The Price of Spring (The Long Price Quartet Book 4)

  “Small Kae is making soup for dinner,” Irit said. “If you have time to help her…”

  “Maati-kvo’s much too busy for that,” Vanjit said.

  When Ashti Beg spoke, her voice was dry as sand.

  “Irit-cha might not have been speaking to him.”

  Vanjit’s spine stiffened, and then, with a laugh, relaxed. She smiled at all of them as she took a contrite pose, accepting the correction. Irit reached out and placed her hand on Vanjit’s shoulder as a sister might.

  “I’m so proud of you,” Irit said, grinning. “I’m just so happy and proud.”

  “So are we all,” Ashti Beg said. Maati smiled, but the sense that something had happened sat at the back of his mind. As the four of them walked to the kitchens—the air growing rich with the salt-and-fat scent of pork and the dark, earthy scent of boiled lentils—Maati reviewed what each of them had said, the tones of voice, the angles at which they had held themselves. Small Kae assigned tasks to all of them except Maati, and he waited for a time, listening to the simple banter and the crack of knives against wood. When he took his leave, he was troubled.

  He was not so far removed from his boyhood that he had forgotten what jealousy felt like. He’d suffered it himself in these same halls and rooms. One boy or another was always in favor, and the others wishing that they were. Walking through the bare gardens, Maati wondered whether he had allowed the same thing to happen. Vanjit was certainly the center of all their work and activity. Had Ashti Beg and Irit interrupted their conversation from an urge to take his attention, or at least deny it to her?

  And then there was some question of Vanjit’s heart.

  The truth was that Eiah had been right. For all the hope and attention placed upon her, the project of the school was not truly Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight. It would be Eiah and Wounded. Vanjit had seen it. It couldn’t be pleasant, knowing she was taking the lead not for her own sake but to blaze the trail for another. He would speak to her. He would have to speak with her. Reassure her.

  After the last of the lentil soup had been sopped up by the final crust of bread, Maati took Vanjit aside. It didn’t go as he had expected.

  “It isn’t that Eiah-cha’s work is more important,” Maati said, his hands in a pose meant to convey a gentle authority. “You are taking the greater risk, and the role of the first of the poets of a new age. It’s only that there are certain benefits that Eiah-cha brings because of her position at court. Once those aren’t needed any longer, you see—”

  Vanjit kissed him. Maati sat back. The girl’s smile was broad, genuine, and oddly pitying. Her hands took a pose that offered correction.

  “Ah, Maati-kvo. You think it matters that Eiah is more important than I am?”

  “I didn’t…I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “Let me. Eiah is more important than I am. I’m first because I’m the scout. That’s all. But if I do well, if I can make this binding work, then she will have your permission. And then we can do anything. That’s all I want.”

  Maati ran a hand through his hair. He found that none of the words he had practiced fit the moment. Vanjit seemed to understand his silence. When she went on, her voice was low and gentle.

  “There’s a difference between why you came to this place and why we have,” she said. “Your father sent you here in hopes of glory. He hoped that you would rise through the ranks of all the boys and be sent to the Dai-kvo and become a poet. It isn’t like that for me. I don’t want to be a poet. Did you understand that?”

  Maati took a pose that expressed both an acceptance of correction and a query. Vanjit responded with one appropriate to thanking someone of higher status.

  “I had the dream again,” Vanjit said. “I’ve been having it every night, almost. He’s in me. And he’s shifting and moving and I can hear his heart beating.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maati said.

  “No, Maati-kvo, that’s just it. I wake up, and I’m not sad any longer. It was only hard when I thought it would never come. Now, I wake up, and I’m happy all day long. I can feel him getting close. He’ll be here. What is being a poet beside that?”

  Nayiit, he thought.

  Maati didn’t expect the tears, they simply welled up in his eyes. The pain in his breast was so sudden and sharp, he almost mistook the sorrow for illness. She put her hand on his, her expression anxious. He forced himself to smile.

