A Bloom in the North Page 11

  "Of course," I said. "Give us a few weeks to settle in. If we miss the deadline for the first child allotment, we can apply for our measure next year."

  "A considerate approach," Thesenet said, rising. "I thank you for it. Three days, then, ke Pathen. I'll see you at House Rabeil."

  "So you shall," I said. "Thank you for lunch."

  "The pleasure was mine," Thesenet said, and left me to contemplate the view. Which I did for longer than I planned. The warehouse contract represented an opportunity I wouldn't have dared hope for, so good in fact that I couldn't help a certain wariness: it would be a perfect way to entrap us if we were already suspected of treason. Even so I greatly anticipated bringing that news home.

  Against that pleasure I savored the brief bitterness of the allotment Jushet had arranged. The empire had removed the anadi from the general population to manage the failing birthrate, and as a consequence all of our children were born behind the walls of the anadi residences and then spirited away to facilities where they were raised by the empire's hand-picked guardians. If a House demonstrated its profitability and respectability it was awarded a number of children each year to expand its House... but of course, those children were already several years old before release and had been indoctrinated thoroughly into the empire's mores by their keepers. There were no children in the streets of our cities anymore; they were too jealously guarded, first by the empire and then by the Houses that worked so hard to earn them. The average Jokkad in these days would rarely see one unless he belonged to a Great House.

  Jushet's gift meant that we would be among those favored few to receive them in return for our "duty," which meant I would have to pick out at least ten emodo to come with me to the residence and beget those children on unwilling anadi. But while I could beg off receiving the honor of a few token anadi to decorate my Household, I could not reject the much greater compliment of receiving an allotment of children, not when Asara would not have been eligible for such an allotment for years.

  I watched the Jokka walking through the bright pale autumnal light below until my thoughts settled. And then I rose and left. Before I need borrow that trouble, I had a gift to bring home to my beloved.

  Hesa stared at me, pupils dilated in plum-red eyes. "They want us to what?"

  Bringing this news to my councilors had thus far been everything I'd hoped. I'd caught Darsi and Hesa both in the common room, sent someone to fetch Abadil and then put forth Thesenet's proposal. The look on Hesa's face... I leaned back, hands folded on my stomach, and tried not to laugh.

  "You can't be serious!" Hesa managed, its voice fluttering on the first word.

  "Sorry I'm late, what did I mi—what's wrong with Hesa?" Abadil said at the door.

  Darsi said wryly, "Pathen's figured out how to give an eperu an orgasm."

  I flattened my ears and began to speak but Abadil interrupted me, dropping into a chair across from Darsi and saying, "This sounds promising... go on!"

  I gave Darsi my best 'we'll talk later' glare and said to Abadil, "The minister would like us to undertake the creation of an imperial trade system based out of warehouses in het Narel. If we accept his proposal, we'll be tasked with building the first warehouses, buying and staffing caravans, and scheduling and running them to all the towns on Ke Bakil."

  "He... w-wants us to... w-what?" Abadil said, his snicker burbling out from around the words until by the end of it he was smacking his palm on the edge of the table, laughing too hard to talk.

  I said mildly, "I told him we would seriously consider his offer."

  Abadil collapsed into another paroxysm.

  "Well," Darsi said with a sigh. "I see I'm the only one left with the faculty of speech. I believe I speak for all of us, ke Pathen, when I say we will need to sit down and work out the dangers, advantages and logistical challenges involved, including the very real possibility this is a trap contrived by our spies—"

  "We'll do it!" Hesa exclaimed, finding its tongue. "Gods! Go back and tell him right now we'll sign!"

  Darsi's ears slicked back. "Hesa! The size of this undertaking, it can't be underestimated, we've never run anything this complicated, and that's without mentioning that it won't exactly help us stay unnoticed!"

  "We'll do it," Hesa said to me directly, ignoring him. "Just give it to me, Pathen, I swear you won't regret it. I can do this."

  "I know you can," I said. "I just wanted to give you the chance to tell me no."

