I was not invited to Comonot’s meeting with the heads of the Agogoi, nor did I expect to be. Surely Kiggs and I would be leaving Porphyry soon—how long could negotiations possibly take?—and I’d already decided not to spend my last few days trying to persuade the ityasaari to come south with me. They were happy here; let them remain so. I would return and see them in more peaceful times.
Instead, I spent the next morning with Abdo and his family. Abdo had been less feverish and more tranquil the last two days, but he slept all the time. I hoped this might mean Jannoula was relenting and that Naia could take him back to Paulos Pende whenever he opened his eyes. Around midday I wandered to the harbor market and played flute in the sunshine. Children skipped circles around me. I’d hoped Brasidas would find me, but he wasn’t around.
When I returned to Naia’s in the late afternoon, a note had arrived from Ardmagar Comonot: Meet the prince and me at the Metasaari public garden at sunset. That was it; no hint of how his meeting had gone.
I went early and ate at the little caupona where I’d met Saar Lalo. I’d come to love octopus balls in gravy; I would miss Porphyrian food in Goredd. I loitered at a table, nursing my mint tea and watching the sun go down.
Kiggs and Comonot appeared at last, two lengthening shadows in the descending dusk; I met them by the public fountain where water spewed from a mer-dog’s snout. “This way,” said the Ardmagar, in lieu of a greeting, and we set off toward a long, low colonnaded house on the north side of the square.
“How did the negotiations go?” I whispered to Kiggs.
The prince shook his head. “We’re sworn to secrecy. These may not be my gods, but I don’t relish meeting Dread Necessity down a dark alley,” he said. “However, I believe I may hint obliquely that the jewel of our purpose is to be ransomed at a high price, and that the Ardmagar is a miserly villain.”
“I can hear you,” said Comonot over his shoulder as he knocked on the door.
I pinched my lips shut around a laugh, but found Kiggs’s hint perplexing. Comonot was prepared to pay to end his war. What price had Porphyry demanded?
A middle-aged woman with short hair and a serious expression opened the door. “Ardmagar,” she said, saluting the sky and revealing herself to be a saarantras.
“Lucian, Seraphina,” said Comonot, “I introduce Ikat, civic leader of the dragons in exile and—I’m given to understand—an excellent physician.”
Ikat, in good saar fashion, didn’t acknowledge the introduction, but she did hold the door for us. She was dressed in a plain tunic and trousers of undyed cotton, no ornaments, her brown feet bare. She led us silently through her atrium toward a central square garden. Chairs and benches had been set in a circle, and ten saarantrai sat under globular lanterns. I assumed they were all saarantrai; I recognized Lalo. Ikat snapped thrice and a slender serving girl fetched another wooden bench for Kiggs and me. We sat, and Comonot went around the circle, introducing himself to everyone.
“More exiles than this are willing to help, I hope,” I whispered to Kiggs.
“That’s part of what we’re here to find out,” he whispered back. “This is the ‘Futile Council,’ as Eskar calls it. Saarantrai have no voice in the Assembly, so they’ve created their own impotent ruling body, which occasionally sends petitions for the Agogoi to ignore.”
“Has the Ardmagar located Eskar yet?” I asked, and the prince shook his head.
The serving girl offered us honeyed almond cakes. Kiggs took one, muttering under his breath, “I’ll need you to translate if this meeting is held in Mootya.”
“Soft-mouth Mootya, you mean,” said the serving girl in Goreddi. Kiggs looked up at her. She had a pointy face reminiscent of a rat’s, and her twig-like brown arms were bare to the shoulder. She was full grown in height, but her stance suggested a petulant ten-year-old. She sneered down at the prince and said, “If you expect us to roar at each other, you’ll be disappointed. We’ve transposed Mootya into sounds our soft mouths can make, but it’s the same language.”
Kiggs was enough of a scholar to know this already, but he bowed his head politely. The girl stared at him, her eyes bulging. “That’s why you know our names for things, like Tanamoot or ard,” she continued unnecessarily, “whereas in hard-mouth Mootya, ard sounds like this.” She threw her head back and screamed.
The circle of saarantrai, who’d been chatting together, went silent. “You’re screaming at a prince of Goredd,” said Ikat, crossing the lawn and taking the girl by the shoulders as if to lead her away.
“It’s all right,” said Kiggs, trying to smile. “We were discussing linguistics.”
Ikat frowned slightly. “Prince, this is my daughter, Colibris.”
“Brisi,” the girl corrected, lifting her pointy chin defiantly.
It was a Porphyrian name, and she was dressed very differently from the other saarantrai. The adults wore plain tunics and trousers in noncommittal colors; they kept their hair short and practical, except for Lalo, with his long hair tied Ninysh-style.
Brisi, however, wore a diaphanous dress splashed with gaudy butterflies and birds; her hair was piled precariously on her head, in imitation of the towering coiffures fine ladies such as Camba wore. It wobbled when she moved. In fact, her screaming had sent a lock tumbling, but she seemed not to notice. It dangled, limp and forlorn, at her shoulder.
She finished serving the guests and disappeared into the shadows of the house.
Ikat began the meeting, saying (in soft-mouth Mootya), “Eskar hasn’t returned. Am I correct that no one knows where she’s gone?”
Around the circle, no one moved.
“You owe much to her indefatigable perseverance, Ardmagar,” said Ikat. “When she arrived last winter, only Lalo would even consider leaving. We’ve built lives here, and we were reluctant to trust you. Your administration was harder on deviants than the three that came before.”
