The Complete Ivory

by Doris Egan

  So far Ran hasn't blossomed into any super-neurosis, and the quirks he has are ones I'm prepared to live with. His distorted view of family, distorted in its way as mine, is like an anchor; he's unreasonably prejudiced in my favor, just because I had the good sense to marry him. So he's willing to put up with a great deal, too, and just assume that my intentions are good.

  That's an attitude worth gold. It's not why I married him, but I'm beginning to see that people get married for reasons that are different from the reasons they don't get divorced.

  All right, Theodora; you don't want anybody to take these treasures away from you. But what are you going to tell the Cormallon council next year?

  Not to mention the ghost of Ran's grandmother. I wished she'd been as forthcoming in her message to me; I wished I knew her exact words. I'd heard this "new blood" phrase before, but how I could be responsible for it was beyond me. Was I supposed to trust Grandmother, unstopper the healer's cap (I felt like a bottle of old wine in someone's cellar), and go for the marginal odds as Jack Lykon had laid them out? Grandmother must have been crazy. Because if there's anything to this heredity business at all, this hypothetical offspring wouldn't be getting any terrific genes for the manipulation of magic, not from me. And yet I was the item she wanted factored into the plan. Did this make sense?

  All right, assume I reported in to the council next year as barren. I'd chiseled the information out of Ran as to what would follow:

  "We'd adopt," he said.

  "Then what's all this about a second wife?"

  "Well… that's who we'd adopt from. It can be done on an entirely friendly basis, Theodora. You could even help pick her out—probably one of the Ducorts or the Cymins. Then when she, uh, produces, we write her a bank order, get a divorce—"

  "Forget that idea."

  "It's a purely businesslike arrangement, Theodora—"

  I'd given him a look that must have had more power than I'd realized because he shut up.

  I reexamined that exchange from a scholar's point of view: I didn't see how a child of Ran and one of Cormal-lon's usual allies would satisfy Grandmother's requirements for a new genetic infusion.

  I wished the old lady were alive. I wished I'd known her a little longer. I wished the Cormallons weren't so damned secretive.

  The cart belonging to the Kenris Training School was piled high with goodies, and with live cargo, too; a very small member of the school sat atop, facing backward, staring directly into my face. He looked to be about two or three years old, wearing a short quilted jacket of royal blue that somebody had buttoned for him right up to the neck.

  When he saw me focus on him, his dark eyes came alert. He zeroed in on my string bag, resting on the edge of the wagon.

  "What's that?" he said, pointing to my rose nectarine.

  "That's a rose nectarine," I replied.

  "What's that?" he said, pointing to a bundle of hand-woven napkins.

  "They're dinner napkins," I replied.

  "What's that?" he rapped out, pointing to my pellfruit— then to my phoenix-griffin dish—then to my colored papers.

  Each time I answered him he moved on to the next item. Is this kid making fun of me? I wondered, uncertainly. He can't even know what half these things are, but he keeps asking for more.

  Finally his exhausted looking guardian started to pull the cart away. The boy turned to me quickly and the words tumbled out. He jabbed his finger toward each item to illustrate his fact-checking. "That's a rose nectarine. That's dinnernapkins. That's a pellfruit. That's feenixgrif'n-dish.

  That's festival paper. That's red oranges. That's a penholder."

  "Yes!" I said, delighted.

  He didn't smile, but the solemn eyes looked pleased at his success.

  The cart moved away, past the spice line, out onto the path toward the park exit. I stared at it.

  Gracious lady?" asked the spice vendor. "You're next."

  "I'll be right back."

  I left the string bag on the wagon like any fool tourist and galloped after the shaky cart of the Kenris School troop.

  "Excuse me! Excuse me, gracious lady." The young woman stopped, with a facial expression that suggested she was too tired to even try to understand why I was bothering her.

  "Yes? Can I help you?"

  "I was just wondering. Are these children…" I searched frantically for the right word. What we usually translate into Standard as "adoption" refers to a series of ways people are taken into Houses, usually with a task in mind; I had no task in mind here. "Uh, are these kids available?"

  She said, politely, "If you require any sort of trade experience, we can probably supply it. For short-term assignments, we have contracts of even a day at a time. You have only to call on our registrar's office—"

  "No, no. Are they… for sale?"

  This phrasing she grasped. "Of course," she said.

  And they call us barbarians. "I'll have to get back to you on this," I said, "but meanwhile, can you tell me the name of the kid on top of the cart?"

  "Tirjon. We don't have any last names, of course, but there's an ID number: 428791."

  Numbers instead of surnames, just like my birthplace. I was practically nostalgic. "Four-two-eight-seven-nine-one," I said. "Many thanks. Four-two-eight-seven-nine-one." I walked away from the Kenris guardian and back toward the spice wagons. Four-two-eight-seven-nine-one. I needed a pen.

  Ran was waiting, having rescued my string bag. "Did I miss something?" he asked.

  "Ran, I've been thinking." As we spoke we started clean-

  ing, out the last three jars of maneroot from the vendor's display before they disappeared. "We ought to consider adoption. Regular adoption, I mean, none of this extra-wives stuff."

  He seemed puzzled. "Take in a cousin for fostering? It's done all the time, but I didn't know you were interested."

  "No, no. I mean bringing up a kid from scratch. Scratch from the Cormallon point of view, that is—didn't your grandmother used to talk about needing new blood?"

  "I don't think that's what she—"

  "There was a possible candidate here not two minutes ago. From the Kenris School."

  "A training school? Sweetheart—look, there are a lot of reasons why that would never work. First, the council would have a fit— What are you doing?"

  "I'm borrowing your pen." I slipped it out of his outer-robe pocket.

