HELDA JOINED BEJMET in the reception chamber of her residence. “You wanted to see me, Eosan? You said it was urgent.”
“Thank you for coming so quickly.” Bejmet took Helda’s elbow, steered her towards the gallery door that opened on the inner courtyard. “Come, let’s walk in the garden and talk.”
As they descended the steps, she fidgeted with a datacard in her hand. She gestured with it towards the stream that meandered through the garden landscape, led them to its source in a small waterfall constructed near the pavilion. “Here,” said Bejmet. She sat on a stone bench beneath a feather leaf tree, where the burbling rush of water was loud enough to conceal their words from chance ears of household staff. Helda recognized this as one of the Eosan’s favorite spots for sharing confidences. She sat beside the senior shigasa, and waited for her to tell her why she had been summoned.
Bejmet played with the card she held and did not meet Helda’s eyes. She seemed unable or unwilling to begin. The Dosan rested her hand on Bejmet’s thigh. “What’s wrong?” she asked gently.
Bejmet forced out a brittle laugh. “Right about now I’m supposed to be dictating to you how you are going to cooperate with an outsider who has chosen to intrude in our business.”
“Eosan?” Shock and puzzlement were evident in Helda’s voice.
“If we cooperate with her, we are bowing to outside interests, doubtless at cost to our own, and I suspect we’re falling into some Lakshan-cursed imperial intrigue in the process. It’s an intolerable precedent to set, and it will cost me my place and future if the mother house learns of it. If we do not cooperate with her, she will destroy Palumara House out of spite. Not just us on Lyndir, but the entire House.”
Of all the possible reasons Bejmet might have called her here, this was the last thing in the world Helda was prepared for. She could scarcely believe her ears, but the Eosan was near tears and her distress quite real. She had never known her to take wild flights of fancy or exaggerate circumstances. She shook her head in disbelief. Destroy Palumara House?
“Who would want to do that?” she blurted.
In answer Bejmet pressed the datacard into her hand. Helda studied its contents and then sat still, her mind racing.
The pillow talk that came to the ears of the shigasue included a great deal of political intrigue, whispered from Enclave to Enclave in the rapid sharing that had characterized entertainers since ancient times. When such intelligence spread through their network, once in a great while Helda heard the Kingmaker mentioned. Never as an immediate contact, but as the spider in a distant imperial web, pulling strings with far-flung consequences that sometimes drove a client to the Enclave to seek solace from his worldly woes. The head of the Emperor’s political police was a shadow figure, a faceless bogeyman; everyone knew he existed, and like the bogeyman, hoped they would never encounter him.
Or her. Helda was surprised to learn that a woman was head of Internal Security’s political police. She had never thought about it. She paid attention to the government players on distant Calyx only through the grapevine of shigasue gossip. It had not been relevant to her life … until now.
She felt for Bejmet. This much official scrutiny was at best uncomfortable; at worst, fatal for their business. Entertainers of the Between-World might associate closely with favored patrons or clients, but they stayed scrupulously out of politics, favoritism, faction intrigues: away from anything that could put their autonomous status at risk. Gods forfend they should become distrusted, or perceived to be some group’s tool. Clients aligned with opposing interests would fall away, all shigasu would be suspect, everyone’s business would be hurt.
Surface neutrality was the hard-and-fast rule for entertainers. They might bend that rule when it suited them—to serve an honor-debt to a client, perhaps, or gain obligation that would help the shigasue strategically. But never would they compromise neutrality in answer to the needs of outsiders.
Out of this doggedly neutral stance came other codes of conduct, foremost among them that no house allowed clients to dictate staff or business decisions of any sort. Clients were just that, and no more, outsiders who stepped upon the stage of the Between-World only for a time, while it was the shigasu who must live there, always.
Now here came the ultimate outsider, the Emperor’s shadow enforcer, the Kingmaker herself, daring to dictate terms where even the ruling Lau Sa’adani nobility stayed scrupulously hands-off.
She didn’t know if she was more affronted by the gall of the woman, or worried by the threat to them all.
Bejmet was both. “It’s dangerous to defy her,” she said. “This is the one who arranged for the extinction of the entire kin network of House Aneo, after the Aneo Rebellion was put down. She has the capacity to carry out her threats, and she won’t hesitate to do so.”
“What is it she wants that’s worth such consequences?”
“Not that much, relatively speaking.” Bejmet avoided her eyes. “It must be a move in a bigger game, one she’ll kill to keep secret. That is why I don’t take her words as threat, Helda. I take them as promise. She made clear the consequences of defying her or betraying her.”
Helda shifted uncomfortably. “Are you betraying something by sharing this with me?”
Bejmet laughed bitterly. “No. You’re part of it.”
“Oh?” She handed the datacard back.
“She wants one of your girls for an extended period. She won’t say what for. Then she’ll return her to you. But she also wants us to name weregeld price, in case we ‘lose the girl’s services,’ as she put it.”
Helda’s brows drew together. “She’s doing something that might kill one of my shigasa.”
“Apparently so.”
Bejmet and Helda shared a look. It reeked of secret schemes and machinations; a precarious business, if they allowed it. Yet with Ilanya’s … promise … hanging over their heads, how could they not permit it?
“Ashani guard us,” Helda breathed. “This is awful.”
Bejmet nodded.
“Does it matter what girl I give them?”
The Eosan did not answer her, but studied the stepping stones at their feet.
“Bejmet?”
The older woman sighed. “Hinano Kesada.”
“What!?”
“They want the Winter Goddess.”
“What in the seven icy hells do they want with her?” Helda’s voice rose. Bejmet raised a cautioning finger and motioned her to moderate her tone. Her own reply was a harsh whisper.
“Now you know all that I know. And I tell you as your Eosan that you are going to cooperate with this Juro-cursed woman, and we will pray that no harm comes to Kesada. I’ve been over this a million times, and it’s the best we can do.”
Helda came to her feet, fists clenched, then unclenched. She could not defy her Eosan. She could not put Kes at risk. She distrusted PolitDiv; to imagine Kes in their clutches was unbearable. To imagine her House destroyed, even more so.
She shared a long, bleak look with Bejmet. Unable to speak beyond her turmoil, she gave a deep bow and took her leave.