that the brain has no nerve endings.
“Magistrate, what have you given me?”
“This ornament we call dascra gosfi’mija. It means treasure of the birth-parent. I wish you to wear mine. Perhaps its bestowal will atone in some small way for the insult your seconds are likely to perceive in my refusal of their Liege Mistress’s spiritual weapon.”
“I can’t speak for their possible response, Magistrate.”
“Of course you can’t. In the meantime, wear this. I must have something from you in exchange— not the dairauddes—and you must agree to keep my gift with you at all times until your departure from Trope, when you must give it back into my keeping. Our exchange will betoken the bond between us during our mission to Palija Kadi. We are men of one mind.”
Discomfited, Seth replied, “Magistrate, I don’t know what you mean when you say that. I don’t feel it as you seem to, and I believe you should know my confusion. What we have in common, I think, is a desire to settle our own private concerns through the Sh’gaidu. That’s all.”
— I must have something in exchange, the Magistrate cerebrated sharply, as if Seth hadn’t even spoken.
“But I—”
“This will do, I think.” The Magistrate stepped forward and with quick fingers unclasped still another chain at Seth’s neck. Was he retrieving the amulet he’d just given? No, not that. Seth saw that clutched in Vrai’s right hand were the collapsible eye coverings that Abel had told him to wear on Trope.
“But those are for the sun, Magistrate. I may require them tomorrow in the Sh’gaidu basin.”
“If you do, we’ll provide you with anjajwedo —slit-goggles , you might say—like our own. Yours I must have in exchange for the amulet.” He put Seth’s goggles around his neck.
The sky’s orchid rot had quickened to a kind of overarching bruise. Deeply melancholy, this hurt stained the entire twilight landscape.
“I trust you, Kahl Latimer. I’m sensitive to emanations. I know you for a good man. Moreover, we have at least one thing else in common besides the Sh’gaidu.”
Seth waited for clarification.
“We each wish to go home,” the Magistrate cryptically obliged. “We each wish to go home.”
SEVEN
The first-floor “room” in which Douin and Pors had been lodged was in reality an elevated platform with a pair of papery screens for walls. Another side was open to a corridor, and the fourth and final wall was glass: a prodigious dormitory window that the Kieri envoys had opaqued by some subtle interior fine tuning. Bronze in color, this window shimmered against Trope’s mournful twilight.
Entering, Seth saw three sleeping pallets sunk like shallow graves into the carpeted platform. Pors and Douin sat in tulip chairs near the window, hunched over a small plastic gantry playing a Kieri counter game called naugced. It was comforting to see that they had retrieved their effects kits from the transcraft before coming to the dormitory; Seth’s, too. He pulled off his clammy gloves and tossed them toward the only pallet not already littered with Kieri hair clasps, pumice-soap bundles, and ministerial caps.
This would be the first night since his boyhood in the Lausanne Paedoschol that he had slept in a room with someone other than Günter Latimer or his own isohet. How strange that his bedfellows should be Gla Tausians, jauddeb, aliens. A scent as of bitter cinnamon pervaded the area, and Seth knew this to be an intimate Kieri scent. Although Pors was smoking fehtes, a rare Feht Evashsted “tobacco” said to have strange effects on jauddeb metabolism, the smell in the room derived less from the burning cigarette than from the simple presence of Pors and Douin themselves.
They had turned their corner of this Tropish dormitory into a Kieri geffide.
Seth tossed the dairauddes into his pallet after his gloves, and Douin, who was awaiting Pors’s next play, looked up.
“Master Seth!” he cried, rising.
Pors also
“Magistrate, what have you given me?”
“This ornament we call dascra gosfi’mija. It means treasure of the birth-parent. I wish you to wear mine. Perhaps its bestowal will atone in some small way for the insult your seconds are likely to perceive in my refusal of their Liege Mistress’s spiritual weapon.”
“I can’t speak for their possible response, Magistrate.”
“Of course you can’t. In the meantime, wear this. I must have something from you in exchange— not the dairauddes—and you must agree to keep my gift with you at all times until your departure from Trope, when you must give it back into my keeping. Our exchange will betoken the bond between us during our mission to Palija Kadi. We are men of one mind.”
Discomfited, Seth replied, “Magistrate, I don’t know what you mean when you say that. I don’t feel it as you seem to, and I believe you should know my confusion. What we have in common, I think, is a desire to settle our own private concerns through the Sh’gaidu. That’s all.”
— I must have something in exchange, the Magistrate cerebrated sharply, as if Seth hadn’t even spoken.
“But I—”
“This will do, I think.” The Magistrate stepped forward and with quick fingers unclasped still another chain at Seth’s neck. Was he retrieving the amulet he’d just given? No, not that. Seth saw that clutched in Vrai’s right hand were the collapsible eye coverings that Abel had told him to wear on Trope.
“But those are for the sun, Magistrate. I may require them tomorrow in the Sh’gaidu basin.”
“If you do, we’ll provide you with anjajwedo —slit-goggles , you might say—like our own. Yours I must have in exchange for the amulet.” He put Seth’s goggles around his neck.
The sky’s orchid rot had quickened to a kind of overarching bruise. Deeply melancholy, this hurt stained the entire twilight landscape.
“I trust you, Kahl Latimer. I’m sensitive to emanations. I know you for a good man. Moreover, we have at least one thing else in common besides the Sh’gaidu.”
Seth waited for clarification.
“We each wish to go home,” the Magistrate cryptically obliged. “We each wish to go home.”
SEVEN
The first-floor “room” in which Douin and Pors had been lodged was in reality an elevated platform with a pair of papery screens for walls. Another side was open to a corridor, and the fourth and final wall was glass: a prodigious dormitory window that the Kieri envoys had opaqued by some subtle interior fine tuning. Bronze in color, this window shimmered against Trope’s mournful twilight.
Entering, Seth saw three sleeping pallets sunk like shallow graves into the carpeted platform. Pors and Douin sat in tulip chairs near the window, hunched over a small plastic gantry playing a Kieri counter game called naugced. It was comforting to see that they had retrieved their effects kits from the transcraft before coming to the dormitory; Seth’s, too. He pulled off his clammy gloves and tossed them toward the only pallet not already littered with Kieri hair clasps, pumice-soap bundles, and ministerial caps.
This would be the first night since his boyhood in the Lausanne Paedoschol that he had slept in a room with someone other than Günter Latimer or his own isohet. How strange that his bedfellows should be Gla Tausians, jauddeb, aliens. A scent as of bitter cinnamon pervaded the area, and Seth knew this to be an intimate Kieri scent. Although Pors was smoking fehtes, a rare Feht Evashsted “tobacco” said to have strange effects on jauddeb metabolism, the smell in the room derived less from the burning cigarette than from the simple presence of Pors and Douin themselves.
They had turned their corner of this Tropish dormitory into a Kieri geffide.
Seth tossed the dairauddes into his pallet after his gloves, and Douin, who was awaiting Pors’s next play, looked up.
“Master Seth!” he cried, rising.
Pors also
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