  "Theodora, you were born off-planet, you have no real grasp of how sensitive some issues—"

  He broke off, watching me flip open a corner of the decorator paper and write numbers on it. "Are you listening to me?" he asked.

  "Of course I am!" I said, offended. "You know I always do what you say."

  Not long after, autumn found us in Cormallon.

  I had passed the Poraths' house a few days earlier and peered in through the empty gate. A gold cat peered back at me from some long grass and another raised a sleepy head from the porch. Hadn't Jusik taken them along? Perhaps he'd tried and they'd chosen to take the first rest stop and return to familiar territory. Well, there were other pools here beside the dry one, and the Poraths still owned the property; I hoped sufficient mice and such could be found to keep them going.

  I supposed that we owed a debt of gratitude to the Poraths' Scythian yellow toms. If it weren't for them I never would have slept out on the porch, and never would have wondered what Auntie Jace was doing heading out through the garden at dawn. And who knows, without the whipping my sinuses took whenever we visited the household, my nose might have been more susceptible to Loden's perfume.

  So a few days later I was sitting in our own garden, in Cormallon, beside a small red pavilion open to the air. Kursek, one of the goldbands, had just brought us out tah, grinned, and left, taking the rocks over the stream instead of the bridge as his route back. It was a gorgeous day, with scudding clouds and cool breezes. In the privacy of the estate I'd thrown off my outerrobes and slipped into wide blue trousers and a tunic. Ran doesn't like trousers, on
men or women, because he thinks they're provincial; so I compromised by not wearing them as often as I liked and he compromised by not commenting when I did.

  Ran sighed happily from the boulder where he sat, pleased with his territory, his tah, his life. "Weather change coming," he said, after a good twenty minutes of silence, nodding toward the growing black fist on the horizon. There's often a series of thunderstorms in the area around Cormallon just before fall gets fully underway.

  After a while, I said, "You know, I hope we don't get involved in any more investigations."

  "I thought the idea appealed to your scholarly mind, tymon."

  I shrugged. "The process is fine. I just don't like the results."

  "Eliana was no friend of yours," he said, meeting my eyes.

  "No. I know that. But it's still a great deal of responsibility to take for another human being." At least five other human beings, actually. As I thought about Jusik, Auntie, Leel, Coalis… the servants, the cats… the abandoned house and garden…

  A freshening wind came up, ruing the sleeves of my tunic. I poured another cup of tah. The clouds were racing by now, autumn at their heels.

  "It was good for our reputation," said Ran, giving me what he would consider comfort if it were given to him.

  We'd discussed the idea of adopting a trocha child, but not, to my mind, exhaustively.

  I said, "Speaking of training schools—"

  "Great bumbling gods, haven't we finished that yet?"

  "Really, Ran," I said, surprised. "When I think I've run through all my arguments, I'll let you know."

  Two nights previously: Ran sitting on the bed, one sandal on and one off. "You don't understand the protocol, sweetheart. When trocha children get adopted, it's only as waymakers—an older sibling to help out with bringing up the firstborn."

  "Great. Then he can be a waymaker. It'll buy us more time from the council, we can say we want to give him a year or two to grow before we start on our own kids."

  "Tymon, are you listening? Trochas don't inherit. They grow up to be councillors, helpers-out, advisers, retainers. They don't take over the business."

  "If we handle it properly, in a few years he'd be so ingrained into Cormallon people won't know where he came from. Don't you see, Ran, all this within-the-family stuff the council harps on is just what your grandmother wanted to avoid?"

  He threw up his hands. "Only a barbarian would even think she could get away with this!"

  "That's exactly my point."

  Whereupon he gave up in disgust and went to look for his other sandal.

  It was growing darker. Suddenly the cool wind turned cold, and burst down on us, picking up the napkins Kursek had brought out and throwing them far into the bushes. I grabbed the tahpot and burner and Ran took the cups; we ran for the pavilion just as the skies opened.

  Sheets of water pounded against the roof. Lakes and rivers fell around us. We started to laugh.

  "What timing," said Ran.

  "How will we get back to the house?" I asked.

  We set our tah service down on the somewhat dirty pavilion floor. "Kursek will show up eventually," said Ran. "With umbrellas." I was standing against one of the wide pillars that held up the roof. He leaned over and kissed me. I kissed back.

  It was a change-in-the-weather kind of kiss. Not on this floor, I thought, though it wasn't a bad idea in itself…

  "Kursek," I said, at last. "Who knows when he'll show up?"

  "His hard luck," said Ran, paying no attention.

  "Can't you see him… ? Standing in the downpour, waiting for us to finish?"

  We started to laugh again and Ran stepped back. "Should we drink our tah, then?"

  "By all means."

  Ran never asked me—trocha child or no trocha child— what I planned to tell the Cormallon council next year. Fortunately Ivoran years give you a little more space to work with. As, the old story of the condemned man goes— perhaps you know it? The man reprieved by his king when he promised to teach a horse to sing— "In a year the king may die, or I may die, or the horse may die… or the horse may sing." Meanwhile, in my arguments with Ran, I stuck to the practicalities; mainly because it was far too embarrassing to admit that I'd been slain by the charm of a two-year-old.

  Look, I'm only a barbarian who never got her doctorate. I do what I can.

  I took my cup from Ran and thought of the capital; it seemed lifetimes away. "You know," I said, "we owe a debt of gratitude to those cats. When we go back to the city, you should bring them a present. Silken collars. A week of fresh fish."

  "A potful of mice."

  "Catnip. And don't forget to say thank you when you go."

  He set down his tah-cup on the railing of the pavilion. "You could go and thank them yourself."

  He smiled.

  "No I couldn't," I said.