He shrugged, as if to acknowledge the fact that neither one of them had the answer to that question.

"On the other hand, from the size of the forces they've got forward-deployed, and from the conversations our recon crystals have recorded, it seems pretty obvious that these people's transportation capabilities are even more inferior to ours than we'd originally thought. They're clearly dependent on unenhanced animal transport, and they're talking in terms of literally months before any substantial reinforcements can arrive. From the things they've said, however, they're also anticipating that those reinforcements will be substantial when they do arrive.

"Obviously, there are still some really big holes in our own ability to translate what they're saying. Even when we get the words, we don't always have the context to make sense out of them. Still, it's clear that they're bringing up a lot of combat power. Quite possibly more than we've been able to assemble. But they won't be able to get it into position for some time, whereas ours is almost completely into position now. And, of course, there's a corollary to that, because the striking power we'll have concentrated here by the end of next week represents everything currently available in this entire chain. We're going to be as strong as we're ever going to get-at least for the foreseeable future-very quickly now, whereas they apparently have substantial additional reinforcements ready to move in behind the ones they're currently expecting, as you yourself have just suggested. In other words, we're probably looking at the most favorable balance of forces we're likely to see, at least until the Commandery finds out what's going on and starts sending in additional forces, and that's going to take months yet.

"And, finally, there's the difficulty that what we're talking about here is the biggest, and almost certainly the most valuable, portal cluster in our history. From some of the things they've said, it seems apparent the same thing is true for them, and at the moment, they've got possession of it. If we had it, how quick would we be to give it up, or to share it? Especially with someone we regarded as murderous barbarians? Which," the two thousand's eyes suddenly bored into Klian's across the table, "is precisely how they think about us, judging from the RCs' take."

Klian looked back at his superior and wished he had an answer for those last two questions. Or that he quite dared to ask how important the possession of any portal cluster was compared to the possibility of a general war with another inter-universal civilization.

"I have to balance all of those questions and considerations against Two Thousand mul Gurthak's instructions and my own evaluation of the situation," Harshu continued after moment. "And, despite my loose-dragon reputation, I'll be honest and admit that it scares the tripes out of me. But that doesn't mean I don't have to do it anyway, now does it?"

"No, Sir. I guess not," Klian conceded. He wanted to ask just what Harshu's instructions from mul Gurthak were, but that information hadn't been volunteered, and he knew it wouldn't be.

"As far as the potential diplomatic consequences are concerned," Harshu said, "I'm like you, Five Hundred-a soldier. I was never trained as a diplomat, and I've never wanted to be one. Master Skirvon and Master Dastiri, on the other hand, are diplomats, and I assure you that I'm giving very serious consideration to their advice and conclusions. In his original briefing, Two Thousand mul Gurthak made the point to me that it would be foolish to neglect the resource they offer, and I have no intention of doing so."

Klian nodded, suppressing yet another of those nagging questions he wanted to ask but couldn't. He strongly suspected that Skirvon and Dastiri were making more than purely diplomatic assessments of the other side, and he wondered how much influence those "advice and conclusions" were going to have with Harshu.

Silence fell for several long moments, and then Harshu inhaled sharply and gave his head a little shake.

"Whatever we may end up doing, Five Hundred, I have no intention of doing anything until the rest of our assigned strength arrives three days from now. And Master Skirvon and Master Dastiri are due to report back to us here for 'consultations' the day after that. At this time, I can honestly tell you that I definitely have not decided in favor of launching any sort of offensive."

Klian's shoulders started to relax, but Harshu wasn't quite finished.

"I haven't firmly decided against it yet, either," he said. "I can't, not until I've heard what Skirvon and Dastiri have to say about these Sharonians' current attitude and fundamental posture. But," he looked into Klian's eyes very, very levelly, "I can't possibly justify delaying my decision much longer. Our logistics situation is going to be difficult enough, just trying to hold all of our dragons and troops here and keep them fed somehow. You know that better than anyone else. And even if that weren't true, if offensive operations seem unavoidable, then it would be criminally negligent of me to wait for the reinforcements they're expecting to actually get here."

