Page 36 of Something Human

“I don’t suppose, in all our excitement, we’ve remembered to bring anyone to interpret for us,” someone said, as they paused in the wet street to tell the messenger not to bother going to the palace.

“I have a bit of Luth,” said Doros. “Glaukos suggested I come for that reason.”

“I should think they will have sent someone who speaks our language,” said Kleisios.

“If they have anyone who does,” said Glaukos doubtfully.

Adares said nothing. He had surrendered to the temptation to believe that the Luth really were leaving; more than that he was still trying not to allow himself to hope for.

The sentries at the gate, awaiting an escort from the palace to take up the emissary, were startled to find the archon and his councillors, dressed in their finery from the party, getting down from their horses and dripping into the lamplit interior of the gate house. The Luth emissary, who stood warming his hands over the sentries’ brazier, looked up and did his haughty best not to seem surprised too.

Though he was not Rus, he was not quite a stranger to Adares either. He was one of the young men of fashion who had come with the horses to the temple complex. Adares recognized his supercilious pale face and the spiralling blue bird outlined on his forearm. He was glad he had not let himself be too sure it would be Rus. The other half of his hope he found all but confirmed by the atmosphere in the guardroom; it was clear that the emissary had come on a mission of peace.

He did not speak a word of Pseuchaian, but of course he wouldn’t, not being kahar. Adares could not imagine, at first, why he had been the one sent. But he did seem to have an uncanny sense for rank.

After a year of ruling Tios, Adares was quite used to people not believing, when he was introduced to them, that he was really archon of the colony. Now he was not even dressed in black or wearing any badge of his rank, and he came into the gate house in the middle of a knot of men, several of whom were much older than he. But he had not even come out from among his councillors, and was just throwing back the wet folds of his cloak, when the Luth emissary stepped up to him and made a deep, respectful bow onto one knee. He rose and said something in his own language, looking at Adares but evidently expecting to be interpreted.

“He says,” said Doros, pushing politely through the crowd of wet cloaks to arrive at Adares’s side, “that Gunthanaruth sends you his greeting. Or something like that—I have only a little Luth, I’m afraid.”

There were certain things Adares would have liked to say in response to this which he did not think Doros would be able to translate to his satisfaction. Instead he met the emissary’s gaze, rather sternly, and simply nodded in acknowledgement of the greeting. The Luth warrior looked satisfied with this. He opened a leather satchel that he carried by his side and extracted a rolled parchment, which he held up for Adares to see and then passed to Doros.

“Oh dear,” Doros murmured, fumbling with cold fingers to untie the string holding the parchment closed. “I don’t know that I’ve ever even seen Luth writing—I shall have to get him to read it for me.”

“They don’t have writing,” said Adares, reaching for the scroll. “It’ll be in Pseuchaian.” And the emissary had handed it off to an underling because he assumed the Phemian headman wouldn’t be literate himself.

Adares got the string untied and unrolled the parchment. The letter was written in elegant Kossian prose in a small, rounded hand. He had never seen Rus’s writing, but somehow he couldn’t believe that this was it. He imagined Rus would write in a more angular scrawl, perfectly legible but somehow conveying the intensity of his personality.

Gunthanaruth Son of Durguruth, Supreme Headman of the Luth, sends greetings in peace to Archon Phyleros of Tios.

It is an honour to greet a worthy adversary, whether on the battlefield or off it. A still greater honour, in the face of defeat, is to make a worthy adversary into a powerful ally. Though our men bested yours on the field, in strategy and cunning you have proven yourself more than a match for us. We have tasted of the first honour and now desire the second.

Adares looked up from the letter.

“Don’t cheer or whistle, men—we will lose face if we look like we weren’t expecting this—but Gunthanaruth wants an alliance.”

There was a thrilled silence, everyone trying hard to look nonchalant, and glancing at one another significantly. Adares went back to the letter.

We will return to our grazing lands in the north for the winter. Our men are preparing for departure this night. For the men of your tribe slain in battle, since they were more numerous than ours, we will offer a blood-price in tribute, as is our custom. It will be delivered once we have returned to our summer villages.

Before we depart, we desire to treat with you about the terms of our alliance, if you will agree to meet us outside your city walls, under the banner of peace. You may be assured of our good faith, and that we act in accordance with a great omen given to us by our gods, which our holy men have always told us are the same as your gods. Farewell.

Ah, thought Adares, so the truth slips out. Maybe you desire the honour of greeting a worthy adversary, and so on—or maybe you’re worried that the gods don’t favour your enterprise any more. And then, as that reminded him of something, a terrible dark thing loomed up in his mind.

“Doros,” he said, looking up from the letter to the face of the Luth emissary, “ask him what the omen was.”

“Sir?”

“The letter mentions an omen. Ask him what it was.”

Doros put the question, in halting syllables. The emissary gave some answer: a sentence, expressionless, uncaring.

“I … don’t quite understand, sir,” said Doros. “He says there was a fight of some kind, and—”

“The bull won,” said Adares.

“Yes, lord archon—that is exactly what he said. The bull won. I’m not sure what it means.”

There were a few moments then in which Adares wished everything gone: all the wet-cloaked, silently triumphing councillors; all the sentries and captains and soldiers, the tired women and children who had come off the boats, the dancers and the slaves who served at the banquet; the palace of the archon and all the walls and houses and temples of Tios; the supercilious blue-eyed man in front of him, who had watched Rus die and felt nothing. If they were gone, he could have mourned. But they hemmed him in, all the stones and people of this place, heaped up around him, clamouring: Lead us! Build us! Fight us! Make treaties with us! We don’t care what has happened to your heart.