“Much farther,” she said absently. He was talking to a man now. Tall, with hair the color of golden maize. “Look.” She pointed. “There’s Rafe.”
“Ah!” said Micah, smiling. “Yes, there he is. Rafe is very kind, I think. He’s probably helping that man.”
Kaab turned sharply to Micah, but there was nothing except innocent delight in her expression. “Do you . . . like him?” Kaab asked, wishing that her Xanamwiinik tutor had been more explicit in the nuances of such terms.
Micah nodded energetically. “Of course! He’s like my cousins, only he doesn’t care about gardens. He loves equations. And distances! I think you should talk to him about your home, and how far away it is. If it takes me a day from the farm, and the farm is twenty miles away . . . how long did it take you to travel here?”
“Ninety days,” Kaab said.
Micah’s eyes widened. “Then you’re at least one thousand eight hundred miles away! If you were traveling by horse. But no, you came from the sea. I must ask Rafe how fast boats go. But you are from very far away! How did you travel so far? I’m sure he’d like to know.”
“I’m sure he would,” Kaab said dryly, thinking back to his clumsy interrogation earlier. This Rafe was very interested in things she was quite sure her family did not want him to know. Which made him a good person to stick close to. The Balams couldn’t afford to have their monopoly on chocolate trade with the Land threatened. Not with things as they were back home, with the Tullan army just waiting for an excuse to attack.
“Who is he still helping over there?” she asked Micah, just for something to say.
Micah frowned. “I don’t know. I think they’re arguing now. But he is rubbing his hands on his thighs. Our friend Joshua says that he only does that when he wants to kiss someone.”
Kaab laughed, but she felt an odd lurch. Even from this distance she could sense an intensity between the two men. Perhaps Micah was right.
“But why,” Micah said, “does he want to kiss someone he’s arguing with?” She sighed. “I like Rafe,” she repeated. “But I don’t think he makes very much sense sometimes.”
Kaab thought of how many long months had passed since she had kissed anyone. Of the games she had played with Citlali, thinking that nothing too serious could come of them. She had seen quite a few pretty girls since she’d arrived (though she had to admit the University seemed remarkably devoid of that particular enticement). “He ought to kiss him,” she said.
Micah wrinkled her nose. “Cousin Daniel tried to kiss me once. I hit him on the head with a turnip, and he never tried again.”
Kaab laughed until she had to wipe her eyes. “I think that was very wise,” she said.
Uncle Chuleb was waiting for Kaab when she returned home, kneeling with a brush and open codex upon a reed mat he had laid out in the courtyard garden. The gum trees, brought at great expense from home by the previous generation, were lit in the late evening chill by a series of oil lamps in sconces that hung from the trees on long ropes of finely braided henequen. A natural spring—almost certainly why her ancestors had bought the land here—fed a series of man-made streams and waterfalls that made the house feel like an oasis of home in a wide desert. Muscovy ducks and other waterfowl kept to the ponds and beneath overhanging rocks. Her uncle had arranged himself beside the largest waterfall, beside which grew the squat breadnut trees they kept wrapped in gauze throughout the long winter. He looked a picture of refined nobility, with his hair arranged in two loops beneath a stiff jade-beaded head cloth, and a mantle printed with the family pattern draped over his chest and left arm. She imagined he was reviewing the records of the recent shipment, but when she approached, she saw that he was in fact composing in the family book, the formal record of the history of the Balams.
“Niece,” he said, when she had come close enough to acknowledge. “You took your time returning. Did you learn anything interesting?”
“Much, Uncle,” she said, and knelt across from him. “What are you recording in red and black?”
Uncle Chuleb did not buy a note of her innocent tone, but it amused him. “Your arrival, dearest niece. For it comes to me that I might have cause to write more about you before long. And what did you learn?”
“That saffron costs a great deal, but in abundance smells of smelted copper and annatto.”
Her uncle smiled. “You intrigue me. I look forward to the gilded hares at tomorrow’s feast. And what else?”
