The Price of Spring Read online

  "Eiah-cha," the most senior of the servants said, his hands in a pose of ritual offering, "may we escort you to your rooms?"

  "No," she said. "Food first. Then rest."

  Eiah suffered them to take her satchel, but refused the sable cloak they offered against the night air. It really wasn't that cold.

  "Is there word from my father?" she asked as they walked along the wide, empty paths.

  "No, Eiah-cha," the servant replied. "Nor from your brother. There have been no couriers today."

  Eiah kept her pleasure at the news from her expression.

  The palaces of Saraykeht had suffered less under their brief Galtic occupation than many others had. Nantani had been nearly ruined. Udun had been razed and never rebuilt. In Saraykeht, it was clear where statues had once been and were gone, where jewels had been set into the goldwork around the doorways and been wrenched out, but all the buildings except the Khai's palace and the library still stood. The utkhaiem of the city hadn't restored the damage or covered it over. Like a woman assaulted but with unbroken spirit, Saraykeht wore her scars without shame. Of all the cities of the Khaiem, she was the least devastated, the strongest, and the most arrogant in her will to survive. Eiah thought she might love the city just a little, even as it made her sad.

  A singing slave occupied the garden outside Eiah's apartments. Eiah left the shutters open so that the songs could come through more clearly. A fire burned in the grate and candles glowed in glass towers. A Galtic clock marked the hours of the night in soft metallic counterpoint to the singer, and as she pulled off her robes and prepared for sleep, Eiah was amazed to see how early it was. The night had hardly exhausted its first third. It had seemed longer. She put out the candles, pulled herself into her bed, and drew the netting closed.

  The night passed, and the day that followed it, and the day that followed that. Eiah's life in Saraykeht had long since taken on a rhythm. The mornings she spent at the palaces working with the court physicians, the afternoons down in the city or in the low towns that spread out from Saraykeht. To those who didn't know her, she gave herself out to be a visitor from Cetani in the north, driven to the summer cities by hardship. It wasn't an implausible tale. There were many for whom it was true. And while it couldn't be totally hidden, she didn't want to be widely known as her father's daughter. Not here. Not yet.

  On a morning near the end of her second month in the city-two weeks after Candles Night-the object of her hunt finally appeared. She was in her rooms, working on a guide to the treatment of fevers in older patients. The fire was snapping and murmuring in the grate and a thin, cold rain tapped at the shutters like a hundred polite mice asking permission to enter. The scratch at the door startled her. She arranged her robe and opened the door just as the slave outside it was raising her hand to scratch again.

  "Eiah-cha," the girl said, falling into a pose that was equal parts apology and greeting. "Forgive me, but there's a man ... he says he has to speak with you. He has a message."

  "From whom?" Eiah demanded.

  "He wouldn't say, Most High," the slave said. "He said he could speak only with you."

  Eiah considered the girl. She was little more than sixteen summers. One of the youngest in the cities of the Khaiem. One of the last.

  "Bring him," Eiah said. The girl made a brief pose that acknowledged the command and fled back out into the damp night. Eiah shuddered and went to add more coal to the fire. She didn't close the door.

  The runner was a young man, broad across the shoulder. Twenty summers, perhaps. His hair was soaked and sticking to his forehead. His robe hung heavily from his shoulders, sodden with the rain.

  "Eiah-cha," he said. "Parit-cha sent me. He's at his workroom. He said he has something and that you should come. Quickly."

  She caught her breath, the first movements of excitement lighting her nerves. The other times one or another of the physicians and healers and herb women of the city had sent word, it had been with no sense of urgency. A man ill one day was very likely to be ill the next as well. This, then, was something different.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  The runner took an apologetic pose. Eiah waved it away and called for a servant. She needed a thick robe. And a litter; she wasn't waiting for the firekeeper. And now, she needed them now. The Emperor's daughter got what she wanted, and she got it quickly. She and the boy were on the streets in less than half a hand, the litter jouncing uncomfortably as they were carried through the drizzle. The runner tried not to seem awed at the palace servants' fear of Eiah. Eiah tried not to bite her fingernails from anxiety. The streets slid by outside their shelter as Eiah willed the litter bearers to go faster. When they reached Parit's house, she strode through the courtyard gardens like a general going to war.

