Master of None

by N Lee Wood

  “Then Qandra said red hair looked silly, and Sharu said Qandra was just jealous because she heard her tell Hasasi she wanted red hair too and that’s why she stealed all the red colors out of the paint box, except it didn’t work and just made her hair all sticky so her mother got really mad, then Qandra said it wasn’t so and she hit Sharu on the arm, like this.”

  Aenanda demonstrated, thumping her small fist lightly against her father’s arm and giggling at his comic charade of injury. “And she made Sharu cry, so I told Qandra she couldn’t be my friend anymore and I wasn’t going to talk to her ever again...”

  It was late, the Dhikar eying him reproachfully as he continued to sprawl on the floor with his five-year-old daughter. He helped her paste scraps of colored paper together as she related the day’s playground politics.

  He sighed, picking dried glue from his fingertips. “Aenanda, Daddy’s tired. Speak Hengeli.”

  “Okay,” Aenanda said, switching to fluent Hengeli without batting an eye. She wriggled on the floor as she sorted through the paper bits. “So then Sharu and me wouldn’t let Qandra play with us in the garden, are you going to use the yellow, Daddy? ’Cuz I want it for my . . .” She hesitated. “Garmisan?”

  “Butterfly,” he translated, and handed her the yellow paper. “No, you have it.”

  “Bubberfly,” she repeated. She pushed back the mass of curling red hair from her eyes and attacked the paper with a blunt pair of scissors, cutting out a lopsided pair of wings. “We saw this really big bubberfly in the garden and Sharu tried to catched it, but it flew really really fast and she couldn’t jump high enough... oh!”

  “What?” Nathan asked sharply, alarmed by her sudden uneasiness. “I’m not supposed to talk Hengeli anymore,” she said sheepishly, still using her father’s native language.

  “Why not?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Grandmama doesn’t want me to.”

  “Ah.” He sat up and said carefully in Vanar, “In that case, we won’t speak in Hengeli.” He had no doubt he was constantly being monitored inside the Changriti House, with Pratha Eraelin scrutinizing every word for the slightest infraction. “We must do as Grandmama wishes.”

  “Why?” Aenanda asked, then ducked her head at her father’s warning look. “Khee’un?”

  “Because she’s the boss. What she says, goes.”

  “How come Grandmama can’t speak Hengeli?”

  “Aenanda,” he chided, “we are not going to have this conversation. In either language, okay?”

  The little girl pouted, chopping her bubberfly wings to shreds. “Father Ukul is learning Hengeli,” she muttered rebelliously, and glanced up at him slyly through gigantic eyelashes.

  He should have scolded her, but his curiosity won out, just as he knew Aenanda knew. “Is he, now?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, her sulkiness a sham. “But his teacher isn’t as good as you. He makes lots of mistakes and he sounds funny. How come you don’t teach Father Ukul to speak Hengeli?”

  “I didn’t know he wanted to.”

  “Oh, yes,” Aenanda said cheerfully, her moodiness evaporating. “Mama likes it.”

  That was news to him. As far as Nathan knew, other than the few memorized phrases Kallah had spoken at his adoption party, Aenanda’s mother didn’t understand a single word of Hengeli. And this discussion was once again skirting into dangerous territory.

  “Right, you,” he said, and stood up to scoop his daughter into his arms. “You know what else Mama likes? She likes you to go to bed when you’re supposed to. So you’ll just have to finish your garmisam tomorrow.”

  “Bubberfly,” Aenanda squealed.

  “Garmisam.” He kissed her nose, then tried to hand her over to the waiting Dhikar. She clung to him tightly, the strength in her arms around his neck surprising. “Come on, Aenanda. It’s a long way back for me, and it’s getting late enough as it is. Time for bed.”

  “Don’t go, Daddy,” she begged. “Why do you have to leave? Father Ukul and Father Raetha live with me. You could stay here all the time if you wanted to.”

  His heart sank, but he tried to smile. “You know why, sweetheart. We’ve been through all this. I have work to do, and the only place I can do it is my library.” Someday, Aenanda would pick the logic of his arguments into as many shreds as she had her bubberfly wings. His reader was the best Nga’esha money could buy, more than capable of accessing anything he needed from any distance. But what a five-year-old couldn’t solve with logic, she tried with tears and tantrums, very much her mother’s daughter.

