The Diplomat (16 page)

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“Only that you look like you slept in a stairwell. We’ll have your other uniform ready for you by noon, so you can change then.”

“Very good.” An unexpected rush of gratitude prompted Rema to give Yorin her brightest smile. “Thank you, Yorin.”

Yorin bristled his eyebrows, lifted a few fingers in farewell and left the chamber. Rema stretched on the bed, tensing and relaxing her legs until the soreness left. As her head sank into the pillow, weariness stole over her. More sleep was required. She stumbled across the room, locked the door and returned to the bed. A wavering half-sleep came over her, and she dozed until the sound of activity in the hallway made it clear the day had begun.

As she was pulling herself up from the mattress, somebody tapped at the door. “Come in,” she said, and the handle rattled. “Oh, sorry!” She crossed the room and unlocked the door. Alys stood in the corridor, smiling so widely that her small eyes crinkled at their corners.

“You slept on the floor,” she said. “Gosh, Rema.”

Rema pursed her lips. “Do all the servants know by now?”

“Only some. The woman who helped you move there was chatty, but Yorin shouted at her. She’s not telling anyone anymore.” Alys frowned. “Rema, I don’t want you to be sent away. Whenever a girl becomes too friendly with Lady Elise, she gets sent away.”

“Don’t listen to gossip, Alys.”

“I won’t. I’m here to take you to the Queen for breakfast. Come on, quick! She whips me behind the ears when she’s angry.”

Alys hopped nervously from foot to foot while Rema locked the door behind her. Together they hastened through the waking palace to the upper level. As they entered the corridor leading to Talitha’s chamber, they slowed at the unexpected sight ahead—Elise, waiting outside the door. Her hair was more unruly than ever, spilling and tangling over her gold-edged white dress. A painful emotion tugged at Rema’s heart.

Elise looked up as they approached. “Alys, you can leave us,” she said.

“Yes, my lady.” Alys hesitated a moment before scampering off.

“She’s worried because she’s supposed to announce us.” Elise gave a tentative smile. “But I think my mother will forgive her.”

Rema kept her tone formal in an attempt to prevent her voice from shaking. “Good morning, Elise.”

Elise’s smile faltered. “So it’s back to Elise now.” She turned her head, and her earrings jangled. Their dangling silver threads were beautiful against Elise’s dark hair. If only Rema were able to tell her so.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I suppose I don’t mean anything either. Tell me why you blew me a kiss. Was it just to mock me?”

“Just a harmless joke.” Rema’s throat tightened, and she took a quick breath. Time to change the subject. “Are we both invited to breakfast, then?”

“Well spotted, Remela. Perhaps my mother has realized that when making a decision regarding my future, I should be present.”

“If you’re going to call me Remela, at least say it right. You have to roll the
r
with your tongue.”

“If only you were this interested in my tongue before.” Elise’s voice became suddenly urgent, her face naked with a desire for consolation. “Rema, did you read my letter? Did you feel anything at all?”

Rema opened her mouth, but all she could think of was Yorin’s warning. “Let’s go in,” she said. Elise’s lips quivered, and a hot sickness flooded Rema’s heart. She hurriedly opened the door, and they both trudged into Talitha’s chamber, a chill distance between them.

“Sit down, both of you,” said Talitha, beckoning to the women. She seemed to have aged half a decade since Rema had last seen her. Her eyelids drooped, veiling her murky eyes, but there was still energy in her voice, and her fingers played nimbly upon the spine of the book in her lap.

“Odd,” she said. “I’d have imagined you both would get on, yet here you are as cold as morning’s frost.”

“I have things to do,” said Elise. “Can we not take care of this quickly, Mother?”

“We’ve yet to even get the food in, Elise. Our guest must be fed.” Talitha tapped her nails on the cover of the book. “Where is that girl?” On cue, a servant woman knocked and entered, bringing a tray of small cakes. They looked like nothing more than little bundles of flour and sugar, and even a hundred would be unlikely to satisfy Rema’s hunger.

Talitha waited for the servant to leave before biting into a white mouthful. “Very well.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Talk to me.”

