Aesi'uah folded her hands before her mouth, as though to blow life into a tiny flame shielded there. "Please, Captain Vansen, you do not understand…"
"No, your mistress does not understand." He did not like arguing with her. The chief eremite was quiet and graceful, and in her own way, kind; disagreeing with her made him feel clumsy and cruel. "My allies have made a brave concession. They have opened their gates to your people, although only days ago you Qar were killing Funderlings on the doorstep of their own city. Not only that, but they have even given you a place for your army to camp-a place between themselves and their most holy place…"
"That is because of our shared mortal enemy, the Autarch of Xis," she began, but Vansen was still angry.
"Yes, but we were not in immediate danger from the autarch. The people of Southmarch were safe inside our castle walls, the Funderlings down here in the rock. It was your people in their camp above who were most at risk."
She paused, but with the air of someone listening to something he couldn't hear. He suspected she conversed with Yasammez in her head, just as he had once heard the words of Gyir Storm Lantern in the same, silent way, but knowing that did not make him feel any better. It happened to her several times an hour and had been a constant reminder that no matter how courteously she seemed to listen to Vansen, nothing would be done without her mistress' consent.
"Please, Captain," she said at last. "One thousand years or more of hatred and distrust do not vanish with a wave of the hand."
"Oh, trust me, my lady, I know that very well."
"Look there," Aesi'uah said, gesturing with a slender hand toward the crowd of strange shapes that surrounded them, filling the natural stone gallery to the walls-perhaps a thousand Qar in this chamber alone. "Already we have done something here unseen since the earth was young. Understand that my mistress must deal with problems of her own, many of them of a subtlety that I cannot explain to someone who will live only a century."