Part 37 (1/2)

'There are worse,' he said.

Otah rose, and the general rose with him. From the servants' niches and from beyond the great archway to the south, their respective people appeared. Hard soldiers from the South, men of the utkhaiem in flowing robes from the North. Otah raised his hands in a pose of command, and let the servants go forward to prepare their way.

The furnaces were near the surface where they could be blocked off from the rest of the city if the fires ever should escape their cells. The air near them was thick with the scent of smoke and oppressive with heat. The noise of the flames was like a waterfall. Otah led Balasar and his men to the huge grates where the scrolls and codices and books were stacked. Generations of history. Philosophic essays composed by minds gone to dust a thousand years before. Maps that predated the First Empire. The surviving sc.r.a.ps of war records from before the first andat. Otah looked upon his culture, his history, the record of all that had come before and that had made the world what it was. The flames licked and leapt.

If only it could have been just the poets' books and treatises on the andat . . . but the Galt had insisted, and Otah had understood. Each history was a footprint in the path, each collection of court poems might contain a hint or reference. With time and attention, someone might put together again what had been torn apart, and it was a chance the Galt had refused to accept. Their tenuous peace required sacrifices, and sacrifice without loss didn't deserve the name.

'Forgive this,' Otah said, to no one. He walked forward, coming to the first pile. The book was leather-bound and worn from years of loving care. Otah let it fall open and looked on Heshai's careful handwriting for the last time. With a sense of sorrow, Otah cast the book into the flames, then raised his hands again, and the servants began to throw the pages into the fire. Parchment darkened and curled in the suddenly white flame. Tiny embers flew out into the air, glowing and going dark, fireflies at sunset. The horror of it all closed his throat, and with it came a strange elation.

A hand touched his arm, and Otah looked at the Galtic general. There were tears in his eyes too.

'It was necessary,' he said.

The night candles were burned down past their first quarter before Otah found his way back to his rooms. Kiyan was already asleep, her face smooth and peaceful. He resisted the urge to touch her, to pull her awake and hope that some of that calm might come with her. It wouldn't. He knew that. Instead he watched the subtle rise and fall of her breath, listened to the small sounds the tunnels made in the darkness, the soft flow of air. He thought of crawling in beside her, still in his robes, pressing his eyes closed until forgetfulness took him as well. But he needed to perform one last errand. He rose quietly and left by the back pa.s.sage, down deeper into the earth.

The physician rose when he caught sight of Otah, taking a welcoming pose so quietly that the rustle of cloth in his robes seemed loud. Otah replied with one that asked a question.

'He's well,' the physician said. 'The poppy milk makes him sleepy, but it stops the cough.'

'May I?' Otah asked.

'I think he'll never rest unless you do. But it would be best if he didn't speak overmuch.'

Danat's room was warm and close. The night candle fluttered and glowed in its gla.s.s case. Great iron statues of hunting cats and a bear risen on his back feet radiated heat from the fires in which they'd been kept all through the day. His boy sat up unsteadily, smiling. Otah went to his side.

'You should be asleep,' Otah said, smoothing the hair from Danat's brow.

'You were supposed to read to me,' the boy said. His voice was scratchy and thick, but not as bad as it had been. Otah felt tears in his eyes again. He could not bring himself to say that the books were all gone, the stories all made ash. 'Lie back,' he said. 'I'll do what I can.'

Grinning, Danat dropped to his pillows. Otah took a long, unsteady breath and closed his eyes.

'In the sixteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Adani Beh,' Otah murmured, 'there came to court a boy whose blood was half Bakta, his skin the color of soot, and his mind as clever as any man who has ever lived . . .' Danat made a small sound of pleasure and closed his eyes, his hand seeking out Otah's fingers.

Otah went on as long as he could before his memory failed him, and then he began to invent.

BOOK FOUR: THE PRICE OF SPRING.

PROLOGUE.

