“War!” exclaimed Queen Niethe, and then, as she realized this was obviously the case, looked sorry she had spoken.
Tan politely pretended not to notice the queen’s embarrassment. “The Linularinan actions can hardly be seen in a less serious light. Only King Iaor’s generosity will allow it to be cast otherwise—if he is generously inclined.”
“To be sure—yet he will surely wish to be generous—no one can want a war,” the queen said earnestly.
“Anyone would suspect, from the actions of his agents, that the Fox is in fact inclined toward war,” Tan said, and looked around at them all. “But I have observed Mariddeier Kohorrian closely for better than six years, and I would swear he is never pointlessly aggressive. He might wish to reclaim the Delta, so often held by Linularinum and not by Feierabiand—”
Everyone nodded, fully aware of the Delta’s complicated history.
“But he is not as, ah, forcefully acquisitive by nature, as, say, the Arobern of Casmantium. I still suspect Istierinan is acting alone and without Kohorrian’s knowledge. But if the Fox himself is directing these activities, I believe it is with some restricted object, and not with any desire to provoke His Majesty to answer directly.”
From Geroen’s pessimistic glower, he was not confident of this assessment. Queen Niethe, on the other hand, seemed to have been rather too thoroughly reassured. Mienthe suspected that this might be because the queen simply did not want to believe that anything very dramatic was likely to happen. Niethe thrived in her well-ordered life and hated uproar and all disarray.
Mienthe herself thought that Tan would not have put his conclusion quite so firmly if he was not confident, but she also wondered just how infallible his judgment was. He’d thoroughly underrated the Linularinan spymaster’s determination, evidently. And the Linularinan mage’s ability to find him. Whom else might he have underrated? But she said only, “If either Kohorrian or Istierinan acts to gain a limited object, then that must be recovering the thing they believe you stole. I think it would be nice to know what that thing is supposed to be.”
“It certainly would,” Tan said fervently. “I would try to write it out, assuming it’s a legist-magic of some sort, only after, well, everything, I confess I’m afraid of what Istierinan’s mages might do if I pick up a quill.”
“Nothing,” the queen said firmly. “Not while we are all alert and watching—not while I am actually here in this room, surely, do you think?”
Mienthe did not find herself confident of this.
“I’ll just write out the briefest line—I’ll see what comes to me,” Tan promised. He looked sidelong at Mienthe. “If you will permit me? It’s your house—and you I’ve depended on, all unknowing, for rescue. Twice, now. Shall I risk a third time?”
“Perhaps not,” murmured the queen, gazing at Mienthe with concern.
“Lady Mienthe?” Tan asked.
Mienthe wanted to refuse, but somehow, with Tan seeming to expect her to bravely agree, it was hard to say no. “Well,” she said, not entirely willingly, “I want to know, too. All right. All right. Geroen, could you bring Tan a quill and a leaf of paper, from the desk over there?”
Captain Geroen handed Tan a long black feather, which he ran through his fingers. Nothing happened. Tan smiled reassuringly at Mienthe, dipped the quill in the bottle of ink Geroen wordlessly held for him, and, for lack of a proper table, set the paper on his knee.
Mienthe fell asleep before the ink touched the paper. She fell asleep sitting up, with her eyes open. That was how it seemed to her. She dreamed about a thin black spiral that glistened like ink. It was a different kind of spiral than the one she’d drawn earlier. This kind of spiral led inward and down to a concentrated point rather than rising and diffusing outward. She closed her eyes and followed the spiral down and down, and in, and farther in… She blinked, words writing themselves in spidery black script against the emptiness of her inner vision. Though the writing itself was black, colors bloomed behind the script: emerald and dark summer-green, primrose yellow, rich caramel gold and brown, the blues and slate colors of the sea. The fragrance of honeysuckle and spring rain filled the air, and behind those fragrances, the heavier, more powerful scents of new-turned earth and sea brine.
She could not read even a single letter of the words she saw. Nor did she hear them. Though they seemed real and meaningful, they were not at all like spoken words. But she knew what they said. Or she knew, at least, that part of their purpose was to close tight and hold hard, and yet another part was to flex and move against pressure, only all those concepts were wrong—Mienthe didn’t mean “hold” or “flex” or “pressure,” or even “purpose.” It was very strange to have concepts in her mind that she couldn’t actually grasp.