“That there are great conflicts between the nobility and their intellectuals, who are not the same here. That some of their intellectuals are very interested in the mysteries of the Four Hundred Siblings and the secrets of moving great distances across the seas. I very much doubt that any of them have found it. But it seemed to me that if they do, there is a chance that their merchants might use such knowledge to take their own ships to our ports.”
She did not spell out the rest of the implications. Chuleb, a minor Kinwiinik noble who had married into the family very young, understood them as well as she. With the monopoly broken by the Locals themselves, the other Trading families might use that to invalidate the Balam mandate to the port. And some of these Trading families had lived for generations with the Tullan, whose insatiable political ambitions now threatened even the southern coastal cities of the Kinwiinik. Formally, all Traders owed their first loyalty to other Traders of all families. Practically, their relationships were more complex. Local ships in Trading waters had the potential to break the delicate political balance in the lands of the gods. It could bring a war that would destroy Balam power—and possibly the autonomy of the Kinwiinik themselves. She remembered the stories of Nopalco, the river that ran red for thirteen rotations of the great calendar wheel. And she thought—of course she did—of her role in bringing on this crisis. If her irresponsible actions contributed to the destruction of her people, her home . . .
She shook her head, a violent negation.
“It is good that you brought this to me, Niece. I take it that you met one of the students interested in this subject?”
“He’s Fenton’s son.”
Chuleb did not look unduly surprised. “And perhaps you can continue to cultivate his acquaintance?”
“Of course, Uncle.”
“Good. Just as a precaution, Niece. I have been aware of the current climate in the University, but the men in charge are conservative and easily threatened. They would rather eat stones than learn something new. As long as we encourage them, the few revolutionaries like young Fenton won’t have enough support to make their new discoveries.”
“Ah,” Kaab said, and felt a little ill. It was best for her family, of course, to support the Board of Governors against the students. But she had felt Rafe and Micah’s enthusiasm. Rafe, at least, would understand some of the implications of his discovery. Micah clearly lived for her equations and the joy of solving them. But what was necessary was not always just. Had her parents not struggled to make her understand that? Even sick with the illness that would kill her, Ixmoe had spoken to her daughter with the lessons of the elders: Passion in excess is as much of a vice as passivity, my little bee. You must not recklessly waste the heat of your head-spirit, or you will attract the punishment of the gods for powers not held in sacred moderation.
Her uncle noticed her preoccupation. “Are you well, Kaab?”
She smiled, with an effort. “I was recalling my mother.”
“May she always walk the earth, may you always carry her.” He paused thoughtfully, his eyes on the lights beyond her. “Before you go, I wonder what you make of this letter? It arrived the other day.”
He took an object from behind the family book and held it across the mat. The paper was fine and thick, creamy. She turned it over and started to read. Diane, Duchess Tremontaine was the signature. Why did that name sound familiar? Ah yes. The lady who had first served the saffron hares. Rafe had been positively irascible on the way back home, and on his lips the name of the duke—this lady’s hus
band, apparently—had nearly dripped poison. The duke sat on the Board of Governors.
The letter was short. It requested a meeting with Kaab’s uncle to discuss matters of trade that would be beneficial to them both. It gently stressed her political connections through her husband, and her place in polite society.
“I thought the nobility here did not interest themselves in trade?”
“As did I, Niece. This letter is . . . quite unusual.”
“Well, there can be no harm in seeing what she wants, can there? What does Aunt say?”
“She is inclined to agree with you.”
“But?”
Uncle Chuleb looked out at the lamp-lit garden, accurate as a drawing of home by a Trader too long away. “The lady is not to be underestimated. Her husband is very influential, but I suspect that she personally exercises more political power than her peers believe. Her hand in anything is a reason to be cautious.”
“How will you answer her?”
He shrugged. “I have petitioned Xamanek for guidance. May his star always guide us. And of course, I’ll speak to your aunt. We will decide after the feast.”
