“Sit here with my compeers,” Twig muttered. “Eat fast. There may not be long to go. He’s in a surly mood.”
Thinking to make polite conversation, Jing said, “Has two lovely shes, this lord. Is of the children many to him credit?”
The scholar’s colleagues, Bush, Hedge and so on—names doubtless adopted, in accordance with local custom, when they took service with the Count—froze in unison. Twig whispered forcefully, “Never speak of that where he might overhear! No matter how many women he takes, there is no outcome and never has been, except … See the cripple?”
Previously overlooked, there sat a girl by herself, her expression glum. She leaned to one side as though she had been struck by an assassin’s prong. Yet she bore a visible resemblance to the Count, and she was passably handsome by the standards of Ntah where the mere fact of her being a noble’s daughter would have assured her of suitors. She was alone, though, as if she were an unmated or visiting male. Had he again misunderstood some local convention?
Twig was continuing between gobbles of food. “She’s the reason I’m here—eat, eat for pity’s sake because any moment he’s going to order up the evening’s entertainment which is bound to include you and over there”—with a nod towards a trio of emaciated persons whom Jing identified with a sinking feeling as sacerdotes—”are a bunch of charlatans who would dearly have liked to sink claws in you before I did except that I put it about I wasn’t expecting you before the last boat of autumn in ten days’ tune. Anyway, Rainbow—who is much brighter than you’d imagine just looking at her—is his sole offspring. Naturally what he wants is a cure for infertility and an assurance that his line won’t die out. So our real work keeps getting interrupted while we invent another specious promise for him.”
For someone afraid of being overheard, Twig was speaking remarkably freely. But Jing was confused. “You not try read his future from stars?” he hazarded. “You not think possible?”
“Oh, it may well be! But before we can work out what the sky is telling us, we must first understand what’s going on up there. My view, you see, is that fire above and fire below are alike in essence, so that until we comprehend what fire can do we shan’t know what it is doing, and in consequence—Oh-oh. He’s stopped eating, which means the rest of us have to do the same. If you haven’t had enough to keep you dreamfree I can smuggle something to your quarters later. Right now, though, you’re apt to be what’s served him next!”
In fact it didn’t happen quite so quickly. With a spring like a stabber-claw pouncing out of jungle overgrowth, a girl draped in glitterweed erupted from shadow. She proved to be a juggler, and to the accompaniment of a shrill pipe made full use of the hall’s height by tossing little flying creatures into the air and luring them back in graceful swooping curves.
“She came in on the first spring boat,” Twig muttered, “and is going away tomorrow—considerably richer! Even though she didn’t cure the Count’s problem, he must have had a degree of pleasure from her company…”
Certainly the performance improved the Count’s humor; when it was over he joined in the clacking of applause.
“We have a foreign guest among us!” he roared at last. “Let him make himself known!”
“Do exactly as I do!” Twig instructed. “First you—”
“No!” Jing said with unexpected resolve. “I make like in my country to my lord!”
And strode forward fully upright, not letting the least hint of pressure leak from his tubules. Arriving in front of the Count, he paid him the Ntahish compliment of overtopping him yet shielding his mandibles.
“I bring greeting from Ntah,” he said in his best Forbish. “Too, I bring pearlseeds, finest of sort, each to grow ten score like self. Permit to give as signing gratitude he let share knowledge of scholars here!”
And extended what was in fact his best remaining seed.
For an instant the Count seemed afraid to touch it. Then one of his treasurers, who stood by, darted forward to examine it. He reported that it was indeed first-class.