by N Lee Wood
She hadn’t raised her voice, or so much as opened her eyes, but Nathan’s mouth had gone dry. “Hae’m, jah’nari l’amae.”
He waited for her to dismiss him, but she said nothing more, still basking in the sun as if asleep. After several minutes, he crept out as silently as he could, breathing a sigh of relief if that was to be the worst of his discipline.
While he studied with Mahdupi, Pratima spent much of her time swimming in the clear, tranquil waters of the bay, where the gravity didn’t affect her body with quite as much force. Several times, he caught sight of her from the balconies of the men’s house, her long hair streaming behind her like seaweed, her naked body shining pearl white. But even here, Nathan noticed, the Vanar avoided her, and she swam in a carefully isolated bubble, alone in a sea of people.
They fell into a quiet routine: she swam, he studied, they escaped whenever they could to the freedom of the rain forest. She helped him to map the unexplored forests, recording every new species of native plant he found, learned how to gather and process his samples. She laughed at him as he sweated and stumbled and whacked his way through dense undergrowth while she slipped through the shadowy rain forest as nimbly as a wraith. They took packed food with them, picnicking on the cold slopes of the mountain. He sat at the top of a cliff with his arms and legs wrapped around Pratima to warm her thin body, both of them shivering as they looked down at the distant fields and buildings of Dravyam huddled next to the sea.
“You love it here,” Pratima said quietly.
He held her tighter, kissing her hair. “I love anywhere I’m with you.” But he did find it sad the Vanar cared so little for the native land, willing to destroy what they could find no utilitarian purpose for.
Whenever they couldn’t get away from the estate, they retreated to a low stone bower overgrown with wisteria in a secluded corner of a garden. They had turned it into their private nest, sleeping nestled together with the scent of flowers around them. Even the children left them in peace, no one to disturb their tiny Eden, as fleeting and illusory as it was.
He had been with Mahdupi and a young sahakharae music teacher as they drilled him in the interminable marriage rituals he would be expected to carry out on his return to the Sabtú Nga’esha Estate when one of her taemora clerks hurried in, unannounced, and murmured in her ear. Mahdupi bent her head to listen without expression, although the taemora was clearly agitated. The sahakharae seemed oblivious to anything other than his kapotah lute, tuning the strings in the sudden lull.
When the taemora straightened, waiting expectantly, Mahdupi sat back on her heels, broad hands on her thighs, and sighed. She gazed at Nathan thoughtfully. He carefully kept his own gaze fixed over her shoulder, still holding his own lute awkwardly in his lap. He knew enough by now not to ask any questions, although inwardly he cringed, wondering what violation of Vanar rules he’d inadvertently committed this time.
As if reaching a decision, she stood from the floor and snapped her fingers at him. “Come with me, Nathan.” The sahakharae glanced up briefly, expressionless, but neither he nor the taemora followed as Mahdupi led him out of the room.
Mahdupi strode without looking back to see if he followed, her determined stride so quick he had to trot after her down the long hallway into an area he had never been. They reached a balcony already filled with excited spectators, a few women glancing at him in surprise. He realized he was deep in the women’s part of the House, where men were generally forbidden. Mahdupi jerked her head, a gesture for him to come out onto the balcony.
The gallery overlooked part of the main garden where what seemed like a small riot had broken out below. After a moment, he picked out two men, their sati torn and disheveled, circling each other as various allies orbited around them in the turmoil with bright, avid eyes. He was guiltily relieved the problem hadn’t been his after all. He’d also seen enough fights in his life to know this was not the usual docile posturing of men jockeying for position in the Family hierarchy. This was the real thing: pure raw emotion, real fury and hatred boiling over into the open.
A woman, a middle-aged taemora, pushed her way to lean over the balustrade beside him, her face flushed, watching the activity below intently. Aware of his stare, she glanced at him, the point of her tongue moistening her tips, and he could almost feel the sexual energy radiating from her. The woman smiled and turned her attention back on the men below.