  “No! I don’t want you to go, I want you to stay here!” She was struggling in earnest as he tried again to give her over to the waiting Dhikar.

  “Aenanda, stop this right now,” he said sternly.

  The child leaned away from him, quivering with rage, and slapped him in the face with all her small strength. It was painful enough to make him gasp, and he nearly dropped her in his surprise. They both froze, glaring at each other nose to nose. He heard the subharmonic hum, but the Dhikar drew back, cautiously measuring his reaction.

  He simply stared at the child, waiting in silence. Aenanda’s temper collapsed with guilt, although she was still determined to get her own way.

  “You have to do what I say,” she insisted.

  “I do? And why is that?” he said calmly.

  “Because Mama says so,” she said with less confidence.

  “Mama says so.”

  The last of her defiance crumbled under his skepticism. “Well... but you have to do what Mama tells you to, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. And if Mama says I can’t come and see you anymore because it makes you behave like a violent uncivilized yepoqioh, what do I do then?”

  Shamefaced, Aenanda hung her head, chubby legs kicking feebly. He glanced over her shoulder at the Dhikar. The usually stolid guard raised an approving eyebrow before she twitched her wrist, silencing the implants.

  “Aenanda, you don’t like it when other people hit you. You don’t like it when they hit your friends, like Qandra and Sharu, do you?”

  “No,” she said petulantly. “But when I’m pratha h’máy, then I’ll be the boss and what I say goes.”

  “Uh-huh. When you’re pratha h’máy, I’ll worry about it. But until then, I’m still your father, and you’ll treat me with respect. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, chastised but unhappy. Then she hugged him fiercely, her tears wet against his cheek. “I’m sorry, Daddy, I didn’t mean it...”

  He closed his eyes, breathing in her scent, loving this child more than anything in the world. Sighing, he kissed her hair.

  “Speak Vanar, Aenanda.”

  XXXIII

  WITH SO FEW OTHER PEOPLE ON THE TRAINS AND STREETS THIS EARLY in the morning, Nathan enjoyed the relative silence as he made his way across town from the Changriti Estate to the safety of his library deep inside the grounds of the Nga’esha. He had reluctantly spent the night in his daughter’s House, having been summoned by Kallah after their daughter’s outburst. Their discussion was far more civil than he’d expected, Kallah more weary than displeased by her daughter’s violent behavior. The amount of time Nathan spent with his daughter was un-orthodox, but his visits with Aenanda would not be curtailed, to his relief. Unlike her mother, Kallah was willing to admit their daughter’s temper more likely a product of Changriti traits than Hengeli. Ukul had hovered unobtrusively in the background, silent and attentive as usual, but the senior kharvah avoided any eye contact with Nathan, probably mortified his private linguistic studies had been exposed.

  Nathan left before sunrise, the last lingering stars fading in the still dark sky. A few shops were opening, preparing for the day’s coming business. Sodden leaves beaten from the trees by the rain in the night littered the walkway in tatters. He kept his eyes on the stone paved streets, wet and treacherously slick.

  Half a dozen naeqili te rhowghá loitered along the wide boulevard, hoping to be hired to clear the walk by shop
keepers not willing to wait for the automated cleaners to make their pass before the shops opened. It seemed a lifetime ago since Nathan had done such menial labor before he had exchanged his humble sati for Nga’esha blue.

  A man in a tattered white sati methodically swept the remains of leaves from the walk into the gutter. This one didn’t seem to be getting many jobs, judging by the man’s gaunt frame. Preoccupied, Nathan barely noticed him, quickly striding around him in his hurry to make the men’s train on time. Then something made him stop and turn, regarding the stooped man with puzzled curiosity.

  When he did recognize Rulayi, it hit him as an almost physical shock. The once powerful shoulders had lost their vitality, Rulayi nearly skeletally thin. As Nathan stared, the former Nga’esha slowly ceased the methodical sweep of his broom and looked up. The genial man who had rowed Nathan out to collect plankton off the shores of Dravyam so many years ago gazed back at him apathetically, his eyes vacant. After a moment, Rulayi pulled the white sati over his head, and Nathan spotted the lajjae on his wrist.

