Just now, though, such ambiguities of attitude were a luxury the city was unable to afford. An actual hjjk ambassador, tongue-tied and uncommunicative though he might be, was here. Guessing at his message, or relying on Hresh’s Wonderstone-assisted ability to read his mind, was insufficient. He had to be made to state his errand in words. Nialli would simply have to yield. Her assistance in this thing was too important.
Brusquely Taniane said, “What kind of foolishness is this? There’s no spying involved here. We’re talking about service to your city. A stranger comes, bearing news that the Queen wants to negotiate with us. But he can’t speak our language and nobody here can speak his, except for one young woman who happens to be the chieftain’s daughter, but who also seems to think that there’s something unethical about helping us to find out what an ambassador from another race is trying to say.”
“You’re turning everything your own way, mother. I simply don’t want to feel that if I do manage to open some sort of communication with Kundalimon, I’m obliged to report whatever he says to me to you.”
Taniane felt the beginnings of despair. Once she had thought Nialli Apuilana would succeed her one day as chieftain; but plainly that could never be. The girl was impossible. She was baffling: volatile, headstrong, unstable. It was clear now that the long line of the chieftainship, which could be traced back into the remote days of cocoon life, was destined to be broken. It was the hjjks that did this to her, Taniane thought. One more reason to despise them. But all the same Nialli Apuilana could not be allowed to win this battle.
Summoning all the force that was within her, she said, “You have to do it. It’s vital to our security that we understand what this is all about.”
“Have to?”
“I want you to. You have to, yes.”
There was silence. Inner rebellion knotted Nialli Apuilana’s forehead. Taniane stared at her coldly, pitilessly, matching the hardness of her daughter’s glare with an even fiercer look, one meant to overpower. To enhance it she allowed her second sight to arise, and Nialli Apuilana looked at her in amazement. Taniane maintained the pressure.
Nialli Apuilana, though, continued to resist.
Then at last she gave ground: or appeared to. Coolly, almost contemptuously, she said, “Well, then. As you wish. I’ll do what I can.”
Nialli Apuilana’s face, so wondrously a reflection of Taniane’s own refracted through decades of time, was expressionless, unreadable, a mask void of all feeling. Taniane felt the temptation to reach out at the most intimate level of second sight, to reach with forbidden force and penetrate that sullen mask for once. Was it anger that Nialli Apuilana was hiding, or mere resentment, or something else, some wild rebellious flare?
“Are we finished?” Nialli Apuilana asked. “Do I have permission to leave now?”
Taniane gave her a bleak look. This had all gone so very badly. She had won this little battle, perhaps. But she sensed that she had lost a war.
She had hoped to reach out to Nialli in love and friendship. Instead she had snapped and snarled, and had made use of the blunt strength of her position, and had coldly issued orders, as though Nialli were nothing more than some minor functionary of her staff. She wished she could rise, walk around the desk to her, take her in her arms. But that was beyond her, somehow. Often it seemed to her that a wall higher than King Salaman’s stood between her and her daughter.
“Yes,” she said. “You can go.”
Nialli Apuilana went briskly toward the door. When she reached the hallway, though, she turned and looked back.
“Don’t worry,” she said, and, to Taniane’s surprise, there seemed to be a conciliatory tone in her voice. It sounded almost gentle. “I’ll do things the right way. I’ll find out everything you need to know, and tell you. And I’ll tell it to the Presidium too.”
Then she was gone.
Taniane swung around and looked at the masks behind her on the wall. They seemed to be laughing at her. Their faces were implacable.
“What do you know?” she muttered. “None of you ever had mates, or children, did you? Did you?”
“Lady?” a voice called from outside. It was Minguil Komeilt. “Lady, may I come in?”
“What is it?”
“A delegation, lady. From the Guild of Tanners and Dyers of the Northern District, concerning repairs to their main water conduit, which they say has become blocked by sewage that is being illegally released by members of the Guild of Weavers and Wool-Carders, and is causing—”
Taniane groaned.
“Oh, send them to Boldirinthe,” she said, half to herself. “This is something the offering woman can handle as well as the chieftain can.”
“Lady?”
“Boldirinthe can pray for them. She can ask the gods to unplug the water line. Or bring down vengeance on the Guild of Weavers and—”
“Lady?” Minguil Komeilt said again, with alarm in her voice. “Do I understand you rightly, lady? This is a joke, is it not? This is only a joke?”
“Only a joke, yes,” said Taniane. “You mustn’t take me seriously.” She pressed her fingers against her eyes, and drew three quick deep breaths. “All right. Send in the delegation from the Guild of Tanners and Dyers—”
A veil of hazy heat shrouded the sky as Nialli Apuilana stepped into the street outside the House of Government. She hailed a passing xlendi-wagon.
“The House of Nakhaba,” she told the driver. “I’ll be there just five minutes or so. Then I’ll want you to take me somewhere else.”
That would be Mueri House, where the hjjk emissary had been lodged: a hostelry used mostly by strangers to the city, where he could be kept under close watch. Now it was time to bring him his midday meal. She went to Kundalimon twice a day, at noon and twilight. He had a small one-windowed room — it was more like a cell — on the third floor, facing backward into a blind plaza.
Her confrontation with her mother had left her drained and numb. Love warred with fear in her whenever she had to deal with Taniane. There was never any telling, with Taniane, when her powerful sense of the needs of the city was going to override all other considerations, all thought of the messy little private needs and problems of private individuals, whether they happened to be her daughter or some absolute stranger. For her the city always came first. No doubt you got that way, Nialli Apuilana supposed, when you held the chieftainship for forty years: time made you hard, narrow, singleminded. Maybe the Beng who had hurled the rock was right: maybe it was time for Taniane to step aside.
Nialli Apuilana wondered whether she really was going to spy for Taniane, as she had so abruptly found herself agreeing to do.
It had been a mistake, perhaps, to put the whole thing in terms of spying. She was, after all, a citizen of Dawinno and the daughter of the chieftain and the chronicler. And she did, after all, have at least a little knowledge of the hjjk language, which was more than anyone else here could claim. Why not serve as interpreter, and do it gladly, with pride in being of service? It didn’t mean that she’d have to repeat every single word of her conversations with Kundalimon to Taniane and the Presidium, or to open up her whole experience of the hjjks to their probing. She could pick and choose: she could easily enough limit what she reported to them to the basic matters of the negotiation. But it had been so frightening, the thought that they might grill her on everything she knew about the Nest and its ruler. That horrified her, that they would break through the shield of privacy which she had held in place around herself for nearly four years. She meant to cast off that shield herself, when and if she felt it was the proper time. The idea that they might in some way strip her of it before she was ready filled her with terror, though. An overreaction, perhaps. Perhaps.