  “You’re quite right,” he said. “Quite right. Come along now. The bowls are all washed, and it’s time we got to work.”

  He made his way to the hall they had set aside for classes. His heart was both heavy and light: heavy with the renewed sorrow of his boy’s death, light at Vanjit’s reaction to him. She had known Eiah’s work to be of greater importance, and had already made her peace with her own lesser role. He wondered whether, in her place and at her age, he would have been able to do the same. He doubted it.

  That evening, his lecture was particularly short, and the conversation after it was lively and pointed and thoughtful. In the days that followed, Maati abandoned his formal teaching entirely, instead leading discussion after discussion, analysis after analysis. Together, they tore Vanjit’s binding of Clarity-of-Sight apart, and together they rebuilt it. Each time, Maati thought it was stronger, the images and resonances of it more appropriate to one another, the grammar that formed it more precise.

  It was difficult to call the process to a halt, but in the end, it was Vanjit and Vanjit alone who would make the attempt. They might help her and advise her, but he allocated two full weeks in which the binding was hers and hers alone.

  Low clouds came in the morning Eiah returned. They scudded in from the north on a wind cold as winter. Maati knew it wouldn’t take. There were weeks of heat and sun to come before the seasons changed. And yet, there was a part of Maati’s mind that couldn’t help seeing the shift as an omen. And a positive one, he told himself. Change, the movement of the seasons, the proper order of the world: those were what he tried to see in the low, gray roof of the sky. Not the presentiment of barren winter.

  “The news is strange,” Eiah said as they unloaded her cart. Boxes of salt pork and raw flour, canisters of spice and hard cheese. “The Galts have fallen on Saraykeht like they owned it, but something didn’t go well. I can’t tell if my brother thought the girl was too ugly or she fell into a fit when she was presented, but something went badly. What I heard was early and muddled. I’ll know better next time I go.”

  “Anything that hurts him helps us,” Maati said. “So whatever it was, it’s good.”

  “That was my thought,” Eiah said, but her voice was somber. When he took a pose of query, she didn’t answer it.

  “How have things progressed here?” she asked instead.

  “Well. Very well. I think Vanjit is ready.”

  Eiah stopped, wiping her sleeve across her forehead. She looked old. How many summers had she seen? Thirty? Thirty-one? Her eyes were deeper than thirty summers.

  “When?” she asked.

  “We were only waiting for you to come back,” he said. Then, trying for levity, “You’ve brought the wine and food for a celebration. So tomorrow, we’ll do something worth celebrating.”

  Or else something to mourn, he thought but did not say.

  9

  “By everything holy, don’t tell Balasar,” Sinja said. “He can’t know about this.”

  “Why?” Idaan asked, sitting on the edge of the soldier’s bed. “What would he do?”

  “I don’t know,” Sinja said. “Something bloody and extreme. And effective.”

  “Stop,” Otah said. “Just stop. I have to think.”

  But sitting there, head resting in his hands, clarity of mind wasn’t coming to him easily. Idaan’s story—her travels in the north after her exile, Cehmai’s appearance on her doorstep, their rekindled love, and Maati’s break with his fellow poet and then his return—had the feel of an old poem, if not the careful structure. If he hadn’t had the pirates or Ana o
r her father or his own son or the conspiracy between Yalakeht and Obar State, or the incursions from the Westlands, he might have enjoyed the tale for its own sake.

  But she hadn’t brought it to him as a story. It was a threat.

  “What role has Cehmai taken in this?” he asked.

  “None. He wanted nothing to do with it. Or with my coming here, for that. I’ve left him to look after things until I’ve paid my debt to you. Then I’ll be going home.”

  “Is it working?” Otah said at length. “Idaan-cha, did Maati say anything to suggest it was working?”

  His sister took a pose of negation that held a sense of uncertainty.

  “He came to Cehmai for help,” Sinja said. “That means at least that he thinks he needs help.”