  “Rulayi?” he said, although there was no question. The man shifted his attention to his broom and turned his back toward Nathan, beginning the dilatory sweep along the stones at his feet, as ponderously stoic as a castrated bull. So this was the punishment the Nga’esha had meted out as just, the man’s mind permanently crippled while stripping him of any rights to the protection or support of his Family.

  Appalled, Nathan took three quick steps and was around him, grasping him by the forearm to force the man to stop. He wondered how many times he’d walked straight past Rulayi without even seeing the man, so inured now to the anonymous naeqili te rhowghá on the streets that he barely noted their existence anymore.

  A movement in the doorway caused them both to turn, Rulayi half a beat behind Nathan. The shopkeeper stood with her arms crossed over her chest, studying him narrowly. Her eyes flickered from his hair to the costly pin holding his Nga’esha blue silk sati over the Changriti burgundy. She glanced at the stack of heavy gold bracelets on his wrists, the gleam of jewels on his ankle winking between the folds of birdsilk, the expensive sandals protecting his elaborately hennaed feet. She knew exactly who he was.

  “You are interfering with his labor, young kharvah,” the woman said carefully, her tone both chiding and respectful. “I am not paying him to stand and talk.” She wore a cheap floral sati, a daughter of a Middle Family, he knew, and not that well placed in her own hierarchy. She resented the disturbance by an obviously rich Nga’esha kharvah. Most likely, she was a younger cousin who would have had to do the job herself had the rhowghá not shuffled through the streets in search of early work.

  Nathan stared at her before her lips thinned with irritation. He then bowed, hands together. “Apologies, l’amae,” he said quickly. She smirked at his heavy accent. “Please, allow me. . . .”

  Before she could object, or Rulayi could react, he had the broom in his hands and swept the remainder of the damp leaves quickly and competently into the gutter. He handed her the broom, slightly out of breath and sweating, keeping his eyes properly averted. “As you can see, nidhih l’amae”—he made sure to use a flatteringly high salutation, one he was sure they both knew she didn’t merit—“your path is clean. If you will now pay my naeqili brother, we will leave in peace.”

  She stood without speaking for so long, Nathan finally glanced up. “I didn’t hire you,” she said calculatingly.

  “I didn’t ask you for payment,” he said, still using as high-low a terminology as he could. Rulayi stood impassively, hands dangling beside him. “I merely wished to help my friend.”

  The shopkeeper held out her hand imperiously, frowning with barely suppressed impatience as Rulayi fumbled with his card. As she noted the money into his account, she said, “You only did half. He did the rest, and I didn’t hire him. I’ll only pay you for the work you did.” She looked up with a malicious smile, as if inviting argument, obviously enjoying being able to insult a famous Nga’esha, if only a male.

  When she held the card out arrogantly, Rulayi took it back without protest. Nathan quickly bowed to hide his reaction. When he straightened, he had managed to mask his anger.

  “May the Goddess who is the Mother of us all reward you as you deserve for your compassion, l’amae,” he said innocently, gratified by the flush of color on her face. Keeping a straight face, he grabbed Rulayi by the arm and tugged him away.

  “Don’t worry,” he said under his breath, “I’ll give you the difference myself.” The only response Rulayi made was an apathetic nod. Nathan spotted an open cafe at the corner of the square. Usually, men could eat in the farthest back room, behind the shop, out of sight. “Are you hungry?”

  It took Rulayi a few minutes to sort through the slowed responses of his brain to answer. “Yes. Always.”

  The expression on Rulayi’s face didn’t change as the woman stopped them at the men’s door at the rear of the cafe and refused to serve them. “Not with him,” she said firmly. She nodded her head toward the lajjae bracelet fastened to Rulayi’s wrist. She wasn’t hostile, and shook her head reproachfully. “Surely you knew that,” she said at his surprise. He hadn’t known, never having had enough money when he had lived as a rhowghá outcast to have afforded even the dingy, windowless rooms in the back.

