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

  They met as they always did, sitting in a rough circle and discussing the fine points of binding the andat. There was no sign of the earlier conflict; Vanjit and Ashti Beg treated each other with their customary kindness and respect. Eiah explained the difference between accident, intention, and consequence of design to Irit and Small Kae and, Maati thought, learned by the experience. By the warm, soft light of the lanterns, they might have been talking of anything. By the end, there was even real laughter.

  It should have been a good evening, but as he went back toward his bed, Maati was troubled and couldn’t quite say why. It had to do with Otah-kvo and Eiah, Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight. The Galts and his own unsettling if unsurprising insight into the nature of time and decay.

  He opened his book, reading his own handwriting by the light of the night candle. Even the quality of his script had changed since Vanjit had sharpened his vision. The older entries had been…not sloppy, never that. But not so crisp as he was capable of now. It had been an old man’s handwriting. Now it was something different. He picked up his pen, touched nib to ink, but found nothing coherent to say.

  He wiped the pen clean and put the book aside. Somewhere far to the south, Otah was dining with the men who had destroyed the Khaiem. He was sleeping on a bed of silk and drinking wine from bowls of beaten gold, while here in the dry plains his own daughter prepared to risk her life to make right what he had done.

  What they had done together. Otah, Cehmai, and Maati himself. One was crawling into bed with the enemy, another turning away and hiding his face. Only Maati had even tried to make things whole again. Vanjit’s success meant it had not been wasted effort. Eiah’s fear reminded him that it was not yet finished.

  He made his way down the corridors in the near darkness. Only candles and a half-moon lit his way. He was unsurprised to see Vanjit sitting alone in the gardens. Unlike the courtyard where they had spoken before, the gardens were bleak and bare. They had come too late to plant this season. Eiah’s occasional journeys to Pathai provided food enough, and they didn’t have the surplus of spare hands that had once held up the school. The wilderness encroached on the high stone walls here, young trees growing green and bold in plots where Maati had sown peas and harvested pods.

  She heard him approaching and glanced back over her shoulder. She shifted, adjusting her robes, and Maati saw the small, black eyes of the andat appear from among the folds of cotton. She had been nursing it. It shocked him for a moment, though on reflection it shouldn’t have. The andat had no need of milk, of course, but it was a product of Vanjit’s conceptions. Stone-Made-Soft had been involved with the game of stones. Three-Bound-as-One had been fascinated by knots. The relationship of poet and andat was modeled on mother and child as it had never been before in all of history. The nursing was, Maati supposed, the physical emblem of it.

  “Maati-kvo,” she said. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”

  He took a pose of apology, and she waved it away. In the cold light, she looked ghostly. The andat’s eyes and mouth seemed to eat the light, its skin to glow. Maati came nearer.

  “I was worried, I suppose,” he said. “It seemed…uncomfortable at dinner this evening.”

  “I’d been thinking about that,” Vanjit said. “It’s hard for them. Ashti Beg and the others. I think it must be very hard for them.”

  “How do you mean?”

  She shrugged. The andat in her lap gurgled to itself, considering its own short, pale fingers with fascination.

  “They have all put in so much time, so much work. Then to see another woman complete a binding and gain a child, all at once. I imagine it must gnaw at her. It isn’t that she intends to be rude or cruel. Ashti is in pain, and she lashes out. I knew a dog like that once. A cart had rolled over it. Snapped its spine. It whined and howled all night. You would have thought it was begging aid, except that it tried to bite anyone who came near. Ashti-cha is much the same.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do,” she said. “You shouldn’t think ill of her, Maati-kvo. I doubt she even knows what she’s doing.”

  He folded his arms.

  “I can’t think it’s simple for you either,” he said. He had the sense of testing her, though he couldn’t have said quite how. Vanjit’s face was as clear and cloudless as the sky.

  “It’s perfect,” she said. “Nowhere near as difficult as I’d thought. Only he makes me tired. No more than any mother with a new babe, though. I’ve been thinking of names. My cousin was named Ciiat, and he was about this old when the Galts came.”