  It laughed, eyes glittering with that fire I'd fallen so utterly in love with in het Kabbanil. "But you knew I wouldn't."

  "I knew you wouldn't," I agreed, satisfied.

  "I think it's a splendid idea!" Abadil said. "It'll accomplish everything we'd hoped to, and give us a reason to do it immediately and on a grand scale! Oh, don't fret, Darsi. It's just our same plan to hide in plain sight, only magnified."

  "Magnified to the point of us not being able to clamp down on every part of it for secrecy's sake!" Darsi said, irritated. "Am I the only one who thinks we should be more cautious? There are spies in our House and Claws crawling all over our fields!"

  Abadil reached over and patted his hand. "I think the only mistake you're making, ke emodo, is thinking you're the only one who sees the dangers. But all of us are quite cognizant of the peril we're in, every day, just being here and holding our opinions. Aren't we?"

  Neither Hesa nor I said anything. Did we have to?

  Darsi covered his face. "Gods, it's like being bound to a wagon that's being driven at a full run along a cliff by a suicidal driver. You people have no sense of self-preservation!"

  "I assure you," I said dryly, "we're quite intent on our survival."

  "Fine words from someone in an eperu's bed!" Darsi exclaimed.

  Abrupt silence.

  And then I grabbed the front of his vest and slammed his back into the wall, and no one stopped me... not even Darsi himself, who seemed to have realized he'd gone too far. His breathing was erratic, too quick; he was looking down and away and his ears were flushed with shame.

  "Now who's trying to get someone killed?" I said, lips pulled back from my teeth. When he didn't answer I shook him once by the vest. "Look at me." When he didn't, I snarled, "Look at me!"

  "Ke Pathen—"

  "Do you know who you are?" I interrupted.

  "I—"

  "Let me tell you who you are," I growled. "You're Darsi Asara-emodo, a member of my House. My House, Darsi. And if you ever... ever blurt that out again, I will visit the justice of a Head of Household on a member-turned-criminal. I'm sure you know the penalty for real crime under the Stone Moon. Don't you."

  "Pathen, I'm sorry!" he said.

  "I don't care if you're sorry," I said. "If you do it again, I'll have your tongue ripped out. And you'll have deserved it."

  "I'm sorry," he said again, trembling. "It just slipped out—"

  I let him go and stepped away, disgusted. "Get out. I don't want to see you again until you've put aside whatever it is that's driving this quarrel between us. And Darsi—" He paused, already at the door. "Make it quick."

  "Yes, ke Pathen," he whispered, and fled.

  Hesa's face was the color of chalk though it was otherwise composed, its hand resting lightly on the table. Across from it, Abadil cocked a brow and said, "I hope he takes your warning seriously. I'd hate to lose him."

  "What?" I said, drawn from my rage by the unexpected sentiment. "Darsi?"

  "Yes," Abadil said. "Until your arrival, he was quite indispensable. No particular talents except for hard work and willingness to do what other people ask him to. For some reason, though, he seems incapable of sense around you."

  "He'd better learn quickly," I said. "Or I'll have him sent to Ilushet where he can't endanger the rest of us."

  "Yes," Abadil said with a sigh. "That would be a pity." He glanced at Hesa, then smiled at it crookedly. "Oh, don't fret, ke eperu. I'm not about to spill your secret."

  "You," I observed, ears flat, "are not acti
ng surprised enough, Abadil."

  "No," Abadil said. "I suppose I'm not. But I knew someone who loved an eperu before, though he didn't see the signs in himself until much, much later. Not that the two of you are acting like lovers... quite the opposite, I'd say. But the idea doesn't surprise me, no. Now that I consider it, the two of you are well-matched. I'd harness you in tandem if given the choice."

  I stared at him, fighting an unwilling amusement through the haze of my anger at Darsi. "You... just compared us to a team of rikka."

  "As a metaphor I admit it was a bit contrived, but it was the first thing that came to mind," Abadil said. He stood and walked to the door. "So... this proposition of Thesenet's. Did he give you any more details?"

  "A few," I said, struggling back toward the topic. The sound of the door closing penetrated my anger and I looked up.