  He held his hands together, his fingertips touching loosely in the respectful gesture reserved for strangers. “Would it be possible then, l’amae, to buy a few things and take it away with us?”

  For a moment, he was afraid she would refuse, looking over his shoulder stonily into the distance as she considered. Then her eyes slid to Rulayi, standing silently with his head bowed. She sucked air in between her front teeth, frowning, and said, “How much?”

  Quickly, Nathan pulled his card from the pouch and scribbled his finger across the surface before he handed it to her. “As much as this amount will buy, l’amae.”

  She glanced at it and chuckled. “You must be very hungry.” “Very,” he said steadily, keeping his eyes lowered.

  She smiled and pocketed his card. “Go to the kitchen door. Let no one see you there.” Nathan had to pull Rulayi with him, and they waited in the alley for several long minutes. About the time he was sure she was not going to return and give back his card, the beaded netting defending the interior from prying eyes was pulled back. The woman handed his card and a heavy grass-weave sack bulging with far more foodstuffs than the amount he had given her could have bought. The smell of hot, spicy food made his mouth water.

  “Thank you,” Nathan said, and stumbled over the ritual expression wishing her the Goddess’s blessing. Rulayi waited as silently as a shadow behind him.

  “My neighbors tend to think of this alley as a place to dump their own rubbish,” the woman said. “Every morning, I find someone has crept into the alley and left their litter. Every afternoon, the cleaners charge my business more than my share to take it away. I am the head of my Family, but it is small, and I cannot spare extra daughters to come that early in the morning to remove it before the cleaners come.” Again, her eyes flicked toward Rulayi. “If someone were to take care of this problem, I’m sure there would be enough left over from the night before to repay him for the work. Perhaps you have a distant cousin...?”

  Both men knew what she was saying. As long as she didn’t see Rulayi, she didn’t have to acknowledge his presence. Scavenging was legal for the rhowghá. He nodded, both grateful and angry. “I will ask around, l’amae.”

  He started to turn and stopped when she touched his forearm. Startled, he looked directly at her, his arms full.

  “You have eyes like a summer sky just before the sunset,” she said quietly. “I have never seen eyes that color before.” He didn’t know whether it was a proposition or not, so he stood mutely. For a married man of High Family to be out on his own and speaking to a strange woman was considered highly unsuitable conduct, while even more scandalous to be in the company of a naeqili te rhowghá.

&
nbsp; Then she smiled kindly and closed the door.

  As it was, when he returned the next week to check how Rulayi was doing, she was less pleased to see him. Rulayi had never shown up. Nathan futilely searched for him at every charity shelter in the city, looked in every alley, asked every slow-witted or surly rhowghá he saw.

  But no one was either able or willing to tell him where Rulayi had gone.

  XXXIV

  “WHEN YOU WERE MY AGE, NATHAN,” RAEMIK ASKED, “WHAT WERE you doing?”

  They faced one another across the huge table in the library, which at the moment was being used as a lab to prick out fragile svapnah seedlings from the gel trays to transplant into individual growing plugs. These would be carefully labeled and transferred back into Nathan’s little greenhouse at the bottom end of the men’s garden. Most of them, Nathan suspected, would be dead inside two days, but he was determined to discover the secret to cultivating the native plant.

  “Getting the hell out of Westcastle,” Nathan said.

  “Why?”

  “Because we were in the middle of a civil war and I was tired of people trying to shoot my ass.”

  “Why? What were people fighting about?”

  “Water.”

  “Water?”

  “Water.” On a planet with as much constant rainfall as Vanar, he could well understand how insignificant that must have seemed to Raemik. He didn’t attempt to explain.

  “How did you do it, then, leave Hengeli?”

  Nathan concentrated on his work, trying to work the dials on the tweezers under the magnifying glass without jostling the brittle cotyledons on the root apex. He listened with only half an ear, but the boy’s transparency was glaring. “Not in any way that you could ever leave Vanar, Raemik, or I’d have been long gone myself by now. Would you hand me another set of plugs, please?”

  The boy flushed, and silently passed him the plugs he’d filled with the special rooting medium Nathan had devised. After an interim, he asked, “What was it like where you lived?”