The Price Of Spring(13)

Ana Dasin, the Galt who would one day be Empress of the Khaiem, reminded Otah of a rabbit. Her huge, brown eyes and small mouth looked perpetually startled. She wore a gown of blue as pale as a robin's egg that didn't fit her complexion and a necklace of raw gold that did. She would have seemed meek, except that there was something of her mother in the line of her jaw and the set of her shoulders.

All he knew of her had come from court gossip, Balasar Gice's comments, and the trade of formal documents that had flowed by the crate once the agreements were made. It was difficult to believe that this was the girl who had beaten her own tutor at numbers or written a private book of etiquette that had been the scandal of its season. She was said to have ridden horses from the age of four; she was said to have insulted the son of an ambassador from Eddensea to his face and gone on to make her case so clearly that the insulted boy had offered apology. She had climbed out windows on ropes made from stripped tapestry, had climbed the walls of the palaces of Acton dressed as an urchin boy, had broken the hearts of men twice her age. Or, again, perhaps she had not. He had heard a great deal about her, and knew nothing he could count as truth. It was to her he made his first greeting.

"Ana-cha," he said. "I hope I find you well."

"Thank you, Most High," she said, her voice so soft, Otah halfwondered whether he'd understood. "And you also."

"Emperor," Farrer Dasin said in his own language.

"Councilman Dasin," Otah said. "You are kind to invite me."

Farrer's nod made it clear that he would have preferred not to. The singers above them reached the end of one song, paused, and launched into another. Issandra stepped forward smiling and rested her hand on Otah's arm.

"Forgive my husband," she said. "He was never fond of shipboard life. And he spent seven years as a sailor."

"I hadn't known that," Otah said.

"Fighting Eymond," the councilman said. "Sank twelve of their ships. Burned their harbor at Cathir."

Otah smiled and nodded. He wondered how his own history as a fisherman would be received if he shared it now. He chose to leave the subject behind.

"The weather is treating us gently," Otah said. "We will be in Saraykeht before summer's end."

He could see in all their faces that it had been the wrong thing. The father's jaw tightened, his nostrils flared. The mother's smile lost its sharp corners and her eyes grew sad. Ana looked away.

"Come see what they've done with the kitchens, Most High," Issandra said. "It's really quite remarkable."

After a short tour of the ship, Issandra released him, and Otah made his way to the dais that was intended for him. Other guests arrived from Galtic ships and the utkhaiem, each new person greeting the councilman and his family, and then coming to Otah. He had expected to see a division among them: the Galts resentful and full of barely controlled rage much like Fatter Dasin, and Otah's own people pleased at the prospects that his treaty opened for them. Instead, he saw as the guests came and went, as the banquet was served, as priests of Galt intoned their celebratory rites, that opinions were more varied and more complex.

At the opening ceremony, the divisions were clear. Here, the robes of the Khaiem, there the tunics and gowns of the Galts. But very quickly, the people on the deck began to shift. Small groups fell into discussion, often no more than two or three people. Otah's practiced eye could pick out the testing smile and almost flirtatious laughter of men on the verge of negotiation. And as the evening progressed-candles burning down and being replaced, slow courses of wine and fish and meat and pastry making their way from the very cleverly built kitchens to the gently shifting deck-as many Galts as utkhaiem had the glint in their eyes that spoke of sensed opportunity. Larger groups formed and broke apart, the proportions of their two nations seeming almost even. Otah felt as if he'd stirred a muddy pool and was now seeing the first outlines of the new forms that it might take.

And yet, some groups were unmoved. Two clusters of Galts never budged or admitted in anyone wearing robes, but also a fair-sized clot of people of the cities of the Khaiem sat near the far rail, their backs to the celebration, their conversation almost pointedly relying on court poses too subtle for foreigners to follow.

Women, Otah noted. The people of his nation whose anger was clearest in their bodies and speech tended to be women. He thought of Eiah, and cool melancholy touched his heart. Trafficking in wombs, she would have called it. To her, this agreement would be the clearest and most nearly final statement that what mattered about the women of the cities-about his own daughter-was whether they could bear. He could hear her voice saying it, could see the pain in the way she held her chin. He murmured his counterarguments, as if she were there, as if she could hear him.