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

  “Can’t we…can’t we do something?” Danat asked.

  “No,” said the andat in the same breath that Eiah said, “Yes. I need my satchel. Where is it?”

  Danat rushed back to the great doors, returning half a moment later with the physician’s satchel in his hands. Eiah grabbed it, plucked out a cloth bag, and started shuffling through sheaves of dried herbs that to Maati looked identical.

  “There’s another bag. A yellow one,” Eiah said. “Where is it?”

  “I don’t think we brought it,” Danat said.

  “Then it’s back at the quay. Get it now.”

  Danat turned and sprinted. Gently, Eiah took Maati’s hand. He thought at first she meant to comfort him, but her fingers pressed into his wrist, and then she reached for his other hand. He surrendered himself to her care. He didn’t have a great deal of choice. Idaan squatted at his side, Otah sitting on the dais. The andat rose, stepping back by Ana’s side as if out of respect.

  “How bad?” Idaan asked.

  “He hasn’t died. That’s what I can offer for now,” Eiah said. “Maati-kya, open your mouth. I don’t have time to brew this, but it will help until I can get the rest of my supplies. It’s going to be sweet first and then bitter.”

  “You’ve done it,” Maati said around the pinch of leaves she put on his tongue.

  Eiah looked at him, her expression startled. He smiled at her.

  “You bound it. You’ve cured the blindness.”

  Eiah looked up at her creation, her slave. It nodded.

  “Well, no,” she said. “I mean, yes, I bound him. And I did undo Vanjit’s damage to Ana and myself. And then you, when I saw that she’d done it.”

  “Galt?” Ana asked.

  “I hadn’t…I hadn’t even thought of it. Gods. Is there anything different to be done? I mean, a whole nation at once?”

  “You have to do everything,” Maati said. “Birds. Beasts. Fish. Everyone, everywhere. You have to hurry. It’s only a thought.” The herbs were making his mouth tingle and burn, but the pain in his breast seemed to ebb. “It’s no different.”

  Eiah turned to the andat. The kind, pale face hardened. No matter how it seemed, the thing wasn’t a man and it wasn’t gentle. But it was bound to her will, and a moment later Eiah caught her breath.

  “It’s done,” she said, wonder in her voice. “They’ve been put back. The ones who are left.”

  Ana stepped forward and knelt, wordlessly enfolding Eiah in her arms. From where he lay, he could see Eiah’s eyes close, watch her lean into the embrace. The two women seemed to pause in time, a moment that lasted less than two long breaths together but carried the weight of years within it. Eiah raised her head sharply and the andat twitched. Idaan leaped up, yelping. All eyes turned to her as she pressed a flat palm to her belly.

  “That,” she said, “felt very odd. You should warn someone when you’re planning something like that.”

  “Sterile?” Otah asked. His voice was low. There was no joy in it.

  “Repaired,” Eiah said. “We can bear again. Galts can father children and we can bear them.”

  “I don’t suppose you could leave me as I was?” Idaan asked.

  “So we’ve begun again,” Otah said. “It is all as it was. We’ve only changed a few names. Well—”

  Wounded cut him off with a low bark of a laugh. Its eyes were fixed upon Eiah. Otah looked from one to the other, his hands taking a querying pose. Woman and slave both ignored him.

  “Everyone?” the andat asked.

  “Everyone, everywhere,” Eiah said. “It’s only a thought, isn’t it? That’s all it needs to be.”

  “What are you doing?” Ana asked. It seemed like a real curiosity.

  “I’m curing everyone,” Eiah said. “If there’s a child in Bakta who split her head on a stone this morning, I want it fixed. A man in Eymond whose hip was broken when he was a boy and healed poorly, I want him walking without pain in the morning. Everyone. Everywhere. Now.”

  “Eiah Machi,” the andat said, its voice low and amused, “the little girl who saved the world. Is that how you see it? Or is this how you apologize for slaughtering a whole people?”

