Page 43 of The Second Marriage
“Yes. And Sejun speaks Chedai very well, it seems, so he can help shepherd me along.”
“I wish you great success. These have been long years of warfare, and everyone is ready for peace.” She gazed through the window, which opened onto a small courtyard or lightwell. “But the king… well, that’s not for me to worry about.”
Taral looked at her side-turned face. “What can you tell me?”
She shrugged. “There’s talk. You know how this can be. King Aditya is growing older. Maybe people say that something could have been done sooner to end our wars. Maybe people say he should step down and let his son begin to rule. These are only things I overhear in the marketplace, you understand.”
“Of course.”
“Some people perhaps remember the king’s younger brother, who died in a tragic hunting accident, and wonder what might have come to pass if he had lived.” She shrugged again. “We’re one nation now, but we weren’t always. There are those who remember a time when they had their own kingdom and ruled themselves. And there are others who came from Skopa once, long ago, and may think to themselves that Skopa’s queen rules capably and with wisdom, and would like to return to Skopa’s auspices.”
“Separatists,” Taral said, and Simra nodded. “Within the palace?”
“Now that I can’t say. I only hear the talk of the common people. Whatever the nobility conspire about amongst themselves, I know nothing.”
“Well.” Taral sat for a moment, considering. “You expect someone to sabotage the negotiations?”
“How could I predict that? You think I have more insight than I do. I’m only a simple fossil seller, Your Highness. I hear gossip and report it to you so that you don’t begin your negotiations in ignorance of the full scope of the situation at hand.” Simra raised her eyebrows. “I hope for peace in my country. I’m sure you can imagine.”
She had said little about the conflict in her letters. Taral had assumed the war was too distant to affect her in any concrete way. From the weariness in her expression that was much like King Aditya’s air of profound exhaustion, he saw he had been mistaken.
“I’ll do everything I can,” he said. “Thank you for telling me. Feba will be glad to know of this. I wonder that the king said nothing of this, although I suppose he may have told Feba and asked her to keep it quiet.”
“The king may not think it’s important. He may not know the extent of it.” She hesitated, then said, “He grows isolated, it’s said. He trusts no one, and fears Skopai magic. One of his sorcerers disappeared last spring under mysterious circumstances at the border. There are all sorts of wild tales about what happened. He hasn’t left the palace since, and keeps a sorcerer with him at all times, even while he sleeps.”
“A simple fossil seller,” Taral said.
Simra smiled. “I have many customers. I listen well and say little, and some are inclined to talk more than they should. I tell you what I’ve heard repeated more than once, which makes me think it’s not only idle gossip. I leave it to you what to do with this information, as I’m no politician.”
A tap at the door interrupted them. Simra’s wife poked her head in, wincing apologetically. She was younger than Simra and quite beautiful. “Sorry, sorry,” she said in Chedai, and made a quick bow in Taral’s direction. Then she said something to Simra much too rapidly for Taral to even pick out a word or two. Chedai was maddening because it was similar enough to Dirang that he felt he ought to understand it, and yet he couldn’t draw meaning from the sounds. Simra replied, and her wife nodded and went out.
“A question about the shopping,” Simra said to Taral. “I mostly do it, and she does the cooking. Not the most efficient setup, perhaps.”
“Congratulations on the wife,” Taral said.
Simra laughed. “Thank you. I’m very pleased to have acquired her. And how is your own acquisition? I thought you were a dedicated bachelor and was surprised when you wrote to say you had married.”
Taral managed not to wince. He had given Simra very few details aside from explaining the custom of arranged marriages, which Simra had said wasn’t done in Chedi apart from among the nobility. He wished now that he had said a little more so that he wouldn’t have to answer any questions on the subject. “He’s very pleasing. Charming, cheerful. I’m happier now than I was before our marriage, which is no small thing.”
It was true, he realized as he spoke. Hewashappier. Sejun had brought unexpected warmth to the gelid core of his life. Although his regrets about Jaysha were still at the forefront of his mind, he wasn’t sorry to be married to Sejun. He could only hope that Sejun wasn’t sorry to be married to him.
“I don’t see the appeal of men,” Simra said, “but I’m glad you found a good one. Will you bring him to have dinner with us? Lavi and I would be very pleased to meet him.”
“So you can all speak Chedai and gossip about me, I’m sure,” Taral said, then held up his hand at Simra’s frown. “I’m sorry. A poor joke. Sejun would be delighted and so would I.”
Simra smiled. “Then we will make a plan.”
CHAPTER20
The Skopai delegation arrived while Taral was out in the city with Sejun, searching for a bookseller’s shop Sejun had heard about from one of the Chedai. They noticed the people around them all moving in one direction with enough excited pointing and talking that Taral gathered something of interest was happening. He and Sejun followed the crowd, and through the throng of gathered onlookers they sighted the vanguard, armored soldiers on warhorses bearing banners with the crest of Skopa on them, a stylized white flower on a dark blue background.
They stood there on the narrow side street and watched the procession ride up the main road toward the palace. The Skopai were dark-skinned as the darkest of the Chedai, and uniformly so, with curly dark hair they wore braided or tied back. A long line of mounted soldiers went by, and then came nobles or diplomats in their fine tunics and trousers, some of them waving and smiling at the gathered Chedai. Diplomats, then, surely, trying to win over the people they had been at war with for so long.
“I wonder if they’ve brought their queen,” Taral said to Sejun, who shrugged in his careless way; Taral wondered, not without fondness, whether Sejun even knew that the Skopai had a queen.
Taral’s question was answered in short order by the appearance of a woman on a tall bay horse. She wasn’t dressed any differently than the nobles who preceded her, but something about her upright posture and the way she looked around made Taral certain that this was the queen.
He wondered at her willingness to travel so deep into the heart of Chedi for these negotiations instead of making the Chedai come to her or at least meet somewhere in the middle. Feba had said that the Chedai claimed they were the victors, but even if that were so, it seemed strange to him that Skopa would permit its queen to put herself at risk in such a way. Again he wished he knew more of the situation here. It was possible some cultural practice was at play, some convention Chedi and Skopa shared that Taral was oblivious to.