Free A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire by Michael Bishop Page B

eyes he had. He wore a pair of slitted eye coverings. Tropiards elsewhere in the J’beij were similarly outfitted. Everyone seemed costumed and masked.
    Grabbing Seth’s arm, Pors spoke in his own tongue: “You represent not just you, Master Seth, but Lady Turshebsel and the Kieri state. Have a care about your presentation. Don’t speak until the Magistrate has spoken to you. Remember, too, that—”
    Seth shook off Pors’s hand and glared at him angrily.
    “A reminder,” Douin said placatingly. “Nothing more, Master Seth.”
    The three companions followed their guides to the center rear of the J’beij, where the Tropiards halted beneath a scaffold unlike all the others. Its floor was carpeted with a material of luxuriant plum. Where all the other platforms were open but for safety rails and discontinuous banks of silent equipment, this one had opaque, papery walls. Indeed, Seth realized, it formed the base of a genuine room. One of their guides climbed a set of clear steps and disappeared into the boxlike structure. The other guide, still hooded, faced about and stared at them appraisingly.
    “Lord Pors and I have complete trust in you,” Douin said. “For that reason, we won’t go with you into the Magistrate’s presence. We’ll wait for you here or wherever else our hosts are kind enough to permit us to rest.”
    Seth swung about on Douin in perplexity and terror. No one had said anything about his confronting the Magistrate alone.
    “Wait! I don’t want to usurp your own involvement. What will the Magistrate think if you and Lord Pors don’t present your credentials?”
    “Master Abel informed his people by radio that you—an Ommundi Company representative empowered by Lady Turshebsel to act as her agent—would be our sole intermediary in this matter.”
    “Why would Abel do such a thing?” Seth whispered urgently.
    “He told the Tropish deputy magistrate that it’s the custom of Ommundi Company negotiators to deal with government representatives on a one-to-one basis. With our blessing, Master Abel also said that Lord Pors and I were merely your onworld seconds.”
    “Neither of those things is true!”
    “They are indeed,” Pors contradicted Seth. “Here on Trope—as little as I care to acknowledge it—you command as well as speak for us. This has been our intention from the beginning.”
    “You never said I was to meet with the Magistrate alone!”
    “What difference does that make?” Douin asked. “You knew you were to be our envoy, that you were to do the speaking.”
    “But not that you’d abandon me on the Magistrate’s doorstep!”
    “Give him the dairauddes,” Lord Pors said, ignoring Seth’s accusation. “Begin with that.”
    “Yes,” Douin interjected. “That may calm you down.”
    “If I command as well as speak for you,” Seth reasoned desperately, “then I command you to accompany me to this audience.”
    “Your command authority doesn’t extend so far as that,” Pors countered. “Do well, Master Seth. I think they’re ready for you.”
    At the top of the helical stairway, the cloaked escort gestured to Seth. Then he disappeared into the room again.
    “What’s this about?” Seth demanded. “What are you doing?”
    “You know your mission already,” Douin replied, purposely misunderstanding his first question, ignoring the second. “You have our prayers.”
    “The dairauddes,” Pors added. “Don’t forget it.”
    When the Gla Tausians withdrew from Seth, he went hesitantly forward because there was nothing else to do. Why had Abel isolated him with Lord Pors and Master Douin? And why, now that they had all set foot on Trope, were the Kieri—both experienced administrators and envoys—isolating him still further by prodding him into this important meeting alone? Seth’s heart thudded, his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, and a sense of inadequacy climbed his constricted throat like an ill-digested meal, its taste at once brackish