geriatrics? If the Khaiem and the Galts don't become one, we'll both be
forgotten. Our land will be taken, our cities will be occupied, and you
and I will spend our last years picking wild berries and stealing eggs
out of nests, because there won't be farm hands enough to keep us in bread."
"That was my thought as well," Otah said.
"So, no fallback position, eh?"
"None," Otah said. "It was raw hell getting the utkhaiem to agree to the
proposal I've brought. I take it the vote is going to fail?"
"The vote is going to fail," Balasar said.
Otah sat forward, his face cradled in his palms. The slight, acrid smell
of old ink on his fingers only made the darkness behind his closed lids
deeper.
Five months before, he had wrestled the last of the language in his
proposed treaty with Galt into shape. A hundred translators from the
high families and great trading houses had offered comment and
correction, and small wars had been fought in the halls and meeting
rooms of his palace at Utani, sometimes resulting in actual blows. Once,
memorably, a chair had been thrown and the chief overseer of House
Siyanti had suffered a broken finger.
Otah had set forth with an entourage of hundreds-court servants, guards,
representatives of every interest from Machi in the far, frozen north to
the island city of Chaburi-Tan, where ice was a novelty. The ships had
poured into the harbor flying brightly dyed sails and more banners and
good-luck pennants than the world had ever seen. For weeks and months,
Otah had made his arguments to any man of any power in the bizarre,
fluid government of his old enemy. And now, this.
"Can I ask why?" he said, his eyes still closed.
"Pride," Balasar said. Otah heard the sympathy in the softness of his
voice. "No matter how prettily you put it, you're talking about putting
our daughters in bed under your sons."
"And rather than that, they'll let everything die?" Otah said, looking
up at last. Balasar's gaze didn't waver. When the old Galt spoke, it was
with a sense of reason and consideration that might almost have made a
listener forget that he was one of the men he spoke of.
"You don't understand the depth to which these people have been damaged.
Every man on that council was hurt by you in a profound, personal way.
Most of them have been steeping in the shame of it since the day it
happened. They are less than men, and in their minds, it's because of
the Khaiem. If someone had humiliated and crippled you, how would you
feel about marrying your Eiah to him?"
"And none of them will see sense?"
"Some will," Balasar said, his gaze steady as stone. "Some of them think
what you've suggested is the best hope we have. Only not enough to win
the vote."
"So I have a week. How do I convince them?" Otah asked.
Balasar's silence was eloquent.
"Well," Otah said. And then, "Can I offer you some particularly strong
distilled wine?"
"I think it's called for," Balasar said. "And you'd mentioned something