was a place I knew, a city I had lived in, worked in, for over a year. I knew the streets, the towers, the sombre courts and ways and façades of the Palace. I knew my job here. Therefore for the first time it came plainly to me that, my friend being dead, I must accomplish the thing he died for. I must set the keystone in the arch.
At the Palace gates the order was for me to proceed to one of the guest-houses within the Palace walls. It was the Round-Tower Dwelling, which signalled a high degree of shifgrethor in the court: not so much the king’s favour, as his recognition of a status already high. Ambassadors from friendly powers were usually lodged there. It was a good sign. To get to it, however, we had to pass by the Corner Red Dwelling, and I looked in the narrow arched gateway at the bare tree over the pool, grey with ice, and the house that still stood empty.
At the door of the Round-Tower I was met by a person in white hieb and crimson shirt, with a silver chain over his shoulders: Faxe, the Foreteller of Otherhord Fastness. At sight of his kind and handsome face, the first known face that I had seen for many days, a rush of relief softened my mood of strained resolution. When Faxe took my hands in the rare Karhidish greeting and welcomed me as his friend, I could make some response to his warmth.
He had been sent to the kyorremy from his district, South Rer, early in the autumn. Election of council-members from the Indwellers of Handdara Fastnesses is not uncommon; it is however not common for a Weaver to accept office, and I believe Faxe would have refused if he had not been much concerned by Tibe’s government and the direction in which it was leading the country. So he had taken off the Weaver’s gold chain and put on the councillor’s silver one; and he had not spent long in making his mark, for he had been since Thern a member of the Heskyorremy or Inner Council, which serves as counterweight to the Prime Minister, and it was the king who had named him to that position. He was perhaps on his way up to the eminence from which Estraven, less than a year ago, had fallen. Political careers in Karhide are abrupt, precipitous.
In the Round-Tower, a cold pompous little house, Faxe and I talked at some length before I had to see anyone else or make any formal statement or appearance. He asked with his clear gaze on me, ‘There is a ship coming, then, coming down to earth: a larger ship than the one you came to Horden Island on, three years ago. Is that right?’
‘Yes. That is, I sent a message that should prepare it to come.’
‘When will it come?’
When I realized that I did not even know what day of the month it was, I began to realize how badly off I had in fact been lately. I had to count back to the day before Estraven’s death. When I found that the ship, if it had been at minimum distance, would already be in planetary orbit awaiting some word from me, I had another shock.
‘I must communicate with the ship. They’ll want instructions. Where does the king want them to come down? It should be an uninhabited area, fairly large. I must get a transmitter—’
Everything was arranged expeditiously, with ease. The endless convolutions and frustrations of my previous dealings with the Erhenrang Government were melted away like ice-pack in a flooding river. The wheel turned … Next day I was to have an audience with the king.
It had taken Estraven six months to arrange my first audience. It had taken the rest of his life to arrange this second one.
I was too tired to be apprehensive, this time, and there were things on my mind that outweighed self-consciousness. I went down the long red hall under the dusty banners and stood before the dais with its three great hearths, where three bright fires cracked and sparkled. The king sat by the central fireplace, hunched upon a carven stool by the table.
‘Sit down, Mr. Ai.’
I sat down across the hearth from Argaven, and saw his face in the light of the flames. He looked unwell, and old. He looked like a woman who has lost her baby, like a man who has lost his son.
‘Well, Mr.