hundreds until now. Otah considered her raised brows and downcast eyes,
the set of her mouth and her shoulders. There had been a time when he'd
lived by knowing how to interpret such small indications. Perhaps he
still did.
"I found your letter quite moving," she said. "Several of us did."
"I am gratified," Otah said, not certain it was quite the correct word.
"Fatter and I have talked about your treaty. The massive shipment of
Galtic women to your cities as bed servants to your men, and then
hauling back a crop of your excess male population for whatever girls
escaped. It isn't a popular scheme."
The brutality of her tone was a gambit, a test. Otah refused to rise to it.
"Those aren't the terms I put in the treaty," he said. "I believe I used
the term wife rather than bed servant, for example. I understand that
the men of Galt might find it difficult. It is, however, needed."
He spread his hands, as if in apology. She met his gaze with the bare
intellect of a master merchant.
"Yes, it is," she said. "Majesty, I am in a position to deliver a
decisive majority in both the High Council and the convocation. It will
cost me all the favors I'm owed, and I have been accruing them for
thirty years. It will likely take me another thirty to pay back the debt
I'm going into for you.
Otah smiled and waited. The cold blue eyes glittered for a moment.
"You might offer your thanks," she said.
"Forgive me," Otah said. "I didn't think you'd finished speaking. I
didn't want to interrupt."
The woman nodded, sat back a degree, and folded her hands in her lap. A
wasp hummed through the air to hover between them before it darted away
into the foliage. He watched her weigh strategies and decide at last on
the blunt and straightforward.
"You have a son, I understand?" Issandra Dasin said.
"I do," Otah said.
"Only one."
It was, of course, what he had expected. He had made no provision for
Danat's role in the text of the treaty itself, but alliances among the
Khaiem had always taken the form of marriages. His son's future had
always been a tile in this game, and now that tile was in play.
"Only one," he agreed.
"As it happens, I have a daughter. Ana was three years old when the doom
came. She's eighteen now, and ..."
She frowned. It was the most surprising thing she'd done since her
arrival. The stone face shifted; the eyes he could not imagine weeping
glistened with unspilled tears. Otah was shocked to have misjudged her
so badly.
"She's never held a baby, you know," the woman said. "Hardly ever seen
one. At her age, you couldn't pull me out of the nursery with a rope.
The way they chuckle when they're small. Ana's never heard that. The way
their hair smells ..."
She took a deep breath, steadying herself. Otah leaned forward, his hand
on the woman's wrist.