by N Lee Wood
She laughed, leaning back into the thick cushions. “Impolite!” Her laughter came from deep in her chest, rumbling and wet.
His face prickled with alarm. “But what does it mean, exactly?” he pressed as her laughter subsided.
She laboriously dragged in another lungful of pungent smoke. Smiling broadly, she shook her head in amazed disbelief. “It means, my poor ignorant child, you are both astoundingly lucky and standing nose deep in a large pond of watery pigshit. Or have I confused another of your colloquial expressions?”
“L’amae, please,” he persisted. “Have I screwed up again?”
“Not at all. You’ve been offered a proposal, sweet boy—and may I point out an extraordinary but favorable one—for matrimonial union with a High Family. By taking Kallah’s symbolic gift from her own hand, you’ve accepted. May I have the honor to be the first to offer you my sincere congratulations.”
“Oh God,” he breathed, his fears confirmed. “Kallah is the daughter of Pratha Eraelin Changriti.”
Yaenida reclined even deeper into the pillows, obviously amused by his situation. “Quite so,” she admitted.
“The Changriti pratha h’máy hates me,” he said, pronouncing the words with the distinctness he would use for a child. “Two days after that, she tried to have me murdered!”
The healing gash in his side twinged with the memory of the frantic struggle in the dark, the choking smell of bitter cinnamon in the cloth clamped over his nose, the blade scraping by his ear to impale the sleeping mat. Only the advantage of his size and strength as well as the skills learned as a boy growing up hard had saved him. The would-be assassin had vaulted through the small half-moon window, vanishing like a cat over the rooftops, leaving him crumpled on the floor and bleeding more from his nose than from the wound along his ribs. The pahlaqu guardian where he lived had been summoned by the hospital, and viewed the torn scrap of dark burgundy silk in his fist with zealous indifference, strongly advising him to forget the incident had ever happened. Yaenida echoed that opinion.
“An accusation I should be careful to speak of very discreetly, were I you,” she warned him. “If Pratha Eraelin dva Hadatha Changriti wanted you dead, you would be dead, and she would not appreciate your slanderous allegations of incompetence.”
“Then she was quite competent in scaring the hell out of me. I can’t marry her daughter. I would be living in the household of a woman who would make my life nothing but a large pond of watery pigshit.”
“But, Nathan,” she chided, nearly laughing, “you did accept.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing!” he protested, his hands gesturing for emphasis, breaking strict Vanar convention. The women in the corner looked up sharply. As two stood, Yaenida waved them away impatiently. He forced down his anxiety. Never show anger, never. He knew better. “How was I supposed to know what she was offering?” Nathan continued, keeping his voice low and his sweating palms on his thighs. “Isn’t there some way of explaining this to her? I can’t legally be held to agreements I didn’t know were being made, can I?”
She smiled at him pityingly, and he bit his lip to shut up. Ignorance of Vanar law, he’d already been well taught, was no excuse.
“Nate,” she said, using the intimate name he hadn’t heard from her since his imprisonment. The unexpected familiarity made his throat hurt. “Kallah is a respectable and influential member of a High Family, and you are in no position to be choosy. Believe me, you could do a lot worse.”
“I don’t have anything against Kallah Changriti, although she’s probably more interested in me because I’m ‘exotic’ rather than from any real affection. Surely it’s not my sparkling wit and charm. Come on, Yaenida, I can barely even talk with the girl!”
Yaenida raised one eyebrow, which he took for concurrence. “Isn’t there some way around this without breaking protocol or upsetting her? You’re the Nga’esha pratha h’máy, can’t you explain to her I didn’t understand what life would be like for me in Pratha Eraelin’s House?”
“The pratha h’máy of a High Family does not involve herself with the problems of naekulam,” she said ironically. “That would be too far beneath my dignity.”
He stared at her in disbelief.
She sighed. “Nobody cares about how unpleasant your life would be in the Changriti House, and I’m sure Kallah is well aware of what her mother is like. No doubt part of her reason for making such an absurd offer in the first place was to antagonize Eraelin. But your feelings are not important, and would not be of interest to anyone.”
Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, fighting the impulse to ball his hands into fists.
“It is a remarkable development, however,” Yaenida mused thoughtfully, speaking more to herself. “Although on reflection, not that absurd. You wouldn’t be any liability to business alliances. Kallah already has two kharvah from favorably positioned Families as well as a houseful of excellent sahakharae.”
“But I’m not a kharvah or a sahakharae.”
“Ah, but you are the irresistible combination of both!” she said, her eyes lighting up. “What is more tempting and seductive than the unique, especially when it’s safe? If she couldn’t acquire you as sahakharae, her only other option is marriage. There’s certainly nothing wrong with your seed, wonderfully exotic as it is, Nathan, but you are still naekulam, without Family. It is not unheard-of, but rare, for such an offer to be made to someone with so little to bring into a union. You should be delighted.”
“What if,” he said carefully, “it was explained to Kallah that I am only a stupid foreigner, that not only had I misunderstood but that I was already committed to marrying someone else?”
Her eyes were bird bright, sparkling in the sunlight. “I had forgotten about your sort, Nathan,” she said softly. “So very . . . passionate. A flair for the dramatic. Well, well, you have fallen in love with yet another of our fair young maidens, and are now trapped in the timeless predicament of love and rivalry? How entertaining.”
He held himself as rigorously erect as possible. “It is not a question of love, l’amae Yaenida. But if I am to ‘unite,’ if that’s the word for it, I would prefer doing so with a different House.”
“Tell me, dear boy,” she said, smiling broadly. Her teeth were smoke stained, the gums atrophied away from the roots. “Just to satisfy an old woman’s curiosity, who is this charming maiden who has warmed your blood and stolen your heart? Who is it you wish to wed?”
He sat back on his heels and hoped his face was unreadable. “You.” It took her a moment to react, then her eyes widened. She started to cough violently, strangling on the smoke and laughter competing for control of her lungs. The younger women stood, distrustful and alarmed, to be waved back by Yaenida’s impatient arm, bone-thin wrist snapping in the air, the bracelets jingling. She continued to laugh for a long minute, her eyes streaming, until Nathan flushed and looked down. The three slowly retook their seats, glaring suspiciously at him.
“Oh, Sweet Lady Mother!” Yaenida gasped, setting off another round of laughter, then wiped away the tears from her wizened cheeks. “Thank you, Nathan, I haven’t had such a thrill in years.”
He kept silent, his jaw clenched. She coughed lengthily, a deep, wet, chronic congestion, still chuckling.
She spoke in rapid Vanar, and one of the younger women left long enough to return with a glass of green-tinted water as another two knelt by her side. One fanned her face anxiously as the other tucked the fingers of one hand around Yaenida’s wrist while she studied the medical scanner in her other. Yaenida submitted impassively without even acknowledging her presence as the women loaded a medgun and pressed the muzzle against her upper arm. It hissed as Yaenida gulped the water noisily to ease her cough. He could smell the delicate scent of mint and medicinal bitters. Within a few minutes, her cough had eased and the color returned to her face.
“Come now, my love,” she finally rasped out, handing the empty glass back without looking at the women and wavin
g them away imperiously. Her attendants withdrew to the window reluctantly, hovering like flies around a corpse. “Am I supposed to believe you prefer these ancient bones to Kallah’s supple young flesh?”
She drew the edge of her embroidered tasmai away from her body, holding the elegant folds of cloth open just far enough to reveal the shadows of her slack breasts, the dry skin hanging in folds from brittle ribs, the glint of gray hair in the bony recess of her groin. The women around her murmured, puzzled. “Tell me you find me irresistible,” she said softly. “Tell me your blood runs hot with desire at the sight of this body. Could you really perform your duty as a kharvah on this worn carcass?” Her face was contorted in a smile of scorn and resigned loss.
He swallowed hard, and raised his head to stare unblinkingly into her eyes in clear breach of protocol. “Pratha Yaenida, were you to honor me as a member of your House, I would perform my duty in any manner you required, and would do so with pride and pleasure.” He hoped he sounded far more confident than he felt.
