Children of God

29 Central Inbrokar 2061, Earth-Relative

IT WAS PAST SECOND DAWN WHEN HA’ANALA WOKE TO DAYLIGHT IN HER eyes. She turned her face away from the glare and stared at Puska, still lax with sleep.

How can I tell Sofia? she asked herself miserably—her first thought on this new day identical to her last of the previous one. Sitting up, she looked at herself and grimaced: her fur was matted and muddy, and her teeth felt as thick as her head. Oh, Isaac, she thought hopelessly, getting up slowly, stretching each stiff limb. Her mind as blank as the flatlands that stretched out before her, she stared east over an immense plain, the lavender of its shortgrass blossoms pale in the bleached light of full day.

"Sipaj, Puska," she said. "Wake up!" She felt around with her tail and slapped Puska’s hip. Puska brushed her away. "Puska!" she cried, more urgently, not daring to move her head for fear of losing the plume. "He’s alive! I can smell him."

That brought the Runao to her feet in a swift roll. Puska stared in the same direction that Ha’anala was looking, but saw only emptiness. "Sipaj, Ha’anala," she said wearily, "there’s no one there."

"Isaac’s out there," Ha’anala insisted, making a quick attempt to brush dried mud from her coat. "It depends on the wind, but someone thinks he’s moving northeast."

Puska couldn’t detect a useful thing herself, except for some sintaron setting fruit nearby and a little patch of sweetleaf that might make a decent breakfast. "Sipaj, Ha’anala, it’s time to go home."

"We just have to catch up with him—"

"No," said Puska.

Shocked, Ha’anala glanced over her shoulder and saw equal parts of skepticism and regret in Puska’s face. "Don’t be frightened," she started.

"I’m not frightened," Puska said bluntly, too tired for courtesy. "I don’t believe you, Ha’anala." There was an awkward pause. "Sipaj, Ha’anala, someone thinks you have been wrong about all of this. He’s not out there."

They looked at each other for a long time: all but sisters, almost strangers. It was Ha’anala who broke the silence. "All right," she said evenly. "Someone will go on alone. Tell Fia that someone will find Isaac even if she must follow him all the way to the sea."

AS THE SOUNDS OF PUSKA’S RETREAT RECEDED, HA’ANALA CLOSED HER eyes and formed an image of the plume: diffuse and broad at its top, narrowing at the base toward a point she could not detect, but could infer from the taper. Not caring that Puska had given up, she said, "He’s out there," and followed the pillar of his scent into the wilderness.

In the first few hours, the wind played with the plume and she was twice forced to double back so she could arc across the trail to find the line strongest with his passing on the ground. But as the suns climbed and the wind stilled, her skill strengthened, and she had only to shift her head from side to side to gauge the gradient.

The plain was not empty, as it had seemed, but creased and furrowed with narrow streams swollen from the previous day’s rain. Many of the creeks were bordered by bushes bearing purplish fruits that Isaac had eaten, she noted, examining his spoor. Ha’anala herself was hungry a great deal of the time, but stayed alert for burrows along the banks where small prey whose name she did not know could be dug out or snagged on a claw when she thrust an arm deep into a den. Once, hot and dirty, she waded into a creek and sat on its stony bottom, hoping to be scrubbed clean and cooled by the rain-quickened current; to her astonishment, as she leaned back against her tail, some kind of swimmer blundered into the weir of her spread legs. "Manna!" she cried, and laughed into the sunlight.

The land was full of wonders. She could see from one side of the world to the other, and on her sixth day of travel she had watched suns both rise and set, and understood at last why the colors of the sky changed. Her own body was an astonishment. Confined by dense vegetation throughout her childhood, she had never before felt the rightness of her natural gait. The rhythm of her steady stride sang to her: a poetry of walking, of silent space, of purpose. Leaning into a floating canter, tail level with the ground, she knew for the first time balance and speed, precision and grace, but she felt no need to hurry. She was gaining on Isaac, knew that he was alive and well. She was certain that he was happy, as she herself was.

She allowed herself a day of rest by a gullied stream, where she discovered hundreds of mud nests filled with infant somethings whose foolish parents had left them unguarded, and she fell asleep that evening with a full belly, secure in the belief that Isaac was not far ahead and that she could follow him even after a rain, and awoke the next morning, stiff-muscled but joyous.

