Master of None (43 page)

He looked up at Kallah’s dismayed expression, then glanced at his daughter wriggling restlessly in Vasant Subah’s less than maternal grasp, the child obviously not understanding what was happening.

“I renounce nothing, jah’nari l’amae,” he said tightly.

The hush in the hall was so complete he imagined no one dared even breathe. Then Aenanda whimpered, trying to squirm out of the Dhikar chief’s grip. His teeth clenched, making his jaw ache.

“How dare you defy me?” Eraelin hissed. “How
dare
you?” “Because I don’t want my daughter to see her father as a coward and a hypocrite—”

Eraelin shot to her feet, all semblance of formal decorum gone.
“Shut up! Shut up, you filthy goat turd! Don’t you presume to speak to me in that manner!”

He stared at her, unsurprised by her ferocity but startled at her loss of control. She quivered with so much rage he thought for a moment she would leap down from her dais to attack him herself.

Aenanda began to cry. “Daddy, I want my daddy...”

At that, his composed facade cracked, and he risked looking at Kallah imploringly. Her chin quivering, she snapped her fingers. For a moment, Vasant Subah didn’t react until Kallah turned to glare at her dangerously, then she handed the child to a Dhikar. Aenanda struggled as she was carried bodily from the hall, her limbs flailing in ineffectual outrage. “Let me go! I want my daddy!” Her small voice faded, leaving a poisonous silence in its wake.

With visible effort, Pratha Eraelin settled back onto the cushions and arranged her sati carefully. “Leave this House immediately,” she said finally, her voice trembling. “You are never to return here again.”

He stood up, bowed to her deferentially, and walked from the room in a dignified calm he didn’t feel. As he passed the men, both Ukul and Margasir also stood and followed him out. Once outside, Ukul asked softly, “What shall I do with your things?” There was no triumph in the man’s voice, no satisfaction his rival had been ousted. He seemed genuinely shaken.

“Send them to the Nga’esha House. Ukul . . .” The senior kharvah glanced up, and Nathan’s throat constricted painfully. “Please take care of our daughter for me.”

Ukul’s eyes reddened as he nodded, and left Nathan and Margasir at the entrance to the men’s house. The two hadn’t made it out of the Changriti Estate before a young woman ran up from behind them, catching Margasir by one arm to stop him.

“Margasir,” she said, pleadingly and out of breath, “you don’t have to go with him, don’t leave....”

The woman spoke as if Nathan weren’t there, ignoring him as completely as a ghost. The sahakharae glanced at Nathan then back to her, his face phlegmatic. “He’s my práhsaedam, l’amae,” he said coldly. “As well as a brave man. Would you ask me to be any less than he is?”

“But you’ve told me yourself, you don’t even agree with him!” she protested.

“No, I don’t. But I do believe in honor and loyalty. Something the Changriti House should learn to appreciate.” He turned away, his face stony as she screamed tearful abuse after him.

As they walked toward the men’s trains, Nathan said, “You don’t think what I’m doing is right.” He made it a statement.

Margasir shrugged one shoulder. “I will defend your right to be wrong. If I do not, who will defend me when I am wrong?” Nathan stopped, looking down at the road in confusion. “What is the matter with you now?” Margasir demanded, annoyed.

“I can’t go back to the Nga’esha.” He looked around vaguely. “I have nowhere to go.”

After a moment’s silence, Margasir said more gently, “Perhaps my friends the Pakaran will—”

“No. They are good people who don’t need my bringing them trouble. I certainly can’t sleep on a park bench and risk Vasant Subah arresting me for vagrancy. The only place I can think of is a charity shelter.”

“You can’t go there,” Margasir objected. “You’re High Family, not naekulam. You would create a scandal!”

Nathan laughed harshly. “A scandal? Pratha Yronae threatens to imprison me, Pratha Eraelin disowns me, my wife is divorcing me, they’ve taken my daughter away, and you’re worried that
I
will create a scandal?”

Margasir sighed disapprovingly. “I think you have brought much of this down on yourself. You have more than most men can hope for in this life, and you were not even Vanar-born. It isn’t your place to tell those of us who are what we should or should not do. Your thinking is too foreign. Your ways may be acceptable for you yepoqioh, but not for us. We are content the way we are.”