The doors to the courtyard thrown open, the arcaded peristyle draped in multicolored garlands of flowers sweet enough to coat the throat, the drums and flutes playing a song of welcome to the entering guests, a song of farewell to the flaming sun. The servants in mantles and draped loincloths of henequen carrying trays of wooden cups, filled with frothy chocolate prepared in the traditional style: cold, scented with honey and vanilla and blossoms of trees so exotic their names have yet to be made palatable to the Local tongue. The women of the house, as precious as flowers, as precious as jade in their skirts and blouses and wide belts stiff with precious jewels, multicolored embroidery whose meaning escapes the ant-egg-skin guests and sings its own song to the Traders far from home. The altars to Xamanek and Chaacmul on the north and west sides of the portico are laden with offerings of burning copal resin, wafting pleasantly among the guests, and with figurines of amaranth dough mixed with the blood, ritually let, of the girl called Ixkaab and her family.
The Balam family greets their guests in the courtyard, smiling broadly as the Locals cast wide eyes at the pleasing extravagance of the flowers bought for the occasion and of the formal attire of the hosts.
“By god that man has a rock the size of my thumb up his nose!”
“It’s jade, dear. Inlaid with gold, if I’m not mistaken. A fine piece.”
“How does he breathe around that thing?”
“How do you talk around yours?”
The guests move on, gently steered by discreet servants. Chocolate is held to be intoxicating among the Kinwiinik. Only certain classes are allowed to taste its refined, prized flavor, which even the gods are said to hold in esteem. The Traders are willing to sell the processed beans to the Locals to do with as they please, but not even the most plebeian of country squires would dare ask one of those smooth-faced servants for cream to cut the bitterness of the frothy brew being served tonight. And if he did, they would just as impassively pretend not to understand him.
Ixkaab is resplendent in shades of red and green. She embroidered the blouse herself on the long boat journey. Her thick hair has been bound in two braids, wrapped around the back of her head and gathered into two small points in front, at the height of her fine brown eyes. This is a sign of respect: Only married women and those dedicated to the service may bind their hair in this way. She is young, and so her jewels are modest, but Aunt Ixsaabim is a master of the art of personal adornment and they are brilliantly deployed. Her headdress is small, anchored to the back and shimmering with quetzal feathers that move in the brisk evening breeze like the river beneath the forest canopy: always green, but never quite the same shade. Her wide belt has been beaten with gold and layered with tiny jade beads in the motif of her father’s family. Her brown skin glows a shimmering yellow, tinted with the cream of axin brought especially from home. Her uncle Chuleb and the male heads of the lesser Kinwiinik Trading families who also live and trade in this city wear more elaborate headdresses of hardened cloth that support their expertly layered feathers, the pure jade of the quetzal, the flaming ruby of the spoonbill, the opalescent clarity of the bottom feathers of a Muscovy duck, and the tail feathers of a white heron. Their mantles are the products of a hundred hours of hard labor with loom and needle, and advertise their status as much as their jewels. At home, they could not chance such a public display of wealth. At home, Traders must engage in the fiction that they are not as wealthy as the nobles they serve. Here in the Land, money and power have a more open relationship.
The bustle in the courtyard flows through an open passageway, lit warmly by torches burning fragrant pine, and into a large banquet hall. The ceiling is arched, and the high windows have all been thrown open. The servants lead the Local guests, somewhat stiff and hampered by stays and petticoats and starched linen, to the long table constructed in the Local manner, with sufficient height for its several dozen chairs. The Fenton patriarch notes that the table at the front of the hall is low to the ground and surrounded by woven reed mats and two squat chairs. The Kinwiinik guests who have been honored with invitations tonight remain standing near this low table. They appear content to wait. In their home, the Balams might occasionally be forced to prove their dominance over an upstart Trading family. In the land of the north, the great family maintains a careful, but unquestioned dominance.