She caught up to him at midday. He was standing on the edge of an escarpment where the plain fractured, its eastern half lower than the west by the height of a mature w’ralia tree. Isaac said nothing, but when she came to a halt some sixty paces away, he flung his arms wide as though to embrace all the empty fullness around him—not spinning to blur the world, but turning with ecstatic slowness to see it all. When he had come full circle, his eyes met her own. "Clarity!" he cried.

"Yes," she called, elated, for a moment knowing everything hidden in his strange, secret heart. "Clarity!"

He swayed slightly: naked, tall and tailless. Ha’anala followed his gaze to the vast sky. "Red is harmless," he declared with fragile bravery, not knowing himself how wrong he was. After a time, blinking, and beginning to shiver, he said, "I won’t go back."

"I know, Isaac," Ha’anala replied as she walked toward him—Sofia and the Runa forgotten, all her life before now lost to view. "I understand."

He fell silent, which was no surprise, but as Ha’anala drew close her own quiet became speechlessness. Isaac was the color of blood, his poor pale skin blistered and swollen. What could have done this to him? she wondered, ears flattened. He sat abruptly next to his two possessions, the computer tablet and his fraying blue shawl, but did not draw the cloth over his head and shoulders as was his custom even in the forest, where the canopy had shielded him from the suns’ power. "Tha’s all," she heard him say, the muttered words slurred.

Not knowing what else to do, she felt compelled to ask, "Sipaj, Isaac, are you not hungry?" And cursed herself for uselessness.

"Listen," he said, trembling, the tension in his narrow, nearly hairless body visible. "Music." She didn’t move, paralyzed by the oozing sores, the smell of corruption…. "Listen!" he insisted.

Thus commanded, she went motionless, ears high and open. Above her, she heard the slow beat of some large thing’s wings as it climbed to meet a thermal that would lift it out over the rim of the escarpment. Below, at the base of the cliff, the crash of water and alarming bellows that diminished into comic squeals or a ponderous trill of grunts. Westward, the fluting whistles of some kind of herd keeping itself gathered as its long-necked members grazed, heads to the ground. Nearby, tiny scratchings, wind hissing in grass. A soft popping noise that drew her eye: seedpods cracking open as some critical shift in temperature or humidity swelled or shrank their cells.

"God’s music," she breathed, her own heartbeat loud in her ears.

"No," said Isaac. "Listen. There are others who sing."

Others! she thought then, hearing the notes of the evening chant, thin and distant, coming in fragments with the fitful wind. Others who sing. Djanada—Jana’ata!

Isaac thrust his thin arms out to support the treacherous weight of his head and shoulders, which seemed to him to have become heavier just now, and leaned at the edge of the precipice. Seeing him rapt and heedless of his wounded skin, Ha’anala crept nearer the brink, listening to a well-known melody sung uncertainly by two voices, their harmony unfamiliar but beautiful. A mixed multitude, Ha’anala thought, looking down on them. Jana’ata and Runa, but a puzzling collection of ages and sexes. Djanada babies riding the backs not of their own fathers but of female Runa, who were huddled together, ears clamped against the song. A few veiled and robed persons. Then she spotted the singers—a man wearing metal clothing, and a boy a little younger than Ha’anala herself.

Momentary mourning came like a cloudburst: she wanted to be here alone with Isaac, to be as solitary as two stones, side by side. She wanted to ask him one question each day, and to take the whole of the world’s turning to think about his answer. She wanted to know what he had heard as he walked. Was there a kind of poetry in his legs too? Did the wind roar wordlessly in his small ears?

Not yet! she thought, anguished. I don’t want any others!

WHICH WAS THE VERY THOUGHT PRESENTLY PASSING THROUGH THE mind of Shetri Laaks, who had caught the scent of a female, and looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of yet another refugee peering down at him from the escarpment that divided the grasslands.

No more! he thought, appealing to any deity who’d listen. I don’t want any others!

As if in accordance with his prayer, the girl’s unveiled head disappeared. Even so, Shetri Laaks was thrown sufficiently off balance by her unwelcome appearance to stumble over the evening chant’s concluding verse, thus earning another of his nephew Athaansi’s insolent smirks. I never wanted any of this, you superior young stud, Shetri wanted to snarl at Athaansi. Take the damned armor and my obstinate sister and the wretched chants and just go on by yourselves, and may Sti dance on your bones!

