The Price of Spring (The Long Price Quartet Book 4) Page 11

  Third, and perhaps least interesting, it became clear that he was wasting his time.

  “Friends,” Otah said. Then again, louder, “Friends!”

  Slowly, the table grew quiet around him.

  “The morning has been difficult,” he said. “We should retire and reflect on what has been said.”

  Whatever it was, he didn’t add.

  There was a rumble of assent, if not precisely agreement. Otah took a pose of gratitude to each man and woman as they left, even to Farrer Dasin, for whom he felt very little warmth. Otah dismissed the servants as well, and soon only he and Danat remained. Without the pandemonium of voices, the meeting room seemed larger and oddly forlorn.

  “Well,” his son said, leaning against the table. He was wearing the same robe as he had at the botched ceremony the day before. The cloth itself looked weary. “What do you make of it?”

  Otah scratched idly at his arm and tried to focus his mind. His back ached, and there was an uneasy, bright feeling in his gut that presaged a sleepless and uncomfortable night. He sighed.

  “Primarily, I think I’m an idiot,” Otah said. “I should have written to the daughters. I forget how different their world is. Your world, too.”

  Danat took a pose that asked elaboration. Otah rose, stretching. His back didn’t improve.

  “Political marriage isn’t a new thing,” Otah said. “We’ve always suffered it. They’ve always suffered it. But, once the rules changed, it stopped meaning so much, didn’t it? As long as Ana-cha has been alive, she hasn’t seen political marriages take place. If Radaani married his son to Saya’s daughter, they wouldn’t be joining bloodlines. No children, no lasting connection between the houses. Likewise in Galt. I doubt it’s stopped the practice entirely, but it’s changed things. I should have thought of it.”

  “And she could take lovers,” Danat said.

  “People took lovers before,” Otah said.

  “Not without fear,” Danat said. “There’s no chance of a child. It changes how willing a girl would be.”

  “And how exactly do you know that?” Otah asked.

  Danat blushed. Otah walked to the window. Below, the gardens were in motion. Wind shifted the boughs of the trees and set the flowers nodding. The scent of impending rain cooled the air. There would be a storm by nightfall.

  “Papa-kya?” Danat said.

  Otah looked over his shoulder. Danat was sitting on the table, his feet on the seat of a cushioned chair. It was the pose of a casual boy in a cheap teahouse. Danat’s face, however, was troubled.

  “Don’t bother it,” Otah said. “It might be a new world for sex, but there was an old world for it too. And I’m sure there are any number of other men who’ve made the same discoveries you have.”

  “That wasn’t the matter. It’s the wedding. I don’t think I can…I don’t think I can do it. When it was just thinking of it, I hadn’t seen what it would be to be married to someone who hated me. I have now.”

  His voice was thick with distress. A gust of stronger wind came, rattling the shutters in their frames. Otah slid the wood closed, and the meeting room dimmed, gold tiles turning bronze, blue tiles black.

  “It will be fine,” Otah said. “At worst, there are other councillors with other daughters. It won’t be a pleasant transition, but—”

  “A different girl won’t fix this. At best we’d find a girl less willing to struggle. At worst, we’d find someone who hated me just as much, but better versed in deceit.”

  Otah took his seat again. He could feel his brow furrow. If he hadn’t been so tired to begin with, it wouldn’t have taken him as long to think through Danat’s words.

  “Are you…” Otah said, then stopped and began again. “You’re saying you won’t have Ana?”

  “I thought I could. I would have, if she hadn’t done what she did. But I’ve spent all night looking at it, and I don’t see a way.”

  “I do. I see it perfectly clearly. High families have been arranging marriages for as long as there have been high families. It binds them together. It shows trust.”

  “You didn’t. You were Khai Machi. You could have had dozens of wives, but you didn’t. Even after the fever took Mother, you didn’t. You could have,” Danat said. And then, “You could now. You could make one of these girls your wife. Marry Ana-cha.”

  “You know quite well that I couldn’t. A man of my years bedding a girl? They wouldn’t see a marriage so much as a debauch.”