Rema’s cake was already halfway to her mouth, and she put it back on the tray. Presumably Talitha, not confident of her own ability to defeat Rema, had summoned Elise for reinforcement. Rema would have to restrain herself for fear of seeming callous, while Elise would be given opportunity to cut through Rema’s arguments and expose the cruelty of the demands. It was a clever stratagem, and it might have worked on a lesser diplomat.

Rema took a measured breath. “Let’s start with Calan.” Talitha blushed and glared at her book. “He’s made demands upon the Emperor to which I can’t possibly concede.”

“He’s a little foolhardy, I’ll admit.”

“An understatement if I ever heard one,” said Elise. “Get to the point, Remela.”

“Calan wants to change the terms of the agreement. Instead of ending the war, he wants it to continue until Lyorn is utterly defeated. The wealth will be split between Ormun and himself. Do you know what this would mean?”

“Rhetorical question, I assume,” said Talitha.

“It would mean further years of war and death. It would mean ruling over a people who resent you and will revolt at the least provocation. It would mean imperial provinces at your doorstep, garrisoned with Ormun’s restless armies.”

“That sounded like a threat,” said Elise. “Is that how you steal princesses? Bully their mothers into submission?”

“Elise, dear, you’ll have your say,” said Talitha, lifting her fingers in a gesture of reproach. “Rema, continue.”

“If you follow Calan along his mad path, what I’ve described is only the most fortunate outcome,” said Rema. “It’s just as possible that the Emperor will take offense at the renegotiation and withdraw his support, leaving you at the whim of an outmatched warmonger.”

“Enough about Calan.” Talitha’s voice expressed a deep fatigue tinged with grief. “It’s the fate of Elise that I’m concerned about. My daughter, Rema.”

“Let’s talk about her, then. If my terms aren’t accepted, Lyorn will destroy you, and Elise will suffer the fate of all princesses taken through conquest rather than marriage. If you accept my offer, she will at least live at my court in Arann.”

“If you can call that living,” said Elise with simmering temper.

“Be clearer,” said Talitha. “What is the difference between Lyorn someday breaking these walls and snatching her, and my giving her to a man who breaks walls the way other men break their bread?”

Rema swallowed. Gods help her speak these cunning half-truths. “She’ll be his twentieth wife. He’s only one man. There’ll be indignities and suffering, but she’ll have the freedom of the palace.”

“The freedom of the palace!” said Elise. As before, she was beautiful in her outrage, her round cheeks livid with color. “So I’m free to move about in my cell. Thank you, Remela, for that generous concession.”

“There’s little time to negotiate. If you don’t accept my terms as they are, then you may find that it is too late. Calan will act with all the impetuousness of youth. Your kingdom will suffer, and Elise will be no better off for it.”

“Hmm.” Talitha ran her tongue across her teeth. “Elise, think clearly now. What do you make of our situation?”

“I won’t respond until she looks at me,” said Elise, and Rema reluctantly faced her again. Elise’s lips were parted in fury, and the temper in her eyes was as controlled and steady as a lance. A prickling heat crept across Rema’s face. To think this frozen land could produce a woman of such ardor…

“Remela is telling the truth. The war will consume us, and Calan’s way will lead to butchery and suffering. But Mother, Ormun is wrong to ask this of us. He isn’t offering us aid but an insult, not only to us but to all women. We must seek other allies, other options—”

“You don’t have time,” said Rema. “There’s no—”

“Don’t you dare interrupt me. My entire life I’ve had to endure being interrupted, and you have no more right to do so. I’ll admit that I’m being selfish. I have a strange desire not to be sent away to marry a tyrant. But this isn’t only about my desires, Rema. We have to prove that Ormun can’t just take whatever woman he wishes.” Elise leaned forward. Her voice, though angry, was melodic, and it washed over Rema’s body like a shiver. “There will be a better way. Yes, sometimes sacrifices have to be made, but this is only cruelty disguised as benevolence. I don’t see a peace offer. All I see is a kind heart closing itself to kindness and a woman who knows right willingly doing wrong.”

Rema’s face burned as she inhaled deeply and looked into Elise’s eyes. Anger, pain and sorrow seethed in those silver depths, but so too did love, distant and longing. Finally Rema understood: it was by love, and love alone, that she would reach Elise. For this trade to take place, Rema would have to offer something of her own in exchange, the sacrifice she had never given another. And for this defiant lover of women, this healer of the sick and forgotten, this furious goddess who had stared down her brother and set the court ablaze—for Elise, Rema would gladly give it.

