Daniel Abraham - Price of Spring

Wounded cut him off with a low bark of a laugh. Its eyes were fixed upon Eiah. Otah looked from one to the other, his hands taking a querying pose. Woman and slave both ignored him.

"Everyone?" the andat asked.

"Everyone, everywhere," Eiah said. "It's only a thought, isn't it? That's all it needs to be."

"What are you doing?" Ana asked. It seemed like a real curiosity.

"I'm curing everyone," Eiah said. "If there's a child in Bakta who split her head on a stone this morning, I want it fixed. A man in Eymond whose hip was broken when he was a boy and healed poorly, I want him walking without pain in the morning. Everyone. Everywhere. Now."

"Eiah Machi," the andat said, its voice low and amused, "the little girl who saved the world. Is that how you see it? Or is this how you apologize for slaughtering a whole people?"

Eiah didn't speak, and the andat went still again. Anger flashed in its eyes and Maati's hand went out, touching Eiah's. She patted him away absently, as if he were no more than a well-intentioned dog. The andat hissed under its breath and turned away. Maati noticed for the first time that its teeth were pointed. Eiah relaxed. Maati sat up; his breath had almost returned. The andat shifted to look at him. The whites of his eyes had gone as black as a shark's; he had never seen an andat shift its appearance before, and it filled him with sudden dread. Eiah made a scolding sound, and the andat took an apologetic pose.

Maati tried to imagine what it would be like, a thought that changeable, that flexible, that filled with violence and rage. How did we everthink we could do good with these as our tools? For as long as she held the andat, Eiah was condemned to the struggle. And Maati was responsible for that sacrifice too.

Eiah, it seemed, had other intentions.

"That should do," she said. "You can go."

The andat vanished, its robe collapsing to the floor in a pool of blue and gold. The scent of overheated stone came and went, a breath of hell on the night air. The others were silent. Maati came to himself first.

"What have you done?" he whispered.

"I'm a physician," Eiah said, her tone dismissive. "Holding that abomination the rest of my life would have gotten in the way of my work, and who told you that you were allowed to sit up? On your back or I'll call in armsmen to hold you down. No, don't say anything. I don't care if you're feeling a thousand times better. Down. Now."

He lay back, staring up at the ceiling. His mind felt blasted and blank. The enameled brick was blurred in the torchlight, or perhaps it was only that his eyes were only what they had been. The cold air that breathed in through the window too gently to even be a breeze felt better than he would have expected, the stone floor beneath him more comfortable. The voices around him were quiet with respect for his poor health or else with awe. The world had never seen a night like this one. It likely never would again.

She had freed it. Gods, all that they'd done, all that they'd suffered, and she'd just freed the thing.

When Danat returned, Eiah forced half a handful of herbs more bitter than the last into his mouth and told him to leave them under his tongue until she told him otherwise. Idaan and one of the armsmen hauled Vanjit's body away. They would burn it, Maati thought, in the morning. Vanjit had been a broken, sad, dangerous woman, but she deserved better than to have her corpse left out. He remembered Idaan saying something similar of the slaughtered buck.

He didn't notice falling asleep, but Eiah gently shook him awake and helped him to sit. While she compared his pulses and pressed his fingertips, he spat out the black leaves. His mouth was numb.

"We're going to take you back down in a litter," she said, and before he could object, she lifted her hand to his lips. He took a pose that acquiesced. Eiah rose to her feet and walked back toward the great bronze doors.

The footsteps behind him were as familiar as an old song.

"Otah-kvo," Maati said.

The Emperor sat on the dais, his hands between his knees. He looked pale and exhausted.

"Nothing ever goes the way I plan," Otah said, his tone peevish. "Not ever."

"You're tired," Maati said.

"I am. Gods, that I am."

The captain of the armsmen pulled open the doors. Four men followed, a low weaving of branches and rope between them. Eiah walked at their side. One of the men at the rear called out, and the whole parade stopped while the captain, cursing, retied a series of knots. Maati watched them as if they were dancers and gymnasts performing before a banquet.

"I'm sorry," Maati said. "This wasn't what I intended."

"Isn't it? I thought the hope was to undo the damage we did with Sterile, no matter what the price."

Maati started to object, then stopped himself. Outside the great window, a star fell. The smear of light vanished as quickly as it had come.

"I didn't know how far it would go."

"Would it have mattered? If you had known everything it would take, would you have been able to abandon the project?" Otah asked. He didn't sound angry or accusing. Only like a man who didn't know the answer to a question. Maati found he didn't either.

"If I asked your forgiveness…"

Otah was silent, then sighed deeply, his head hanging low.

"Maati-kya, we've been a hundred different people to each other, and tonight I'm too old and too tired. Everything in the world has changed at least twice since I woke up this morning. I think about forgiving you, and I don't know what the word means."

"I understand."

"Do you? Well, then you've outpaced me."

The litter came forward. Eiah helped him onto the makeshift seat, rope and wood creaking under his weight, but solid. The gait of the armsmen swayed him like a branch in the breeze. The Emperor, they left behind to follow in the darkness.

The formal joining of Ana Dasin and Danat Machi took place on Candles Night in the high temple of Utani. The assembled nobility of Galt along with the utkhaiem from the highest of families to the lowest firekeeper filled every cushion on the floor, every level of balcony. The air itself was hot as a barn, and the smell of perfume and incense and bodies was overwhelming. Otah sat on his chair, looking out over the vast sea of faces. Many of the Galts wore mourning veils, and, to his surprise, the fashion had not been lost on the utkhaiem. He worried that the mourning was not entirely for fallen Galt, but also a subterranean protest of the marriage itself. It was only a small concern, though. He had thousands more like it.

The Galtic ceremony-a thing of dirgelike song and carefully measured wine spilled over rice, all to a symbolic end that escaped him-was over. The traditional joining of his own culture was already under way. Otah shifted, trying to be unobtrusive in his discomfort despite every eye in Utani being fixed on the dais.

Fatter Dasin wore a robe of black and a red ocher that suited his complexion better than Otah would have expected. Issandra sat at his side in a Galtic gown of yellow lace over a profoundly celebratory red. Danat knelt before them both.

"Farrer Dasin of House Dasin, I place myself before you as a man before my elder," Danat said. "I place myself before you and ask your permission. I would take Ana, your blood issue, to be my wife. If it does not please you, please only say so, and accept my apology."

The whisperers carried his words out through the hall like wind over wheat. Ana Dasin herself knelt on a cushion off to her parents' right and Danat had been sitting to Otah's left. The girl's gown had been an issue of long and impassioned debate, for the swell of her belly was unmistakable. With only a few minor modifications, the tailors could have done much to hide it. Instead, she had chosen Galtic dress with its tight fittings and waist-slung ribbons, which would make it clear to the farthest spectator in the temple that summer would come well after the child. Etiquette masters from both courts had gone at the issue like pit dogs for the better part of a week. Otah thought she looked beautiful with her garland of ribbons. Her father apparently thought so as well. Instead of the traditional reply, I am not displeased, Fatter looked Danat square in the eyes, then turned to Ana.