  “Yes,” Danat said. “And putting me in your place would only change how it looked, not what it was. I’ll do whatever I can to help. You know that. I could marry a stranger and make the best of it. But I won’t father a child on an unwilling girl.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Otah said, and knew immediately that it was the wrong thing. His son’s smile was a mask now, cold and bright and hard as stone. Otah raised his hands in a pose that took the words back, but Danat ignored it.

  “I won’t do something I know in my bones is wrong,” Danat said. “If it’s the only way to save us, then we aren’t worth saving.”

  Otah watched the boy leave. There were a thousand arguments to make, a thousand ways to rephrase the issue, to make something different of these same circumstances. None of them would matter. He let his head sink to his hands.

  There had been a time when Otah had been young and the world had been, if not simple, at least certain. Decades and experience had made him sure that his sense of right and wrong were not the only ones. Before he’d had that beaten out of him by the gods, he might well have taken the same stand Danat had just now. Do what he believed to be right and endure the consequences, no matter how terrible.

  If only his children were less like him.

  There had to be a way. The whole half-dead mess of it had to be salvageable. He had only to see how.

  Voices and argument filled the halls as he made his way through the palaces. Columns wrapped in celebratory cloth mocked him. Uncertain, falsely bright gazes met his own and were ignored. The thick air of the summer cities left sweat running down Otah’s spine and the sense of a damp cloth pressed against his face. There was a way to salvage this. He had only to find it.

  Letters and requests for audiences waited for him, stacks of paper as long as his forearm. He ignored them for now and sent his servants scurrying for fresh paper and chilled tea. He sat at his desk, the pen’s bright bronze nib in the air just above the brick of ink, and gave himself a moment before he began.

  Kiyan-kya—

  Well, love, it’s all gone as well as a wicker fish boat. Ana won’t have Danat. Danat won’t have Ana. I find myself host to the worst gathering in history not actually struck by plague. I think the only thing I’ve done well was that I didn’t wrestle our son to the ground when he walked away from me. I feel like everyone is wrapped up in what happened before, and I’m alone in fearing what will come after. We won’t survive, love. The Khaiem and the Galts both are sinking, and we’re so short-sighted and mean of spirit we’re willing to die if it means the other bastard goes down too.

  I don’t mean Ana or Danat. They’re only young and brave and stupid the way young, brave people are. I mean her father. Farrer Dasin is happy to see this fail. I imagine there are a fair number in my court who feel the same way.

  There are two sides to this, love. But they aren’t the two sides we think of—not the Khaiem and the Galts. It’s the people in love with the past and the ones who fear for the future. And, though the gods alone know how I’m going to do it, I have to win Danat and Ana over from the one camp to the other.

  Otah paused, something shifting in the back of his mind. It felt the way it had when Kiyan was alive and speaking to him from the next room, her voice too low to make out the words. He put down the pen and closed his eyes.

  Win Ana over. He had to win Ana over.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Issandra-cha. Thank you for coming. You know my son, I think,” Otah said.

  The sun touch
ed the hills to the west of Saraykeht. Ruddy air rich with the scent of evening roses came through the unshuttered windows. A small meal of cheese and dried apple and plum wine waited for their pleasure on a low lacquered table. Issandra Dasin rose from her divan to greet Danat as he came forward.

  “Issandra-cha,” Danat said and returned her welcome.

  “Danat needs your help,” Otah said. Danat glanced over at him, surprise in his gaze. “You see, your daughter has convinced him that it would be wrong to marry an unwilling woman. I can argue it to be the lesser evil, but if we two work together, I think the issue might be avoided altogether.”

  Issandra returned to her seat, sighing. She looked older than when Otah had first met her.

  “It won’t be simple,” Issandra said.

  “What won’t be simple?” Danat asked.

  “Wooing my daughter,” Issandra said. “What did you think we were talking about?”

  Otah took a bit of dried apple in his mouth while Danat blinked. Words stumbled over the boy’s tongue without finding a sentence.

