The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(82)

Low clouds obscured moon and stars. When Otah closed the shutters against the cold night air, the room grew no darker. The great copper tub the keeper had prepared glowed in the light of the fire grate. The earthenware jar of soap beside it was half-empty, but at least Otah felt like his skin was his own again and not hidden under layers of dust and sweat. His traveling robes had vanished and he'd picked a simple garment of combed wool lined with silk. The voices of the armsmen rose through the floorboards. The song was patriotic and bawdy, and the drum that accompanied them kept missing the right time. Otah rose on bare feet and walked out to the stairs. No servants scuttled out of his way, and he noticed the absence.

Danat was not among the armsmen or out with the horses. It was only when Otah approached the room set aside for Ana Dasin that he heard his son's voice. The room was on the lower floor, near the kitchens. The floor there was stone. Otah's steps made no sound as he walked forward. Ana said something he couldn't make out, but when Danat answered, he'd come near enough to hear.

"Of course there are, it's only Papa-kya isn't one of them. When I was a boy, he told me stories from the First Empire about a half-Bakta boy. And he nearly married a girl from the eastern islands."

"When was that?" Ana asked. Otah heard a sound of shifting cloth, like a blanket being pulled or a robe being adjusted.

"A long time ago," Danat said. "Just after Saraykeht. He lived in the eastern islands for years after that. They build their marriages in stages there. He's got the first half of the marriage tattoo."

"Why didn't he finish it?" Ana asked.

Otah remembered Maj as he hadn't in years. Her wide, pale lips. Her eyes that could go from blue the color of the sky at dawn to slate gray. The stretch marks on her belly, a constant reminder of the child that had been taken from her. In his mind, she was linked with the scent of the ocean.

"I don't know," Danat said. "But it wasn't that he was trying to keep his bloodline pure. Really, there's a strong case that my lineage isn't par ticularly high. My mother didn't come from the utkhaiem, and for some people that's as much an insult as marrying a Westlander."

"Or a Galt," Ana said, tartly.

"Exactly," Danat said. "So, yes. Of course there are people in the court who want some kind of purity, but they've gotten used to disappointment over the last few decades."

"They would never accept me."

"You?" Danat said.

"Anyone like me."

"If they won't, then they won't accept anyone. So it hardly matters what they think, because they won't have any sons or daughters at court. The world's changed, and the families that can't change with it won't survive."

"I suppose," Ana said. They were silent for a moment. Otah debated whether he should scratch on her door or back quietly away, and then Ana spoke again. Her voice had changed. It was lower now, and dark as rain on stone. "It doesn't really matter, though, does it. There isn't going to be a Galt."

"That's not true," Danat said.

"Every day that we're like ... like this, more of us are dying. It's harvest time. How are they going to harvest the grain if they can't see it? How do you raise sheep and cattle by sound?"

"I knew a blind man who worked leather in Lachi," Danat said. "His work was just as good as a man's with eyes."

"One man doesn't signify," Ana said. "He wasn't baking his own bread or catching his own fish. If he needed to know what a thing looked like, there was someone he could ask. If everyone's sightless, it's different. It's all falling apart."

"You can't know that," Danat said.

"I know how crippled I am," Ana said. "It gives me room to guess. I know how little I can do to stop it."

There was a soft sound, and Danat hushing her. Otah took a careful step back, away from the door. When Ana's voice came again, it was thick with tears.

"Tell me," she said. "Tell me one of those stories. The ones where a child with two races could still win out."

"In the sixteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Adani Beh," Danat said, his voice bright and soft, "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 had ever lived. When the Emperor saw him ..."

Otah backed away, his son's voice becoming a murmur of sound, inflected like words but too faint to mean anything. Their whole journey, it had been like this. Each time Otah thought they might have a moment alone, Ana was near, or one of the armsmen, or Otah had brought himself to the edge of speech and then failed. Every courier they stopped along the road was another reminder to Otah that his son had to know, had to be told. But no word had come from Idaan, and Danat still didn't know that Eiah was involved in the slow death of Galt and, with it, the future Otah had fought for.

Before Pathai, Otah had told himself when they were on the road. During the journey itself, it hardly mattered whether Danat knew, but once they reached their destination, his son couldn't be set out without knowing what it was they were searching for and why. Otah had no faith that another, better chance would come the next day. He made his way back upstairs, found a servant woman, and had cheese, fresh bread, and a carafe of rice wine taken to Danat's room. Otah waited there until the Galtic clock, clicking to itself in a corner, marked the night as almost half-gone. Otah didn't notice that he was dozing until the opening door roused him.