To date, Shetri Laaks had sung the evening chant all of ten times. This was, not coincidentally, the exact number of days he had been taking his little mob of women and children north.

No matter what his resentful young nephew thought, Shetri Laaks had never aspired to anything but the quiet life of an apothecary specializing in the Sti canon. Indeed, until informed by a novice that his second-born sister, Ta’ana Laaks u Erat, and her entire household had just appeared at the gate, Shetri Laaks had been only vaguely aware of the revolt in the south, and had certainly never expected to be affected by it—only draft Runa were allowed anywhere nearby. Adepts like Shetri lived simply, their provisions periodically supplied by their natal families, occasionally supplemented by the offerings of those hoping to have ailments declared uninheritable or injuries deemed minor enough to be treated without iniquity. Now and then, widows bought the right to prepare for a serene death by witnessing the water ritual. Otherwise, the adepts were left alone, and that had suited Shetri admirably.

"Our brother Nra’il has been killed in combat," Ta’ana had informed him without preamble when he presented himself to her in the visitors’ shelter ten days earlier. "All his people are murdered. My husband, as well."

Shetri had stared dumbly for a time, still hoping that his sister and her entourage would prove an unusually convincing hallucination. Why are you telling me this? he thought. Go away.

"I cannot travel alone," Ta’ana had insisted then, despite the fact that she had come this far unaccompanied by an adult male relative. "The north is defensible. It is your duty to take us there."

"Not possible," he’d muttered, barely able to speak. He held up his claws, stained with pigment from the spoiled rite Ta’ana had called him away from. He had only recently mastered the full body of the canon, and hadn’t built tolerance to the inhalants used during the water ritual. "The drugs will be in effect for days," he told her, blinking. She smelled of smoke and was wearing a smudged veil that fell to her feet; it was shot through with silver threads and its hem was embroidered with a lattice pattern that seemed to Shetri to be crawling. "There are visual disturbances," he reported.

"It is your duty," she repeated.

"And what of the duty of your husband’s brother?"

"Dead," she said, not burdening him with superfluous detail or herself with the telling of it: her calm was brittle. "You are my son’s regent now. There is no one else. The armor is yours until Athaansi is trained."

"I’m old enough," Athaansi had snarled with a fifteen-year-old’s reflexive ferocity. "This is insult. I will fight you, Uncle!"

Ta’ana whirled and cuffed the boy violently, stunning the three of them—mother, son and uncle. Athaansi broke the silence with a shuddering gasp and began to sob. "Control yourself," Ta’ana ordered, finding her own voice. "If you give way, the others will too. Go sit with your sister." Then she’d further scandalized the adepts, who were watching from a barely polite distance, by gathering up her veil and raising it with both hands so she could stare unimpeded at her surviving brother. "Focus!" she snapped. "Would I have left my walls if there was anyone alive to defend my honor? You are regent, Shetri," she said in a tone that he was obliged to consider persuasive. "The armor is in the wagon."

So he had pulled off and laid aside his plain gray robe and called upon skills indifferently learned during his days of training as a young reshtar of barely respectable rank. Whether it was the drug or genuine forgetfulness, he couldn’t picture how to put on the armor. Athaansi, red-eyed and humiliated, found solace in contempt, turning the shin plates right side up for his hapless uncle, to the silent amusement of the Runa valet who fastened the buckles.

"We must walk. Wear boots," Ta’ana had told him as he struggled with the breastplate. The navigable rivers south of Mo’arl were now wholly controlled by Runa rebels. "And bring ointments for burns."

He was too befuddled to argue that his feet were used to the ground— he walked every day, collecting psychotropic herbs and the minerals that could be ground for pigment; he did not think to ask who was burned.

With brilliant color still pulsating around every solid object, Shetri Laaks had begun the trek north, nominally in command of his sister’s household while following the directions of a Runa maid, who was actually leading the way. Farce, he’d thought with every step of his first day’s travel. This is farce.

But by the end of the second full day on the road, Shetri had seen enough to recognize his elder sister’s laconic courage, for he had learned why the ointments were needed. Ta’ana had remained in her burning compound until the last moment, gathering her dependents and organizing an orderly retreat by firelight with an audacity born of desperation. The entire town had been fired—even the quarters of Runa domestics, whose goodwill and affection Ta’ana had nurtured and won, anticipating a day when war would find her. She and her children were alive only because their household Runa had smuggled them out of the burning Laaks compound in a false-bottomed wagon—prepared long ago in expectation of such a night—apparently loaded with loot, but actually packed with food and the family’s valuables, including Nra’il’s dented, blackened armor.

