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down all say it, too...
The question is, are we going to be able to find out what before they send us home again?
Way back down at the end of the main room, someone knocked on the door. Not right this minute,
Gelert said. "Oh my gosh, we should have been changed by now..."
Lee said, for the benefit of whoever might be doing surveillance on them at the moment. "Come on ..."
Lee had attended her share of governmental sessions in her time, everything from the UN&ME in general
session to that recurring bout of tag-team wrestling otherwise known as the biweekly meeting of the Ellay
City Council. In con-tent, the Miraha's "guest assembly" was probably no differ-ent from most of these,
insofar as it involved a great many people, usually of advanced years, standing up and making long
leisurely speeches in indecipherable language. The only difference here, Lee said silently, is that even
in the Senate, the average age isn't anywhere near as advanced as these people's ... and the
Senate don't speak Alfen.
We should count ourselves lucky they can speak at all, Gelert said. These people may not be
speaking any language we can understand, but at least they dress better than the Senate.
Lee was inclined to agree, but wondered if perhaps they were doing it in self-defense. The building itself
came of a period in Alfen architecture that had favored not only huge arched and domed spaces, but a
luxury in materials and ex-ecution that would have made some parts of the Vatican, or for that matter the
palace of the Dragon Emperor of Xaihon, look like a thatched hut by comparison. Elaborate frescoes
and hangings adorned every wall of the long hallway that brought them under the central dome where the
Miraha sat; delicate and impossibly complex mosaics and enamel-inlaid tilings covered the floors;
detailings, carvings, and orna-mentation in fairy gold were everywhere. Whole pillars made of
semiprecious stone, especially a blue agate lined with green, had been inlaid with tiny gems that winked
and glittered in the torchlight as one walked by—for the com-mittee had actually been led into the vast
space by Alfen women dressed all in black, wearing crowns and collars of black gems and bearing
genuine torches. Gelert had mut-tered down his implant about not knowing whether they were destined
for a barbecue or an auto-da-fe, and Lee had to restrain herself from poking him.
In the central hall they had been conducted into the mid-dle of the Miraha, under the great painted
dome, and nearly blinded by the shifting glitter of still more fairy gold and jewels on the lawmakers
gathered there, either woven into their ceremonial garb—the Alfen short-cloak and trews or half-gown
here augmented with dagged and slashed sleeves, and quilted or cross-gartered with even more fairy
gold, in tissue—or worn as great chains of office, massive, many-linked. Lee had felt positively
underdressed in her plain lanthanomancer's black and the simple chain of her rank.
But at least we get to sit down, she had thought. Chairs had been placed for the committee in the very
center of the space. The eighty members of the Miraha did not sit, but stood. There was only one chair,
off to one side, of plain black wood and very simply design, uncushioned, with a tall back on which was
carved a more ornate version of the Miraha's sigil, the hexagon and the spear.
Gelert, sitting down beside Lee, had looked around with amusement at the standing arrangements.
Maybe this is in-tended to keep the speeches shorter, he said. But the hope had proved vain. The
speeches—when a given speaker deigned to speak in English—said a great deal about mutual respect,
and the necessity for peoples to listen to one an-other, and much else. But looking at the faces of the
speak-ers, and not even trying particularly hard to See, Lee thought she had never heard so much lying in
her life. The atmo-sphere of resentment was overwhelming.
Gelert's nose nearly never stopped twitching. They hate our guts, he said. Someone up high, and I'm
betting it's the Elf-King, told them to have us here and like it. And they've managed the first part
... but not the second.
And we have to go to a party with these people later? Lee said. That sounds like all kinds of fun...
Protocol, Lee.
I'd rather work, she said. Here in the midst of all this privilege and power, the heart of Alfheim's wealth
and in-fluence, and amid all these people who despite their young faces had the eyes of old and wicked
politicians, every one—she could not stop seeing the face of Omren dil'Sorden, dead too young without
even really knowing why.
You're doing your work, Gelert said. You're getting up their noses, by being a human at the heart of
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