  “You won’t have a different girl for fear she’ll hate you and lie about it,” Otah said in the tone of a man explaining the solution of a simple mechanical problem. “Ana, we are all quite aware, isn’t going to hide her feelings on the matter. So if she chooses you, you can believe her. Yes?”

  “We have a small advantage in that her present lover is something of a cow,” Issandra said. “I suspect that, had the circumstances been otherwise, she would already have grown tired of him. But he’s a point of pride now.” She fixed Danat with her eyes. “You have a hard road before you, son.”

  “You want me to seduce your daughter?” Danat asked, his voice breaking slightly at seduce.

  “Yes,” Issandra said.

  Danat sank to a cushion. His face flushed almost the color of sunset.

  “I thought he might deliver an apology,” Otah said. “It would give him a reason to speak with Ana-cha in private, separate him from the political aspect of the arrangement, and place him in her camp.”

  “Apologize for what?” Danat said.

  “Well, for me,” Otah said. “Express your shame that I would treat her so poorly.”

  “She’ll smell that in a heartbeat,” Issandra said. “And if you begin by giving her the upper hand, you’ll never have it back. Ask an apology from her. Respect her objections, but tell her she was wrong in humiliating you. You are as much a pawn in this as she is. And do you have a lover?”

  “I…I was…”

  “Well, find one,” Issandra said. “Preferably someone prettier than my daughter. You needn’t look shocked, my boy. I’ve lived my life in court. While you poor dears are out swinging knives at each other, there are wars just as bloody at every grand ball.”

  A scratching came at the door, followed by a servant woman. She took a pose of abject apology.

  “Most High, there’s a courier for you.”

  “It can wait,” Otah said. “Or if it can’t, send for Sinja-cha.”

  “The courier’s come from Chaburi-Tan,” the servant said. “The letter is sealed and signed for you alone. He says the issue is urgent.”

  Otah cursed under his breath, but he rose. As he stepped out to the antechamber, he heard Danat and Issandra resume the conversation without him. The antechamber felt as close as a grave, heavy tapestries killing any sound from within the greater meeting room. The courier was a young man, hardly more than Danat’s age. Otah saw the calm, professional eyes sum him up. If the boy had been longer in the gentleman’s trade, Otah would never have noticed it. He accepted the letter and ripped it open there, not waiting for a blade to cut the silk-sewn edging.

  The cipher was familiar to him, but it made for slower reading than plain text. It was from the Kajiit Miyan, servant to the Emperor Otah Machi who had founded the Third Empire. Otah skipped down past the honorifics and empty form, decoding words and phrases in his mind until he reached something of actual importance. Then he read more slowly. And then he went back and read it again.

  The mercenaries hired to protect Chaburi-Tan were ending their contract and leaving. Within a month, the city would be reduced to its citizen militia. The pirates who had been harrying the city would find them only token resistance. Their options, his agent said, were to surrender and pray for mercy or else flee the city. There would be no defense.

  Otah took the servant girl by the elbow.

  “Find Balasar. And Sinja. Bring them…” Otah looked over his shoulder. “Bring them to the winter garden of the second palace. Do it now. You. Courier. You’ll wait until I have word to take back.”

  The twilight world lost its color like a face going pale. Otah paced the lush green and blossomless garden, wrenching his mind from one crisis to the next. A different servant led Balasar into the space between the willows.

  “Find us some light,” Otah said. “And Sinja-cha. Get Sinja-cha.”

  The servant, caught between two needs, hesitated, then hurried off. Otah led Balasar to a low stone bench. The general wore a lighter jacket, silk over cotton. His breath smelled of wine, but he gave no sign of being drunk. Otah looked out at the gray sky, the dark, looming palaces with windows glimmering like stars and cursed Sinja for his absence.

  “Balasar-cha, I need you. The Galtic fleet has to travel to Chaburi-Tan,” Otah said.

  He outlined the letter he’d had, the history of increasing raids and attacks, and his half-imagined scheme to show the unity of Galt and the Khaiem. With every word, Balasar seemed to become stiller, until at the end, it was like speaking to stone.