The half-marked path the housemaid knew passed within sight of several other smoldering towns. No male Jana’ata over the age of sixteen breathed; here and there, a wailing child or a bewildered woman was found wandering. Some were too badly burned to save; to these Shetri gave quietus, using the embers of their own compounds to light pitiably ineffective pyres. The rest he treated for burns as he had his sister, and Ta’ana made every one of them part of her migrant household, without regard to lineage or birthrank.

"We can’t feed any more," Shetri would declare as each new refugee joined their band.

"We won’t starve," Ta’ana insisted. "Hunger is not the worst thing."

But their progress was slowed, and they had gathered more people than could be fed with the provisions packed in the wagon. Nights were always broken by someone’s dream of flames; in the mornings, exhaustion fought fear to determine their pace. By the fifth day, Shetri was thinking clearly enough to realize that he could slaughter one of the draft Runa. By the ninth, they had left the wagon behind. Everyone, master and domestic, carried a child or food or a bundle of essentials.

Now, after days of flight and still far from safety, the numbers of Jana’ata and Runa in their little party were dangerously unbalanced. The more refugees Ta’ana took on, the slower they traveled and the sooner they had to butcher; two more Runa domestics had snuck off the previous night.

At this rate, we’ll never get to Inbrokar City, Shetri thought, looking up at the cliff edge where the newest girl was hiding. He turned to his sister, hoping that she hadn’t noticed the latest refugee, but Ta’ana was standing, veil off, ears cocked forward.

"Get her," Ta’ana said.

"It’ll be dark soon!"

"Then you’d best go now."

"Come down, girl!" he yelled, turning cliffward. There was no response. Shetri glanced at his sister, who stared uncompromisingly back. "Oh, all right," he muttered, flicking an ear at the valet, who came to unburden him of the armor. Ta’ana had earned obedience; Shetri, not much in the habit of leadership anyway, gave it to her.

Free of the armor’s weight, he picked his way carefully across the rocky riverbed, trying not to attract the attention of a pair of cranil snuffling and squealing in the shallows upstream, and then stood looking upward toward where this inconvenient girl had last showed herself. The escarpment was not a sheer drop. Blocks of stone had fallen toward the water, and these presented a fair approximation of a stairway for the first two-thirds of the distance before giving way to an increasingly uncongenial verticality. Mere expectation of a ludicrous death yielded twice to near certainty, so Shetri Laaks was in a thoroughly unhappy frame of mind— and in the midst of a wide — ranging and almost sincere curse calling down plague, deformity, insult, diarrhea and mange on every living creature east and west of the Pon River and all its tributaries—when he came face to face with what simply had to be a lingering effect of the Sti drugs.

"Don’t fall," the girl advised as he crested the cliff, his lungs and feet straining for air and purchase respectively.

For a time, he gazed dumbfounded at a young woman who was not merely unveiled but completely naked. Embarrassed beyond description, he finally averted his eyes from this spectacle, only to behold the noseless, tailless, oozing figment sitting woozily on the ground next to her.

"Someone’s brother is ill," the girl said.

Shetri gaped at her, ears drifting sideways, and belatedly realized that his pedal grip was beginning to give way. Scrambling with sudden undignified zeal, he established a graceless momentary balance on the stem of a scrubby bush growing horizontally from a crack in the rock, and heaved himself over the edge of the escarpment without further delay. "My lady," he gasped, in breathless, abbreviated greeting when he arrived belly-down. "Your brother?" The girl looked blank. "Your brother?" he repeated, in kitchen Ruanja. She lifted her chin.

Slumped over, legs crossed, its skeletal arms thrust out like buttresses, the «brother» had evidently been flayed alive by some remarkably inefficient hunter. There was a tiny nose, Shetri saw now that he was closer, but like much of the rest of this monster, it was blistered and raw.

"He’s too far gone," Shetri told the girl, getting up wearily. "Someone will grant him peace."

"No!" the girl cried, as Shetri moved into position behind the poor beast and lifted its little jaw to open its throat. Shetri froze. She was not large, but she looked quite capable of biting through a man’s neck. Shetri himself had not so much as wrestled with anyone in years. "Go away," she ordered. "Leave us alone!"