  Without speaking, Parit ushered her to the back. It was the same room in which she'd seen the last woman. Parit sent the runner away. There were no servants. There was no one besides the two physicians and a body on the wide slate table, covered by a thick canvas cloth soaked through with blood.

  "They brought her to me this morning," Parit said. "I called for you immediately."

  "Let me see," Eiah said.

  Parit pulled back the cloth.

  The woman was perhaps five summers older than Eiah herself, darkhaired and thickly built. She was naked, and Eiah saw the wounds that covered her body: belly, breasts, arms, legs. A hundred stab wounds. The woman's skin was unnaturally pale. She'd bled to death. Eiah felt no revulsion, no outrage. Her mind fell into the patterns she had cultivated all her life. This was only death, only violence. This was where she was most at home.

  "Someone wasn't happy with her," Eiah said. "Was she a soft-quarter whore?"

  Parit startled, his hands almost taking a pose of query. Eiah shrugged.

  "That many knife wounds," she said, "aren't meant only to kill. Three or four would suffice. And the spacing of them isn't what I've seen when the killer had simply lost control. Someone was sending a message."

  "She wasn't stabbed," Parit said. He took a cloth from his sleeve and tossed it to her. Eiah turned back to the corpse, wiping the blood away from a wound in the dead woman's side. The smear of gore thinned. The nature of the wound became clear.

  It was a mouth. Tiny rosebud lips, slack as sleep. Eiah told her hand to move, but for a long moment her flesh refused her. Then, her breath shallow, she cleaned another. And then another.

  The woman was covered with babies' mouths. Eiah's fingertips traced the tiny lips that had spilled the woman's lifeblood. It was a death as grotesque as any Eiah had heard in the tales of poets who had tried to bind the andat and fallen short.

  Tears filled her eyes. Something like love or pity or gratitude filled her heart to bursting. She looked at the woman's face for the first time. The woman hadn't been pretty. A thick jaw, a heavy brow, acne pocks. Eiah held back from kissing her cheek. Parit was confused enough as it stood. Instead, Eiah wiped her eyes on her sleeve and took the dead woman's hand.

  "What happened?" she asked.

  "The watch saw a cart going west out of the soft quarter," Parit said. "The captain said there were three people, and they were acting nervous. When he hailed them, they tried to run."

  "Did he catch them?"

  Parit was staring at Eiah's hand clasping the dead woman's fingers.

  "Parit," she said. "Did he catch them?"

  "What? No. No, all three slipped away. But they had to abandon the cart. She was in it," Parit said, nodding at the corpse. "I'd asked anything unusual to be brought to me. I offered a length of silver."

  "They earned it," Eiah said. "Thank you, Parit-kya. I can't tell you how much this means."

  "What should we do?" Parit asked, sitting on his stool like a fresh apprentice before his master. He'd always done that when he felt himself at sea. Eiah found there was warmth in her heart for him even now

  "Burn her," Eiah said. "Burn her with honors and treat her ashes with respect."

  "Shouldn't we ...
shouldn't we tell someone? The utkhaiem? The Emperor?"

  "You already have," Eiah said. "You've told me."

  There was a moment's pause. Parit took a pose that asked clarification. It wasn't quite the appropriate one, but he was flustered.

  "This is it, then," he said. "This is what you were looking for."

  "Yes," Eiah said.

  "You know what happened to her."

  "Yes."

  "Would you..." Parit coughed, looked down. His brow was knotted. Eiah was half-tempted to go to him, to smooth his forehead with her palm. "Could you explain this to me?"

  "No," she said.

  AFTER THAT, IT WAS SIMPLE. THEY WOULDN'T REMAIN IN SARAYKEHT, NOT WHEN they'd so nearly been discovered. The Emperor's daughter asked favors of the port master, of the customs men on the roads, of the armsmen paid by the city to patrol and keep the violence in the low towns to an acceptable level. Her quarry weren't smugglers or thieves. They weren't expert in covering their tracks. In two days, she knew where they were. Eiah quietly packed what things she needed from her apartments in the palace, took a horse from the stables, and rode out of the city as if she were only going to visit an herb woman in one of the low towns.