  “We can only show unity where it exists,” Balasar said. His voice was low, and in the rising darkness it seemed to come from no direction at all. “After what happened yesterday, the fleet’s as likely to turn on the city as the raiders.”

  “I don’t have the ships and men to protect Chaburi-Tan,” Otah said. “Not without you. The city will fall, and thousands will be killed. If the Galtic fleet came in, the pirates would turn back without so much as an arrow flown. And it would halfway unmake yesterday’s mess.”

  “It can’t happen,” Balasar said.

  “Then tell me what can,” Otah said.

  The general was silent. A moth took wing, fluttering between them like a clot of shadows and dust before it vanished.

  “There is…something. It will make things here more difficult,” Balasar said. “There are families who have committed to your scheme. That have already been brokering contracts and arranging alliances. I can gather them. It won’t be anything like the full force of war, but if they sent their private ships and soldiers along with whatever you can muster up, it might serve.”

  “At the cost of sending away what allies I have,” Otah said.

  “That would be the price of it,” Balasar said. “Send away your friends, and you’re left eating with your enemies. It could poison the court against us.”

  Us. At least the man had said us.

  “Get them,” Otah said. “Get whoever you can quickly, and then send for me. I can’t let another city die.”

  It only occurred to him as he stalked back through the wide stone halls and softly glowing lanterns of the first palace that he had been speaking to the man that had killed Udun and the village of the Dai-kvo, the man who had maimed Nantani and Yalakeht.

  The meeting chamber was empty when he reached it; Danat and Issandra had gone. The cheese and apples and wine had been cleared away. The lanterns had blown out. Otah called for a servant to fetch him food and light. He sat, his annoyance and unease rising in his breast like the tide climbing a sea cliff.

  Ana Dasin and her petulant, self-important father were well on their way to seeing both empires chewed away one bit at a time by pirates and foreign conspiracies. And failing crops. And time. Childless years growing one upon another like a winter with no promise of spring. There were so many things to fix, so uncountably many things that had gone wrong. He was the Emperor, the most powerful man in the ci
ties of the Khaiem, and he was tired to his heart.

  When the food arrived—pork in black sauce, spiced rice, sugared apple, wine and herbs—Otah was hardly hungry any longer. Moments after that, Sinja finally arrived.

  “Where have you been?” Sinja demanded. “I’ve been wandering around the winter garden for half a hand looking for you.”

  “I should ask the same. I must have had half the servants in the palace looking for you.”

  “I know. Six of them found me. It got inconvenient telling them all I was busy. You need to come with me.”

  “You were busy?”

  “Otah-cha, you need to come with me.”

  He breathed deeply and took a pose that commanded obedience. Sinja’s eyebrows rose and he adopted an answering pose that held nuances of both query and affront.

  “I have no intention of going anywhere until I have finished eating,” Otah said. It embarrassed him to hear the peevishness in his voice, but not so much as to unsay it. Sinja tilted his head, stepped forward, and lifted one end of the table. The plates and bowl spun to the floor. One shattered. Otah was on his feet with no memory of standing. His face felt as warm as if he were looking into a fire. His ears filled with a buzzing of rage.

  Sinja took a step back.

  “I can have you killed,” Otah said. “You know I can have you killed.”

  “You’re right,” Sinja said. “That passed the mark. I apologize, Most High. But you have to come with me. Now.”

  Servants came in, their eyes wide as little moons, their hands fluttering over the carnage of his dinner.

  “What is it?” Otah said.

  “Not here. Not where someone might hear us.”

  Sinja turned and walked from the room. Otah hesitated, mumbled an obscenity that made the servants turn their faces away, and followed. As his own anger faded, he saw the tension in Sinja’s shoulders and through his neck. They were the sorts of signs he should have picked up on at once. He was tired. He was slipping.

  Sinja was quartered in apartments of the third palace, where the Khai Saraykeht’s second son would have lived, had there been a Khai Saraykeht or any sons. The walls were black marble polished until the darkness itself shone in the torchlight. Doors of worked silver still showed where gems had been wrenched from them by Galtic hands. They were beautiful all the same. Perhaps more beautiful than when they had been intact; scars created character.