A Shadow in Summer (The Long Price Quartet Book 1)

  Tor Books by Daniel Abraham

  >+
  The Long Price Quartet

  A Shadow in Summer

  * Winter Cities

  *Denotes forthcoming book

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  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  A SHADOW IN SUMMER: BOOK ONE OF THE LONG PRICE QUARTET

  Copyright © 2006 by Daniel Abraham

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Edited by James Frenkel

  Book design by Jane Adele Regina

  Maps by Jackie Aher

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Abraham, Daniel.

  A shadow in summer / Daniel Abraham.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”

  ISBN 0-765-31340-5 (acid-free paper)

  EAN 978-0-765-31340-9

  1. City and town life—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3601.B677S53 2006

  813’.6—dc22

  2005016832

  First Edition: March 2006

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Fred Saberhagen,

  the first of my many teachers

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Romantic visions aside, writing is not something often done in isolation. I would like to thank everyone whose input made this book better than I could have done alone. Especially Walter Jon Williams, Melinda Snodgrass, Steve and Jan Stirling, Terry England, John Miller, Sally Gwylan, Yvonne Coats, Emily Mah, Sage Walker, Victor Milan, George R.R. Martin, and all the various members of the New Mexico Critical Mass Workshop.

  Thanks are also due to Shawna McCarthy for her faith in the project, and Jim Frenkel for his hard work and kind attentions to a first-time novelist.

  But I am especially grateful to Connie Willis, who gave me my first advice on the book, Tom Doherty, who gave me my last, and Katherine Abraham, without whom it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as fun in between.

  PROLOG

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  “Again,” Tahi-kvo barked. “And correctly!”

  “We are honored by your presence, most high Dai-kvo,” Otah said sweetly, as if it were the first time he had attempted the ritual phrase. The old man sitting before the fire considered him closely, then adopted a pose of acceptance. Tahi-kvo made a sound of satisfaction in the depths of his throat.

  Otah bowed, holding still for three breaths and hoping that Tahi-kvo wouldn’t strike him for trembling. The moment stretched, and Otah nearly let his eyes stray to his teacher. It was the old man with his ruined whisper who at last spoke the words that ended the ritual and released him.

  “Go, disowned child, and attend to your studies.”

  Otah turned and walked humbly out of the room. Once he had pulled the thick wooden door closed behind him and walked down the chill hallway toward the common rooms, he gave himself permission to touch his new wound.

  The other boys were quiet as he passed through the stone halls of the school, but several times their gazes held him and his new shame. Only the older boys in the black robes of Milahkvo’s disciples laughed at him. Otah took himself to the quarters where all the boys in his cohort slept. He removed the ceremonial gown, careful not to touch it with blood, and washed the wound in cold water. The stinging cream for cuts and scrapes was in an earthenware jar beside the water basin. He took two fingers and slathered the vinegar-smelling ointment onto the open flesh of his ear. Then, not for the first time since he had come to the school, he sat on his spare, hard bunk and wept.

  “THIS BOY,” THE DAI-KVO SAID AS HE TOOK UP THE PORCELAIN BOWL OF TEA. Its heat was almost uncomfortable. “He holds some promise?”

  “Some,” Tahi allowed as he leaned the lacquered rod against the wall and took the seat beside his master.

  “He seems familiar.”

  “Otah Machi. Sixth son of the Khai Machi.”

  “I recall his brothers. Also boys of some promise. What became of them?”

  “They spent their years, took the brand, and were turned out. Most are. We have three hundred in the school now and forty in the black under Milah-kvo’s care. Sons of the Khaiem or the ambitious families of the utkhaiem.”

  “So many? I see so few.”

  Tahi took a pose of agreement, the cant of his wrists giving it a nuance that might have been sorrow or apology.

  “Not many are both strong enough and wise. And the stakes are high.”

  The Dai-kvo sipped his tea and considered the fire.

  “I wonder,” the old man said, “how many realize we are teaching them nothing.”

  “We teach them all. Letters, numbers. Any of them could take a trade after they leave the school.”

  “But nothing of use. Nothing of poetry. Nothing of the andat.”

  “If they realize that, most high, they’re halfway to your door. And for the ones we turn away . . . It’s better, most high.”

  “Is it?”

  Tahi shrugged and looked into the fire. He looked older, the Dai-kvo thought, especially about the eyes. But he had met Tahi as a rude youth many years before. The age he saw there now, and the cruelty, were seeds he himself had cultivated.

  “When they have failed, they take the brand and make their own fates,” Tahi said.

  “We take away their only hope of rejoining their families, of taking a place at the courts of the Khaiem. They have no family. They cannot control the andat,” the Dai-kvo said. “We throw these boys away much as their fathers have. What becomes of them, I wonder?”

  “Much the same as becomes of anyone, I imagine. The ones from low families of the utkhaiem are hardly worse off than when they came. The sons of the Khaiem . . . once they take the brand, they cannot inherit, and it saves them from being killed for their blood rights. That alone is a gift in its way.”