Her eyes narrowed as she drew the tasmai wrap back over her skeletal body protectively, her green-veined hands fussing with the intricate folds. “I almost believe you,” she said, and looked out of the windows at thin clouds skimming high in the afternoon blue. The younger women stared at them with perplexed expressions. “From anyone else, I would suspect such an audacious scheme was nothing more than brazen ambition and greed. But not from you.” She glanced back at him, her look as hard and cool as marble. “Explain yourself.”
He looked down at his hands still pressed against his thighs. “I have no one to talk to,” he finally answered. His throat hurt, as if trying to swallow against a stone lodged there.
She snorted. “Is that all?”
“For godsake, isn’t that enough?” he asked, and heard his own voice catch with repressed anger. “I’ve been on Vanar over a year, and I’m dying in this isolation! Living in a charity shelter isn’t all that much different from prison, Yaenida, and at least in prison I had you to talk to.”
“There are no prisons on Vanar.”
“I wasn’t ill, l’amae,” he said, knowing his resentment leaked out, “and the people asking me all those questions weren’t doctors.”
Her eyes watched him impassively as she worried the stem of the pipe with her teeth, squinting as tendrils of smoke escaped from her nostrils and curled past her face. He felt his frustration rising.
“My life is constant hell here. No one dares talk to me; they’re all too nervous even without that Changriti bich’chú stopping me in the street to keep me properly terrified.” She raised an eyebrow at his use of vulgar slang to refer to the Qsayati Vasant Subah, head of the Vanar security police. “Not that it matters since I can’t learn this damned language, with or without my tutor. I’m naeqili te rhowghá, and I know exactly what that means, she’s managed to teach me that much,” he said sharply at her surprise. “I’m in fact worse than the lowest of outcasts: everyone knows who I am, but I’m treated like some dangerous animal set loose by accident. I try and stay out of trouble, sitting around doing nothing until I’m out of my mind, but the instant I go out, I make one mistake after another. I have nowhere else to go, Yaenida, I need your help, please!” He was shouting, leaning forward on his knees as he gestured angrily toward her.
From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the younger women rise, snatching up her staff and striding toward them with protective hostility. He only knew one way to respond, and immediately “turtled,” elbows against knees, his forehead against the back of his hands pressed against the floor. He cursed inwardly, prepared for the blows, and hoped she’d at least spare his head.
He heard rather than saw the argument: a fast whipping of Vanar, one voice sharp, the other cracked with age but strong. Yaenida’s emaciated fist smacked against the cushions. The only words he caught were “Get out.” A fast padding of feet, the glimpse of satin-clad heels past his face, and the sudden silence pressed against his ears.
“Vultures,” Yaenida muttered. “I’m not dead yet.” She grunted as she shifted awkwardly on the pillows, then said, “Nathan, you look ridiculous. That position is for small children. Don’t be so damned idiotic. Get up off the floor and give me a hand.”
He was up instantly and helping her to her feet, her bony talon cold in his hand, her elbow in the other as frail as a stick. She was startlingly light: a decent puff of wind could have carried her off. He half carried her, her legs like stilts as she hobbled, to the wide windowsill, settling her on the ledge overlooking the garden. Crystal and bronze wind chimes hung from the corners of fluted roofs, their clear sound blending with trills of songbirds. The sun shone directly on her face, outlining every crease with unflattering clarity.
“Ah, Nathan,” she said gently, and stroked his cheek, her hand as smooth and dry as parchment. “You do tempt me, you do. Not a kind thing to do to an old woman in my condition.”
He caught her hand and brushed a kiss against her palm before he released it—a purely Hengeli gesture. She smiled and with a graceful motion invited him to sit on the ledge opposite her. When he hesitated, she said with mock seduction, “We’re alone, no one’s watching. We can do whatever we like.”
He wondered just how true that really was but settled his back against the stone across from her, one leg drawn up casually, hands laced around his knee. He was more grateful for this private familiarity and breach of propriety than he could have told her.