  "Now," Abadil said. "Touch, you two, before you fly apart. You're not the first to see the answer and you won't be the last."

  "The answer?" I said.

  "The answer to Ke Bakil's problem," Abadil said. "Which is that we make rules about whether we should care for people and their fates based on their sex and our perception of the viability of their futures." He snorted. "Even with nature giving us proof of the absurdity of that by making us capable of switching sex twice in our lives! We still insist we know better. But the truth is that we're all the same flesh, ke Pathen, male, female and neuter. And we all have the same chance to die before our time, and to lose our faculties from terrible accident, and to love. Until we admit that to each other and to ourselves, we'll keep suffering apart, and our societies will be rife with cruelty and injustice."

  Now we were both staring at him.

  "As if you're surprised by all this," he said, folding his arms. "You know it in your hearts where it counts. So please a cynic and a drunk and don't hide the truth from me."

  Hesa said, slowly, "Ke Abadil... love does not answer all questions, nor solve all problems."

  "Of course not," he said, unruffled.

  "Love, in fact, makes some things nearly impossible," Hesa said, the words still coming with such difficulty that my own teeth ached. "Love can destroy. Love hurts."

  "Yes, yes," he said. "Absolutely."

  It narrowed its eyes at him. One could see the red in its lashes in the right light.

  "What do you expect of power?" Abadil said as I regarded Hesa in profile. "Fire will kill you too, ke eperu. But would you live without the heat of the sun and the warmth of it in winter?" He leaned forward. "The Stone Moon sees the destructive power of love and outlaws it. But that curtails its generative power also, doesn't it? And what are we failing for lack of? Children? Mercy? Community? What do you think makes those things possible?" He flicked his ears back and said, "No, Hesa. Our choices are love... or fear. The empire's made its choice. And so, you perceive, have the two of you."

  I looked at the eperu.

  "Come sit," Hesa said to me a heartbeat later.

  So I drew out a chair beside it and the eperu took my hand, and that was all. But that was enough for both of us... and for Abadil too, for in his eyes we saw the sort of honest pleasure I think we all hope those around us will feel for us in our happiness. We went back to discussing the logistics of fulfilling Thesenet's request and it was a good meeting. I couldn't help but wonder what Darsi would have brought to it had we not had such strife between us, though.

  After Abadil left, Hesa said, "Darsi's right, you know. It might be a trap."

  "I know," I said.

  "And love doesn't solve all problems," it continued, but more to itself than to me.

  I said, "Of course not, pefna. Love is a vision. It needs logistical support."

  Startled from its reverie, Hesa laughed. "Ah, what? Well, is my Head of Household commanding it, then?"

  "Love as our vision of the future?" I said. I huffed softly. "As long as the society founded on it is brave enough to understand and face the cruelties of nature, I can think of worse things, ke eperu. I just can't see how it could be done."

  The eperu glanced up at me, thoughtful. "We'll see, ke emodo. We'll see."

  I spent the next days immersing myself in the business of the House. While I didn't think I'd be involved with it directly, I wanted a basic understanding of what everyone would be doing. Abadil was pleased to give me a tour through the part of the House he'd set aside for his paper-making endeavor, which was currently a clutter of half-constructed frames and vats. The emodo he'd drafted into the project seemed excited, though, so I left him to the management of it. Hesa then introduced me to the liaison for the empire's eperu workforce who was teaching our team their duties. When they hadn't been packing goods and loading caravans, Laisira's eperu had tended bees, not crops, and none of them were familiar with the process. They took to it with all the energy and focus we expected of the eperu without question... most of us, anyway. I watched them at their labors and remembered Hesa's revelation about the secret culture of neuters and the attendant beliefs. Did they need that apartness, I wondered? Did they feel called to that sacrifice to give their lives meaning?

  I also watched my three imperial spies, but they had their heads down in their work. The two emodo had been dragged into Abadil's venture—perhaps involvement with something so potentially revolutionary would win their loyalty, for it was hard not to fall in love with success. The eperu Jushet had cannily assigned together with the emodo was in the field, one of the few who knew the well and irrigation duties without being taught. Perhaps it noticed the ignorance of its fellows? I didn't know what Molan's eperu had been tasked with, but then, perhaps the spy didn't either.