“I regret it,” said Comonot, who sat on the bench beside Ikat. “Too much time has been wasted chasing the elusive ideal of incorruptible draconic purity. The Old Ard take it to extremes, but it was always untenable. Progress—or, more prosaically, our continued survival—will require a shift in the opposite direction, toward a broader definition of dragonhood.” One corner of his mouth dimpled, a strangely self-deprecating expression. “Of course, my previous attempt at dragging our people toward reform has resulted in civil war. I may not be the one to follow.”
When I translated that for Kiggs, he gave a low whistle and whispered back, “Don’t tell me he’s learned humility!” Around us, the saarantrai muttered solemnly together; Comonot, thick hands folded in his lap, watched them with a falcon’s eye.
“You’ve shown yourself remarkably flexible of mind, for a non-deviant,” said Ikat, and Comonot bowed his head. “So many of us had given up any hope of a return that we had hardened our hearts against the desire to see our homeland again, or dismissed it as impossible. We told ourselves we fit seamlessly into Porphyrian society, that the Porphyrians accepted us fully and without reservation—”
“They certainly don’t want you to leave,” Comonot interjected. “It’s not the Omiga Valley that’s the sticking point. They’re demanding near-impossible compensation for agreeing to let you go.”
Ikat sat up a little straighter and her eyes narrowed. “They’re not our jailers.”
“No,” said Comonot, “but they have an agreement with the Tanamoot, and a great reluctance to lose so many doctors, merchants, scholars—”
“To say nothing of our elevated non-citizen taxes,” muttered someone.
“Many of our merchants don’t wish to leave,” said Ikat. “They’ve found a new way to accumulate a hoard, and that’s enough for them, but the rest of us chafe against the restrictions. We can only transform four times a year, during the games. Bearing children is complicated, and raising them more difficult still.”
“Stop talking about me, Mother,” piped a shrill voice in Porphyrian, and there was Brisi, peeking out from behind a column.
Ikat ignored the interruption. “There’s no chance of laying an egg, not in the time we’re allowed, but human-style gestation still takes three years, by which point the baby is far too large. I had to cut Colibris out myself; she was walking within a day.”
“I don’t want to go to the Tanamoot!” cried Brisi, speaking over her mother. “It’s not my home. I am Porphyrian, whether you admit it or not. You can’t make me go. I’m an adult under Porphyrian law. I could live here on my own.”
“You are not an adult,” said Ikat, switching to Porphyrian. “And under Porphyrian law, even adults are subject to the head of the family.”
Brisi harrumphed, turned on her heel, and stomped off. Ikat called after her, “I plan on being around for another two hundred years. You had better make peace with that notion.”
Somewhere deep in the house, a door slammed. Ikat released a slow breath through flared nostrils, then said quietly, “It’s hard for her. The playmates of her early childhood are not merely grown, they’re grandparents. She won’t reach intellectual and sexual maturity for another five years. She doesn’t understand our ways, and we’re a long way from understanding her.”
“Bite her,” said Comonot reasonably. “Right on the back of the neck.”
Ikat shook her head. “The Porphyrians have laws against harming children.”
“What harm?” cried Comonot. “My mother bit me every day for thirty years.”
“I told you,” said a male saarantras from across the circle. “They’re legislating against our cultural traditions. They see barbarism in things they don’t comprehend.”
“But a human bite isn’t safe,” offered Lalo. “The skin is frail, and infection—”
I was so astonished at this turn of conversation that I’d stopped translating. Kiggs nudged me. “Why are they arguing?”
I opened my mouth, at a loss to explain, when suddenly there came a rapping at the front door. Brisi scurried out of the shadows to answer it, and moments later, tall, black-haired Eskar stepped into the garden. Everyone stared openmouthed, myself not least or last, but she didn’t acknowledge our gazes or say hello. She approached one of the benches and waited silently while the saarantrai on it made room for her to sit.
The silence stretched uncomfortably. Comonot said, “You’re late.”
“Indeed,” said Eskar, tossing her bangs out of her eyes. She looked around, taking account of who else was in the garden, and nodded terse recognition at Kiggs and me. “I’m here now. I presume we’re discussing the logistics of traveling up the Omiga? Carry on.”
“Where have you been?” said Comonot, skewering her with his glare. “I expected you to be here. I expected your help with planning this operation.”
“I have been helping,” said Eskar coldly. “I’ve scouted ahead, plotting our route beyond the Omiga Valley. The Old Ard’s patrols are thin in that part of the Tanamoot, but they’re there.”
“You’ve learned their routes?” said Comonot.
Eskar shifted in her seat. “Some of them. But we’re going to need places to conceal ourselves. I propose seizing Censor facilities on the way to the Kerama. Lab Four is easily reached if we follow the Meconi River, and—”
“Slow down,” said Comonot, beetling his brows. “I have no quarrel with the Censors.”
“Did you not just promise to ease up on the repression of deviants?” Ikat interjected. “The Censors are the primary enforcers of those policies.”
“And if you bring these exiles home, the Censors are going to have a quarrel with you,” said Eskar flatly. “The location makes strategic sense. It’s poorly guarded; patrols avoid it. I used to work there and am still in contact with the quigutl in the boiler rooms.”
Comonot was shaking his head. “You overstep yourself, Eskar. I need to consider all the possible—”
“It’s a sound plan,” said Eskar, an unexpected tension in her voice, like a bowstring strung too tight. Her eyes, two pools of blackness, met mine, and my stomach clenched. “Orma is at Lab Four.”