Daniel Abraham - Price of Spring

Six members of the High Council sat at the wide marble table along with Balasar Gice and Issandra Dasin. Otah, Danat, and representatives of four of the highest families of the utkhaiem sat across from them. Otah wished he'd been able to scatter each side among the other instead of dividing the table like a battlefield. Or else keep the group smaller. If it had been only himself, Farrer, and Issandra, there might have been a chance.

Ana, the girl who had taken a stick to this political beehive, was not present, nor was she welcome.

"There are agreements in place," Balasar said. "We can't unmake them on a whim."

"Yes, Dasin-cha. Contracts have been signed," one of the utkhaiem said. "Is it Galt's intention that any contract can be invalidated if the signer's daughter objects?"

"That isn't what happened," the councilman at Farrer's right hand said. "We have our hands full enough without exaggerating."

And so it started off again, voices raised each over the other with the effect that nothing but babble could be heard. Otah didn't add to the clamor, but sat forward in his chair and watched. He considered the architecturevaulted ceiling of blue and gold tiles, the sliding wooden shutters. He found a scent in the air: sugared almonds. He struggled to hear a sound beyond the table: the wind in the treetops. Then, slowly, he pulled his awareness back to the people before him. It was an old trick he'd learned during his days as a courier, a way of withdrawing half a step from the place where he was and considering the ways that people moved and held themselves, the expressions they wore when they were silent and when they spoke. It often said more than the words. And now, he saw three things.

First, he was not the only silent one at the table. Issandra Dasin was rocked a degree back in her chair, her eyes fixed on the middle distance. Her expression spoke of exhaustion and a barely hidden sorrow, the complement to her husband's self-destructive pleasure. Danat was also withdrawn, but with his body canted forward, as if he was trying to hear every phrase that fluttered through the heavy air. He might as easily drink a river.

Second, Otah saw that neither side was united. The Galts across from him ran the gamut from defiant to conciliatory, the utkhaiem from outraged to fearful. It was the same outside. The palaces, the teahouses, the baths, the street corners-all of Saraykeht was filled with agreements and negotiations that were suddenly, violently uncertain. He recalled something his daughter had said once about the reopened wound being the one most plagued by scars.

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 Fatter 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.