  Eiah didn’t speak, and the andat went still again. Anger flashed in its eyes and Maati’s hand went out, touching Eiah’s. She patted him away absently, as if he were no more than a well-intentioned dog. The andat hissed under its breath and turned away. Maati noticed for the first time that its teeth were pointed. Eiah relaxed. Maati sat up; his breath had almost returned. The andat shifted to look at him. The whites of his eyes had gone as black as a shark’s; he had never seen an andat shift its appearance before, and it filled him with sudden dread. Eiah made a scolding sound, and the andat took an apologetic pose.

  Maati tried to imagine what it would be like, a thought that changeable, that flexible, that filled with violence and rage. How did we ever think we could do good with these as our tools? For as long as she held the andat, Eiah was condemned to the struggle. And Maati was responsible for that sacrifice too.

  Eiah, it seemed, had other intentions.

  “That should do,” she said. “You can go.”

  The andat vanished, its robe collapsing to the floor in a pool of blue and gold. The scent of overheated stone came and went, a breath of hell on the night air. The others were silent. Maati came to himself first.

  “What have you done?” he whispered.

  “I’m a physician,” Eiah said, her tone dismissive. “Holding that abomination the rest of my life would have gotten in the way of my work, and who told you that you were allowed to sit up? On your back or I’ll call in armsmen to hold you down. No, don’t say anything. I don’t care if you’re feeling a thousand times better. Down. Now.”

  He lay back, staring up at the ceiling. His mind felt blasted and blank. The enameled brick was blurred in the torchlight, or perhaps it was only that his eyes were only what they had been. The cold air that breathed in through the window too gently to even be a breeze felt better than he would have expected, the stone floor beneath him more comfortable. The voices around him were quiet with respect for his poor health or else with awe. The world had never seen a night like this one. It likely never would again.

  She had freed it. Gods, all that they’d done, all that they’d suffered, and she’d just freed the thing.

  When Danat returned, Eiah forced half a handful of herbs more bitter than the last into his mouth and told him to leave them under his tongue until she told him otherwise. Idaan and one of the armsmen hauled Vanjit’s body away. They would burn it, Maati thought, in the morning. Vanjit had been a broken, sad, dangerous woman, but she deserved better than to have her corpse left out. He remembered Idaan saying something similar of the slaughtered buck.

  He didn’t notice falling asleep, but Eiah gently shook him awake and helped him to sit. While she compared his pulses and pressed his fingertips, he spat out the black leaves. His mouth was numb.

  “We’re going to take you back down in a litter,” she said, and before he could object, she lifted her hand to his lips. He took a pose that acquiesced. Eiah rose to her feet and walked back toward the great bronze doors.

  The footsteps behind him were as familiar as an old song.

  “Otah-kvo,” Maati said.

  The Emperor sat on the dais, his hands between his knees. He looked pale and exhausted.

  “Nothing ever goes the way I plan,” Otah said, his tone peevish. “Not ever.”

  “You’re tired,” Maati said.

  “I am. Gods, that I am.”

  The captain of the armsmen pulled open the doors. Four men followed, a low weaving of branches and rope between them. Eiah walked at their side. One of the men at the rear called out, and the whole parade stopped while the captain, cursing, retied a series of knots. Maati watched them as if they were dancers and gymnasts performing before a banquet.

  “I’m sorry,” Maati said. “This wasn’t what I intended.”

  “Isn??
?t it? I thought the hope was to undo the damage we did with Sterile, no matter what the price.”

  Maati started to object, then stopped himself. Outside the great window, a star fell. The smear of light vanished as quickly as it had come.

  “I didn’t know how far it would go.”

  “Would it have mattered? If you had known everything it would take, would you have been able to abandon the project?” Otah asked. He didn’t sound angry or accusing. Only like a man who didn’t know the answer to a question. Maati found he didn’t either.

  “If I asked your forgiveness…”

  Otah was silent, then sighed deeply, his head hanging low.

  “Maati-kya, we’ve been a hundred different people to each other, and tonight I’m too old and too tired. Everything in the world has changed at least twice since I woke up this morning. I think about forgiving you, and I don’t know what the word means.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you? Well, then you’ve outpaced me.”