Eiah Machi, physician and daughter of the Emperor, pressed her fingers gently on the woman's belly. The swollen flesh was tight, veins marbling the skin blue within brown. The woman appeared for all the world to be in the seventh month of a pregnancy. She was not.

'It's because my mother's father was a Westlander,' the woman on the table said. 'I'm a quarter Westlander, so when it came, it didn't affect me like it did other girls. Even at the time, I wasn't as sick as everyone else. You can't tell because I have my father's eyes, but my mother's were paler and almost round.'

Eiah nodded, running practiced fingertips across the flesh, feeling where the skin was hot and where it was cool. She took the woman's hand, bending it gently at the wrist to see how tight her tendons were. She reached inside the woman's s.e.x, probing where only lovers had gone before. The man who stood at his wife's side looked uncomfortable, but Eiah ignored him. He was likely the least important person in the room.

'Eiah-cha,' Parit, the regular physician, said, 'if there is anything I can do . . .'

Eiah took a pose that both thanked and refused. Parit bowed slightly.

'I was very young, too,' the woman said. 'When it happened. Just six summers old.'

'I was fourteen,' Eiah said. 'How many months has it been since you bled?'

'Six,' the woman said as if it were a badge of honor. Eiah forced herself to smile.

'Is the baby well?' the man asked. Eiah considered how his hand wrapped his wife's. How his gaze bored into her own. Desperation was as thick a scent in the room as the vinegar and herb smoke.

'It's hard to say,' Eiah said. 'I haven't had the luck to see very many pregnancies. Few of us have these days. But even if things are well so far, birthing is a tricky business. Many things can go wrong.'

'He'll be fine,' the woman on the table a.s.serted; the hand not being squeezed bloodless by her man caressed the slight pooch of her belly. 'It's a boy,' she went on. 'We're going to name him Loniit.'

Eiah placed a hand on the woman's arm. The woman's eyes burned with something like joy, something like fever. The smile faltered for less than a heartbeat, less than the time it took to blink. So at least some part of the woman knew the truth.

'Thank you for letting me make the examination,' Eiah said. 'You're very kind. And I wish the best of luck to you both.'

'All three,' the woman corrected.

'All three,' Eiah said.

She walked from the room while Parit arranged his patient. The antechamber glowed by the light of a small lantern. Worked stone and carved wood made the room seem more s.p.a.cious than it was. Two bowls, one of old wine and another of fresh water, stood waiting. Eiah washed her hands in the wine first. The chill against her fingers helped wash away the warmth of the woman's flesh. The sooner she could forget that, the better.

Voices came from the examining room like echoes. Eiah didn't listen. When she put her hands into the water, the wine turned it pink. She dried herself with a cloth laid by for the purpose, moving slowly to be sure both the husband and wife were gone before she returned.

Parit was was.h.i.+ng down the slate table with vinegar and a stiff brush. It was something Eiah had done often when she'd first apprenticed to the physicians, all those years ago. There were fewer apprentices now, and Parit didn't complain.

'Well?' he asked.

'There's no child in her,' Eiah said.

'Of course not,' he said. 'But the signs she does show. The pooled blood, the swelling. The loss of her monthly flow. And yet there's no slackening in her joints, no s.h.i.+elding in her s.e.x. It's a strange mix.'

'I've seen it before,' Eiah said.

Parit stopped. His hands took a pose of query. Eiah sighed and leaned against one of the high stools.

'Desire,' Eiah said. 'That's all. Want something that you can't have badly enough, and the longing becomes a disease.'

Her fellow physician and onetime lover paused for a moment, considering Eiah's words, then looked down and continued his cleaning.

'I suppose we should have said something,' he said.

'There's nothing to say,' Eiah said. 'They're happy now, and they'll be sad later. What good would it do us to hurry that?'

Parit gave the half-smile she'd known on him years before, but didn't look up to meet her gaze.

'There is something to be said in favor of truth,' he said.