The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(58)

"What is Ana's opinion of the matter of Shija and Danat?" Otah asked.

"I don't know," Issandra said. Her voice went softer, sorrow creeping in at the seams. "I believe she's avoiding me."

Otah pressed his fingers against his eyelids until colors swam in the darkness. No one spoke, and the silence pressed on his shoulder like a hand.

"Well," he said at last, "how do the two of you intend to move forward from here?"

"She wants to put them together," Danat said. His voice was equal parts plea and outrage. "She wants Shija and Ana to be seated beside each other at every dance, every meal ..."

"You can't envy what you don't see," Issandra said. "It's more difficult if this other girl can't be easily removed, but if Ana's run with her present lover is nearing an end, and Shija makes it clear that she considers Ana a threat ..."

Danat yelped and began to spout objections, Issandra pressing on against him. Otah kept his eyes closed, the paired voices draining each other of meaning. Instead he imagined the girl to be before him as she had been the night she came to speak with him. Half-drunk. Too proud to be ruled by pride.

He took a pose that commanded silence. Danat's words ended at once. Issandra's took a moment longer to trail off.

"Between the two of you, you'll have to devise something," he said. "I don't have the time or the resources to fix this for you. But consider that you might be treating Ana with less respect than she deserves. Danat-cha, do you intend to build a life with Shija Radaani?"

Danat sobered. He took no pose, spoke no word. Otah nodded.

"Then it would be disrespectful to behave as if you did," Otah said. "Be honest with her, and if it damages relations with House Radaani, then it does."

"Yes, Father," Danat said, hesitated, and then took a pose that asked forgiveness before walking from the room.

Otah's spine ached. His eyes felt gritty with the efforts of the day. It was all far from over.

"Issandra-cha," he said. "I don't know Ana well, but I lost my own daughter by treating her as the girl I remembered instead of the woman she'd become. Don't repeat my mistake. Ana may not be subject to the manipulations that work on younger girls."

Issandra Dasin's face hardened. For a moment, Otah saw the resemblance between mother and daughter. She took a pose of acknowledgment. It was awkward, but her form was correct.

"There is, perhaps, another approach," she said. "I wouldn't have considered it before, but I've spent a certain number of hours with your son. He might be able to manage it."

Otah nodded her on.

"He could choose to fall in love with her. Cultivate the feeling within himself, and then ..." She shrugged. "Let the world take its course. I haven't known many women who failed to be charmed by an attractive man's genuine admiration."

"You think he could simply decide to feel what we want him to feel?"

"I've done it every day for nearly thirty years," Issandra said.

"That is either the most romantic thing I've heard or the saddest," Otah said. And then, "Ana-cha did me a great favor. I'm sorry that Danat repaid it with an indiscretion."

Issandra waved the apology away.

"I doubt she took offense. I'm sure she assumed Danat and this Radaani creature were sharing whatever flat surfaces came available. I remember what it was like at their age. We were all heat and dramatic gestures. We thought we were the first generation to truly discover love or sex or betrayal." Her voice softened.

Otah recalled a girl named Liat with skin the brown of eggshell and the night his one true friend had confessed his affair with her. The night Maati had confessed. He hadn't seen or spoken to either of them for years afterward. He had killed a man, in part as a blessing upon them, Liat and Maati, and the freedom that together they had given him.

All heat and dramatic gestures, he thought. Amusement mixed with sorrow, the way it always did.

"Still, it is a pity," Issandra said. "The Radaani girl is beautiful, and vanity is a powerful lever, no matter how sophisticated you take my daughter to be."

"We may hope for the best," Otah said. "Perhaps Shija-cha will take Danat's apology in stride and return to only acting the role."

Issandra's gaze told him exactly how likely she thought that was, but she only shook her head.

"It would be pleasant," she said.

He ate alone that night, though there were scores of men, Galtic and utkhaiem both, who would have been pleased to share his table. The pavilion sat atop a high tower, the air smelling of lavender and the sea. Otah sat on a cushion by a low table and watched the sunset; orange and red and gold spread out upon a wide canvas of clouds and sky. There were no singing slaves here, but soft chimes danced in the breeze with a sound like bells made from wood. An iron brazier sat close to keep him warm. The evening was beautiful and rich with sadness.

He had known that his daughter was angry with him. He had encouraged the high families to import wives for their sons. They had come from Bakta, Eymond, Eddensea. Women of middling birth commanded huge dowries. The coffers of the utkhaiem had dropped, but a handful of children had been born. A few dozen, perhaps, in every city. It hadn't been enough. And so he'd conceived the plan to join with Galt, old enemies made one people. Yes, it left behind a generation of Khaiate women. And Galtic men, for that. No doubt they would feel angered, lost, discarded. It was a small price to pay for a future.