What has happened to all the women in the world? Shetri asked himself. He held his position for a moment and then, with great care, removed his hands from the beast’s neck and backed off. "My lady: one can think of nothing more inexpressibly agreeable than to obey your command," he said with an elaborate obeisance to the naked little bitch, "but whatever this thing is, the wretch is dying. Would you have your ’brother’ suffer?"

Her glare remained undimmed. Shetri was beginning to realize that she didn’t have any idea what he was saying. Summoning a Ruanja half-remembered from the nursery, he repeated the burden of his question as best he could.

"Someone would not have him suffer. Someone would have him live," the girl declared with a vehemence that seemed to Shetri unnecessarily threatening.

Well, choose! Shetri wanted to say. You can select one condition or the other. He looked around experimentally and noted with some satisfaction that there was still a vague pulsing aura around anything blue, which included the "brother’s" bizarre little eyes. This was exceedingly if temporarily reassuring. Maybe the brother wasn’t real! Perhaps the girl wasn’t either…

Except that Ta’ana had seen her as well. Sighing, Shetri straightened and moved cautiously from behind the poor, skinned thing. He leaned out over the cliff to look at his sister.

"What’s going on?" Ta’ana called up to him.

"Why not come and see for yourself?" Shetri suggested cheerfully, no longer maintaining even a pretense of command.

Ta’ana arrived at the top of the cliff a short time later, stripped to a chemise for the climb. Shetri himself was, by then, sitting serenely a little space away from the girl and what she insisted was her brother, quietly singing a verse or two for Sti. To his beatific gratification, his sister’s face went as slack as his own must have earlier.

Ta’ana assessed the situation with the admirable alacrity of a middle-rank householder used to coping with unexpected visitors. "Honored guests," she said, getting to her feet and addressing the two newcomers as she had each of the refugees they’d taken on during the trek north. The girl looked at her warily. "If it pleases you, be welcomed into my household and sojourn under my lord brother’s protection." Turning to Shetri, Ta’ana added, low-voiced, "Make sure the monster lives."

IT WAS AN UNREASONABLE DEMAND BUT, BY THE DYING LIGHT OF Rakhat’s second sun, Shetri Laaks did what he could.

Which was little enough. Calling down to Ta’ana’s maid, he instructed her to bring the cleanest sleeping sheet she could find and to get a chemise from one of the other refugees. "No," he corrected himself, disturbed by the new girl’s exposure, "bring two chemises, not one. But rinse one in the stream before you come up. Keep everything as clean as you can! And bring me all the ointments!"

While he waited, he examined the monster carefully, but did not touch him. He and Ta’ana were nearly blind when the Runao arrived, but by that time, Shetri had formed a plan of treatment. "Put that… person on the sheet, and be careful of its skin," he told the maid, not giving her time to panic. "Then examine every part of it and pick out any dirt or debris you find. Be gentle." He waited, expecting to hear the pathetic beast cry out, but there was no sound. "Does he live?" he asked the darkness, reluctant to deplete his precious stock of medicine on a corpse.

"He lives," the maid’s voice informed him.

"What are you doing?" the new girl demanded. "Tell this one what you’re doing to him!"

The maid kept silent, not sure who was in charge now. "Tell her, child," Shetri said wearily, and waited for the chatter to pause. "All right," he said to the Runao then, "unwrap the convex silver spatula carefully—don’t get your hands on the end! Use the spatula to spread the ointment over his entire body—a very thin layer, understand? Rounded surface toward the patient—keep the edges of the instrument away from the skin. When the skin is covered with ointment, spread the wet chemise over him, child. Tonight, you will keep the covering damp with fresh water, do you understand?"

Having done all that was possible, Shetri Laaks gave up on the long day, and went to sleep that night hoping that when he awoke, he would spend the morning chuckling about the absurdity of the dreams Sti had provided.

WHEN ISAAC OPENED HIS EYES, THE DAWN CHANT WAS NEARLY OVER and the smell of roasting meat incensed the air. "They’ve killed a Runao," Ha’anala whispered. "They’re eating her."

"Everyone eats," Isaac said, granting emotionless absolution. He closed his eyes again.

But she insisted, "No, it’s wrong. There are other things to eat."

Isaac listened carefully to the chant. Then he slept.