"I wonder if Chava would accept a dinner invitation?" Zindel XXIV wondered aloud, as he gazed out across the Great Palace's immaculately landscaped grounds. The sun was high in a clear blue sky, and a not-so-small army of gardeners moved steadily across the grounds. The Great Palace and its gardens were so vast that not a hint of the normal city noises of Tajvana was audible here in the sitting room of his palatial suite, and he wished passionately that the realities behind that almost pastoral facade matched its appearances.

"I rather doubt he would, Your Majesty," Shamir Taje replied from behind him. "I may not think very much of the man's intelligence, and even less of his morals-assuming he has any-but he does seem to have quite well developed survival instincts."

"Are you suggesting he might think I was inviting him here with ulterior motives, Shamir?" the emperor demanded in injured tones, turning away from the window to look at his old friend.

"Oh, certainly not, Your Majesty," Taje said piously, and the emperor chuckled.

"Well, you're probably right. He wouldn't come. And, I suppose that if I'm going to be honest, I would have ulterior motives. Just think of all the room for unmarked graves the palace gardens offer. Just yesterday, I noticed a bed of flowers that looks like it could use some fertilizer."

Zindel's tone was light; the expression in his eyes wasn't.

"Your Majesty," the First Councilor said, "I wish, with all my heart, that we could simply ignore Chava. And I have to admit that some of our allies' suggestions that we should simply leave Uromathia out of any new world government are very tempting. Given time, the Uromathians would have to recognize how much their isolation was costing them, in both political and economic terms, and one of Chava's successors would undoubtedly find himself forced to reach some sort of rapprochement with us. Unfortunately, his most probable successor is one of those loathsome sons of his, which probably wouldn't be all that much of an improvement. And even that presupposes Chava would be willing to settle for that sort of ostracization long enough for a successor to enter the picture at all."

"And," Zindel said grimly, "it also overlooks the fact that we may just find ourselves needing Uromathia's military capabilities quite badly."

Taje started to say something, then visibly changed his mind. The emperor looked at him for a moment, then turned back to the window, clasping his hands behind them as he returned his gaze to the gardens.

"Go ahead, Shamir," he said.

"Your Majesty, they are talking to us at Fallen Timbers," Taje pointed out to his emperor's back.

"I'm aware of that. And I'm aware also that the analysts and pundits are having a field day with it. And, believe me, no one in the entire multiverse could more fervently hope that something comes of these negotiations."

The emperor's voice was calm, but his expression was grim as he watched birds fluttering through the grounds' groves of trees and imagined how his falcon, Charaeil, would have reacted to all those tasty treats.

It's a pity I can't invite her to dine on Chava, instead, he thought. And then, despite himself, he smiled. Assuming, of course, that Finena would be willing to share.

Then his smile faded, and he looked back over his shoulder at Taje. The First Councilor could see the same peaceful, tranquil scene outside the window, but there was something else entirely in his emperor's eyes. Something dark and terrible.

"I want us to settle this without anybody else getting killed, Shamir. But I'm Calirath. And in here," he tapped his temple, "what I've Glimpsed doesn't include a peaceful resolution."

"Your Majesty," Taje said gently, "not all Glimpses come to pass."

"But very few which haven't proven accurate have been this strong," Zindel countered. "And don't forget Andrin." He shook his head. "I haven't been saying her Talent is stronger than mine simply to bolster her stature in the Privy Council's eyes, you know. It is stronger, gods help her. It's not as developed as mine-she simply hasn't had the life experience to train it the way mine's been trained. But it's strong, Shamir. Strong."

His eyes were darker than ever, and his jaw tightened as he stared at something only he and his daughter could See. Then they refocused on the First Councilor.

"Peaceful coexistence isn't what she's Glimpsed, either," he said.

"But even if that's true, when do you and she See it happening?" Taje asked. The emperor quirked an eyebrow, and the First Councilor shrugged. "Even if these negotiations only buy us a few years-even just a few additional months-they'll be worth it, Your Majesty," he pointed out. "As you've been telling everyone for the last month and a half, we have a monumental task in front of us just to prepare for this sort of conflict. Every day we can buy could be invaluable."

"That's true enough," Zindel conceded. "Especially," he added grimly, "with Chava dragging his godsdamned feet this way."

"Well, at least he's finally stated what have to have been his real terms all along."

"I know." Zindel's expression changed subtly. Taje knew he would never have been able to describe the change to anyone else, yet it was instantly recognizable to someone who knew the emperor as well as he did. It was the expression of a weary, worried father, not a nation's ruler.