  It was true. Every generation saw the blood of the Khaiem spilled. It was the way of the Empire. And in times when all three of a Khai’s acknowledged sons slaughtered one another, the high families of the utkhaiem unsheathed their knives, and cities were caught for a time in fits of violence from which the poets held themselves apart like priests wars at only the price of everything they had known in their short lives. And yet…

  “Disgrace is a thin gift,” the Dai-kvo said.

  Tahi, his old student who had once been a boy like thes
e, sighed.

  “It’s what we can offer.”

  THE DAI-KVO LEFT IN THE MORNING JUST AFTER DAWN, STEPPING THROUGH the great bronze doors that opened only for him. Otah stood in the ranks of his cohort, still holding a pose of farewell. Behind him, someone took the chance of scratching—Otah could hear the shifting sound of fingers against cloth. He didn’t look back. Two of the oldest of Milah-kvo’s black robes pulled the great doors closed.

  In the dim winter light that filtered through high-set, thin windows, Otah could see the bustle of the black robes taking charge of the cohorts. The day’s tasks varied. The morning might be spent working in the school—repairing walls or washing laundry or scraping ice from the garden walkways that no one seemed to travel besides the boys set to tend them. The evening would be spent in study. Numbers, letters, religion, history of the Old Empire, the Second Empire, the War, the cities of the Khaiem. And more often these last weeks, one of the two teachers would stand at the back of the room while one of the black robes lectured and questioned. Milah-kvo would sometimes interrupt and tell jokes or take the lecture himself, discussing things the black robes never spoke of. Tahi-kvo would only observe and punish. All of Otah’s cohort bore the marks of the lacquered stick.

  Riit-kvo, one of the oldest of the black robes, led Otah and his cohort to the cellars. For hours as the sun rose unseen, Otah swept dust from stones that seemed still cold from the last winter and then washed them with water and rags until his knuckles were raw. Then Riit-kvo called them to order, considered them, slapped one boy whose stance was not to his standards, and marched them to the dining hall. Otah looked neither forward nor back, but focused on the shoulders of the boy ahead of him.

  The midday meal was cold meat, yesterday’s bread, and a thin barley soup that Otah treasured because it was warm. Too soon, Riit called them to wash their bowls and knives and follow him. Otah found himself at the front of the line—an unenviable place—and so was the first to step into the cold listening room with its stone benches and thin windows that had never known glass. Tahi-kvo was waiting there for them.

  None of them knew why the round-faced, scowling teacher had taken an interest in the cohort, though speculations were whispered in the dark of their barracks. The Dai-kvo had chosen one of them to go and study the secrets of the andat, to become one of the poets, gain power even higher than the Khaiem, and skip over the black robes of Milah-kvo entirely. Or one of their families had repented sending their child, however minor in the line of succession, to the school and was in negotiation to forgo the branding and take their disowned son back into the fold.

  Otah had listened, but believed none of the stories. They were the fantasies of the frightened and the weak, and he knew that if he clung to one, it would shatter him. Dwelling in the misery of the school and hoping for nothing beyond survival was the only way to keep his soul from flying apart. He would endure his term and be turned out into the world. This was his third year at the school. He was twelve now, and near the halfway point of his time. And today was another evil to be borne as the day before and the day ahead. To think too far in the past or the future was dangerous. Only when he let his dreams loose did he think of learning the secrets of the andat, and that happened so rarely as to call itself never.

  Riit-kvo, his eyes on the teacher at the back as much as on the students, began to declaim the parable of the Twin Dragons of Chaos. It was a story Otah knew, and he found his mind wandering. Through the stone arch of the window, Otah could see a crow hunched on a high branch. It reminded him of something he could not quite recall.

  “Which of the gods tames the spirits of water?” Riit-kvo snapped. Otah pulled himself back to awareness and straightened his spine.

  Riit-kvo pointed to a thick-set boy across the room.

  “Oladac the Wanderer!” the boy said, taking a pose of gratitude to one’s teacher.

  “And why were the spirits who stood by and neither fought with the gods nor against them consigned to a lower hell than the servants of chaos?”

  Again Riit-kvo pointed.

  “Because they should have fought alongside the gods!” the boy shouted.

  It was a wrong answer. Because they were cowards, Otah thought, and knew he was correct. Tahi’s lacquered rod whirred and stuck the boy hard on the shoulder. Riit-kvo smirked and returned to his story.

  After the class, there was another brief work detail for which Tahi-kvo did not join them. Then the evening meal, and then the end of another day. Otah was grateful to crawl into his bunk and pull the thin blanket up to his neck. In the winter, many of the boys slept in their robes against the cold, and Otah was among that number. Despite all this, he preferred the winter. During the warmer times, he would still wake some mornings having forgotten where he was, expecting to see the walls of his father’s home, hear the voices of his older brothers—Biitrah, Danat, and Kaiin. Perhaps see his mother’s smile. The rush of memory was worse than any blow of Tahi-kvo’s rod, and he bent his will toward erasing the memories he had of his family. He was not loved or wanted in his home, and he understood that thinking too much about this truth would kill him.