"TRY THIS, " HA’ANALA SAID WHEN NEXT HE WOKE. SHE SAT AT HIS SIDE, out of his line of sight, but her hand motioned toward a small cup of broth that was sitting nearby. He turned his head away. "Everyone eats," she reminded him. "Shetri says meat will make you stronger. Someone caught this herself. It isn’t Runa."

He sat up. Everything had changed. They were at the bottom, not the top. They were under an awning made of fabric with silver thread. He liked the color. It was quiet here. The Runa kept their distance and spoke in low tones. There was a damp thing draped over him. His skin shone with something slippery. Because no one was talking, he could consider all this. The slippery stuff felt cool.

"Tablet?" he asked Ha’anala.

"Someone was careful with it." He saw her gesture at the edge of his field of vision. The tablet was set on a flagstone nearby.

Isaac drank the broth and lay down again. "We’ll stay with these people," he said.

There was an uncertain pause. "Until you are strong again," Ha’anala said.

"They sing," Isaac said, and fell asleep.

"HOW CAN YOU KNOW THAT?" ATHAANSI BRAT DEMANDED, CERTAIN that his mother’s notion was preposterous.

"You were too young to remember—the Paramount once passed through our compound on an inspection tour. A horrible man! But when he looked at me—a god’s eyes! She has the same," Ta’ana Laaks u Erat insisted, out of the hearing of their Runa and the other refugees. "That girl is a Kitheri."

"Wandering out here alone, with a monster like that?" Shetri cried. "Speaking only Ruanja? Naked?" He preferred his own initial conviction that he was hallucinating again, a hope he still found difficult to relinquish entirely.

"The traitor had a daughter out of Jholaa Kitheri. That was sixteen years ago," Ta’ana said emphatically. "Don’t you see? She’s been brought up in the south, by Runa. The tailless monster has to be one of the foreigners." Athaansi opened his mouth to ask again how she knew. Cutting him off, Ta’ana said, "I listened to the Paramount’s concerts! I know about—" She hesitated, both embarrassed and aroused by the memory of that particular poetic theme. "I know about those things."

If her son was tempted to lecture her on propriety, the set of her ears changed his mind. "Well, then," Athaansi said, "we should execute them and bring their scent glands to Inbrokar. There are standing orders for the nameless one’s death and for his whole sept. And for all foreigners as well!"

To his surprise, his mother did not agree at once. "Haste in a moment, regrets forever," she said after a time, looking at her son speculatively. "It occurs to me that you need a wife, Athaansi."

Shetri Laaks was certain that he was now beyond being amazed by his sister, but Athaansi Erat, he noted delightedly, was still capable of astonishment. "Her?" the boy squawked. "She’s VaHaptaa! She’s under writ of execution! Her children would be—"

"Born in a time when nothing can be predicted," his mother finished for him. "She is collateral to Hlavin Kitheri’s lineage, for which succession is not yet established. Who knows what compromises may become necessary? Kitheri has changed everything else, and she wouldn’t be the first niece to transmit an open patrimony," Ta’ana pointed out. "The girl is small, but of good conformation, and she’s the right age—"

Athaansi’s protests became vigorous at this point. His uncle enjoyed the drama for a time, glad to be forgotten, but his relief was short-lived.

"It seems that Athaansi is too fastidious to cover a VaHaptaa of ancient lineage," said Ta’ana Laaks u Erat, undismayed, and turned her attention from son to brother with dispassionate pragmatism. "Perhaps you would like to make a start on reestablishing the Laaks lineage, now that our brother and his family are dead?" Ears high, Ta’ana invited comment.

There was none, Shetri Laaks being occupied with a silent reassessment of his capacity for astonishment.

Ta’ana rose then, glancing over at the two newcomers, sheltered under the awning she had caused to be made for them out of her own silvered veil. "As for the foreign monster," Ta’ana continued, "he may be useful as a hostage, if things go badly in the south." Which effectively concluded the discussion.

"SOMEONE THINKS YOUR BROTHER SINGS WELL," SHETRI LAAKS TOLD the girl as they walked together the next morning. He did not tell her that her voice was beautiful as well. He was still surprised that she dared to sing the chants, though Ta’ana said that this was now considered permissible among members of Kitheri’s court. So much had changed while he himself had studied changeless ritual. "He has a pleasing, clear voice, and his harmonies are…"

"Otherworldly," Ha’anala supplied, smiling as Shetri considered the construction and then blinked at the word’s meaning. "Isaac loves music, as he can love nothing else."