Nathan nodded, more to himself than in agreement with the big sahakharae. “Some of you are.” He set down the road again at a brisk walk, taking long Hengeli strides with his head held high. Margasir had trouble keeping up, not out of any lack of physical strength, but because he found it difficult to override a lifetime of learned mannerisms. “Go home, Margasir,” Nathan said heatedly. “You shouldn’t suffer for my stubbornness. Even if you don’t stay with the Changriti, you don’t have to remain with me.”

“Shut up, Nathan Nga’esha,” Margasir said testily, clutching at his sati to keep the cloth from tangling around his legs. “I am just as capable of choosing my own method of suicide as you are. Besides, how bad can these charity shelters be?”

An hour later, sitting in a stuffy, cramped, shabby room far worse even than the one he’d been allocated after his release from prison, Nathan smiled at a thoroughly disgruntled sahakharae. “Pretty bad, isn’t it?” His hands laced behind his head, he leaned back against the barren sleeping ledge, not even a musty, threadbare cushion to soften the crumbling plaster walls.

Margasir scowled, sitting on the floor with his massive arms wrapped around his knees. “One would think you almost enjoy this hardship.”

“No, I don’t enjoy it,” Nathan said, dropping his attempt at levity. “But I know I can survive it. I’m still Nga’esha, Eraelin Changriti can’t take that away from me. Pratha Yronae hasn’t thrown me out forever, just until my injuries heal well enough that I don’t scare the children.”

“Bah. I still can’t understand why you don’t just spend that time in a whitewomb. It isn’t a punishment, you know. The days would pass as if they never existed, and you would come out without a scar left, clean as a newborn baby.”

Nathan exhaled slowly. “What’s your worst nightmare, Margasir?” he asked softly. “Is there anything that truly frightens you?”

The sahakharae glanced at him sharply. “Why do you ask?” “Whatever it is, that’s what a whitewomb feels like to me: the most terrifying torture imaginable. Three weeks in there, and I’d be either dead or insane. Compared to that, this charity shelter is a holiday resort. I lived in a place like this for over a year. We’ll only be here three weeks, max. You’ll live.”

As it was, they didn’t even last the night. Daybreak was still several hours away when the Nga’esha taemora nudged him awake with her toe. Margasir grumbled, still half asleep beside him. Nathan rolled onto his back, blinking up at her groggily.

“Come home.”

XXXVII

A
WEEK LATER,
A
ELGAR SOUGHT HIM OUT, SEARCHING UNTIL HE FOUND
Nathan at the farthest end of the men’s garden, planting raspberry canes and wiring the shoots against a wall. As the senior kharvah approached, his entourage at a respectful distance behind him, Nathan stood up, brushed the soil from his hands and knees, and bowed. “
Jyesth pihtae
,” he greeted him, questioningly,
eminent father
.

Aelgar barely dipped his head in response. The burden of regency for eldest father had taken its toll, and Aelgar seemed to have aged decades. He looked constantly exhausted, his skin sallow, the wrinkles around his eyes deeper. It could not have been easy being Yronae’s first husband. “My wife requests that you attend the women’s meal this evening,” he said stiffly.

Nathan was surprised. “What for?” he asked before he thought. “It is an honor to be asked,” Aelgar said sharply, “and not your place to question your pratha h’máy’s reasons.”

Nathan murmured his apologies, ritualistic, meaningless, while the worry in his gut tumbled. Aelgar nodded, not listening. That Aelgar was nervous made Nathan even more afraid.

Although the Nga’esha would never allow the Changriti to publicly humiliate any member of their own Family, he was a repudiated husband, back in the Nga’esha House as a younger, unimportant brother in disgrace, and Yronae was not likely to be forgiving. So his being summoned to attend the women’s meal was astonishing, to say the least: an honor usually given to those men of her Household held in high enough regard. The last time he had served at a Nga’esha meal had been the reception where he had first met Pratima, how many years ago now?

“I don’t remember how to do that, shaelah Aelgar.” He deliberately used his personal connection to the older man, not through the symbolic Family hierarchy. It was a plea, he knew, as did Aelgar, and a feeble one at that.

“Then you will come with me now, little brother,” his brother-inlaw said, his sternness not completely masking his own anxiety. “And we will refresh your memory.”