"I know," Zindel repeated quietly, "and I wish to all the gods that I could spare Janaki this."

"Your Majesty, you don't have to accept," Taje said. "We can send it back to the Committee on Unification with counter proposals of our own. Whatever he may think, Chava isn't really the sole arbiter of this process, you know. Or we could take Ronnel's advice and simply ignore Chava completely."

"Don't tempt me, Shamir," Zindel said grimly. He turned back to the window once again, letting his eyes feast on the peacefulness and calm. Yet even that small pleasure was flawed, because it was his job-his and his family's-to see to it that that peacefulness and calm were preserved. He wished he could be certain it was a job they could do. And he wished, almost as strongly, that there were some way he could spare his son the price of that preservation.

And how many godsdamned generations of our family have wished the same thing? he asked himself in a rare burst of self-pity. The question hovered in the back of his brain, but no sign of it colored his voice as he went on.

"As you've just said, we need all the time we can buy. I can't possibly justify wasting more of it in ultimately pointless maneuvers trying to avoid what has to be done. Chava's traded away a lot of bargaining points to get to this final demand-enough of them that his "reasonableness" has actually managed to sway a hefty minority of the delegates into actively espousing it on his behalf. Not only that, but this campaign of his of exhuming every single bone anyone's ever had to pick with Ternathia hasn't been totally useless from his perspective, either. He doesn't need a majority to spike the wheel of any modification of the Act he doesn't like, only a big enough minority."

"Of course he doesn't, Your Majesty," Taje agreed. "On the other hand, if you do decide to accept his terms on behalf of Ternathia, you've still got to get our allies in the Conclave to agree to it. I'm not at all sure that's going to be a simple proposition."

"You're thinking about Ronnel, I see," Zindel said dryly, and shook his head with a wry smile as he considered the Farnalian emperor. "I sometimes wish Ronnel weren't such a throwback to his ancestors. I can just see him charging the shield wall, foaming at the mouth, bellowing war cries, and whirling his ax around his head as he comes!"

"He's not quite that bad, Your Majesty," Taje protested, and Zindel snorted.

"He's exactly that bad," he corrected, "and he hates Chava with a pure and blinding passion. Of course, he's had more actual contact with Chava than we have, since he shares that section of border with Uromathia near the Scurlis. He hasn't told me exactly what Chava's done, but I've had enough reports from others to have a pretty shrewd idea. And Junni of Eniath's told me quite a bit-more, actually, than I suspect he realizes.

"So I understand why Ronnel's so passionately opposed to any sort of . . . accommodation with Uromathia. And if he thinks he could be any more opposed than I am to the notion of sharing grandchildren with Chava, he's sadly mistaken. But ultimately, he's going to have to swallow it, just like I am. We can't afford to split Sharona between Chava and his supporters and all the rest of us. And let's be honest here, Shamir-if we weren't the ones Chava was making that demand of, we'd probably think it wasn't unreasonable in light of the actual balance of power between Ternathia and Uromathia."

Taje had no choice but to nod.

"Very well." Zindel never turned away from the window. "Inform Representative Kinshe that Ternathia formally accepts Uromathia's proposed amendment of the draft Act of Unification. I suppose," his mouth twitched with just a trace of genuine humor, "that the crown of Sharona is worth a Uromathian daughter-in-law."

Chapter Fifty-One.

"HISTORIC VOTE DUE TODAY".

Thaminar Kolmayr barely glanced at the banner headline on the morning issue of the Gulf Point Daily News their new press secretary had brought in. He didn't need to do any more than that, because he was intimately familiar with the story beneath that headline. Indeed, he'd gotten depressingly good at political analysis over the past dreary, endless weeks.

Thaminar had never been a particularly political person before, but since the murder of their daughter, he and Shalassar had followed the news coming out of Tajvana with quiet, grieving intensity, for reasons very different from those motivating most other Sharonians. Everyone else was worried about who would rule them, and how their lives would change. Thaminar couldn't bear the thought of more change in their lives-not after the traumatic savagery of the "change" they'd already endured-but he knew it was inevitable. And however little interested he might have been in change for change's sake, he and Shalassar were profoundly interested in justice.

