Daniel Abraham - Price of Spring

"It's here!" she screamed. "It's here!"

Before any adult could object, Calin joined her flight. Tablet, stylus, and sums were forgotten in an instant. They ran past the pavilions that marked palaces from merchants' compounds, the squares and open markets that showed where the great compound gave way to the haunts of common labor. The streets were thick with humanity, and Calin threaded his way through the press of bodies aided by his youth, the quality of his robes, and the boyish instinct that saw all obstacles as ephemeral.

He reached the Emperor's platform just before the caravan arrived. Wide plumes of smoke and steam stained the southern sky, and the air smelled of coal. Danat and Ana were already there, seated in chairs of carved stone with silk cushions. Otah Machi-the Emperor himselfsat on a raised dais, his hands resting like fragile claws on the arms of a black lacquer chair. Calin's grandfather looked over as he arrived and smiled. Danat's expression was distracted in a way that reminded Calin of doing sums. His mother was craning her neck and trying not to seem that she was.

It hardly mattered. The crowd that pressed and seethed around the yard at the caravan road's end had eyes only for the great carts speeding toward them, faster than horses at full gallop. Calin sat at his mother's feet, his intended perch nearest his friends forgotten. The first of the carts came near enough to make out the raised dais, twin of his grandfather's, and the stiff-backed white-haired woman sitting atop it. Calin's mother left all decorum, and stood, waving and calling to her mother.

Calin felt his father's hand on his shoulder and turned.

"Watch this," Danat said. "Pay attention. That caravan reached us in half the time even a boat could have. What you're seeing right now is going to change everything."

Calin nodded solemnly as if he understood.

It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price.

Cehmai Tyan sat across the meeting table from the High Council's special envoy. The man was nondescript, his clothing of Galtic cut and unremarkable quality. Cehmai didn't like the envoy, but he respected him. He'd known too many dangerous men in his life not to.

The envoy read the letters-ciphered and sent between a fictional merchant in Obar State and Cehmai himself here in Utani. They outlined the latest advance in the poetmaster's rebuilding of the lost libraries of Machi, which also had not happened. Cehmai sipped tea from an iron bowl and looked out the window. He couldn't see the steam caravan from here, but he had a good view of the river. It was at the point he liked it most, the water freed by the thaw, the banks not yet overgrown by green. No matter how many years passed, he still felt a personal affinity with earth and stone.

The envoy finished reading, his mouth in a smile that would have seemed pleasant and perhaps a bit simple on someone else.

"Is any of this true?" the envoy asked.

"Danat-cha did send a dozen men into the foothills north of Machi," Cehmai said, "and Maati-kvo and I did spend a winter there. Past that, nothing. But it should keep Eddensea's attention on sneaking through to search for it themselves. And we're in the process of forging books that we can then `recover' in a year or so."

The envoy tucked the letters into a leather pouch at his belt. He didn't look up as he spoke.

"That brings a question," the man said. "I know we've talked about this before, but I'm not sure you've fully grasped the advantages that could come from leaning a little nearer the truth. Nothing that would be effective. We all understand that. But our enemies all have scholars working at these problems. If they were able to come close enough that the bindings cost them, if they paid the andat's price-"

Cehmai took a pose of query. "Wouldn't that be doing your work for you?" he asked.

"My job is to see they don't succeed," the envoy said. "A few mysterious, grotesque deaths would help me find the people involved."

"It would give away too much," Cehmai said. "Bringing them near enough to be hurt by the effort would also bring them near to succeed„ ing.

The envoy looked at him silently. His placid eyes conveyed only a mild distrust.

"If you have a threat to make, feel free," Cehmai said. "It won't do you any good."

"Of course there's no threat, Cehmai-cha," the envoy said. "We're all on the same side here."

"Yes," the poetmaster said, rising from his chair with a pose that called the meeting to its close. "Try to keep it in mind."

His apartments were across the palaces. He made his way along the pathways of white and black sand, past the singing slaves and the fountain in the shape of the Galtic Tree that marked the wing devoted to the High Council. The men and women he passed nodded to him with deference, but few took any formal pose. A decade of joint rule had led to a thousand small changes in etiquette. Cehmai supposed it was smallminded of him to regret them.

Idaan was sitting on the porch of their entranceway, tugging at a length of string while a gray tomcat worried the other end. He paused, watching her. Unlike her brother, she'd grown thicker with time, more solid, more real. He must have made some small sound, because she looked up and smiled at him.

"How was the assassin's conference?" she asked.

The tomcat forgot his string and trotted up to Cehmai, already purring audibly. He stopped to scratch its fight-ragged ears.

"I wish you wouldn't call it that," he said.

"Well, I wish my hair were still dark. It is what it is, love. Politics in action."

"Cynic," he said as he reached the porch.

"Idealist," she replied, pulling him down to kiss him.

Far to the east, an early storm fell from clouds dark as bruises, a veil of gray. Cehmai watched it, his arm around his lover's shoulder. She leaned her head against him.

"How was the Emperor this morning?" he asked.

"Fine. Excited to see Issandra-cha again as much as anything about the caravan. I think he's more than half infatuated with her."

"Oh please," Cehmai said. "This will be his seventy-ninth summer? His eightieth?"

"And you won't still want me when you've reached the age?"

"Well. Fair point."

"His hands bother him most," Idaan said. "It's a pity about his hands."

Lightning flashed on the horizon, less that a firefly. Idaan twined her fingers with his and sighed.

"Have I mentioned recently how much I appreciate you coming to find me? Back when you were an outlaw and I was still a judge, I mean," she asked.

"I never tire of hearing it," Cehmai said.

The tomcat leaped on his lap, dug its claws into his robe twice, kneading him like bread dough, and curled up.

For even if the flowergrows from an ancient vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and untested.

Eiah motioned for Otah to sit. She was gentle as always with his crippled hands. He sat back down slowly. The servants had brought his couches out to a wide garden, but with the coming sunset he'd have to be moved again. Eiah tried to impress on her father's servants that what he needed and what he wanted weren't always the same. She'd given up convincing Otah years earlier.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, sitting beside him. "You look tired."

"It was a long day," Otah said. "I slept well enough, but I can never stay in bed past dawn. When I was young, I could sleep until midday. Now that I have the time and no one would object, I'm up with the birds. Does that seem right to you?"

"The world was never fair."

"Truth. All the gods know that's the truth."

She took his wrists as if it were nothing more than the contact of father and daughter. Otah looked at her impatiently, but he suffered it. She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the subtle differences of his pulses.