  As if she were coming back.

  She found them at a wayhouse on the road to Shosheyn-Tan. The winter sun had set, but the gates to the wayhouse courtyard were still open. The carriage Eiah had heard described was at the side of the house, its horses unhitched. The two women, she knew, were presenting themselves as travelers. The man-old, fat, unpleasant to speak withwas posing as their slave. Eiah let the servant take her horse to be cared for, but instead of going up the steps to the main house, she followed him back to the stables. A small shack stood away at an angle. Quarters for servants and slaves. Eiah felt her lips press thin at the thought. Rough straw ticking, thin blankets, whatever was left to eat after the paying guests were done.

  "How many servants are here now?" Eiah asked of the young maneighteen summers, so four years old when it had happened-brushing down her horse. He looked at her as if she'd asked what color ducks laid the eggs they served at table. She smiled.

  "Three," the servant said.

  "Tell me about them," she said.

  He shrugged.

  "There's an old woman came in two days ago. Her master's laid up sick. Then a boy from the Westlands works for a merchant staying on the ground floor. And an old bastard just came in with two women from Chaburi-Tan."

  "Chaburi-Tan?"

  "What they said," the servant replied.

  Eiah took two lengths of silver from her sleeve and held them out in her palm. The servant promptly forgot about her horse.

  "When you're done," she said, "take the woman and the Westlander to the back of the house. Buy them some wine. Don't mention me. Leave the old man."

  The servant took a pose of acceptance so total it was just short of an open pledge. Eiah smiled, dropped the silver in his palm, and pulled up a shoeing stool to sit on while she waited. The night was cool, but still not near as cold as her home in the north. An owl hooted deep and low. Eiah pulled her arms up into her sleeves to keep her fingers warm. The scent of roasting pork wafted from the wayhouse, and the sounds of a flute and a voice lifted together.

  The servant finished his work and with a deferential nod to Eiah, made his way to the servants' house. It was less than half a hand before he emerged with a thin woman and a sandy-haired Westlands boy trailing him. Eiah pushed her hands back through her sleeves and made her way to the small, rough shack.

  He was sitting beside the fire, frowning into the flames and eating a mush of rice and raisins from a small wooden bowl. The years hadn't been kind to him. He was thicker than he'd been when she knew him, an unhealthy fatness that had little to do with indulgence. His color was poor; what remained of his hair was white stained yellow by neglect. He looked angry. He looked lonesome.

  "Uncle Maati," she said.

  He startled. His eyes flashed. Eiah couldn't tell if it was anger or fear. But whatever it was had a trace of pleasure to it.

  "Don't know who you mean," he said. "Name's Daavit."

  Eiah chuckled and stepped into the small room. It smelled of bodies and smoke and the raisins in Maati's food. Eiah found a small chair and pulled it to the fire beside the old poet, her chosen uncle, the man who had destroyed the world. They sat silently for a while.

  "It was the way they died," Eiah said. "All the stories you told me when I was young about the prices that the andat exacted when a poet's binding failed. The one whose blood turned dry. The one whose belly swelled up like he was pregnant, and when they cut him open it was all ice and seaweed. All of them. I started to hear stories. What was that, four years ago?"

  At first she thought he wouldn't answer. He cupped two thick fingers into the rice and ate what they lifted out. He swallowed. He sucked his teeth.

  "Six," he said.

  "Six years," she said. "Women started appearing here and there, dead in strange ways."

  He didn't answer. Eiah waited for the space of five slow breaths together before she went on.

  "You told me stories about the andat when I was young," she said. "I remember most of it, I think. I know that a binding only works once. In order to bind the same andat again, the poet has to invent a whole new way to describe the thought. You used to tell me about how the poets of the Old Empire would bind three or four andat in a lifetime. I thought at the time you envied them, but I saw later that you were only sick at the waste of it."

