The Price Of Spring(86)

She shook the thing once, hard enough to make the oversized head snap back. The tiny mouth set itself into a shocked grimace and it began to wail. Vanjit looked about, but no one had seen the small violence between them. She pulled the andat back to her, cooing and rocking slowly back and forth while it whimpered and fought. Desolate tears tracked her cheeks. And were wiped away with a sleeve.

Maati wondered how often scenes like this one had passed without comment or notice. Many years before, he had cared for an infant himself, and the frustration of it was something he understood. This was something different. He thought of what it would have been to have a child that hated him, that wanted nothing more than to be free. Clarity-ofSight was all the longing that haunted Vanjit and all the anger that sustained her put into a being that would do whatever was needed to escape. Vanjit had been betrayed by the cruelty of the world, and now also her own desire made flesh.

At last she had the baby that had haunted her dreams. And it wanted to die.

Eiah spoke in his memory. What makes its imagine we can do good with these as our tools?





Chapter 19

Low towns clustered around the great cities of the Khaiem, small centers of commerce and farming, justice and healing. Men and women could live out their lives under the nominal control of the Khaiem or now of the Emperor and never pass into the cities themselves. They had low courts, road taxes, smiths and stablers, wayhouses and comfort houses and common meadows for anyone's use. He had seen them all, years before, when he had only been a courier. They were the cities of the Khaiem writ small, and as he passed through them with his armsmen, his son, and the Galtic half-stowaway, Otah saw all his fears made real.

Silences lay where children should have been playing street games. Great swings made from rope and plank hung from ancient branches that shadowed the common fields, no boys daring each other higher. As a child who had seen no more than twelve summers, Otah had set out on his own, competing with low-town boys for small work. With every low town he entered, his eyes caught the sorts of things he had done: roofs with thatch that wanted care, fences and stone walls in need of mending, cisterns grown thick and black with weeds that required only a strong back and the energy of youth to repair. But there were no boys, no girls; only men and women whose smiles carried a bewildered, permanent sorrow. The leaves on the trees had turned brown and yellow and fallen. The nights were long, and the dawns touched by frost.

The land was dead. He had known it. Being reminded brought him no joy.

They stopped for the night in a wayhouse nestled in a wooded valley. The walls were kiln-fired brick with a thick covering of ivy that the autumn chill had turned brown and brittle. News of his identity and errand had spread before him like a wave on water, making quiet investigation impossible. The keeper had cleared all his rooms before they knew where they meant to stop, had his best calf killed and hot baths drawn on the chance that Otah might stop to rest. Sitting now in the alcove of a room large enough to fit a dozen men, Otah felt his muscles slowly and incompletely unknotting. With the supplies carried on the steam wagons and the men shifting between tending the kilns and riding, Pathai was less than two days away. Without the Galtic machines, it would have been four, perhaps five.

Low clouds obscured moon and stars. When Otah closed the shutters against the cold night air, the room grew no darker. The great copper tub the keeper had prepared glowed in the light of the fire grate. The earthenware jar of soap beside it was half-empty, but at least Otah felt like his skin was his own again and not hidden under layers of dust and sweat. His traveling robes had vanished and he'd picked a simple garment of combed wool lined with silk. The voices of the armsmen rose through the floorboards. The song was patriotic and bawdy, and the drum that accompanied them kept missing the right time. Otah rose on bare feet and walked out to the stairs. No servants scuttled out of his way, and he noticed the absence.

Danat was not among the armsmen or out with the horses. It was only when Otah approached the room set aside for Ana Dasin that he heard his son's voice. The room was on the lower floor, near the kitchens. The floor there was stone. Otah's steps made no sound as he walked forward. Ana said something he couldn't make out, but when Danat answered, he'd come near enough to hear.

"Of course there are, it's only Papa-kya isn't one of them. When I was a boy, he told me stories from the First Empire about a half-Bakta boy. And he nearly married a girl from the eastern islands."

"When was that?" Ana asked. Otah heard a sound of shifting cloth, like a blanket being pulled or a robe being adjusted.

"A long time ago," Danat said. "Just after Saraykeht. He lived in the eastern islands for years after that. They build their marriages in stages there. He's got the first half of the marriage tattoo."