  As he drifted toward sleep, Riit-kvo’s harsh voice murmuring the lesson of the spirits who refused to fight spun through his mind. They were cowards, consigned to the deepest and coldest hell.

  When the question came, his eyes flew open. He sat up. The other boys were all in their cots. One, not far from him, was crying in his sleep. It was not an unusual sound. The words still burned in Otah’s mind. The coward spirits, consigned to hell.

  And what keeps them there? his quiet inner voice asked him. Why do they remain in hell?

  He lay awake for hours, his mind racing.

  THE TEACHERS’ QUARTERS OPENED ON A COMMON ROOM. SHELVES LINED the walls, filled with books and scrolls. A fire pit glowed with coals prepared for them by the most honored of Milah-kvo’s black-robed boys. The wide gap of a window—glazed double to hold out the cold of winter, the heat of the summer—looked out over the roadway leading south to the high road. Tahi sat now, warming his feet at the fire and staring out into the cold plain beyond. Milah opened the door behind him and strode in.

  “I expected you earlier,” Tahi said.

  Milah briefly took a pose of apology.

  “Annat Ryota was complaining about the kitchen flue smoking again,” he said.

  Tahi grunted.

  “Sit. The fire’s warm.”

  “Fires often are,” Milah agreed, his tone dry and mocking. Tahi managed a thin smile as his companion took a seat.

  “What did he make of your boys?” Tahi asked.

  “Much the same as last year. They have seen through the veil and now lead their brothers toward knowledge,” Milah said, but his hands were in a pose of gentle mockery. “They are petty tyrants to a man. Any andat strong enough to be worth holding would eat them before their hearts beat twice.”

  “Pity.”

  “Hardly a surprise. And yours?”

  Tahi chewed for a moment at his lower lip and leaned forward. He could feel Milah’s gaze on him.

  “Otah Machi disgraced himself,” Tahi said. “But he accepted the punishment well. The Dai-kvo thinks he may have promise.”

  Milah shifted. When Tahi looked over, the teacher had taken a pose of query. Tahi considered the implicit question, then nodded.

  “There have been some other signs,” Tahi said. “I think you should put a watch over him. I hate to lose him to you, in a way.”

  “You like him.”

  Tahi took a pose of acknowledgement that held the nuance of a confession of failure.

  “I may be cruel, old friend,” Tahi said, dropping into the familiar, “but you’re heartless.”

  The fair-haired teacher laughed, and Tahi couldn’t help but join him. They sat silent then for a while, each in his own thoughts. Milah rose, shrugged off his thick woolen top robe. Beneath it he still wore the formal silks from his audience yesterday with the Dai-kvo. Tahi poured the
m both bowls of rice wine.

  “It was good to see him again,” Milah said sometime later. There was a melancholy note in his voice. Tahi took a pose of agreement, then sipped his wine.

  “He looked so old,” Tahi said.

  OTAH’S PLAN, SUCH AS IT WAS, TOOK LITTLE PREPARATION, AND YET NEARLY three weeks passed between the moment he understood the parable of the spirits who stood aside and the night when he took action. That night, he waited until the others were asleep before he pushed off the thin blankets, put on every robe and legging he had, gathered his few things, and left his cohort for the last time.

  The stone hallways were unlit, but he knew his way well enough that he had no need for light. He made his way to the kitchen. The pantry was unlocked—no one would steal food for fear of being found out and beaten. Otah scooped double handfuls of hard rolls and dried fruit into his satchel. There was no need for water. Snow still covered the ground, and Tahi-kvo had shown them how to melt snow with the heat of their own bodies walking without the cold penetrating to their hearts.

  Once he was provisioned, his path led him to the great hall—moonlight from the high windows showing ghost-dim the great aisle where he had held a pose of obeisance every morning for the last three years. The doors, of course, were barred, and while he was strong enough to open them, the sounds might have woken someone. He took a pair of wide, netted snowshoes from the closet beside the great doors and went up the stairs to the listening room. There, the thin windows looked out on a world locked in winter. Otah’s breath plumed already in the chill.

  He threw the snowshoes and satchel out the window to the snow-cushioned ground below, then squeezed through and lowered himself from the outer stone sill until he hung by his fingertips. The fall was not so far.

  He dusted the snow from his leggings, tied the snowshoes to his feet by their thick leather thongs, took up the bulging satchel and started off, walking south toward the high road.

  The moon, near the top of its nightly arc, had moved the width of two thick-gloved hands toward the western horizon before Otah knew he was not alone. The footsteps that had kept perfect time with his own fell out of their pattern—as intentional a provocation as clearing a throat. Otah froze, then turned.