Delganor could not see through it, fortunately, for Colonel Leys was raging at the insult. Something was going on around him, something he could not see, hear, or smell, could only feel like a foul touch on his skin or a chill draft down his neck. Wrongness. A new kind of wrongness with the Marshal, a very old kind of wrongness with Yugh Delganor; and, even though the reasons for going to Mahahm were indeed urgent and well understood, a sort of willful wrongness with this journey and even with Genevieve. When one tried to think out what was wrong, however, it all came down to the fact that Genevieve’s presence on an arduous, lengthy trip made no sense.
“You are quite red in the face, love,” said Genevieve, with a slightly worried frown.
He looked up, startled at her presence. “I am angry,” he said, before he thought.
“At Prince Delganor?” She smiled, a tight little smile, very controlled, a new expression she had found on her face a few days before and had made much use of since. “I get angry at him for half a day at a time, and it is very helpful, for it keeps me from being afraid of him.”
This echo of his own fear touched him with panic he refused to let her see. “Oh, no, sweetheart, you mustn’t be afraid. You are among friends, family . . .”
She smiled. “Well, family, at least, though Father has seemed more than ordinarily unfamilial and laconic lately. He acts as though I’ve metamorphosed into something obscene instead of merely being pregnant. He’s been spending a lot of time with the Invigilator, though what an Invigilator is doing here, heaven only knows.”
She smiled the tight little smile once again. “I asked one of the men who accompany the Prince if it really is usual to have a pregnant woman along, and he said yes. He says it brings good luck. Why does that impress me so little?”
Aufors put his arms around her, holding her tightly. “There might still be some way out of this.”
“No,” she replied. “I’ve told you. This is a way laid out, Aufors.”
“Oh, by all that’s heavenly, I wish you could explain it to me!” he cried in pain and frustration.
She heard the pain and tried to respond to it. “Suppose when you were a small boy, your father took you to the top of a hill and pointed down the road, saying, ‘My boy, this is your road. You will walk this road, just as I have walked this road, and your sons will walk this road, and you must promise me you will not turn aside from it.’ So you make the promise. Later, perhaps, you become reluctant, but the promise was made. At some point, you have to trust that your father pointed out the road because it was important, and you have to choose to keep your promise or break it. If you are honorable, perhaps you choose not to demand such a promise from your own son, but that’s as far as you can go.”
“But you don’t know where it goes!” he cried furiously.
“I don’t. No. I have to trust that my mother knew what she was asking me to do, or that her mother did, before her.” She hugged him. “Indulge me, Aufors. There must be a good reason for it.”
At dinner that night, Aufors again raised the topic of help for Genevieve, though he did it while speaking with the Marshal and under the guise of talking about something else. “It would be a mistake for us to hire malghaste for any reason. Hiring a member of the caste to perform any intimate function for us would be an admission that we ourselves are unclean. The Mahahmbi could then use that as an excuse for not dealing with us.”
The Marshal nodded, ponderously, but Yugh Delganor interrupted his response. “My dear boy, I have been there before, and they have not refused to deal with me.”
“Forgive me, Your Highness, but always before you were there merely to say hello and give them gifts and best wishes from the Lord Paramount. You’ve never before asked them to change something about the P’naki trade. I’ve been told the Mahahmbi do not like change.”