It had hurt desperately, seeing their daughter's photograph and name splashed across newspaper and magazine pages, or embedded in the telepathic Voicecasts. None of it carried anything approaching the sheer agony of Shaylar's final Voice message, but neither he nor Shalassar had the heart any longer to View those Voicecasts. Using their Voices at all, these last two months, kept bringing back the searing pain of their daughter's death. So they read the newspapers, instead, and told themselves they'd almost gotten used to seeing little Shaylar's picture everywhere they turned.

But the endless, aching grief had not yet passed, and he'd come to realize it never would truly heal. It had faded enough to let them pick up enough of the shattered pieces of their lives to move forward again, yet the pain remained, wrapped around the jagged, empty void her death had left in their hearts, and impossible to forget or assuage. To lose a child, no matter how, was agony. To literally know how she'd died, to have experienced with her the horror and terror of her final minutes of life and yet been forever unable to so much as touch her one last time . . .

Shalassar came in from the kitchen, carrying their breakfast on a tray. He wasn't especially hungry-he seldom was, these days-yet the steaming scent of the coffee was a comforting reminder of normal home life that he welcomed gratefully. They clung to such things, little rituals, familiar things done a thousand ordinary times, as a way of holding themselves together and getting them through each day.

Shalassar glanced at the headline. Just beneath it was yet another black-bordered photograph of Shaylar between the photographs of the only two men in the entire Conclave who truly mattered. The Conclave's delegates had already voted to create a united Empire of Sharona based on the Ternathian model and with Zindel chan Calirath as emperor. Uromathia's refusal to accept the outcome of that vote as binding upon it had created an enormous amount of anger, but no one had really been surprised. What had been at least a little surprising was the fact that Emperor Chava had managed to convince half a dozen smaller nations to stand with Uromathia by appealing to supposed ancient Ternathian wrongs.

Actually, Thaminar reflected, it probably has less to do with "convincing" them to go along with him than it does with finding ways of threatening them into going along. He's supposed to be good at that, after all, and every one of them borders on Uromathia.

However he'd gotten their support, it had given his protests an added degree of legitimacy. Thaminar didn't much care to admit that, but he couldn't deny it, either. Whether or not anyone liked it, Chava Busar and his adherents had positioned themselves well behind their single "reasonable demand." Now it remained to be seen whether the nations which had already accepted Zindel of Ternathia as their new world emperor were prepared to accept the amendment Chava had demanded.

"Do you think they'll accept?" Shalassar murmured, biting her lip gently as she set out the breakfast neither of them truly felt like eating.

"I don't know," Thaminar admitted. She paused, a plate of cut melon slices poised in her hand above the polished tabletop in the bright, sunlit dining nook, and looked up at him, and he shrugged. "I would have thought that when Zindel accepted in Ternathia's name that that would have been the end of it. But apparently Chava is even less popular than I'd thought, difficult though that is to believe."

Shalassar surprised him with a slight smile, then shook her head.

"Do you really think there's significant opposition? Or is this another example of the papers needing to play up the drama to help circulation?"

"My dear, that's pretty cynical," Thaminar observed. "Not that it couldn't be true, too."

He smiled back at her, but the truth was that he didn't really know what was going through the minds of the men and women in Tajvana. On the one hand, it seemed remarkably cut and dried; on the other, some of the delegates-the reports suggested that Emperor Ronnel of Farnalia had probably had a little something to do with it-had dug in their heels in stubborn resistance. Apparently the thought of finding themselves one day living under the rule of Chava Busar's grandchild was more than they could stomach. They were a minority of the total Conclave, but they also included many of the strongest original supporters of the concept of a world empire. Besides, the Act of Unification had required a supermajority for its original ratification. The same supermajority would be required for any amendment of the original Act, and there were enough holdouts to put final approval very much up for grabs.

"In the end," he said, "I suppose it depends on whether or not Ronnel goes on holding out. According to everything I've read, he's one of Zindel's closest allies on almost everything else. I can't believe he won't eventually come around to Zindel's thinking on this issue. It's not as if it's his son who's going to have to marry one of Chava's daughters, anyway."

"Oh? And what about Fyysel? How reasonable was he when Chava's name was placed in nomination?" Shalassar challenged, and Thaminar grimaced.