“Let me give you some advice,” she said, gazing away from him to the garden below. “I have had five husbands in my life, as well as any number of sahakharae. Sahakharae come and go, as sahakharae do, interchangeable amusing things. All but one of my kharvah have died. He’s old, like me, and we are comfortable with each other. We have had many children, our children have children, and we have even lived long enough to see our grandchildren’s grandchildren. Many dozens of them. He would not understand, and it would only upset him if I were at this late date to take a sixth kharvah, a young and handsome one at that.” She nodded toward the garden. “Genetic maintenance only goes so far, and I am nearing the end of my life. Appealing as I might find your offer, I prefer not to complicate what remains of my time with the sort of disruption and jealousy only the young have the stamina for.”
“It could be just a formality,” he pressed. “If I were part of your House, I could see you whenever you have the time to teach me to speak better Vanar, be somewhere safe long enough to learn what I need to adjust to this culture. I’d be no worse off when—” He stopped in embarrassment.
“—I die,” she finished serenely. “You can say it. Death is too intimate a companion for me to have any false inhibition about it.”
“Yaenida, I swear I won’t get in your way. I’ll stay in the corner of the kitchen, sleep in the attic, anywhere.” He hated the desperation in his voice and waved a hand at the edge of jungle stretching forever on the horizon beyond the villa walls. “Send me to one of the Nga’esha estates in Dravyam or Praetah. I’ll spend the entire day out there picking flowers and searching for svapnah seeds,” he joked, the anxiety in his chest straining his voice.
She chuckled, a dry husking sound. “Oh, no you won’t! And scandalize my neighbors? Indeed not.” Her smile vanished, old face solemn. “Nathan, you have the rare chance to marry with a young woman from a very good House. Take it. There is no future for you here.”
His disappointment tasted like acid, but he did his best to resist pleading with her. “I accept your decision,” he said, “although I can’t understand your reasons.”
“They are simple enough: I am an old woman. I will have no more children. Soon, I will die. My kharvah will be taken care of because he has daughters within this House whose duty it is to support him. You will not. Once I am dead, you would be turned out of the House by my daughters before my corpse was even cold.”
“And all the other men in your House, those there?” He nodded toward the figures barely visible beyond the screened
garden. “What happens to them?”
“Some of them belong to daughters. Some are unmarried sons and grandsons. Some are various cousins and nephews hanging around because it’s more pleasant here than with their own Families. Some are friends from different Houses who have práhsaedam, boyhood companions they wish to remain with. Some are merely guests from lesser Families hoping to attract the attention of a potential marriage partner. Others are sahakharae, and they will either find new favorites within the House, if they haven’t already, or leave for other, better pastures. At the worst, they all have Families of their own. You are none of these.”
She pulled the folds of her embroidered cloth over her knees, wincing as she tried to shift her spine into a more comfortable position. “If you turn down this offer, you would be worse off, that I can assure you. The Changriti are one of the Nine High Families—don’t forget that—and Kallah has already violated custom and defied her own pratha h’máy to offer marriage to a naeqili te rhowghá.” She smiled, and her quick scrutiny made him glance away. “Even such a delightful naeqili te rhowghá. Defiance of one’s family is not customary Vanar behavior. Kallah is taking an amazing risk for you, and you did accept, in front of witnesses. Spurned now and humiliated, Kallah would not ask you again at some later date.
“Privately, I’m sure Eraelin would be relieved if you refused, but publicly, you will have gravely insulted her Family. A lowly foreigner, without Family, rejecting the heir to the Changriti fortunes?” Yaenida shook her head with feigned dismay. “You will have antagonized a formidable House, and you’ve already discovered for yourself how extreme Eraelin’s ill will can be.” He shuddered. “I doubt you will ever be offered much better in the future. Without a union to a good House, without Family to protect you, your options would be limited. It is possible you could find a kaemahjah willing to train you to become sahakharae, of course. . . .” She shrugged as he paled.
“I’m not interested in being a whore,” he said stiffly.
