Аластер Рейнольдс - The Iron Tactician

‘What?’ Merlin asked.

‘They’re puzzled that I speak their tongue. They also want to know if you have a syrinx.’

‘Tell them I have a syrinx but that it doesn’t work very well.’ Merlin was still smiling at the men, but the muscles around his mouth were starting to ache. ‘And tell them I apologise for not speaking their tongue, but you’re much better at languages than me. What are their names, too?’

‘I’ll ask.’ There was another halting exchange, Merlin sensing that the names were given grudgingly, but she drew them out in the end. ‘Balus,’ Teal said. ‘And Locrian. I’d tell you which is which, but I’m not sure there’d be much point.’

‘Good. Thank Balus and Locrian for the friendly reception. Tell them that they are very welcome on my ship, but I’d be very obliged if the others stopped crawling around outside my hull.’ Merlin paused. ‘Oh, and one other thing. Ask them if they’re still at war with Gaffurius.’

He had no need of Teal to translate the answer to that particular part of his query. Balus – or perhaps Locrian – made a hawking sound, as if he meant to spit. Merlin was glad that he did not deliver on the gesture; the intention had been transparent enough.

‘He says,’ Teal replied, ‘that the Gaffurians broke the terms of the recent treaty. And the one before that. And the one before that. He said the Gaffurians have the blood of pigs in their veins. He also says that he would rather cut out his own tongue than speak of the Gaffurians in polite company.’

‘One or two bridges to build there, then.’

‘He also asks why they should care what you think of the ones still on your hull.’

‘It’s a fair question. How good do you think you’re getting with this language of theirs?’

‘Better than I’m letting on.’

‘Well, let’s push our luck a little. Tell Balus – or Locrian – that I have weapons on this ship. Big, dangerous weapons. Weapons neither of them will have ever seen before. Weapons that – if they understood their potency, and how near they’ve allowed that ship of theirs to come – would make them empty their bowels so quickly they’d fill their own spacesuits up to the neck ring. Can you do that for me?’

‘How about I tell them that you’re armed, that you’re ready to defend your property, but that you still want to proceed from a position of peaceful negotiation?’

‘On balance, probably for the best.’

‘I’ll also add that you’ve come to find out about a syrinx, and you’re prepared to discuss terms of trade.’

‘Do that.’

Merlin waited while this laborious exchange was carried on. Teal reached some sort of critical juncture in her statement and this drew a renewed burst of angry exclamations from Balus and Locrian – he guessed they had just been acquainted with the notion that Tyrant was armed – but Teal continued and her words appeared to have some temporary soothing effect, or as best as could be expected. Merlin raised his hands in his best placating manner. ‘Honestly, I’m not the hair-trigger type. We just need to have a basis for mutual respect here.’

‘Cohort?’ he heard one of them say.

‘Yes,’ he answered, at the same time as Teal. ‘Cohort. Big bad Cohort.’

After a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing, Teal turned to him: ‘They don’t claim to know anything about a syrinx. Then again, I don’t think these men necessarily would know. But one of them, Locrian, is going back to the other ship. I think he needs to signal some higher-up or something.’

‘It’s what I was expecting,’ Merlin said. ‘Tell him I’ll wait. And tell the other one he’s welcome to drink with us.’

Teal relayed this message, then said: ‘He’ll stay, but he doesn’t need anything to drink.

‘His loss.’

While Locrian went back through the airlock, Balus joined them in the lounge, looking incongruous in his heavily-armoured suit. Teal tried to engage him in conversation, but he had obviously been ordered to keep his communications to a strict minimum. Merlin helped himself to some wine, before catching his own pink-eyed reflection and deciding enough was enough, for now.

‘What do you think’s going on?’ Teal asked, when an hour had passed with no word from the other ship.

‘Stuff.’

‘Aren’t you concerned?’

‘Terribly.’

‘You don’t look or sound it. You want this syrinx, don’t you?’

‘Very much so.’

Balus looked on silently as his hosts spoke in Main. If he understood any part of it, there was no clue on his face. ‘But you seem so nonchalant about it all,’ Teal said.

Merlin pondered this for a few seconds. ‘Do you think being not nonchalant would make any difference? I don’t know that it would. We’re here in the moment, aren’t we? And the moment will have its way with us, no matter how we feel about things.’

‘Fatalist.’

‘Cheerful realist. There’s a distinction.’ Merlin raised his empty, wine-stained glass. ‘Isn’t there, Balus? You agree, don’t you, my fine fellow?’

Balus parted his lips and gave a grunt.

‘They’re coming back,’ Teal said, catching movement through the nearest window. ‘A shuttle of some sort, not just people in suits. Is that good or bad?’

‘We’ll find out.’ Merlin bristled a hand across his chin. ‘Mind me while I go and shave my beard.’

‘Shave your tongue while you’re at it.’

Merlin had just finished freshening up when the lock completed its cycle and the two suited individuals came aboard. One of them, wearing a green and gold suit, turned out to be Locrian. He took off his helmet and motioned for the other, wearing a red and gold suit, to do likewise. This suit was less ostentatiously armoured than the other, designed for a smaller frame. But when the figure lifted their helmet off, glanced at Locrian and uttered a few terse words, Merlin had no difficulty picking up on the power relationship between the two.

The newcomer was an old man – old, at least, in Merlin’s reckoning. Seventy or eighty years, by the Cohort way of accounting such things. He had fine, aristocratic features, accented by a high, imperious brow and a back-combed sweep of pure white hair. His eyes were a liquid grey, like little wells of mercury, suggesting a sharp, relentless intelligence.

Officer class, Merlin thought.

The man spoke to them. His voice was soft, undemonstrative. Merlin still did not understand a word of it, but just the manner of speaking conveyed an assumption of implicit authority.

‘His name is… Baskin,’ Teal said, when the man had left a silence for her to speak. ‘Prince Baskin. Havergal royalty. That’s his own personal cruiser out there. He was on some sort of patrol when they picked up our presence. They came at full thrust to meet us. Baskin says things come out of the Way now and then, and it’s always a scramble to get to them before the enemy.’

‘If Locrian’s spoken to him, then he already knows our names. Ask him about the syrinx.’

Teal passed on Merlin’s question. Baskin answered, Teal ruminated on his words, then said: ‘He says that he’s very interested to learn of your interest in the syrinx.’

‘I bet he is.’

‘He also says that he’d like to continue the conversation on his cruiser. He says that we’ll be guests, not prisoners, and that we’ll be free to return here whenever we like.’

‘Tell Prince Baskin… yes, we’ll join him. But if I’m not back on Tyrant in twelve hours, my ship will take action to retrieve me. If you can make that sound like a polite statement of fact, rather than a crudely-worded threat, that would be lovely.’

‘He says there’ll be no difficulty,’ Teal said.