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Allister Park breathed through Ib Scoglund's nose in exasperation. "Well,
you're going to have to learn to hear it if you ever aim at speak Ketjwa. The
way you spoke it, the way the letters look on paper to someone who's used to
English,aka doesn't mean `corn beer.' It means" at the last moment, he decided
to have mercy on his servant's sensibilities " `dung.' "
Dunedin looked ready to burst into tears. "I never wanted to learn to speak
Ketjwa, or aught save English. All these Skrelling tongues tie my wits up in
knots."
Privately, Scoglund, or rather Park, agreed with him. But he said, "I'm
learning it, so that shows you can. And you'll have to, for no one in Kuuskoo
but a few men of letters and spokesfolk to the Bretwaldate knows even one word
of our speech. How will you keep us in meat and potatoes to say naught ofaka
ifyou can't talk with the folk who sell them?"
"I'll try, Judge," Dunedin said."Aka." He pronounced it wrong again.
Park sighed. Nobody could make his thane a linguist, not in the couple of
days before their steamship docked at Uuraba on the northern coast of the
landstrait of Panama, not in the new sea journey down from the land-strait's
southern coast to Ookonja, the port nearest Kuuskoo and not with twenty years
to work, either. A talent for languages simply wasn't in Monkey-face. The most
to hope for was that he would learn more with Park bullying him than without.
"I'm going up on deck for some fresh air," Park announced. "You stay here
till you've played that record two more times." Dunedin gave him a martyred
look, which he ignored. The cabin was hot and stuffy; no one in this world had
thought of air conditioning.
Park grabbed a hat and a couple of books and climbed the narrow iron
staircase to the deck. The air there was no less humid than it had been
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inside, and hardly cooler: summer on the Westmiddle Sea (Park still thought of
it as the Caribbean, no matter what the map said) was bound to be tropical.
But here, at least, the air was moving.
The deck chairs were deck chairs, right down to their gaudy canvas webbing.
Park threw himself into one. It complained about his weight. He sighed again.
All the alter egos on his wheel of if seemed to run to portliness. They were
all losing their hair, too; he put on the hat in a hurry, before the sun
seared his scalp.
Soon he forgot sun, humidity, everything: when he studied, he studied hard.
And he had a lot of studying to do. He felt like a student dropped into a
class the week before exams. Ever since his actually, Ib
Scoglund's appointment to the International Court for the continent of
Skrelleland the year before, he'd done little but study this world's
languages, history, and legal systems. They were still strange to him, but as
soon as he got to Kuuskoo he would have to start using them.
He wished he'd been assigned a case involving the Bretwaldate of Vinland. Its
customs were recognizably similar to the ones he'd grown up with. But
assigning legal actions to disinterested outsiders made a certain amount of
sense. Disinterested, Allister Park certainly was. Nothing like either country
involved in this dispute existed in the world he knew.
Tawantiinsuuju was, he gathered from the text in his lap, what the Inca
Empire might have become had Spaniards not strangled it in infancy. In this
world, though, Arabs and Berbers still ruled Spain.Among other places, Park
thought. That was part of the problem he'd have to deal with. . . .
A shadow fell on the book. After a moment, Park looked up. A man was standing
by his chair. "You are Judge Scoglund?" he asked in Ketjwa.
"Yes, I am," Park answered slowly, using the same language. He was just glad
he was talking with a man. Men and women used different words for kin and for
other things in Ketjwa, and he wasn't any too familiar with the distaff side
of the vocabulary. "Who are you, sir?"
"I am called Ankowaljuu," the fellow answered. He was in his late thirties,
close to Park's own age, with red-brown skin, straight black hair cut a little
below his ears, and a high-cheekboned face dominated by a nose of nearly Roman
impressiveness. He wore sandals, a wool tunic, and a black derby hat. "I
amtukuuii riikook to the Son of the Sun, Maita Kapak." At the mention of his
ruler's name, he shaded his eyes with one hand for a moment, as if to shield
them from the monarch's glory.
"Tukuuii riikook,eh?" Park looked at him with more interest than he'd felt
before: Ankowaljuu was no ordinary passenger.
"You understand what it means, then?"
"Aye," Park said. Atukuuii riikook was an imperial inspector, of the secret
sort outside the usual chain of command. Most empires had them under one name
or another, so the rulers could make sure their regular functionaries were
performing as they should. Frowning, the judge went on, "I do not understand
why you tell me, though."
Ankowaljuu smiled, displaying large white teeth. "Shall I speak English, to
make sure I am clear?"
"Please do," Park said with relief. "I am working to learn your tongue, but I
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am not yet flowing in it."
"You have the back-of-the-throat sounds, which are most often hardest for
Vinlanders to gain," Ankowaljuu said. "But to go on: I tell you because I want
you to know you may count on me I speak for myself now, mind you, not for the
Son of the Sun for as long as you have a hand in judging this dealing between
my folk and the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb."
"Oh? Why is that?" Park hoped his voice did not show his sudden hard
suspicion. His years in the DA's office told him no one ever offered anything
for nothing. "You must understand I cannot talk with you about this
dealing all the more sobecause you are atukuuii riikook, a thane of your
emperor."
"Yes, of course I understand, That you naysay shows your honesty. I must tell
you, the Son of the Sun was sorry he gave our quarrel with the Emir to the
International Court when he learned the judge would be from Vinland."
"Why is that?" Park asked again, this time out of genuine curiosity. "My
country has little to do with either yours or the Emirate."
"Because so many Vinlanders are forejudged against Skrellings," Ankowaljuu
said grimly. "But when I came up to New Belfast to find out what sort of man
you are, I found his mistrusts were misplaced. No one who has swinked so hard
for the ricks of the Skrellings in Vinland could be anything but fair in his
judgments."
"Well, thank you very much," Park murmured, a little embarrassed at taking
credit for work that had actually been Ib Scoglund's. "I won't needfully
choose for you, either, justbecause you're Skrellings, you know."
Ankowaljuu made a shoving motion, as if to push that idea aside. "I would not
reckon anything of the sort. But it is good to know you will not turn against
us just because the folk of the Dar al-Harb are incomers to Skrelleland like
you Vinlanders."
"I never thock of that." Park clapped a hand to his forehead. "This bounds
strife is quite embrangled enough without worries of that sort."
"So it is." Ankowaljuu chuckled, a bit unpleasantly. "At least I need not
trouble myself about any faithly forejudgment on your part. As a one-time
Christian bishop, no doubt you will have glick scorn for the Emir and his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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