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

by Daniel Abraham

  Ana chuckled and wiped away a tear. Otah grinned and kept the smile in his voice when he went on.

  “He ends by saying that he loves you. And that he trusts you to do what’s right.”

  “You’re lying,” Ana said.

  Otah took a pose that denied an unjust accusation, then flapped his hands in annoyance. The physical language of the Khaiem was a difficult habit to put aside.

  “Why would I lie?” he asked.

  “To be polite? I don’t know. But my father? Farrer Dasin putting on paper that he trusts his little girl’s judgment? The stars would dance on treetops first. The wed-and-pregnant part sounded like him, though.”

  “Well,” Otah said, placing the folded page into her fingers. “He might surprise you. Keep this, and you can read it for yourself once we’ve fixed all this mess.”

  Ana took a pose that offered thanks. It wasn’t particularly well done.

  “You are always welcome,” Otah said.

  They sat in silence until Danat and the other water bearers returned. Then Otah left his seat to Danat and crawled into the sleeping tent, where, true to expectations, he shifted from discomfort to discomfort until the sun rose again.

  They reached Pathai at midday. Silk banners streamed from the towers and the throng that met them at the western arch cheered and sang and played flutes and drums. Men and women hung from lattices of wood and rope to get a better view of Otah and Danat, their armsmen, the steamcarts. The air was thick with the scents of honeyed almonds and mulled wine and bodies. The armsmen of Pathai met them, made an elaborate ritual obeisance, and then cleared a path for them until they reached the palaces.

  A feast had been prepared, and baths. Servants descended on the group like moths, and Otah submitted to being only emperor once again.

  The celebration of his arrival was as annoying as it was pointless. Dish after dish of savory meat and sweet bread, hot curry and chilled fish, all accompanied by the best acrobats and musicians that could be scraped together with little notice. And Ana Dasin sitting at his table, her empty eyes a constant, unintentional reproach. Finding Maati and this new poet was going to be like hunting quail with a circus. He would have to do something to let them move discreetly. He didn’t yet know what that would be.

  The rooms he’d been given were blond stone, the ceiling vaulted and set with tiles of indigo and silver. A thousand candles set the air glowing and filled his senses with the scent of hot wax and perfume. It was, he thought, the sort of space that was almost impossible to keep warm. Danat, Ana, and the armsmen were all being seen to elsewhere. He sat on a long, low couch and hoped that Danat, at least, would be able to get out into the city and make a few inquiries.

  When a servant came and announced Sian Noygu, Otah almost refused the audience before he recognized it as the name Idaan traveled under. His heart racing, he let himself be led to a smaller chamber of carved granite and worked gold. His sister sat between a small fountain and a shadowed alcove. She wore a gray robe under a colorless cloak, and her boots were soft with wear. A long scratch across the back of her hand was the dark red of scabs and old blood.

  The servant made his obeisance and retreated. Otah took a pose of greeting appropriate to close family, and Idaan tilted her head like a dog hearing an unfamiliar sound.

  “I had intended to meet you when you came into the city. I didn’t know you were planning a festival.”

  “I wasn’t,” Otah said, sitting beside her. The fountain clucked and burbled. “Traveling quietly seems beyond me these days.”

  “It was all as subtle as a rockslide,” Idaan agreed. “But there’s some good in it. The louder you are, the less people are looking at me.”

  “You’ve found something then?” Otah asked.

  “I have,” Idaan said.

  “What have you learned?”

  A different voice answered from the darkness of the alcove at Idaan’s side. A woman’s voice.

  “Everything,” it said.

  Otah rose to his feet. The woman who emerged was young: not more than forty summers and the white in her hair still barely more than an accent. She wore robes as simple as Idaan’s but held herself with a mixture of angry pride and uncertainty that Otah had become familiar with. Her pupils were gray and sightless, but her eyes were the almond shape that marked her as a citizen of the Empire. This was a victim of the new poet, but she was no Galt.

  “Idaan-cha knows everything,” the blind woman said again, “because I told it to her.”

  Idaan took the woman’s hand and stood. When she spoke, it was to her companion.

  “This is my brother, the Emperor,” Idaan said, then turned to him. “Otah-cha, this is Ashti Beg.”

  20

  When before Maati had considered death, it had been in terms of what needed to be done. Before he died, he had to master the grammars of the Dai-kvo, or find his son again, or most recently see his errors with Sterile made right. It was never the end itself that drew his attention. He had reduced his mortality to the finish line of a race. This and this and this done, and afterward, dying would be like rest at the end of a long day.

  With Eiah’s pronouncement, his view shifted. No list of accomplishments could forgive the prospect of his own extinction. Maati found himself looking at the backs of his hands, the cracked skin, the dark blotches of age. He was becoming aware of time in a way he never had. There was some number of days he would see, some number of nights, and then nothing. It had always been true. He was no more or less a mortal being because his blood was slowing. Everything born, dies. He had known that. He only hadn’t quite understood. It changed everything.

  It also changed nothing. They traveled slowly, keeping to lesser-known roads and away from the larger low towns. Often Eiah would call the day’s halt with the sun still five hands above the horizon because they had found a convenient wayhouse or a farm willing to board them for the night. The prospect of letting Maati sleep in cold air was apparently too much for her to consider.