She had a point, he conceded. Fyysel had strongly supported Halidar Kinshe's original proposal. But when Chava tried to put his own candidacy forward, Fyysel had spoken for his subjects' blazing outrage at the very suggestion. If, the King of Shurkhal had said bluntly, the world were stupid enough to ramrod Uromathia's ruler down Shurkhal's throat, it would discover that Shurkhali honor still burned hot and that Shurkhali men and women still knew how to fight a war.

Thaminar hadn't even tried to keep track of the number of times he'd read or heard the phrase "Death before Uromathia!" in his kingdom's newspapers and public debates. He'd been in total agreement with the sentiment, and he'd been well aware, through news reports, that Uromathia had done everything in its power to stir up old and vicious hatreds of Ternathia amongst those nations she'd once conquered in an effort to generate some sort of counterbalancing backlash against Zindel.

Despite the miserable failure of Chava's effort to put his own candidacy forward, he had succeeded in energizing a vociferous lunatic fringe almost everywhere outside the current-day boundaries of Ternathia. Fortunately, that fringe had found itself increasingly marginalized as the debate had raged. And as Zindel had emerged more and more strongly as a reasonable, moderate-minded, honorable man who steadfastly refused to allow his own allies to ram his candidacy down anyone's throat, the tide had shifted decisively in his favor.

Yet it remained to be seen whether or not Ternathia's ruler could talk his own "allies"-including King Fyysel-into accepting an arrangement which would guarantee Chava Busar's dynastic grasp on the crown of Sharona.

"I think, in the end, they'll have to accept," he said finally. "If Zindel is willing, how can they refuse? They intend to make him the emperor of all Sharona. Are they going to start right out by telling him he doesn't have the right to make this sort of decision for his own family?" Thaminar shook his head. "That's insane."

"And people don't regularly get insane where Chava is concerned?" Shalassar shot back.

"I don't have any easy answers for you, love," he said. "I wish I did. I wish I still believed in easy answers. But the only way we're going to find out is to wait until the votes are counted."

"I know, I know," Shalassar said, and managed to smile at him. He smiled back at her, then folded the paper and deliberately set it aside as she began spooning melon, grapes, and dates onto his plate. He wished that he could put his worries away as easily as he could discard the newspaper, but that wasn't going to happen. Today's vote was so critical that neither of them really wanted to think about it, but he knew they weren't going to be able to avoid it.

Which didn't mean they weren't both going to try to pretend they could.

"Do you have any delegations coming in today?" he asked, deliberately turning away from the vote in Tajvana and concentrating on their own lives, instead.

Shalassar gave him another smile, but he felt the terrible tension in her through their marriage bond. It was just as hard for her to let go of the Unification vote as it was for him.

"I'm not expecting any," she said, shaking her head. "That doesn't mean the bell won't ring anyway, of course."

Her smile turned a little less forced as she added the qualification. An ambassador to aquatic sentients couldn't do her job the way other diplomats did theirs, and Shalassar's life-and that of her family-had always reflected that inescapable reality.

Human-to-human ambassadors' jobs were almost boringly easy in comparison. They simply received written, verbal, or Voice messages about meeting dates, times, and places, then went and had them. They could actually calculate their calendars, at least for a day or so in advance.

The ambassadors assigned to serve the great apes-the mountain gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, baboons, some of the higher monkey species, and so on-lived far less organized lives. They couldn't expect comfortable quarters in the fashionable, diplomatic sections of Sharona's capital cities, because they had to live close to the populations they served. So they ended up parked out on the fringes of the wilderness areas set aside for the apes . . . which allowed primate emissaries to simply walk up to their houses and knock on the door whenever they felt like it. Which they were notoriously prone to do. The apes were much less interested in the sort of formal, regimented protocols and scheduling humans preferred.

More often, of course, contact with the apes was actually initiated from the human side. The human ambassador would find himself compelled to trek out into the wilderness, seeking out the population of apes affected by a proposed development in their area-a construction site, road, or mine-in order to ask the apes' permission to build on their territory.

