Joel Shepherd - Haven

“I am. I hear you are Lord Alfriedo's right hand these days?”

“The Lord Alfriedo may be young, but he has two hands of his very own. I give him guidance.”

“I see,” said Jaryd.

“He would like to speak with you.”

“With me?” Jaryd frowned.

“Your princess is walking onto very thin ice. Lord Alfriedo and I would like very much to see her succeed, but there are many others who would not. If you wish to safeguard her life, there are things you will need to know.”

Sofy had never seen a place as extraordinary as the Mahl'rhen. Tracato's house of the serrin was less a building than a collection of open spaces, interlinked by chambers, gardens, paths, and low buildings that could not seem to decide where they ended and began. Sofy walked with her grand entourage along winding ways, beneath lattices overgrown with vines and dangling fruit, past semicircular courtyards overlooked by open chambers, and past public pools seemingly suited for bathing that became water features and little falls in the gardens into which they flowed.

She was taken by the pride with which ordinary Tracatans showed off this jewel. As though it were not some alien imposter within their human city as the priests might suggest, but rather an ornament for all Tracatans, human and serrin alike. There was a sadness too, Sofy thought, in that there were no serrin here. Most had fled to Saalshen, as Jaryd had suggested, though Sofy guessed that many more were merely hiding, in safe houses or with sympathetic human families. But the Mahl'rhen was not empty, for in every courtyard or open space there were people, guarding the place from looters and now welcoming these royal guests.

“Did Maldereld build this?” Sofy asked Premier Chiron as they walked.

“Oh no,” said Chiron, “Maldereld spent much of her time at the Justiciary. She was many things, but she was no architect. This was previously the land of a castle and great surrounds belonging to a family wiped out in King Leyvaan's invasion of Saalshen. Many serrin wandered Rhodaan, Enora, and Ilduur for years after, and those architects with the most inspiration gathered here, and made something peculiar to human and serrin styles.”

“A tapestry,” Sofy murmured. “Or perhaps a fusion. The serrin mind is surely not like the human.”

“No,” Chiron agreed, a little uncomfortably.

“In a good way,” Sofy hastened to assure him.

As they stood to marvel at a small amphitheatre incorporated into a garden and overlooked on another side by a wall and balconies, Jeddie arrived somewhat breathlessly at Sofy's side.

“Princess, there is someone you should meet. He is asking for you in person.” She pointed to a doorway. “Just in here, it's perfectly safe.”

Two knights insisted on walking with her regardless, and looking inside. Within was an extraordinary room, like many grand chambers save that there was a wide, circular hole in its roof. Beneath that hole was a corresponding wide circle on the floor, ringed with a balustrade. Upon that balustrade were many symbols engraved on copper and inlaid into stone, and across the tiled floor were strange shapes, like angular sculptures, some as tall as a man, but in abstract form.

Jeddie went to an old man who sat overlooking the odd circle, and murmured to him. The knights checked that there was no other way into the chamber, then at Sofy's insistence left them alone.

Jeddie assisted the old man to stand. He wore lordly clothes, a fine silk shirt and boots, and his hair was long and white. But when he faced her, Sofy could see that he was serrin. The knights had not seen his face and eyes, so long was his hair, and so human his clothing.

“Princess Sofy,” said Jeddie, “this is Ambassador Lesthen. He is Saalshen's senior representative in Rhodaan.”

Lesthen made a light bow. Sofy hurried to him and grasped his hands.

“Ambassador. Where are your people? Are they well?”

“I cannot say,” said Lesthen, and his eyes were apologetic. And yet, quite firm. “I am sorry.”

He would not say, Sofy realised. She was the princess of a people whose religious folk swore to destroy all serrin. Whatever intentions she professed, he did not trust her.

“Of course,” she said. “You have decided to remain?”

“I am too old to sacrifice what life I have left on the battlefield,” said Lesthen. “If sacrifice is required, I shall sacrifice here. As ambassador, it is my task to meet with you. My uthis'ul …I am sorry, there is no precise translation in any human tongue. A purpose greater than oneself.”

Sofy sighed. “I have long been envious of my sister Sashandra, that she speaks your tongue and I do not. It does seem precisely the linguistic task I would enjoy most in all the world, whatever its challenges.”

“Sashandra,” said Lesthen with a faint smile. It wrinkled his face, with lines more dry and flat than human wrinkles. “She does speak the tongue well. Of all the humans I have met, I feel that she is perhaps the best equipped of all to understand the serrinim.”

“The best?”

“You are surprised.”

“Well, I admit I do not always think of Sasha as a greatly cultured person,” Sofy said in humour.

“But why should it require great culture to comprehend we serrin?”

Sofy blinked at the old serrin. There was a calm to him that was mesmerising. A presence that was not fearful or anxious, nervous or embarrassed, neither wishing anything from her nor desiring to do anything to her. It was an absence of edges, she realised, the kind of sharp and uneasy edges that characterised so many of her meetings with humans. To him, she was not any of the things that she was to those people, and her being a princess affected him perhaps least of all.

Perhaps this was why Lenays and serrin seemed to get along despite their most obvious differences, she thought. Lenays cared little for rank either. Serrin neither cringed nor begged favours, and as such were perhaps the only foreigners a common Lenay could immediately respect.

“Well,” she answered him, “the serrin are a very cultured people, are you not?”

“If you feel pride in it,” said Lesthen, “then it is not culture.” Sofy frowned, baffled. “What you call culture is like a pretty jewel to wear upon your collar to tell lesser humans that you are superior to them. There is more culture in a farmer's song as he pulls his plough, or in a sailor's game of dice on the dock front. To build it so large as humans do, to make it the preserve of the wealthy and high status, that is not culture. That is pride and power, masquerading as such.”

“Yet your people build such grand institutions of culture in Tracato!” Jeddie protested.

Lesthen smiled. “Do you think that our presence here has nothing to do with pride and power? We are here to impress, and sometimes even to frighten. That much at least have we learned of your ways.”

“And why does Sasha understand you best?” Sofy asked.

“Because she sees our flaws, and distrusts our wisdom, and curses us for the fools we often are, even as she takes one of us into her bed.” Lesthen sighed, and leaned on the balustrade railing. “She does not gaze in amazement at all we have built, rather she despairs that we have built all of this without first testing to see that the foundation is firm. As I do now.”

Sofy walked to his side and gazed upon the odd shapes on the sunlit floor. “What manner of place is this? I've never seen anything like it.”

“This place is to study the sky,” said Lesthen. He pointed up at the rim of the circle above them. “The marks there indicate the positions of stars viewed from a certain point on the floor, at different seasons and periods. Knowing such, it is possible to tell precisely the hour, even in the darkest night.