She stopped off at the House of Nakhaba only long enough to pick up the food for Kundalimon’s midday meal. Today she had a stewed loin of vimbor for him. Hjjk-food, mostly, was what she brought him: seeds and nuts and baked meats, nothing moist with sauces, nothing at all rich — but also she tempted him carefully now and then with the heartier fare of the People, a morsel or two at a time. Food could be a language too. The meals they took together were one means they had of learning to communicate with each other.
There was one time — it was the third or fourth time she had brought him his meal — when he spent a long time thoughtfully chewing a mouthful of nuts and fruits without swallowing, and finally spat out a quantity into his hand. This he held out to her. Nialli Apuilana’s first response was surprise and disgust. But he continued to press the handful of moist pulp upon her, pointing and nodding.
“What is it?” she asked, bewildered. “Is there something wrong with it?”
“No — food — you — Nialli Apuilana—”
She stared, still not comprehending.
“Take — take—”
Then it came back to her. In the Nest the hjjks shared partly digested food all the time. A mark of solidarity, of Nest-bond; and something more than that, perhaps, having to do with the way the hjjks’ bodies processed their food, that she could not understand. She remembered now the sight of her nestmates pressing chewed food on one another. It was a common thing among them, this sharing of food.
Hesitantly she had taken what Kundalimon offered. He smiled and nodded. She forced herself to nibble at it, though all her instincts recoiled. “Yes,” he said. “Oh, yes!”
She got it down somehow, straggling against nausea. He seemed pleased.
By pantomime he had indicated then that she should take some of the People-food she had brought and do the same with it for him. She picked up a haunch of roast gilandrin and bit into it, and when she had chewed it for a time she pulled the whole wad of it from her mouth, taking care to conceal her queasiness, and gave it to him.
He tasted it cautiously. He looked uncertain about the meat itself; but obviously he was gladdened by her having had it in her mouth first. She could feel a flood of warmth and gratitude coming from him. It was almost like feeling Nest-bond once again.
“More,” he said.
And so, gradually, because she was willing to adopt the hjjk custom with him, he was able to expand his range of foods. Once it became apparent to him that the things Nialli Apuilana brought him were doing him no harm, he ate them with gusto. There was new flesh on his bones, and his dark fur was thickening and had acquired a little sheen. Those strange green eyes of his no longer seemed so hard and icy.
Communication, of a sort.
He was shy and remote, but he seemed to welcome her visits. Had he figured out yet that she too had been in the Nest? Sometimes it seemed that way; but she wasn’t yet sure. Verbal contact between them was still very uncertain. He had picked up a dozen or so words of the language of the city, and she was starting to reconstruct her knowledge of hjjk. But vocabulary was one thing and comprehension was another.
Learn his language, or teach him to speak ours.Those were Taniane’s orders, and no maybes about them. Do it quickly, too. And tell us what you find out.
The first part, at least, was exactly what Nialli Apuilana intended to achieve. And when she and Kundalimon were able to communicate easily with each other, and had come to know each other better, and he had begun to trust her, perhaps he would talk with her of Nest-matters: of Queen-love, of Thinker-thoughts, of Egg-plan, and all the other things of that nature that lay at the heart of her soul. Taniane didn’t need to be told anything about that. The rest, this proposed treaty, the diplomatic negotiations: oh, yes, I’ll let her know whatever I might learn about all that, Nialli Apuilana thought. But nothing about the deeper things. Nothing about the things that really matter.
The xlendi-wagon was waiting. She got in.
“Mueri House, now,” she told the driver.
In Prince Thu-Kimnibol’s grand villa in the southwestern quadrant of the city the healers had gathered once again by the bedside of the lady Naarinta. This was the fifth night running that they had come. She had been ill for many months, slipping gradually downward from weakness to weakness. But now she was passing into the critical phase.
Tonight Thu-Kimnibol was keeping watch in the narrow antechamber just outside the sickroom. The healers had refused to let him get any closer. This night only women might enter Naarinta’s room. The smell of medicines and aromatic herbs was in the air. The smell of impending death was in it, too.
His sensing-organ trembled with the awareness of the great loss that was rushing toward him.
In the sickroom the offering-woman Boldirinthe sat beside Naarinta. Whenever spells and potions were needed and the aid of the Five Heavenly Ones had to be invoked, fat old Boldirinthe heaved her vast body into a wagon and obligingly came to be of service. Old Fashinatanda, godmother to the chieftain — there was another one, blind and feeble though she was, who rarely missed an opportunity to minister to the gravely ill. Some Beng herb-doctor was there, too, a little shriveled woman wearing a dark feather-trimmed helmet flecked with rust, and two or three others whom Thu-Kimnibol could not recognize. They were murmuring to one another, chanting in low lilting voices.
Thu-Kimnibol turned away. He couldn’t bear to listen. It sounded like a chant for the dead.
Outside, in the hallway, bundles of purple flowers with dark red stalks were stacked like temple offerings. The richness of their perfume made Thu-Kimnibol sputter and cough. He walked quickly past, into the huge high-vaulted room that was his audience-chamber. A little group of men waited there in the dimness: Maliton Diveri, Staip, Si-Belimnion, Kartafirain, Chomrik Hamadel. Gaming partners, hunting companions, friends of many years. They clustered round him, smiling, joking, passing a huge flagon of wine back and forth. This was no time for long faces.
“To happier times,” Si-Belimnion said, swirling the wine in his mug. “Happier times past, happier times to come.”
“Happier times,” Chomrik Hamadel echoed. He was of Beng royal blood, a short blunt-featured man with a piercing scarlet gaze. He drank deep, throwing back his head so vehemently that he came close to sending his helmet flying.
Maliton Diveri and Kartafirain joined the toast, grinning, noisily clinking mugs: two robustly built men, one short, the other tall. Only Staip was quiet. He was older than the others, which accounted in part for his restraint; but also he was Boldirinthe’s mate, and no doubt Boldirinthe had told him how little hope there was for Naarinta’s life. Staip had never been one for dissembling: a warrior’s simplicity, that was his style.
Thu-Kimnibol said, picking up a mug and offering it to Maliton Diveri to be filled, “Happier times, yes. Joy and prosperity to us all, and a swift recovery for my lady.”
“Joy and prosperity! A swift recovery!”
It was fifteen years since Thu-Kimnibol had begun to share his life with Naarinta. He had met her not long after he had come from the north to settle in the city that his half-brother Hresh had built; and they had been inseparable ever since. She was of the Debethin tribe, the chieftain’s daughter — not a great distinction, perhaps, there having been only fourteen Debethins still alive when the last survivors of that tribe’s unhappy wanderings had come marching out of the east to ask for citizenship in Dawinno, but a chieftain was a chieftain nonetheless. She was tall and graceful, with an air of quiet strength about her. They were splendid together: majestic, even, the towering Thu-Kimnibol and his stately lady. The gods had given them no children, which was his greatest regret; but he had been content with Naarinta alone, the partner of his labors, the companion of his days. And then this wasting disease had come upon her, this terrible incomprehensible decree of the Heavenly Ones, against which there seemed to be no appeal.