The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(10)

"I found your letter quite moving," she said. "Several of us did."

"I am gratified," Otah said, not certain it was quite the correct word.

"Fatter and I have talked about your treaty. The massive shipment of Galtic women to your cities as bed servants to your men, and then hauling back a crop of your excess male population for whatever girls escaped. It isn't a popular scheme."

The brutality of her tone was a gambit, a test. Otah refused to rise to it.

"Those aren't the terms I put in the treaty," he said. "I believe I used the term wife rather than bed servant, for example. I understand that the men of Galt might find it difficult. It is, however, needed."

He spread his hands, as if in apology. She met his gaze with the bare intellect of a master merchant.

"Yes, it is," she said. "Majesty, I am in a position to deliver a decisive majority in both the High Council and the convocation. It will cost me all the favors I'm owed, and I have been accruing them for thirty years. It will likely take me another thirty to pay back the debt I'm going into for you.

Otah smiled and waited. The cold blue eyes glittered for a moment.

"You might offer your thanks," she said.

"Forgive me," Otah said. "I didn't think you'd finished speaking. I didn't want to interrupt."

The woman nodded, sat back a degree, and folded her hands in her lap. A wasp hummed through the air to hover between them before it darted away into the foliage. He watched her weigh strategies and decide at last on the blunt and straightforward.

"You have a son, I understand?" Issandra Dasin said.

"I do," Otah said.

"Only one."

It was, of course, what he had expected. He had made no provision for Danat's role in the text of the treaty itself, but alliances among the Khaiem had always taken the form of marriages. His son's future had always been a tile in this game, and now that tile was in play.

"Only one," he agreed.

"As it happens, I have a daughter. Ana was three years old when the doom came. She's eighteen now, and ..."

She frowned. It was the most surprising thing she'd done since her arrival. The stone face shifted; the eyes he could not imagine weeping glistened with unspilled tears. Otah was shocked to have misjudged her so badly.

"She's never held a baby, you know," the woman said. "Hardly ever seen one. At her age, you couldn't pull me out of the nursery with a rope. The way they chuckle when they're small. Ana's never heard that. The way their hair smells ..."

She took a deep breath, steadying herself. Otah leaned forward, his hand on the woman's wrist.

"I remember," he said softly, and she smiled.

"It's beside the matter," she said.

"It's at the center of the matter," Otah said, falling reflexively into a pose of disagreement. "And it's the part upon which we agree. Forgive me if I am being forward, but you are offering your support for my treaty in exchange for a marriage between our families? Your daughter and my son."

"Yes," she said. "I am."

"There may be others who ask the same price. There is a tradition among my people of the Khai taking several wives...."

"You didn't."

"No," Otah agreed. "I didn't."

The wasp returned, buzzing at Otah's ear. He didn't raise a hand, and the insect landed on the brightly embroidered silk of his sleeve. Issandra Dasin, mother of his son's future wife, leaned forward gracefully and crushed it between her fingers.

"No other wives," she said.

"I would need assurances that the vote would be decisive," Otah said.

"You'll have them. I am a more influential woman than I seem."

Otah looked up. Above them, the sun burned behind a thin scrim of cloud. The same light fell in Utani, spilling through the windows of Danat's palace. If only there were some way to whisper to the sun and have it relay the message to Danat: Are you certain you'll take this risk? A life spent with a woman whom you've never met, whom you may never love?

His son had seen twenty summers and was by all rights a man. Before the great diplomatic horde had left for Galt, they had discussed the likelihood of a bargain of this sort. Danat hadn't hesitated. If it was a price, he'd pay it. His face had been solemn when he'd said it. Solemn and certain, and as ignorant as Otah himself had been at that age. There was nothing else either of them could have said. And nothing different that Otah could do now, except put off the moment for another few breaths by staring up at the blinding sun.

"Very well," Otah said. Then again, "Very well."

"You also have a daughter," the woman said. "The elder child?"

"Yes," Otah said.

"Does she have a claim as heir?"

The image appeared in his mind unbidden: Eiah draped in golden robes and gems woven into her hair as she dressed a patient's wounds. Otah chuckled, then saw the beginnings of offense in his guest's expression. He thought it might not be wise to appear amused at the idea of a woman in power.

"She wouldn't take the job if you begged her," Otah said. "She's a smart, strong-willed woman, but court politics give her a rash."

"But if she changed her mind. Twenty years from now, who can say that her opinions won't have shifted?"