  Maati sighed and looked down.

  "And I remember when you tried to explain to me why only men could be poets," she said. "As I recall, the arguments weren't all that convincing to me."

  "You were a stubborn girl," Maati said.

  "You've changed your mind," Eiah said. "You've lost all your books. All the grammars and histories and records of the andat that have come before. They're gone. All the poets gone but you and perhaps Cehmai. And in the history of the Empire, the Second Empire, the Khaiem, the one thing you know is that a woman has never been a poet. So perhaps, if women think differently enough from men, the bindings they create will succeed, even with nothing but your own memory to draw from."

  "Who told you? Otah?"

  "I know my father had letters from you," Eiah said. "I don't know what was in them. He didn't tell me."

  "A women's grammar," Maati said. "We're building a women's gram„ mar.

  Eiah took the bowl from his hands and put it on the floor with a clatter. Outside, a gust of wind shrilled past the shack. Smoke bellied out from the fire, rising into the air, thinning as it went. When he looked at her, the pleasure was gone from his eyes.

  "It's the best hope," Maati said. "It's the only way to ... undo what's been done."

  "You can't do this, Maati-kya," Eiah said, her voice gentle.

  Maati started to his feet. The stool he'd sat on clattered to the floor. Eiah pulled back from his accusing finger.

  "Don't you tell that to me, Eiah," Maati said, biting at the words. "I know he doesn't approve. I asked his help. Eight years ago, I risked my life by sending to him, asking the Emperor of this pisspot empire for help. And what did he say? No. Let the world be the world, he said. He doesn't see what it is out here. He doesn't see the pain and the ache and the suffering. So don't you tell we what to do. Every girl I've lost, it's his fault. Every time we try and fall short, it's because we're sneaking around in warehouses and low towns. Meeting in secret like criminals-"

  "Maati-kya-"

  "I can do this," the old poet continued, a fleck of white foam at the corner of his mouth. "I have to. I have to retrieve my error. I have to fix what I broke. I know I'm hated. I know what the world's become because of me. But these girls are dedicated and smart and willing to die if that's what's called for. Willing to die. How can you and your great and glorious father tell me that I'm wrong to try?"

  "I didn't say you shouldn't try," Eiah said. "I said you can't do it. Not alone."

&nb
sp; Maati's mouth worked for a moment. His fingertip traced an arc down to the fire grate as the anger left him. Confusion washed through his expression, his shoulders sagging and his chest sinking in. He reminded Eiah of a puppet with its strings fouled. She rose and took his hand as she had the dead woman's.

  "I haven't come here on my father's business," Eiah said. "I've come to help."

  "Oh," Maati said. A tentative smile found its way to his lips. "Well. I ... that is ..."

  He frowned viciously and wiped at his eyes with one hand. Eiah stepped forward and put her arms around him. His clothes smelled rank and unwashed; his flesh was soft, his skin papery. When he returned her embrace, she would not have traded the moment for anything.

  1

  It was the fifth month of the Emperor's self-imposed exile. The day had been filled, as always, with meetings and conversations and appreciations of artistic tableaux. Otah had retired early, claiming a headache rather than face another banquet of heavy, overspiced Galtic food.

  The night birds in the garden below his window sang unfamiliar songs. The perfume of the wide, pale flowers was equal parts sweetness and pepper. The rooms of his suite were hung with heavy Galtic tapestries, knotwork soldiers slaughtering one another in memory of some battle of which Otah had never heard.

  It was, coincidentally, the sixty-third anniversary of his birth. He hadn't chosen to make it known; the High Council might have staged some further celebration, and he had had a bellyful of celebrations. In that day, he had been called upon to admire a gold- and jewel-encrusted clockwork whose religious significance was obscure to him; he had moved in slow procession down the narrow streets and through the grand halls with their awkward, blocky architecture and their strange, smoky incense; he had spoken to two members of the High Council to no observable effect. At this moment, he could be sitting with them again, making the same points, suffering the same deflections. Instead, he watched the thin clouds pass across the crescent moon.