  “And Cehmai didn’t agree to it,” Idaan said. “He isn’t helping. But he also doesn’t want to see Maati hung. He cut Maati off before he told me who was backing him.”

  “What makes you think he has backing?”

  “He said as much. Strong backing and an ear in the palaces whenever he wanted one,” Idaan said. “Even if that overstates the truth, he isn’t out hunting rabbits or wading through a rice field. Someone’s feeding him. And how many people are there who might want the andat back in the world?”

  “No end of them,” Otah said. “But how many would think the thing was possible?”

  Sinja opened a small wooden cabinet and took out a fluted bottle of carved bone. When he lifted out the stopper, the scent of wine filled the room. He asked with a gesture. Otah and Idaan accepted simultaneously, and with the same pose.

  “The books are all burned,” Otah said. “The histories are gone, the grammars are gone. I didn’t think he could do this when he wrote to me before, I don’t see that he could manage it now.”

  Sinja, stunned, overfilled one of the wine bowls, the red pooling on his table like spilled blood. Idaan hoisted a single eyebrow.

  “He wrote to you before?” she said.

  “It was years ago,” Otah said. “I had a letter. A single letter. Maati said he was looking for a way to recapture the andat. He wanted my help. I sent a message back refusing.”

  “All apologies, Most High,” Sinja said. He hadn’t bothered to wipe up the spilled wine. “Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”

  “It came at a bad time,” Otah said. “Kiyan was dying. It was hopeless. The andat are gone, and there’s no force in the world that can bring them safely back.”

  “You’re sure of that?” Idaan asked. “Because Maati-cha didn’t think it was hopeless. The man is many things, but he isn’t dim.”

  “It hardly matters,” Sinja said. “Just the word that this is happening, and that—may all the gods keep it from happening—you knew he was thinking of it. That you’ve known for years…”

  “It’s a dream!” Otah shouted. “Maati was dreaming, that’s all. He wants something back that’s gone beyond his reach. Well, so do I. Anyone who has lived as long as we have knows that longing, and we know how useless it is. What’s gone is gone, and we can’t have it back. So what would you have had me do? Send the message back with an assassin? Announce to the world that Maati Vaupathai was out, trying to bind the andat, so they should all send invading armies at their first convenience?”

  “Why didn’t you?” Idaan asked. “Send the assassin, I mean. The invading armies, I understand. For that, why did you let them go at the end of the war?”

  “I am not in the mood, Idaan-cha, to be questioned by a woman who killed my father, schemed to place the blame on me, and is only breathing air now because I chose to let her. I understand that you would have happily opened their throats.”

  “Not Cehmai’s,” she said softly. “But then I know why I wouldn’t have done it. It doesn’t follow that I should know why you didn’t. The two aren’t the same.”

  Otah rocked back in his chair. His face was hot. Their gazes locked, and he saw her nod. Idaan took a pose that expressed both understanding and contrition while unmasking the question.

  “That isn’t true,” she said. “Thinking for a moment, I suppose they are.”

  Otah took the bowl Sinja held out to him. The wine was unwatered, rich and astringent. He drank it dry. Sinja looked nervous.

  “There’s nothing I can do about any of this tonight,” Otah said. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed. If I decide it needs talking of further, it’ll be another time.”

  He rose, taking a pose that ended an audience, then feeling a moment’s shame, shifted to one that was merely a farewell.

  “Otah-cha,” Sinja said. “One last thing. I’m sorry, but you left standing orders. If she came back, I was supposed to kill her.”

  “For plotting to take my chair and conspiring with the Galts,” Otah said. “Well. Idaan-cha? Are you hoping to become Emperor?”

  “I wouldn’t take your place as a favor,” she said.

  Otah nodded.

  “Find apartments for her,” he said. “Lift the death order. The girl we sent out in the snow might as well have died. And the man who sent her, for that. We are, all of us, different people now.”