"What is it that you sing with him, after the chants?"

"The Sh’ma: a song of our mother’s people."

Shetri had given up trying to work out Ha’anala’s notions of kinship. Music, on the other hand, was something he appreciated. "It’s beautiful."

"As are your own songs." She was silent for a time. "Someone thanks you for singing to Isaac. The Sti chants make the heart quiet. Someone wishes she understood the words, but the melody is enough."

Shetri paused in their procession, willing now to ask a question that made him uneasy. "How is it possible for Isaac to know the whole of an epic, hearing it but once? Someone studied years…" He looked away, embarrassed. "Is he a memory specialist or is such a feat normal for your… mother’s kind?"

"Our mother says that Isaac’s mind is made differently from anyone else’s anywhere. Isaac would not be like anyone else, even if he were among his own people."

"A genetic freak," Shetri suggested, but she didn’t understand. She knew the evening chants but very little modem K’San, and he couldn’t summon any similar idea in Ruanja. Falling silent, he set himself to study the low-growing foliage around them, noting the herbs that grew here, and leaned over to slice a stem of feverbalm, inhaling its fragrance. He was glad of the distraction, gladder still that the girl was not contemptuous of a man who cared about plants.

Until Ta’ana had proposed a match, Shetri had never in his life considered taking a mate, not even privately, not even after he had first learned of the deaths of Nra’il and his heirs. Ha’anala was young, he knew, but he himself felt newborn in the world. He wondered if Ta’ana had spoken to the girl already. He had no idea how these things were arranged; he was a third, and had never expected to care. "Ha’anala. It’s a strange name," he said.

"Someone was named for a person her father admired."

It seemed to him that she neither revealed nor concealed her identity. Perhaps she thought it obvious—and indeed, it had been to Ta’ana. Or perhaps she had told Shetri himself, but he had understood her Ruanja imperfectly and missed some subtlety. Her soul seemed to him like colored glass: translucent but not transparent.

He was embarrassed to find that he was staring at her again; she would not submit to being gowned, let alone to veiling, and her scent was intoxicating. Shetri gazed back toward his sister’s encampment in the distance, makeshift and muddy with the night’s rain. Very soon he would have to ask his sister to choose between nakedness and hunger. The valet was the most expendable Runao now; given Ta’ana’s abandonment of her veil, he suspected that the dresser’s time was coming. "We must move on to Inbrokar City. Ta’ana is concerned that they may not let us in if too many others have already taken shelter there," he told Ha’anala as they walked again. "What will you do, when Isaac’s wounds are healed?"

She did not seem to answer directly. "It’s wrong to eat Runa," she said. She stopped walking and met his eyes. "Sipaj, Shetri, otherwise, we would stay with you."

He had to listen to her words in his mind again, to be certain: she had used a form of address that meant him personally, not him as a part of his sister’s household. Before meeting Ha’anala, he had rarely spoken to a female not of his own family, but the meaning of Ha’anala’s scent was now unmistakable, and her eyes were the color of amethyst, and she looked at him with what he imagined might be the unfrightened gaze of a Runa courtesan. "Someone is…" His voice faded away. Then, recalling himself regent and determined to be honorable, he began again, "Someone’s nephew Athaansi—"

"Is of no interest," Ha’anala finished decisively. "Your sister will find another wife for him. Perhaps two." Shetri reared back, shocked. "Sipaj, Shetri, everything will change soon. There will no longer be any ’sires’ to waste," she told him, using the K’San term she’d learned from Ta’ana.

She had thought hard about what she must do. On the right foot, there was love for and obligation to Sofia, and a desire to ameliorate unavoidable sorrow. On the left, a need for refuge, for survival on her own terms. Ha’anala could not, would not turn against the Runa, whom she loved and understood; neither could she idly witness the destruction of her own kind. The solution had come as she watched Ta’ana and her maid working together with a practical equality as they organized the little band of refugees for the next leg of the journey.

The people themselves will choose from among us, Ha’anala thought. And we djanada will begin again, having been chosen.

Raised by Runa, Ha’anala had no wish to alarm a male, but she had confirmed Ta’ana’s own worst fears about the war. There would be no more talk of Isaac as hostage—he was to have full status as a brother-in-law.