Fenton’s wife, among the stiffest of the Local women present—her stays have been pulled so tightly against the fat of her stomach that a nervous laugh escapes her every time she breathes too deeply—agrees with her husband about the odd stature of the table. She is the sort of woman who generally finds it prudent to agree with her husband. Rafe Fenton, who loves his mother very much, despises this about her.
“Do you suppose they eat standing up?” Mistress Fenton ventures.
“I suppose they eat squatting on the floor. Odd folk.”
“They wear very fine cloth. And jewels. Rafe, dear, how do you think your sister would look with a few of those aquamarine feathers in her riding cap?”
“Like a ninny,” Rafe says. “So, entirely appropriate.”
“Oh, Rafe,” sighs the Fenton matriarch. The words have the melody of a song she has sung many times before. Rafe, with the look of a man with other things on his mind, mumbles an apology.
The Balams enter once their Local guests have been seated. They and their Kinwiinik guests indeed kneel at the low table, though the graceful way they fold their legs beneath the rich fabric of their skirts and mantles make the Fenton patriarch’s characterization of it as “squatting” seem satisfactorily churlish. To Rafe, at least. The lord and lady of the house occupy the two low stools and offer words of greeting to their assembled guests. The words, whatever they are, are lost on most listeners: The food has, at last, begun to arrive.
First comes a series of sauces studded with slices of meat only intermittently identifiable. “Salamander,” come some shocked whispers down the long Local table. “Newt” and “crickets” and “dog!” But also venison and some kind of rich nut and mushrooms the color of ashes in the grate and a flavor at once sharp and earthy.
“Like a good Erlander cheese,” says the head of the Greenglass family, one of the richest and most influential in the City. He asks the servants for more and mops it up with one of the two dozen kinds of maize pancakes in baskets placed at regular intervals along the table.
“Papa has a very fine palate,” whispers a young lady to her dining companion, a broad-shouldered young man from a smaller Trading family. “He’s quite the gourmand.” The young lady’s whisper is not so soft as she imagines it to be. A wag replies: “He’s quite the glutton!” and a few guests laugh more freely than strictly politic.
The chocolate poured from tall ceramic jugs has grown thicker and a little sour, not unpleasantly so. The addition of fermented agave nectar has begun to take its effect. At the Balam tab
le, some of the men have switched out entirely for glasses of octli, dusted with a powder of chocolate. Kaab looks longingly at the jugs, but there is no time for the women to enjoy it.
“Come, Niece,” says her aunt at a signal from one of the servants. “It’s time.”
The women of the family hasten to the kitchen. In honor of the Local guests, they have decided to modify the traditional serving of tamales. Kaab finds herself holding a copper tray on her shoulder and a basket heaped with ant-egg tamales in the crook of her other elbow.
“What if I drop it, Aunt?” Kaab asks very innocently.
“What if you—” Ixsaabim goes a little pale, peers at her niece, and laughs abruptly. “You little minx! You nearly had me! The great Ixkaab, dropping her food.” She laughs again and gently touches the cotton ribbons woven into Kaab’s braids. “How much you remind me of your mother, dear.”
Kaab bites back sudden tears. She ducks her head. “Thank you, Aunt Saabim.”
There’s no time for any more. The flutes have begun to play in the hall and now the drums will start and the song begins at the front of the line of women, where Kaab takes the place of honor. This feast is—nominally, and, in some small way, actually—a celebration of her arrival.
“We bring tamales,” she sings in the language of her childhood. They don’t mention the hares, because there is no word in Kindaan for saffron, and the Locals wouldn’t understand in any case.
“Good god,” blurts Master Greenglass when they dance into the room, smiling and spinning. “Are those saffron hares?”
“Won’t the Duchess Tremontaine turn green when she hears of this!”
“Gracious, they’re as orange as a sunset!”
“How poetic, darling. But I expect they’ve used some kind of dye. It’ll be all turmeric, and bitter as an old radish.”
“My sister had the good fortune to attend the Duchess Tremontaine’s little soiree,” says the young lady of the indiscreet whisper. “She married a noble, you know.”
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