  On the third day, Eiah had parted with the company, rejoining them on the fifth with a cloth sack of genuinely unpleasant herbs. Maati suffered a cup of the bitter tea twice daily. He let his pulses be measured against one another, his breath smelled, his fingertips squeezed, the color of his eyes considered and noted. It embarrassed him.

  The curious thing was that, despite all his fears and Eiah’s attentions, he felt fine. If his breath was short, it was no shorter than it had been for years. He tired just when he’d always tired, but now six sets of eyes shifted to him every time he grunted. He dismissed the anxiety when he saw it in the others, however closely he felt it himself.

  He would have expected the two feelings to balance each other: the dismissive self-consciousness at any concern over him and the presentiment of his death. He did not understand how he could be possessed by both of them at the same time, and yet he was. It was like there were two minds within him, two Maati Vaupathais, each with his own thoughts and concerns, and no compromise between them was required.

  For the most part, Maati could ignore this small failure to be at one with himself. Each morning, he rose with the others, ate whatever rubbery eggs or day-old meat the waykeeper had to offer, choked down Eiah’s tea, and went on as usual. The autumn through which they passed was crisp and fragrant of new earth and rotting leaves. The snow that had plagued the school had also visited the foothills and shallow passes that divided the western plains of Pathai from the river valleys of the east, but it was rarely more than three fingers deep. In many places, the sun was still strong enough to banish the pale mourning colors to the shadows.

  With rumors that Otah himself had taken up the hunt, they kept a balance between the smaller, less-traveled roads and those that were wider and better maintained. So far from the great cities, the ports and trading posts, there were no foreign faces to be seen. None of the handful of adventurous Westlands women had made their way here to try for a Khaiate husband and a better life. There was no better life
to be had here. The lack of children, of babies, gave the towns a sense of tolerating a slow plague. It was only the world. It no longer troubled Maati. This was another journey in a life that seemed to be woven of distance. Apart from the overattentiveness of his traveling companions, there was no reason to reflect on his mortality; he had no cause to consider that these small chores and pleasantries of the road might be among his last.

  It was only days later, at the halfway point between the school and the river Qiit, that without intending it, Eiah called the question.

  They had stopped at a wayhouse at the side of a broad lake. A wide wooden deck stood out over the water, the wind pulling small waves to lap at its pilings. A flock of cranes floated and called to one another at the far shore. Maati sat on a three-legged stool, his traveling cloak still wrapping his shoulders. He looked out on the shifting water, the gray-green trees, the hazy white sky. He heard Eiah behind him, her voice coming from the main building as if it were coming from a different world. When she came out, he heard her footsteps and the leather physician’s satchel bumping against her hip. She stopped just behind him.

  “They’re beautiful,” he said, nodding at the cranes.

  “I suppose,” Eiah said.

  “Vanjit? The others?”

  “In their rooms,” Eiah said, a trace of satisfaction in her voice. “Three rooms, and all of them private. Meals this evening and before we go. One length of silver and two copper.”

  “You could have paid them the normal price,” Maati said.

  “My pride won’t allow it,” Eiah said. She stepped forward and knelt. “There was something. If you’re not tired.”

  “I’m an old man. I’m always tired.”

  Her eyes held some objection, but she didn’t give it voice. Instead she unbuckled her satchel, rooted in it for a moment, and drew out a paper. Maati took it, frowning. The characters were familiar, a part of Eiah’s proposed binding, but the structure of them was different. Awkward.

  “It isn’t perfect,” Eiah said. “But I thought we could consider it. I’ve mentioned the idea to Large Kae, and she has some ideas about how to make it consonant with the grammar.”

  Maati lifted his hand, palm out, and stopped the flow of words. The cranes called, their harsh voices crossing the water swifter than arrows. He sounded out each phrase, thinking through the logic as he did.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “This is the strongest part of the binding. Why would you change…”

  And then he saw her intentions. Each change she had made broadened the concept of wounds. Of harm. Of damage. And there, in the corner of the page, was a play on the definitions of blood. He folded the page, slipping it into his sleeve.

  “No,” he said.

  “I think it can—”

  “No,” Maati said again. “What we’re doing is hard enough. Making it fit the things that Sterile has done is enough. If you try to make everything fit into it, you’ll end with more than you can hold.”

  Eiah sighed and looked out across the water. The wind plucked a lock of hair, the black threads dancing on her cheek. He could see in her expression that she’d anticipated all he would say. And more, that she agreed. He put a hand on her shoulder. For a moment, neither spoke.

  “Once we reach the river, things will move faster,” Eiah said. “With the Galts’ paddle boats, we should reach Utani before the worst cold comes.” To their left, a fish leaped from the water and splashed back down. “Once I have you someplace with real physicians, I’m going to try the binding.”

  Maati drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. A sick dread un-curled in his belly.

  “You’re sure?” he said.

  Eiah took a pose that confirmed her resolve and also chided him. When he replied with one that expressed mild affront, she spoke.