  The litter came forward. Eiah helped him onto the makeshift seat, rope and wood creaking under his weight, but solid. The gait of the armsmen swayed him like a branch in the breeze. The Emperor, they left behind to follow in the darkness.

  31

  The formal joining of Ana Dasin and Danat Machi took place on Candles Night in the high temple of Utani. The assembled nobility of Galt along with the utkhaiem from the highest of families to the lowest firekeeper filled every cushion on the floor, every level of balcony. The air itself was hot as a barn, and the smell of perfume and incense and bodies was overwhelming. Otah sat on his chair, looking out over the vast sea of faces. Many of the Galts wore mourning veils, and, to his surprise, the fashion had not been lost on the utkhaiem. He worried that the mourning was not entirely for fallen Galt, but also a subterranean protest of the marriage itself. It was only a small concern, though. He had thousands more like it.

  The Galtic ceremony—a thing of dirgelike song and carefully measured wine spilled over rice, all to a symbolic end that escaped him—was over. The traditional joining of his own culture was already under way. Otah shifted, trying to be unobtrusive in his discomfort despite every eye in Utani being fixed on the dais.

  Farrer Dasin wore a robe of black and a red ocher that suited his complexion better than Otah would have expected. Issandra sat at his side in a Galtic gown of yellow lace over a profoundly celebratory red. Danat knelt before them both.

  “Farrer Dasin of House Dasin, I place myself before you as a man before my elder,” Danat said. “I place myself before you and ask your permission. I would take Ana, your blood issue, to be my wife. If it does not please you, please only say so, and accept my apology.”

  The whisperers carried his words out through the hall like wind over wheat. Ana Dasin herself knelt on a cushion off to her parents’ right and Danat had been sitting to Otah’s left. The girl’s gown had been an issue of long and impassioned debate, for the swell of her belly was unmistakable. With only a few minor modifications, the tailors could have done much to hide it. Instead, she had chosen Galtic dress with its tight fittings and waist-slung ribbons, which would make it clear to the farthest spectator in the temple that summer would come well after the child. Etiquette masters from both courts had gone at the issue like pit dogs for the better part of a week. Otah thought she looked beautiful with her garland of ribbons. Her father apparently thought so as well. Instead of the traditional reply, I am not displeased, Farrer looked Danat square in the eyes, then turned to Ana.

  “Bit late for asking, isn’t it?” Farrer said.

  Otah laughed, giving his implicit permission for all the court to laugh with him. Danat grinned as well and took a pose of gratitude somewhat more profound than strictly required. Danat rose, came to Otah, and knelt again.

  “Most High?” he said, his mouth quirked in an odd smile. Otah pretended to consider the question. The court laughed again, and he rose to his feet. It felt good to stand up, though before it was all finished, he’d be longing to sit down again.

  “Let it be known that I have authorized this match. Let the blood of the House Dasin enter for the first time into the imperial lineage. And let all who honor the Khaiem respect this transfer and join in our celebration. The ceremony shall be held at once.”

  The whisperers carried it all, and moments later a priest came out, intoning old words whose meanings were more than half forgotten. The man was older than Otah, and his expression was as serene and joyous as that of a man too drunk to stagger. Otah took a welcoming pose, accepted one in return, and stepped back to let the ceremony proper begin.

  Danat accepted a long, looped cord and hung it over his arm. The priest intoned the ritual questions, and Danat made his answers. Otah’s back began to spasm, but he kept still. The end of the cord, cut and knotted, passed from Danat to the priest and then to Ana’s hand. The roar that rose up drowned out the whisperers, the priest, the world. The courts of two nations stood cheering, all decorum forgotten. Ana and Danat stood together with a length of woven cotton between them, grinning and waving. Otah imagined their child stirring in its dark sleep, aware of the sound if not its meaning.

  Balasar Gice, wearing the robe of a high councilman, was at the front of the crowd, clapping his small hands together with tears running down his cheeks. Otah felt a momentary pang of sorrow. Sinja hadn’t seen it. Kiyan hadn’t. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that the moment wasn’t his. The celebration was not of his life or his love or the binding of his house to a wayhouse keeper from Udun. It was Danat’s and Ana’s, and they at least were transcendent.

