The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(130)

"Come on, then," Calin said. "We can pick the best places for when the caravan comes."

The roadway had been five years in the building, a shallow canal of smooth worked iron that began at the seafront in Saraykeht and followed the river up to Utani. The caravan was the first of its kind, and the common wisdom in the streets and teahouses was evenly divided between those who thought it would arrive even earlier than expected and those who predicted they'd find splinters of blown boilers and nothing else.

Calin dismissed the skeptics. After all, his grandmother was arriving from her plantations in Chaburi-Tan, and she would never put herself on the caravan if it was going to explode.

The sweet days of early spring were short and cold. Frost still sent white fingers up the stones of the palaces in the morning and snow lingered in the deep shadows. A hundred times Calin and his friends had gone through the elaborate ritual of how they would greet the caravan, rehearsing it in their minds and conversations. The event, of course, was nothing like what they'd planned.

When word came, Calin was with his tutor, an ancient man from Acton, working complex sums. They were seated in the sunlight of the spring garden. Almond blossoms turned the tree branches white even before the first leaves had ventured out. Calin frowned at the wax tablet on his knees, trying not to count on his fingers. Hesitating, he lifted his stylus and marked his answer. His tutor made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat and Gaber appeared at the end of the arcade, running full out.

"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."