Sometimes no permission was forthcoming, but those cases tended to be the exception, not the rule. Usually, some sort of quid pro quo could be arrived at. Sometimes the agreements hammered out provided for moving the whole clan into an unoccupied region capable of sustaining them. Sometimes all it took was a gift of technology to help the clan improve its standard of living. More than one large cat had been unpleasantly surprised by sword-wielding chimps protecting their young and infirm, and most of the clans loved steel axheads and saws. Other clans had acquired access to medicines and Healers, paid for by the private developer or government negotiating the treaty.

Word of that sort of agreement generally spread to other clans in the region. Thaminar and Shalassar had smiled over one news story, in particular. The Nishani chimps had allowed mines to be developed in their clan's territory in exchange for medical care. Not to be outdone, the neighboring Minarti chimpanzee clan had plied their telepathic ambassador with questions about what humans might need or want from them. Once they'd discovered that several varieties of rare medicinal herbs which grew in profusion in their territory could be found virtually nowhere else, they'd offered to exchange them for the same medical care.

Horticulturists had been imported to coach the Minarti clan on propagation techniques designed to promote a cultivated supply of the herbs, rather than deplete the wild sources. The delighted chimpanzees had settled down to enjoy their improved health care, tending the plants upon which it depended, and everyone had been quite satisfied by the arrangement.

It was all very humanlike . . . which was one of the reasons it had amused Shalassar and Thaminar so much, since Shalassar's own experiences had been rather different.

For one thing, even chimpanzees had a far better developed sense of time-by human standards, at least-than the cetaceans did. There was, quite literally, no way to predict what hour of the day or night a whale or dolphin might suddenly come seeking the human ambassador. The denizens of the sea lived at an entirely different pace, and in a totally different environment, from humanity or its close cousins, and their perceptions and interests were shaped accordingly. If the cetaceans had even been aware of the Minarti clan's activities at all, they would have thought the entire business was unutterably boring.

Most of the land-dwelling sentients of Sharona (including the majority of humans) felt sorry for and smugly superior to the cetaceans, which had no hands and couldn't use human technology for much of anything. Most cetaceans, on the other hand, didn't think about the apes at all, except to feel sorry for and smugly superior to the hapless primates (including the majority of humans) who were stuck on dry land and unable to exploit a full three-quarters of their home planet's surface. They were totally disinterested in the goings-on of chimpanzees and mountain gorillas, although they'd been forced to modify that attitude where the humans who routinely crossed their home waters were involved.

Human beings might be unable to do much more than barely scratch the shallows of the cetaceans' endless oceans, but they did exploit at least some of the same territory. And since the emergence of Talents among them, it had been the humans who had initiated contact. No one-Shalassar included-quite understood how cetaceans maintained their historical record, but the fact that they did was beyond dispute. And because they did, they remembered the days in which even the greatest and most intelligent of them had been no more than one more food source for humanity . . . and how that had changed.

There were those, among the cetaceans, who remained wary of, even hostile towards, humanity because of things which had happened thousands upon thousands of years ago. More of them, though, remembered that humanity had altered its actions once it realized that it was dealing with other intelligent species. And even those who remained wary, recognized that at least some contact with human beings was inescapable.

That was where ambassadors like Shalassar stepped into the picture. She'd spent her life establishing contacts with the cetaceans, and even more than the ambassadors to the apes, she'd discovered that the nonhumans with whom she dealt had become the very center of her life and career. She wasn't simply their official conduit to land-dwelling humanity; she and her family had made friendships among the great whales, the dolphins and the porpoises, building intensely personal bridges across the inter-species gap.

Still, she was an ambassador, which meant she had more than a merely personal interest in the outcome of today's vote. She had a professional interest, as well, because if Zindel chan Calirath did, indeed, become the emperor of a united Sharona, he would also become Shalassar's ultimate superior. In essence, she'd find herself working for him, as his representative to the cetaceans, rather than for the Kingdom of Shurkhal. Which meant that somehow she'd have to find a way to explain to those aquatic intelligences just what sort of bizarre political convolutions those peculiar bipeds were up to now.

That thought brought her back to the vote once again, and she glanced at the clock on the mantle. It was nearly time for the SUNN Voicecast from Tajvana, and she suddenly felt Thaminar's arms wrap themselves around her from behind. She closed her eyes and leaned back against him, clinging to the love pouring through their marriage bond like another, even stronger set of arms, and he kissed the side of her neck.

"Let's go out to the beach," he said gruffly. "I don't want to stay inside."