  The rest of the ceremony took twice as long as it should have, and by the time the procession was ready to carry them out and through the streets of Utani, the sunset was no more than a memory.

  Otah allowed himself to be ushered to a high balcony that looked down upon the city. The air was bitterly cold, but a cast-iron brazier was hauled out, coals already bright red so that Otah could feel the searing heat to his left while his right side froze. He huddled in a thick wool blanket, following the wedding procession with his eyes. Each street they turned down lit itself, banners and streamers of cloth arcing through the air.

  Here is where it begins, he thought. And then, Thank all the gods it isn’t me down there.

  A servant girl stepped onto the balcony and took a pose that announced a guest. Otah wasn’t about to stick his hands out of the blanket.

  “Who?”

  “Farrer Dasin-cha,” the girl said.

  “Bring him here,” Otah said. “And some wine. Hot wine.”

  The girl took a pose that accepted the charge and turned to go.

  “Wait,” Otah said. “What’s your name?”

  “Toyani Vauatan, Most High,” she said.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty summers.”

  Otah nodded. In truth, she looked almost too young to be out of the nursery. And yet at her age, he had been on a ship halfway to the eastern islands, two different lives already behind him. He pointed out at the city.

  “It’s a different world now, Toyani-cha. Nothing’s going to stay as it was.”

  The girl smiled and took a pose that offered congratulations. Of course she didn’t understand. It was unfair to expect her to. Otah smiled and turned back to the city, the celebration. He didn’t see when she left. The wedding procession had just turned down the long, wide road that led to the riverfront when Farrer stepped out, the girl Toyani behind them bearing two bowls of wine that plumed with steam and a chair for the newcomer without seeming awkward or out of place. It was, Otah supposed, an art.

  “We’ve done it,” Farrer said when the girl had gone.

  “We have,” Otah agreed. “Not that I’ve stopped waiting for the next catastrophe.”

  “I think the last one will do.”

  Otah sipped his wine. The spirit hadn’t quite been cooked out of it, and the spices tasted rich and strange. He had been dreading this conversa
tion, but now that it had come, it wasn’t as awful as he’d feared.

  “The report’s come,” Otah said.

  “The first one, yes. Everyone on the High Council had a copy this morning. Just in time for the festivities. I thought it was rude at the time, but I suppose it gives us all more reason to get sloppy drunk and weep into our cups.”

  Otah took a pose of query simple enough for the Galt to follow.

  “Every city is in ruins except for Kirinton. They did something clever there with street callers and string. I don’t fully understand it. The outlying areas suffered, though not quite as badly. The first guesses are that it will take two generations just to put us back where we were.”

  “Assuming nothing else happens,” Otah said. Below, a fanfare was blaring.

  “You mean Eymond,” Farrer said. “They’re a problem, it’s true.”

  “Eymond. Eddensea, the Westlands. Anyone, really.”

  “If we had the andat…”

  “We don’t,” Otah said.

  “No, I suppose not,” Farrer said, sourly. “But to the point, how many of us are aware of that fact?”

  In the dim light of the brazier’s coals, Farrer’s face was the same dusky red as the moon in eclipse. The Galt smiled, pleased that he had taken Otah by surprise.

  “You and I know. The High Council. That half-bastard council you put together when you headed out into the wilderness. Ana. Danat. A few armsmen. All in all, I’d guess not more than three dozen people actually know what happened. And none of them is at present working for Eymond.”

  “You’re saying we should pretend to have an andat?”

  “Not precisely,” Farrer said. “As many people as already know, the story will come out eventually. But there might be a way to present it that still gave other nations pause. Send out letters of embassage that say the andat, though recovered, have been set aside and deny the rumors that certain deaths and odd occurrences are at all related to a new poet under the direction of the Empire.”

  “What deaths?”

  “Don’t be too specific about that,” Farrer said. “I expect they’ll supply the details.”