The Blood Mirror

She fell silent, and Teia asked, “And have you?”

Anjali grinned. “Well, I’ve not seen the City of Stone in the Cracked Lands, but no one else has either for at least four hundred years. As for the rest, mostly. From the Everdark Gates to the Melos Deeps, from the Rath Delta in flood to the Floating City. I’ve seen the colossi of the Iron Elephants above the Red Cliffs, and the four Ladies of Garriston at sunset, and I’ve seen a sea demon circling White Mist Reef. I’ve played Nine Kings with satraps and danced a gciorcal with one of the last pygmy chiefs.”

“Really?” Teia asked.

“Really. We diplomats often stretch the truth, and sometimes make what we say seem to be the opposite of what we’re actually saying, but we do our best not to lie straight-out.” Anjali smiled. “Well, at least that’s the Chromeria’s school of thinking. Other nations, satrapies, and even clans have other approaches.”

“You just go from wonder to wonder? Nice work if you can get it, huh?” Teia said.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, most of my work has been much more tedious. It took me a full year to negotiate the passage taxes the Aborneans charge on the Narrows. A year working, for an agreement that only lasts ten. Though naturally, one flatters oneself that the representatives will simply renew it when it expires four years from now. If the satrapies last so long.”

“How’d you get to see all those things, though? You don’t even look that old. Er, sorry.”

Anjali grinned. “Easy. I gave myself all the interesting assignments.”

“You what? Wait, how senior are you?” Teia asked.

“Ambassadorships are given out to friends of satraps and Colors. They’re not quite sinecures, but they are largely ceremonial positions. Important for what they do, of course, but there are entire armies of people like me—the career diplomats, not the political appointees—who get the work done where the satrapies rub each other wrong. Fishing rights, piracy, extradition of criminals and runaway slaves, water rights, taxes, spot checks of compliance to the slave laws, and, of course, these days, communicating and compliance checks of the new balancing dictates.”

The new laws governing drafting that Promachos Guile and the Spectrum had instituted didn’t apply to drafters training for war, so Teia hadn’t even noticed them. Drafters elsewhere, however, had to compensate for the war effort—not drafting a certain color as news of light storms came into the Chromeria, or trying to draft more of its opposite color.

“I imagine that’s a nuisance,” Teia said. She was still studying the city they were rapidly approaching. Azûlay was built on a steep hill down to the sea after the arm of its protected bay and the lighthouse. Buildings were packed literally against each other, sharing walls up four and five stories and redbrick roofs, differentiated from their neighbors only by their individual bright-pastel walls. Ivies and greenery of all sorts sprouted everywhere.

“A nuisance? You have no idea, do you?” Anjali Gates said. “In the rich cities like Big Jasper, sure, drafters still use magic for entertainment and convenience. But in the villages where most people live, a ban on green in the fall might damage the olive harvest or mean only natural fertilizers can be used with the barley and wheat plantings. Sub-red is chronically restricted, so if the weather turns bad an entire grape harvest might be ruined. Worse, it means a new mother with a fever can’t be cooled. A nuisance? Child, people are dying so your compatriots can train with fire.”

Teia swallowed. She’d not even considered it.

“On the plus side, there haven’t been as many light storms since the rules were instituted, and no reports of bane in months, of course.”

Orholam’s ball sweat. But Teia said, “You never answered me, did you? About your position.”

“Oh, did I not?” But Anjali Gates smirked. “I’m the corregidor emeritus of the diplomatic corps.”

“That means you were the boss but you retired?” Teia said.

“Unretired now. Briefly. They needed someone who had a chance of reasoning with the… mercurial Nuqaba, and someone expendable, in case she does to me what has been done to messengers bearing unwelcome news from time immemorial.”

“Tough assignment,” Teia said.

“I volunteered.”

“I didn’t,” Teia groused.

“I know, that’s why I brought it up.”

“What do you mean you brought it up? I asked you out of the blue.”

“Did you? Regardless, if they seize me, you should get the hell out. If they take me, they’ll either kill me outright, or possibly do something to shame me. Send me back naked or shave my head or rape me. Each is its own word in the language of diplomacy. The Chromeria will respond appropriately, as it finds possible.”

“What the… what the hell does that even mean?” Teia asked.

“If the Chromeria were to later seize the Nuqaba alive, then if she has beheaded me without torture, she would be beheaded in turn. If she sends me back naked, she would likewise be paraded through the streets. If I were to be raped on her orders, she would be tortured horribly and shamed publicly as much as possible, though not raped, of course: we aren’t animals. Most leaders have an intuitive understanding of this kind of graduated retribution, if not an explicit one. Of course, how she conducts herself in the intervening time between my death and her reckoning could negate or change all of this.”

“And you volunteered?” Teia asked.

“I’m old,” Anjali said cheerfully. “After negotiating grain prices and cart widths hundreds of times, believe me, this is the kind of message we in the diplomatic corps dream of delivering—if only we can get away with it. But it also takes a certain gravitas to deliver a proper epistolary beating. If I pull this off, I’ll have to award myself the corps’s highest honor. If I don’t, I’ve left orders that they should award it to me posthumously.” She grinned at Teia.

“What’s an epistolary beating?”

“Watch the introduction. You’ll see what I mean. Just because I know the ceremonial bows and the twenty-seven titles of the Nuqaba Haruru doesn’t mean I like reciting them. You realize you’re part of this diplomatic grammar, right?”

“Huh?”

“One Blackguard accompanying me, not two, and the one they send is… petite. Forgive me for stating what others will think, I do not share this judgment and in fact know your reputation well—but the Nuqaba will see you as a little girl. Your slight stature makes you look even younger than you are. She might not even believe that you’re a Blackguard. The Chromeria sending you to accompany me is a small snub, but it also means they’re less likely to take or kill you. They’ll think you’re some child put into this role, and whatever glory they might find in defeating or humiliating a big man Blackguard is therefore absent.”