Daniel Abraham - Price of Spring

The meeting room was as silent as a grave. Even the candle flames stood still. The dark-stained wood of the floor and beautifully painted abstract frescoes of the walls seemed out of place, too rich and peaceful for the moment. A back room at a teahouse was the better venue for this kind of negotiation. Ana enjoyed the contrast.

She knew when she first heard of Otah Machi's death that she was going to have to be responsible for holding the Empire together until Danat regained his balance. She hadn't yet lost a parent. Her husband and lover now had neither of his. The lost expression in his eyes and the bewildered tone in his voice made her heart ache. And so when their partners and rivals in trade took the opportunity to renegotiate treaties in hopes of winning some concession in the fog of grief, Ana found herself taking it personally.

"Lady Empress," the ambassador said, "I don't mean disrespect, but you must see that-"

Ana raised her finger, the mirror of the man's gesture. He went silent.

"A necklace," she said. "Ask around if you'd like. You'll find I have no sense of proportion. None."

Very quietly, the ambassador took the scroll up from the table between them and put it back in its satchel. Ana nodded and gestured to the door. The man's spine could have been made of a single, unarticulated iron bar as he left. Ana felt no sympathy for him.

The Master of Tides came in a moment later, her face amused and alarmed. Ana took what she thought was the proper pose to express continuity. The Khaiate system of poses was something that was best born into and learned from infancy. She did her best, and no one had the audacity to correct her, so Ana figured she was close enough.

"I believe that is all for the day, Most High," the Master of Tides said.

"Excellent. We got through those quickly, didn't we?"

"Very quickly," the woman agreed.

"Feel free to offer any other audiences the choice of meeting with me or waiting for my husband until after the mourning rites."

"I will be sure to sketch out the options," the woman said in voice that assured Ana that she would make room in her schedule to help Danat with his father's arrangements.

Ana found her mother in the guests' apartments. Her return trip had been postponed, the steam caravan itself waiting for her. The blue silk curtains billowed in the soft breeze; the scent of lemon candles lit to keep the insects away filled the air. Issandra sat before the fire grate, her hands folded on her lap. She didn't rise.

Ana would never have said it, but her mother looked old. The sun of Chaburi-Tan had darkened her skin, making her hair seem brilliantly white.

"Mother."

"Empress," Issandra Dasin said. Her voice was warm. "I'm afraid our timing left something to be desired."

"No," Ana said. "It wouldn't have mattered. Tell father that I appreciate the invitation, but I can't leave my family here."

"He won't hear it from me," Issandra said. "He's a good man, but time hasn't made him less stubborn. He wants his little girl back."

Ana sighed. Her mother nodded.

"I know his little girl is gone," Issandra said. "I'll try to make him understand that you're happy here. It may come to his visiting you himself."

"How are things at home?" Ana asked. She knew it was a telling question. She started to take a pose that unasked it but lost her way. It wasn't part of their conversation anyway.

"The word from Galt is good. The trade routes are busier than Farrer's seafront can accommodate. He's filling his coffers with silver and gems at a rate I've never seen," Issandra said. "It consoles him."

"I am happy here," Ana said.

"I know you are, love," her mother said. "This is where your children live."

They talked about small things for another hour, and then Ana took her leave. There would be time enough later.

The Emperor's pyre was set to be lit in two days. Utani was wrapped in mourning cloth. The palaces were swaddled in rags, the trees hung heavy with gray and white cloth. Dry mourning drums filled the air where there had once been music. The music would come again. She knew that. This was only something that had to be endured.

She found Danat in his father's apartments, tears streaking his face. Around him were spread sheets of paper as untidy as a bird's nest. All of them were written upon in Otah Machi's hand. There had to be a thousand pages. Danat looked up at her. For the length of a heartbeat, she could see what her husband had looked like as a child.

"What is it?" Ana asked.

"It was a crate," Danat said. "Father left orders that it be put on his pyre. They're letters. All of them are to my mother."

"From when they were courting?" Ana asked, sitting on the floor, her legs crossed.

"After she died," Danat said. Ana plucked a page from the pile. The paper was brittle, the ink pale. Otah Machi's words were perfectly legible. Kiyan-kya- You have been dead for a year tonight. I miss you. I want to have something more poetic to say, something that will do you some honor or change how it./cels to be without you. Something. I had a thousand things I thought I would write, but those were when it was only me. Now, here, with you, all I can say is thatl miss you. The children are starting to come back from the loss. I don't know i f they ever will. I have no experience with this. I had no mother or father. As a child, I had no family. I don't have any experience losing a family. The closest thing I have to solace is knowing that, if I had gone first, you would have suffered all this darkness yourself. That I have to bear it is the price of sparing you. It doesn't make the burden lighter, it doesn't make the pain less, it doesn't take away any of the longing I have to see you again or hear your voice. But it does give the pain meaning. I suppose that's all I can ask: that the pain have meaning. I love you. I miss you. I will write again soon.

Ana folded the letter. Thousands of pages of letters to the Empress who had died. The last Empress before her.

"I don't know what to do," Danat said.

"I love you. You know I love you more than anything except the children?"

"Of course."

"If you burn these, I will leave you. Honestly, love. You've lost enough of him. You have to keep these."

Danat took a deep shuddering breath and closed his eyes. His hands pressed flat on his thighs. Another tear slipped down his cheek, and Ana leaned forward to smooth it away with her sleeve.

"I want to," Danat said. "I want to keep them. I want to keep him. But it was what he asked."

"He's dead, love," Ana said. "He's dead and gone. Truly. He doesn't care anymore.

When Danat had finished crying, his body heavy against her own, the sun had set. The apartments were a collection of shadows. Somewhere in the course of things, they had made their way to Otah Machi's beda soft mattress that smelled of roses and had, so far as Ana could tell, never been slept in. She stroked Danat's hair and listened to the chorus of crickets in the gardens. Her husband's breath became deeper, more regular. Ana waited until he was deeply asleep, then slipped out from under him, lit a candle, and by its soft light gathered the letters and began to put them in order.

And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.

The World itself seemed to have conspired to make the day somber.

Gray clouds hung low over the city, a cold constant mist of rain darkening the mourning cloths, the stones, the newly unfurled leaves of the trees. The pyre stood in the center of the grand court, stinking of coal oil and pine resin. The torches that lined the pyre spat and hissed in the rain.

The assembly was huge. There weren't enough whisperers to take any words he said to the back edges of the crowd. If there was a back. As far as he could see from his place at the raised black dais, there were only faces, an infinity of faces, going back to the edge of the horizon. Their murmuring voices were a constant roll of distant thunder.