  “It has a name already,” Maati said. “Clarity-of-Sight.”

  “I meant a private name,” Vanjit said. “One for just between the two of us. And you, I suppose. You are as near to a father as he has.”

  Maati opened his mouth, then closed it. Vanjit’s hand slipped into his own, her fingers twined around his. Her smile seemed so genuine, so innocent, that Maati only shook his head and laughed. They remained there for the space of ten long breaths together, Vanjit sitting, Maati standing at her side, and the andat, shifting impatiently in her lap.

  “Once Eiah’s bound Wounded,” Maati said, “we can all go back.”

  Vanjit made a small sound, neither cough nor gasp nor chuckle, and released Maati’s hand. He glanced down. Vanjit smiled up at him.

  “That will be good,” she said. “This must all be hard for her as well. I wish there was something we could do to ease things.”

  “We’ll do what can be done,” Maati said. “It will have to be enough.”

  Vanjit didn’t reply, and then raised her arm, pointing to the horizon.

  “The brightest star,” she said. “The one just coming up over the trees there? You see it?”

  “I do,” Maati said. It was one of the traveling stars that made their slow way through the night skies.

  “It has moons around it. Three of them.”

  He laughed and shook his head, but Vanjit didn’t join him. Her face was still and cool. Maati’s laughter died.

  “A star with…moons?”

  Vanjit nodded. Maati looked up again at the bright golden glimmer above the trees. He frowned first and then smiled.

  “Show me,” he said.

  13

  The fleet left Saraykeht on the first truly cool morning of autumn. A dozen ships with bright sails, and the marks of the Empire and Galt flying together from their masts. From the shore, Otah could no longer make out the shapes of the individual sailors and soldiers that crowded the distant decks, much less Sinja himself, dressed though the man was in gaudy commander’s array. Farrer Dasin’s ships still stood at anchor, and the other Galtic ships which had been promised but were not yet prepared to sail.

  Sinja had met with him for the last time less than a hand and a half before he’d stepped onto the small boat to make his last inspection. Otah had made himself comfortable in a teahouse near the seafront, waiting for the ceremony that would send off the fleet. The walls of the place were stained with decades of lantern smoke, the floorboards spotted with the memory of spilled wine. Sitting at the back table, Otah had felt like a peacock in a hen coop. Sinja, breezing through the open doors in a robe of bright green and hung with silk scarves and golden pendants, had made him feel less ridiculous only by comparison.

  “Well, this is your last chance to call the whole thing quits,” Sinja said, dropping into the chair across from Otah as casually as a drinking companion. Otah fumbled in his sleeve for a moment and drew out the letters intended for the utkhaiem of Chaburi-Tan. Sinja took them, considered the bright thread that sewed each of them closed, and sighed.

  “I’d feel better if Balasar was leading the first command,” Sinja said.

  “I thought you’d decided that he’d be better staying to arrange your reinforcements.”

  “Agreed. I agreed. He decided. And it does make sense. Farrer-cha and the others who’ve followed his example will be able to swallow all this better if they’re answering to a Galti
c general.”

  “And waiting for them to be ready…” Otah said.

  “Madness,” Sinja said, slipping the letters into his own sleeve. “We’ve been too long already. I’m not saying that it’s a bad plan. I only wish that there was a brilliant, well-crafted scheme that had Balasar-cha going out and me following behind to see whether the raiders sank everyone. Any word from Chaburi-Tan?”

  “Nothing new,” Otah said.

  “Fair enough. We’ll send word once we get there.”

  A silence followed, the unasked questions as heavy in the air as smoke. Otah leaned forward. Sinja knew about Idaan’s list; Otah had told him in a fit of candor and regretted it since. Sinja knew better than to raise the issue where they might be overheard, but disapproval haunted his expression.

  “There is some movement on the question of Obar State,” Otah said. “Ashua Radaani bribed their ambassador. He has a list of men who have been in negotiation to break the eastern cities from the Empire with backing from Obar State. Two dozen men in four families.”

  “That’s good work,” Sinja said.

  “He’s asking permission to kill them.”