  “You sit here like something from a philosopher’s daydream, refusing to let me even try to mend your heart,” she said, “and then you start quaking like an old woman when I’m the one at risk.”

  “‘Quaking like an old woman’?” Maati said. “I think we haven’t known the same old women. And of course I’m concerned for you, Eiah-kya. How could I not be? You’re like a daughter to me. You always have been.”

  “I might not fail,” she said. And a moment later, rose, kissed his hair, and walked in, leaving him alone with the world. Maati sank deeper into his cloak, determined to watch the birds until his mind calmed. Half a hand later, he went inside the building, muttering to himself.

  The evening meal was a soup of ground lentils, rice, and a sweet, hot spice that made Maati’s eyes water. He paid an extra length of copper for a second bowl. The commons with its low ceilings and soot-stained walls also served as a teahouse for the nearby low towns. By the time he’d finished eating, local men and women had begun to appear. They took little notice of the travelers, which suited Maati quite well.

  In less interesting times, the table talk would have turned on matters of weather, of crop yields and taxes and the small jealousies and dramas that humanity drew about itself in all places and times. Instead, they spoke of the Emperor, his small caravan on its way to Pathai or else Lachi or else some unknown destination in the Westlands. He was going to broker a new contract for women, now that the Galts had been destroyed, or else retrieve the new poet and march back in triumph. He had been secretly harboring the poets all this time, or had become one himself. Nothing that approached the truth. Small Kae, listening to two of the local men debate, looked on the edge of laughter the whole evening.

  As the last of the sunset faded, a pair of the older men took up drums, and the tables nearest the fire grate were pulled aside to clear space for dancers. Maati was prevented from excusing himself from the proceedings only by Vanjit’s appearance at his side.

  “Maati-kvo,” she murmured, her hand slipping around his arm, “I spoke to Eiah-kya. I know it was wrong of me to interfere, but please, please, will you reconsider?”

  The older of the two men set up a low throbbing beat on his drum. The second drummer closed his eyes and bobbed his head almost in time with the first. Maati suspected that both were drunk.

  “This isn’t the place to discuss it,” Maati said. “Later, we can…”

  “Please,” Vanjit said. Her breath wasn’t free from the scent of distilled wine. Her cheeks were flushed. “Without you, none of us matter. You know that. You’re our teacher. We need you. And if Eiah…she pays its price, you know that I’ll be there. I can do the thing. I’ve already managed once, and I know that I could do it again.”

  The second drum began, dry and light and not quite on its mark. No one seemed to be paying attention to the old man in the corner or the young woman attached to his arm. Maati leaned close to Vanjit, speaking low.

  “What is it, Vanjit-kya?” he asked. “This is the second time you’ve offered to bind Wounded. Why do you want that?”

  She blinked and released his arm. Her eyes were wider, her mouth thin. It was his turn to take her arm, and he did, leaning close enough to speak almost into her ear.

  “I have known more poets than I can count,” he said. “Only a few held the andat, and none of them took joy in it. My own first master, Heshai of Saraykeht, planned out a second binding of Seedless. It could never have worked. It was too near what he’d done before, and part of Sterile’s failure was that I borrowed too much from his design.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Maati-kvo,” Vanjit said. Three women had stepped into the dancing space and were thumping in a simple pattern, keeping time with one drum or the other.

  “I mean that everyone wants a second chance,” Maati said. “Clarity-of-Sight…”

  Maati bit down, glancing to see if anyone had heard him. The music and the dance were the focus of the room.

  “The little one,” Maati said, more quietly, “isn’t what you’d hoped. But neither would the next one be.”

  He might just as well have slapped her. Vanjit’s face went white, and she stood so quickl
y the bench scraped out from under her. By the time Maati rose, she was halfway to the door leading out to the stables and courtyard, and when he reached her, they were outside in the chill. A thin fog blurred the lantern hanging above the wayhouse door.

  “Vanjit!” Maati called, and she turned back, her face a mask of pain.

  “How could you say that? How could you say those things to me?” she demanded. “You had as much to do with that binding as I did. You are just as much responsible for him. I offered to take Eiah’s place because someone would have to, not because it’s something that I want. I love him. He’s my boy, and I love him. He is everything I’d hoped. Everything!”

  “Vanjit—”

  She was weeping openly now, her voice high, thin, and wailing.

  “And he loves me. No matter what you say, I know he does. He’s my boy, and he loves me. How could you think that I’d want a second chance? I offered this for you!”

  He took her sleeve in his fist, and she pulled back, yelping. She tried to turn away, but he would not let her.

  “Listen to me,” he said sternly. “You don’t need to tell me how deeply you—”

  Vanjit snarled, her lips pulled back from her teeth like a pit dog’s. She pulled away sharply, and Maati stumbled, falling to his knees. When he rose, he could hear her running footsteps fading into the dark, but the fog had thickened so badly that he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face.

  Except that, of course, it hadn’t.

  He stood still, heart racing, hands trembling. The raucous sounds of the dance came from behind him and to the left. The poorly played drums became his polestar. He turned and made his slow, careful way back toward the wayhouse. The ground was rough under his feet, gravel and weeds taking him at slightly different angles with every step.