? Loyalty can only be created by favor, not by fear—though some of my own first masters were no joy to serve, but nothing like him. He filed the observation for later use, and braced himself as the woman came to a stop outside the door of ji-Imbaoa’s suite. They were technically Chauvelin’s own rooms, by virtue of his rank as head of the ambassadorial household, but Chauvelin himself rarely used them, since any visitor of higher rank could usurp them. Ji-lmbaoa had taken particular pleasure in moving his household into the rooms, and Chauvelin had had to keep a sharp grip on his temper to keep from betraying the existence of a second group of rooms. Ji-Imbaoa would have been happy to move in there, at the expense of his own comfort, just to win a few points in an’ahoba.

“The ambassador Chauvelin,” ji-Imbaoa’s servant announced to the invisible security system, and the carved and lacquered doors swung open.

The Visiting Speaker Kuguee ji-Imbaoa je Tsinraan stood in the center of the suite’s reception room, feet firmly planted on the silk-weave carpet that lay before the chair-of-state. At least he hasn’t chosen to take the chair, Chauvelin thought, and suppressed his anger as he saw the mud on ji-Imbaoa’s feet, caked between the claws and trampled into the carpet. It was a familiar way of showing power, but Chauvelin added it to the Visiting Speaker’s account: the carpet was too beautiful to be treated as part of an’ahoba.

“ Ts’taa.” The word was untranslatable, carrying contempt and impatience and a concise statement of relationship, superior to inferior. Chauvelin raised his eyebrows, hoping that ji-Imbaoa had finally made a mistake—he and the Visiting Speaker were too close in the hierarchy for that to be anything but a deliberate and deadly insult—and realized with regret that ji-Imbaoa was addressing the woman servant.

“You are careless, and slow, and I am diminished by your habits.” Ji-Imbaoa glanced sideways then, toward Chauvelin, and added, “ Chaoihave so much to learn.”