  Otah walked back to his rooms alone. The palace wasn’t quiet or still. Perhaps it never wholly was. But the buzzing fury of the day had given way to a slower pace. Fewer servants made their way down the halls. The members of the high families who had business here had largely gone back to their own palaces, walking stone paths chipped by the spurs and boot nails of Galtic soldiers, passing through arches whose gold and silver adornments had been hacked off by Galtic axes. They went to palaces where the highest men and women of Galt had come as guests, eating beef soup and white bread and fruit tarts. Sipping tea and wine and water and working, some of them at least, to build a common future.

  And Idaan had come to warn him against Maati.

  He slept poorly and woke tired. The Master of Tides attended him as he was bathed and dressed. The day was full from dawn to nightfall. Sixteen audiences had been requested, falling almost equally between members of the utkhaiem and the Galts. Three of the Galtic houses had left letters strongly implying that they had daughters who might be pressed to serve should Ana Dasin refuse. One of the priests at the temple had left a request to preach against the recalcitrance of women who failed to offer up sex. Two of the trading houses had made it clear that they wished to be released from shipping contracts to Chaburi-Tan. The Master of Tides droned and listed and laid out the form of another painful, endless, wasted day. When the stars came out again, Otah knew he would feel like a wrung towel and all the great problems he faced would still be unsolved.

  He instructed that the priest be forbidden, the trading houses be referred to Sinja-cha and the Master of Chains, who could renegotiate terms but not break the contract, and then dictated a common response to the three letters offering up new wives for Danat that neither encouraged nor refused them. All this before the breakfast of fresh-brewed tea, spiced apples, and seared pork had appeared.

  He had hardly begun to eat when the Master of Tides returned with a sour expression and took a pose that asked forgiveness, but pointedly did not suggest that the offending party was the Master of Tides herself.

  “Most High, Balasar Gice is requesting to join you. I have suggested that he apply for an audience just as anyone else, but he seems to forget that his conquest of Saraykeht was temporary.”

  “You’ll treat Balasar-cha with respect,” Otah said, though he couldn’t quite keep from smiling. And then a breath later, his chest tightened. Something bloody and extreme. And effective. What if the general had heard Idaan’s news? “See him in. And bring another bowl for tea.”

  The Master of Tides took a pose that accepted the command.

  “A clean bowl,” Otah added to the woman’s back.

  Balasar followed all the appropriate forms when the servants escorted him back. Otah matched him, and then gestured for all the others to leave. When they were alone, Balasar lowered himself to the cushion on the floor, took the bow
l of tea and the bit of pork that Otah offered him, and stretched out. Otah watched the man’s face and body, but there was no sign there that he’d heard of Idaan’s arrival or of her news.

  “I’ve had a couple of discreet conversations,” Balasar said.

  “Yes?”

  “About taking a fleet to Chaburi-Tan?”

  Otah nodded. Of course. Of course that was what they were meeting about.

  “And what have you found?” Otah asked.

  “It can be done, but there are two ways to go about it. We have enough men to make a small, effective fighting force. Eight ships, perhaps, fully armed and provisioned. I wouldn’t go to war on it, but it would outman most raiding parties.”

  Otah sipped his tea. The water wasn’t quite hot enough to scald.

  “The other way?”

  “We can use the same number to man twenty ships. A mixed force, ours and your own. Throw on as many men as we can find who are well enough to stand upright. It would actually be easier to defeat in a battle. The men who knew what they were about would be spread thin, and amateurs are worse than nothing in a sea fight. But weigh it against the sight of twenty ships. The pirates would be mad to come against us in force.”

  “Unless they know we’re all lights and empty show,” Otah said. “There are suggestions that the mercenaries we have at Chaburi-Tan are working both sides.”

  Balasar sucked his teeth.

  “That makes it harder,” he agreed.

  “How long would you need?” Otah asked.

  “A week for the smaller force. Twice that for the larger.”

  “How many of our allies would we lose in the court here?”

  “Hard to say. Knowing who your friends are is a tricky business right now. You’ll have fewer than if they stayed.”