The two men ripped off their sati, crouching in only torn and bloodied mati as they confronted each other. He recognized Rulayi, the man who had rowed him out to take samples of the plankton bloom. The younger man he knew only by sight, Santosh. Both were married to one of Mahdupi’s more distant cousins, an extremely pretty woman he had noticed but whose name he couldn’t remember. The older man, her second kharvah and therefore his opponent’s subordinate, had powerful shoulders, quick for all his weight. He circled the younger man with relaxed ease, his more wiry opponent obviously scared. Their supporters occasionally skirmished with challengers, the two sides shoving and pulling at each other as they kept the center area cleared for the two antagonists.
“What’s going on?” he asked Mahdupi, unable to maintain strict Vanar custom.
She shot him an acerbic look. “Be quiet and just watch.”
Rulayi kept his focus on his younger rival, smiling grimly as he waited. When Santosh sprang, the older man dodged, reflexes quick. His arm shot out and punched the younger man in the face. Santosh crumpled to his knees, clutching his bleeding face. A woman, the wife of the two kharvah below, rushed from out of the inner rooms onto the balcony, wild eyed as she took in the two struggling men. She clutched the balustrade, half hanging over the edge as she screamed at the two men in rage and fear and desperation, her Vanar too rapid and slurred for Nathan to follow. Rulayi glanced up at her scornfully, his eyes hot, before turning his attention back to Santosh.
Her friends held her arms on either side, murmuring encouragement as they pulled her back from the edge. He suddenly recalled the woman’s name: Nicaea. Her blanched face was stricken as she moaned, a strangled sound in her throat. To his surprise, Mahdupi chuckled, a deep, almost inaudible sound. Nathan glanced at her, but there was no amusement in the woman’s stolid face.
As Rulayi circled his downed foe, Santosh’s hand suddenly clutched his ankle, jerking hard. Nathan caught the look of surprise as the man toppled, then it was a frenzy of arms and legs as the two men fought for a hold. Vanar men were well trained in wrestling, but this wasn’t the stylized sport put on for the enjoyment of women. These two men fought in earnest.
Several Dhikar appeared, strolling unhurriedly through the crowd of men who quickly gave way. But when they looked up at the dalhitri, to Nathan’s surprise, she shook her head. The Dhikar stood out of the way of the brawl, observing without interference.
“You aren’t going to stop this?” Nathan asked in disbelief. Mahdupi smiled bitterly, ignoring his bad manners. “No.” Whether by accident or design, Santosh punched the older man hard under the chin with his head. Rulayi’s eyes rolled up white in his head, and he crumpled as limp as a boned fish. The woman next to him inhaled with more relish than disgust, absently rubbing one hand across her chest, stroking her own breasts.
The sound in the court hushed as the men circled around the pair stopped, watching avidly as Santosh struggled to his feet, sobbing for breath. Blood dripped from a nose Nathan was sure was broken, Santosh’s eyes already beginning to swell into bruised slits as he stared down at the unconscious man. Suddenly Nathan knew, knew, Santosh was deciding whether or not to kill Rulayi. The younger man placed his bare foot against his fallen opponent’s neck. With a little weight, he could crush the man’s windpipe, even break his neck.
Nathan glanced at Mahdupi, who wasn’t even watching the scene below. He traced her speculative gaze to Nicaea, the distraught woman half flung over the balustrade, disheveled and hysterical.
“Santosh, please don’t . . . please...,” his wife called out, her
voice barely audible.
The younger man glared up at her, anger and triumph and naked despair in his face. The man on the ground moaned and stirred. Santosh pulled his foot away from Rulayi’s throat, then hawked and spat on his face, more blood than spittle. He turned his back on the woman on the balcony and strode away with his head high, his back stiff. From the glee on the faces of some of the men picking up their fallen companion and the sullen expression on others’, Nathan suspected their emotions were the results of bets won or lost rather than on the fate of their comrades.
The women mingled slowly, talking among themselves, flushed with high spirits. Only Nicaea stood like carved stone, pale and mute.
“Stupid woman,” Mahdupi said. “She should never have played one against the other, encouraged their jealousy to amuse herself. What did she expect they would do? You see, Nathan, why we discourage violence among our men?” She looked around sourly at the women still giddy with excitement. “It does not bring out the best in any of us.”