"Sipaj, Shetri," Ha’anala said then, "someone has discussed this matter with Ta’ana, and we-but-not-you are agreed. Isaac wishes to remain with people who sing, and someone wishes you for a husband. Your sister agrees." She looked at Shetri until his own eyes dropped; he had begun to tremble, and she herself was hardly less driven by the need to fill an emptiness she had never felt so physically. "It remains for your consent," she said, her voice not quite as steady as she might have wished.

It was all he could do to order his thoughts in K’San and when he was as ready as he could be, he translated them into Ruanja for her. "Someone," he said quietly in a language ill-suited to his tongue and task, "has no experience. Someone studied the Sti epics all his life. There is—there was a small estate, ten day’s travel south of here, but now someone’s sister says there is nothing. Everything is gone. Someone can promise nothing—not even food—to…"

She waited for him to find his words, familiar with Isaac’s need for silence in which to think. After a time, she said, "To study poetry seems an enviable life."

She turned away then and looked south, toward the broad, flat plains she’d traveled over, and thought of all that had happened since leaving Trucha Sai. She thought again of the people, and how much she loved them; of their engulfing affection and their never-ending concern; of their beautiful, terrible need to touch, to speak, to watch, to care. She closed her eyes, asking herself what she wanted.

This, she thought. I want to live among people who sing, who are quiet enough to let Isaac think. I want to be with this shy and awkward man, who is kind to Isaac and who will be a good father. I want to belong with someone. I want to feel at the center of something, and not the edge. I want children and grandchildren. I don’t want to grow to be old and die, knowing that when I die, there will be no more like me.

"I won’t go back," Shetri heard her say, but in a language he did not recognize.

She spoke again, and this time he understood. "Someone’s father once told her that it was better to die than to live wrongly. I say: better to live rightly." Once again, he was confused by the mix of languages she needed to think this way. So she said, "Someone can feed herself and her brother. And you, until you learn." He knew this to be so. She had brought back wild game; roasted, it was tough and fibrous, but the remaining domestics were convinced they could make such meat palatable, given time to learn its preparation. "Someone requires a promise: you will not eat Runa."

It seemed a small thing, somehow, almost reasonable, very nearly sensible, to throw aside the very basis of Jana’ata civilization, merely because this extraordinary girl asked it of him. "As you wish," he said, wondering if this conversation too were some drugged illusion, knowing suddenly that it was not the power of the Sti inhalants but her fragrance, her nearness—

He should not have been surprised. If Ha’anala was who his sister said she was, then she had grown up with Runa and mating was no mystery to her. Even so, that morning, under a wide sky, with three suns’ witness, and no wedding guests but wind and herbs, Shetri Laaks found that it was once again necessary to reassess his capacity for astonishment.

"Sipaj, Shetri: it is not safe to go to the city of Inbrokar," she said, later, when she believed that he could hear again. "We-and-you-also must go beyond the Gamu mountains. Ta’ana agrees. There are places in the far north that will be safe."

Wordless, enveloped, emptied, felled: if she had told him to take up residence on a sun, he’d have climbed through cloud and fallen into fire for her.

"Do you know who we are?" she asked him. "This one and her brother?"

"Yes," he said.

She pulled away, leaving him chilled by her withdrawal, and faced him. "I am a teacher," she said. "My brother is a messenger."

He understood little more than the Ruanja word, messenger. "And what is his message?" he asked, seeing he was meant to.

"Walk away," she said. "And live."

"WE MUST TELL OUR MOTHER," HA’ANALA TOLD ISAAC THAT AFTERNOON. "Someone needs the tablet."

Isaac lifted his chin: permission.

They would be able to monitor any radio transmission on Rakhat, via the Magellan, and tap all its resources, but they themselves could not be located. The Magellan’s systems would record only that their tablet’s signals had passed by way of one of the satellite relays positioned over the continent. Sofia would know that much: they were still on the continent.

Ha’anala sat thinking for a long time, trying to find the words to tell Sofia that there were Jana’ata who were good and decent, that justice could become tainted with revenge. But she knew what the people thought of those who collaborated with the djanada; no matter how nuanced, her words would be understood as treachery.

Throat tight, Ha’anala opened the connection to the Magellan. The enormity of her decision made speech impossible; she pecked out a short message with a single claw. "Sofia, my dear mother," she wrote, "we have left the garden."