  “Sounds very tidy, assuming it’s true and Radaani isn’t involved in the conspiracy himself.”

  “Very tidy then too,” Otah said. “I’m ordering the men brought to Utani. I can speak with them there.”

  “And if Radaani refuses?”

  “Then I’ll invite just him,” Otah said. Sinja took an approving pose. Otah thought for a moment that they might be done.

  “The other matter?”

  “Being addressed,” Otah said.

  Four of the members of Idaan’s list had been quietly looked into, the irregularities of their behavior clarified. One had been hiding half-a-dozen mistresses from a wife with a notoriously short temper. Two others had been conspiring to undercut the glass trades in the north, setting up workshops nearer the alum mines of Eddensea. The fourth had also appeared on Ashua Radaani’s list, and had no clear connection to Maati.

  Sinja had made it perfectly clear that he thought examining Eiah’s actions was the wisest course. If she was Maati’s backer, better to find it quickly and put a stop to the whole affair. If she wasn’t, best to know that and stop losing sleep. There was a cold logic to his argument, and Otah knew what his own reluctance meant. His daughter had turned to her Uncle Maati. Turned against her father. And the pain of that loss was almost more than he could bear.

  “Well,” Sinja said. “I suppose I’d better go before the sailors all get too drunk to know sunrise from sunset and land us all in Eymond. If I don’t come back, make sure they put up statues of me.”

  “You’ll come back,” Otah said.

  “You only say that because I always have before,” Sinja replied, smiling. He sobered. “See that Balasar comes quickly, though. These ships will make a grand spectacle, but it would be a short fight.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Otah said.

  Sinja rose and took a pose of leave-taking. It might be the last time Otah ever saw the man. It was a fact he’d known, but something in the set of Sinja’s body or the studied blankness of his face drove the point home. For the space of a breath, Otah felt the loss as if the worst had already happened.

  “I would have been lost without you, these last years,” Otah said. “You know that.”

  “I know you think it,” Sinja said, matching Otah’s quiet tone. “Take care, Most High. Do what needs doing.”

  Sitting now on his dais, watching the ships recede and vanish, Otah thought the phrase had been intended as last words. Do what needs doing. Meaning, more specifically, find Eiah. The sun rose from its morning home in the east; the seafront surged with a hundred languages, creoles, pidgins. Where the armsmen of the palace ended, merchants set up their tall, thin stalls and proclaimed their wares. When Otah took his leave, they would do the same in the space he now inhabited. Returning to the palaces would be like taking his finger out of water. It wouldn’t leave a hole. He wondered, sometimes, if the whole world wasn’t the same.

  Back at the palaces, Otah suffered through the ritual change of robes, the closing ceremony that followed seeing off the fleet. He dearly hoped that when Balasar’s reinforcements departed, he could avoid repeating the entire pointless exercise. He hoped, but doubted it. Once the last cymbal had chimed, the last priest intoned the final passage, and Otah had done his duty as Emperor, he went back to his rooms. Danat and Issandra were waiting there.

  Otah greeted them both with a single pose appropriate to near family. If it was still an optimism, the Galtic woman didn’t comment on it. She put down a bowl of tea she’d been drinking from, and Danat rose to his feet.

  “Thank you for joining me,” Otah said. “I wanted to know the…the status of your work.”

  The pair exchanged glances. Issandra spoke.

  “In one respect, I think you could say we’re doing quite well. Ana’s request that her father add himself to your naval adventure has caused something of a strain between her and Hanchat. He seems to think she’s being disloyal to Galt in general and therefore him in particular.”

  “I can understand that,” Otah said, lowering himself to a cushion. “The gods all know she surprised me with it.”

  “The problem is that she feels she’s cleared all accounts by the gesture,” Issandra said. “Any sense of obligation she might have felt toward Danat-cha from her misbehavior or his clemency toward Hanchat is done.”

  “I see,” Otah said.

  “There’s something else,” Danat said. “I think Shija-cha has…”

  “The imitation lover has developed ambitions,” Issandra said. “Apparently you’ve entrusted her uncle with some particularly delicate task?”