“What happens now?”
“They will be punished. All three of them,” Mahdupi said softly. “But you may go now. I shall be quite busy for some time, I think.” She glanced around grimly at the women following them, lowered her voice, and much to his surprise, spoke to him for the first time in impeccable Hengeli. “Do us both a favor. Find Pratima. Spend the day doing whatever it is you do in the forest. Spend two. Don’t come back until I send for you.”
“How will you know where we are, l’amae Mahdupi?”
“If you assumed I know everything, you would be wrong,” she said. “But you’d also be safe in your assumptions.”
Pratima and Nathan escaped to the forest, where it would be four days before Mahdupi recalled them. They heard that for several nights, the men’s quarters had been half deserted, and those kharvah not called to their wives’ beds had grumbled among themselves. But the morning after the fight, Santosh had been found in the almond orchard.
He had hung himself.
XXIII
TWO WEEKS BEFORE HE WAS EXPECTED TO MARRY KALLAH, HE AND Pratima had been returned to Sabtú. He wasn’t too unhappy to leave; his excursions into the rain forest had been curtailed, the mood in Dravyam turning oppressive. Nicaea and Rulayi had both disappeared, no one willing to talk about what might have happened to either of them.
Mahdupi had taken the responsibility of teaching Nathan what he needed to know for his marriage to Kallah very seriously, drilling him in the endless greetings and ceremonies as relentlessly as Yaenida had taught him Vanar, and inspecting his rehearsals with a critical eye. Now that Nathan knelt in the airy sunlit room off the Changriti men’s garden, he was glad his zealous cousin was far away in Dravyam and not there to wince at his bumbling.
He had set out at sunrise to walk barefoot all the way across Sabtú from the Nga’esha Estate to the Changriti, as tradition dictated, while carrying the inlaid box filled with small gifts and jewels and a full coffee set as well as the kapotah lute he was somehow expected to play to accompany his own singing as he entertained Kallali’s two kharvah. His suggestion that he be allowed to sing something from his limited Hengeli repertoire had been met with shocked horror from his tutors. As he tramped along the road, his face already hurting from smiling as he bowed at the ceaseless wishes for good luck and success from every stranger he passed, he’d thought sourly that his musical ability might amuse the two unlucky men only if they had a healthy sense of humor.
He’d arrived shortly before noon, his feet blistered and the calves of his legs sore. Although Ukul Daharanan was the younger of the two kharvah, he had been Kallah’s first husband as well as the nephew of a Daharanan dalhitri h’máy. Once Nathan married into the Changriti, both he and Raetha Avachi, Kallah’s second kharvah and the minor son of a Middle Family, would defer to Ukul. But Ukul apparently was not blessed with the sense of humor Nathan had hoped for as the younger man sat listening to the foreigner’s inept attempt to approximate the children’s melody Mahdupi’s music teacher had painstakingly taught him to pick out on the lute’s multitude of strings. His sharp face was as expressionless and as warm as arctic granite.
Raetha’s friendly grin, on the other hand, seemed a permanent fixture in the big man’s round face as he peered at Nathan through a shock of dark hair constantly falling over his forehead into his eyes. The two men sat on plump cushions, while Nathan, as a supplicant for admission to the Changriti men’s house, knelt on the hardwood floor. He balanced the lute across his lap, metal picks slipping around the end of his sweaty fingers. Although they were the only ones in the huge hall, Nathan heard the whispers and saw the shadows of the curious Changriti menfolk behind the carved window screens.
Nathan finally completed his idiotic little verse about a thin cat dancing with a fat donkey and put the lute down to one side and bowed. When he straightened, Ukul’s expression had not changed in the least, but he said, his voice colorless, “How interesting the way you have given a beloved melody of our childhood new interpretation, unlike anything I’ve heard before.”
Raetha’s eyes widened, and Ukul shot him an acid look as the larger man choked back a snort of laughter.
Nathan blinked and reddened, then stumbled through the ritual response, “I am happy it was pleasing to your ear,” although he knew that Ukul had said no such thing.