Nathan followed the older man without further argument into the long pavilion where a half dozen other male members of Yronae’s house practiced for the evening’s meal. To most of them, it was routine, and they ran through the bits and pieces of their own ceremonies with a bored ease. The dancers, half naked and sweating, conferred with the choreographer on a variation of one of the more intricate dances, while two musicians restrung and tuned their multinecked lutes, silver picks on their fingers giving them bird’s claws. Qim looked up from his drums as Nathan walked into the cool interior of the pavilion, his expression neutral. As if it were a signal, conversation and music dwindled to silence, the men watching him furtively. Nathan felt his skin prickle with a cold that had nothing to do with the weather. Aelgar scowled, snapped his fingers, and the men resumed their activity.

Baelam, Yronae’s third kharvah, was in charge of the service, the unattractive, earnest young man drilling his chosen team on what foods were to be prepared and how they were to be served. If he was aware of Nathan’s dread, he gave no sign of it, concentrating all his energies on perfecting the performance.

“You will serve the gold-dusted figs,” he said to Nathan. He then explained how to choose the best figs to reserve for Yronae, and how to cache them under the main plate Nathan held in one arm, serving from lowest to highest rank without running out before he got to the pratha h’máy.

“What should I do,” Nathan asked, “once I’m finished with the figs?”

Baelam gazed at him absentmindedly. “Then you sit by her right shoulder and wait. She will tell you if there is anything else she wants you to do.” Nathan knew if Baelam understood why he was being summoned he would never say.

The younger man chose to wear the Nga’esha sati to honor his wife, and wore it in a fashion that nearly hid the yellow Navamam mati, the least important of the Nine Families. The boy had married extremely well and knew it. He was devoted and dutiful to Yronae, unlike Nathan, who had just thrown away every advantage he had ever gained. There was no animosity in the man’s expression, nor even contempt. Baelam accepted his fate, good or bad, with a deference bordering on religious zeal, and could not comprehend why Nathan had so resisted his own.

Baelam drilled him on serving the figs until it was time for the men to wash, the dancers changing into their ornate costumes and headdresses. The men ate a quick supper in the room adjoining the women’s kitchen, bolting their meal with little ceremony or enthusiasm. While those in charge of the food continued their preparations, the rest sat silently until Aelgar appeared in the door and nodded. Qim picked up his drums and followed the rest of the musicians out, but shot a quick wink toward Nathan before he disappeared. It had been the only sign of kindness he had seen the entire day, and he felt oddly grateful for it. A few minutes later, Nathan heard faint music begin, muffled by the walls. Baelam had his head tilted back to listen, more intent on timing than on any enjoyment of the music. At some point, he pointed to two other men, who got up silently and left to begin their own roles in the formalities.

It seemed hours before Baelam glanced at him and nodded. Nathan picked up his plate of sugared figs and walked out into the huge room where Yronae waited.

The women’s meal was smaller than her mother’s huge reception Nathan had seen so long ago. Nor were there any dignitaries, foreign or from other Families, only the Nga’esha present. Yronae sprawled across the low divan at the center of the large room, a half dozen of only the most senior members of the women’s house scattered around behind her in a proximate semicircle. He recognized them all, knew his relationship to each through Yronae: Suryah, his niece and Yronae’s heir; Bidaelah, Suryah’s younger sister; Dhenuh, the daughter of Yronae’s first cousin, now pregnant with her third child; and every other minor cousin no matter how tenuously related. Although a private meal, this had to be a meeting of some importance, as he was surprised to see even the influential dalhitri Mahdupi dva Sahmudrah Nga’esha of Dravyam. His former tutor acknowledged his presence with the faintest of nods, unsmilingly. These were all rich and powerful women, their delicate, angular faces bearing the Nga’esha family stamp: smooth skin and dark eyes, deceptive fragility.

The men set down full dishes and removed the empty ones with smooth motions, quiet, graceful. As Nathan entered, Yronae looked up at him, her eyes impassive. He faltered, his heart beating too rapidly, before he averted his gaze and began passing out figs, his arm under the platter sweating.

Qim and the others knelt at one end of the long hall, where the acoustics made even the slightest note audible throughout the room. Two other sahakharae played a counterpart pair of lutes, bass and tenor, while Qim sat behind his drums, his fingers caressing the taut hides stretched over hollowed wood to coax sounds like birds rustling in trees. He looked half asleep, his face bland. They played an old intricate melody while the singer chanted a poem of the Ancient Mothers and the morning sky and evening stars in a smooth, rich voice. Three dancers, glittering in their theatrical costumes, undulated their athletic bodies gracefully, every movement precise and fluid from years of tedious practice. Their hands wove the silent text of the story their bodies acted out, their ritualized movements telling a tale of early Vanar that Nathan could barely follow.