  Shija Radaani. Ashua’s niece.

  “I have,” Otah said.

  “She’s taken that fact and the request that she act as Danat’s escort, and drawn the most remarkable conclusion,” Issandra said. “She thinks that Danat-cha is in love with her, and intends to sabotage his connection to Ana on her behalf.”

  “It’s not only that,” Danat said. “This is my fault. I…I lost my perspective. It was…”

  “You bedded her,” Otah said.

  Danat’s blush could have lit houses. It was as Otah had feared. Issandra sighed.

  “This Radaani woman,” she said. “Can you safely offend her family?”

  “At the moment, it would be awkward,” Otah said.

  “Then I can’t see that the girl is that far wrong,” Issandra said. “Danat has sabotaged things.”

  “I’m very sorry,” he said. “It wasn’t…gods.”

  Danat sat again, his head in his hands.

  “What is Ana’s opinion of the matter of Shija and Danat?” Otah asked.

  “I don’t know,” Issandra said. Her voice went softer, sorrow creeping in at the seams. “I believe she’s avoiding me.”

  Otah pressed his fingers against his eyelids until colors swam in the darkness. No one spoke, and the silence pressed on his shoulder like a hand.

  “Well,” he said at last, “how do the two of you intend to move forward from here?”

  “She wants to put them together,” Danat said. His voice was equal parts plea and outrage. “She wants Shija and Ana to be seated beside each other at every dance, every meal…”

  “You can’t envy what you don’t see,” Issandra said. “It’s more difficult if this other girl can’t be easily removed, but if Ana’s run with her present lover is nearing an end, and Shija makes it clear that she considers Ana a threat…”

  Danat yelped and began to spout objections, Issandra pressing on against him. Otah kept his eyes closed, the paired voices draining each other of meaning. Instead he imagined the girl to be before him as she had been the night she came to speak with him. Half-drunk. Too proud to be ruled by pride.

  He took a pose that commanded silence. Danat’s words ended at once. Issandra’s took a moment longer to trail off.

  ?
??Between the two of you, you’ll have to devise something,” he said. “I don’t have the time or the resources to fix this for you. But consider that you might be treating Ana with less respect than she deserves. Danat-cha, do you intend to build a life with Shija Radaani?”

  Danat sobered. He took no pose, spoke no word. Otah nodded.

  “Then it would be disrespectful to behave as if you did,” Otah said. “Be honest with her, and if it damages relations with House Radaani, then it does.”

  “Yes, Father,” Danat said, hesitated, and then took a pose that asked forgiveness before walking from the room.

  Otah’s spine ached. His eyes felt gritty with the efforts of the day. It was all far from over.

  “Issandra-cha,” he said. “I don’t know Ana well, but I lost my own daughter by treating her as the girl I remembered instead of the woman she’d become. Don’t repeat my mistake. Ana may not be subject to the manipulations that work on younger girls.”

  Issandra Dasin’s face hardened. For a moment, Otah saw the resemblance between mother and daughter. She took a pose of acknowledgment. It was awkward, but her form was correct.

  “There is, perhaps, another approach,” she said. “I wouldn’t have considered it before, but I’ve spent a certain number of hours with your son. He might be able to manage it.”

  Otah nodded her on.

  “He could choose to fall in love with her. Cultivate the feeling within himself, and then…” She shrugged. “Let the world take its course. I haven’t known many women who failed to be charmed by an attractive man’s genuine admiration.”

  “You think he could simply decide to feel what we want him to feel?”

  “I’ve done it every day for nearly thirty years,” Issandra said.

  “That is either the most romantic thing I’ve heard or the saddest,” Otah said. And then, “Ana-cha did me a great favor. I’m sorry that Danat repaid it with an indiscretion.”

  Issandra waved the apology away.

  “I doubt she took offense. I’m sure she assumed Danat and this Radaani creature were sharing whatever flat surfaces came available. I remember what it was like at their age. We were all heat and dramatic gestures. We thought we were the first generation to truly discover love or sex or betrayal.” Her voice softened.