It took another two hours to hand out the gifts he’d hauled all the way across the city: bits of jewelry, the latest popular drama in entertainment cubes (or so he’d been assured; traditional Vanar theater bored him even when he understood the plot), expensive handmade birdsilk sati in the Changriti burgundy with matching mati in each man’s Family colors. He’d also added a bit of pink apple blossom to weave into each man’s braid, the fashion having caught on since his strange gift to Tycar. Ukul barely glanced at the loot spread out neatly in front of him, although Raetha was obviously far more pleased with the flowers than with the rest of the expensive gifts.
“I would dance for you, esteemed brothers, had I not so stupidly injured my left ankle, which would, of course, only spoil your enjoyment. My most humble apologies.” Aelgar himself had suggested this pretext, promising him that, if put properly, it might be enough to get him out of having to lumber about the room like a lobotomized ox. But he held his breath, waiting for Ukul’s response. The weasel-faced man would get more satisfaction out of forcing him into an absurd performance than from watching a good one, Nathan instinctively knew. But he tried to keep his relief off his face when Ukul expressed his regret.
Then Nathan had begun the tedious coffee ceremony, reciting the poetry in proper order as he went through the praising of the earth, the praising of the coffee bush, the blessing of the beans, the grinding, the sifting, the spicing, the boiling of the water, the blessing of the sugar, the blessing of the sand, the hammered copper pot, the tiny porcelain cups, heating the coffee to a boil exactly three times before he poured it out with absolute precision. He’d almost finished, his back hurting from the continuous bowing, his cheeks numbed from his frozen smile, his knees throbbing from kneeling long hours on the floor, grateful to be nearing the end of an extremely unpleasant day, when disaster struck.
As he held out the steaming cup of black coffee for Ukul, his mind went suddenly blank. His mouth hung slack and he couldn’t remember the damned script. Ukul stared back at him, narrowed eyes as black as the coffee as he waited unrelentingly. Frozen, Nathan groped for the words, the cup rattling ominously in his hand.
“May the perfume of this offering...,” he suddenly heard Raetha whisper. The large man was gazing up obliviously over Nathan’s shoulder, as if unaware of anything wrong.
Ukul flicked an angry slit-eyed glance toward his junior.
His memory jolted, Nathan babbled quickly, “May the perfume of this offering be as fresh to your nose as the morning sun on the grass, may it be pleasant to your tongue, sweet as honey . . .” The words were unintelligible sounds, learned by rote, Nathan too rattled to remember
their meaning.
Raetha hazarded a friendly smile as they each drank the coffee in turn, although Nathan could barely taste his. Then, thankfully, the ordeal was over. They bobbed and waved and sent him home, the sun already beginning to set. The two men would discuss his various merits and defects, and give their verdict to their wife before each of them sent gifts to him, to be examined closely by Aelgar as an indication of how well or how poorly he’d done. Who would then report to Yronae, who would then consult Yaenida, who would then invite Eraelin for a similar private women’s ceremony. It all seemed very mind-numbingly tedious.
He took the underground train back to the edge of the Nga’esha Estate, having to wait on the platform as three trains went by before one with a men’s car stopped. His feet hurt, his back hurt, his ego hurt, and, he thought ruefully, the fun was just beginning. . . .
XXIV
HE HAD THOUGHT PRATIMA WOULD WANT TO BE GONE BEFORE THE ACTUAL marriage and was baffled and uneasy when she announced her decision to attend the ceremony. Three days before the wedding, they escaped to their favorite rendezvous, down by the river in the copse with the old split tree. Pratima lay in the tree’s hollow, playfully dropping leaves on him while he leaned against the trunk below.
“It’s not that I want you to leave,” he tried to explain, hoping to convince her without hurting her feelings, “but there’s no reason you have to attend.”
“Of course there is,” she replied serenely. “It’s a Nga’esha wedding, and Pilot or no, I’m still Nga’esha. It would be rude for me not to attend. Besides, it’s not every day that a son of the Nga’esha pratha h’máy is married, you know. The celebration should be quite something to see.”