She took Elise’s hand into her own. Elise’s eyes widened, and Talitha raised an eyebrow. “My father was a poet,” Rema said. “He told me that the gods give every poet a riddle, and they must devote their lives to solving it. His riddle was peace. He believed that someday the world would no longer know war and suffering. He tried to describe how that might feel—to evoke an understanding of peace so powerful that it could become real. He dreamed that anyone who heard his poems would never raise a hand in anger again.”

Rema pressed Elise’s hand tighter, and her anger faded, replaced by a look of bewildered affection. “As a little girl, I played around his feet while he wrote. Sometimes he’d look down to me and say, ‘Remmy! Tell me what makes you happy.’ And with the innocence of a child, I would name him those things that brought me joy. The sound of laughter. The warm night air of the savannah. My pet lion cub. One night, he asked me that question, and I thought longer than before. Finally I said that my truest happiness was watching him hold my mother. He wept and kissed me.”

She swallowed, her throat squeezed by emotion. “My father was the reason I went to Arann. I wanted to make his dreams real, but I knew that it would take more than poetry to do it. My parents helped me pack and farewelled me with tears. Neither doubted that I could become a diplomat.” She could see their faces now, clearer now than they had been for years. “I dressed as a boy and went to the palace, where I claimed to have an important letter and acted dumb when they asked me who it was from. As I hoped, the guards took me to one of the diplomats. He knew straightaway that I was a girl in disguise, but I begged him in every language I knew to let me stay.”

Talitha remained still and attentive, while Elise continued to stare at Rema with intensity. “There was no law against women being diplomats,” said Rema. “Only a common belief that they lacked the intelligence for the role. I was allowed to enroll in the school, and I went through the training with the boys. The diplomat who had first helped me was young, and we grew close. I valued his friendship, but I broke his heart when he learned I had no interest in men.”

Elise’s face trembled, but Talitha nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Too busy with your studies.” Despite her emotion, Rema was unable to keep back a smile. Thank the gods for naive hearts.

“Before long, Emperor Togun learned there was a girl among his junior diplomats. He was Ajulese, like my father, and I spoke his native tongue, a lyrical language called Ajulai. I used to read poetry to him, a slight young woman kneeling at the feet of a living, laughing mountain. He was a conqueror too, but conquest brought him no happiness. I dared to read him my father’s poems, and he came to share my faith in their vision.” Rema blinked, and a tear spilled from her lashes. “We became friends and achieved much. When Ormun killed him, I was left hollow. I’ve done what I can since, but it’s been war after war, the dead stretching across the plains.”

Rema exhaled softly, keeping the ache of her old grief in check. “A year after Togun’s death, my father and mother visited me in the city. They saw my pain and consoled me. Father read me his latest poem, his truest work, he said. I’ve learned it by heart. It goes as thus.” She closed her eyes and recited the poem in Ajulai, the language of her father. The sounds were mellow in her mouth, light on her tongue and ethereal in her breath. Each verse resonated into the next, and the words hung in the air like lyrical smoke. As Rema concluded the final verse, the tears pressed hard to her eyes, and her throat squeezed shut with grief.

“How pretty that sounds,” said Talitha. “I would like to understand the words, however.”

“Do you speak Annari? It’s easier to translate to.”

“The language of the Empire. Of course we do. We’re educated women.”

“It loses its poetic form, but this is the closest I can manage.” Rema closed her eyes and recited again.

“Beneath the wing of despair,

I drift, feathered with tears.

Shadow wreathes my every bone,

Sorrow seeks my soul.

But then I fracture, falling broken,

And the darkness breaks with me.

I feel that I am light again

And know that I am saved.

Now drift to me, twin of my heart,

Toward this certain bliss.

For love has lain a path for you,

And you will find me waiting.”

The short silence that followed was broken by a confused snort from Talitha. “I don’t understand what this has to do with our situation.”

Rema ignored her—Elise, for whom the message had been meant, had clearly understood it. Her grip had tightened, and her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. She turned her face away and pressed her other hand to her lips.