  There was little I could do about the spies, though, so I let them be. At least they were pulling their weight in the traces with the rest of us. In the meantime, I had a party to concern myself with, one for which I realized I had nothing sufficient in my clothes-chest to wear. I sent for Laisira's former master-weaver and took him with me to the shops of the Green. I daresay he felt some affront at being forced to buy clothes he felt he could have done better making himself, but that was a little of why I'd brought him; once he'd resigned himself to the experience, he was flattered that I'd asked his advice, and he stopped thinking of me as Pathen Ures-emodo, former Claw of the empire and scourge of Laisira's unnatural Head of Household, and began thinking of me as an interesting fashion problem to solve.

  We returned with multiple packages, some of which the weaver wouldn't let me touch until he'd put some of his embroiderers and painters on them, and I let him go feeling I'd accomplished something far more important than outfitting myself for my false role as het Narel's hero-Claw Head of Household. It was hard to fear someone you'd been haranguing for having shoulders too broad for their waist.

  "I heard you bought clothing?" Hesa asked me later, perplexed. We were in the communal room again; two pots were left on the hearth as a matter of course, one for stew or porridge and another for something steeped. The drink in it today was some kind of delicate floral tea, a scent that evoked the wind on the back of het Narel's grasslands.

  "There's a party tomorrow night at House Rabeil," I said. "Thesenet intends to use it as my formal introduction to society."

  "Have you told Darsi?" it asked, brows rising.

  "I haven't even seen Darsi for almost two days," I said.

  It sighed. "You're not making this easier, Pathen."

  I laughed. "If it was easy, ke eperu, you'd be bored."

  It scowled at me. Or tried. I could see the smile trying to win its mouth.

  The following afternoon I retired to my chambers to dress, expecting to do so alone and naturally finding Abadil waiting for me at the door.

  "You know that I can dress myself...?" I said.

  "How fortunate for you that I'm not here to help you with that, then!" he said. When I paused too long, he added, "Never fear, ke emodo. I have no designs on you. The last male with whom I considered a relationship cured me of the habit of flirting with Jokka of worl
d-affecting significance."

  I lifted my brows. "This sounds like quite a story."

  "I'm sure it does," Abadil said. "But I'm here to tell you different stories. About the personalities of het Narel's powerful Houses, so that you don't walk into that gathering completely unarmed."

  "Ah," I said, and gestured. "By all means, then."

  So Abadil sat on my bed and regaled me with names and histories while I set out my clothes and began the process of putting on my newest mask. The uniform of a Claw had been the first... this would be my second. I hoped it would fit more easily.

  "This information," I said, pulling on the pants. "How old is it? You haven't been in het Narel for some time, Abadil."

  "Fortunately I have a friend who's been here since before the empire," Abadil said. "And I went to see him the day after we arrived. Eduñil Rabeil-emodo, that is. He used to head Transactions then, he'll probably be one of your hosts tonight. He's one of the principals of the House still."

  "A good friend?" I said.

  "Since childhood," Abadil said. Quieter, he said, "It was good to see him again. We've been through a great deal together."

  "Sounds like a much better candidate for a flirtation than some world-affecting emodo you've barely met," I said, pulling my shirt on.

  For once, Abadil didn't have an immediate answer. I thought of looking at him but judged doing so would distract him from whatever he was thinking. Still, I smiled as I tucked in the shirt. I had been assured that the current fashion was for longer coats and vests, modeled after the Stone Moon's uniforms. I'd gone for a knee-length black vest over black pants with the purpose of reminding those around me of my former occupation. Laisira's artisans had embroidered the black fabric with black and gray floss so that the fabric looked rich without being gaudy. The shirt was white, the warm white of spilled blood, and loose; custom dictated that I should bind it below the elbow, so I'd chosen broad ribbons the pale yellow of honey, or tears.