Master of None (44 page)

He served the last of the figs to the last of the women, turning smoothly as he had rehearsed while switching the small plate he’d hidden under the larger onto the platter. One of the figs had dislodged from the elaborate arrangement, and before he reached Yronae’s divan, he surreptitiously poked it back into place with a finger. It left a mark in the gold dust as he set it on the low table in front of her, a smudge of dark sugar on the rim.

Nathan swept back his sati and knelt beside her divan, his palms resting on his thighs while keeping the sticky finger slightly up and away from the silk. He had to resist the urge to put it in his mouth and lick the gooey sweet from it. Yronae studied the plate for a long moment, and Nathan’s heartbeat felt hollow in his chest, waiting for this infraction to be exposed, for himself to be ordered hauled out of the room in disgrace. But she reached toward the plate to choose a fig, held it delicately with her fingers, and ate it without comment, much to Nathan’s absurd relief. Only on Vanar, he thought grimly, could a blemished fig be a major catastrophe.

There was another course, then a sequence of wines poured into tiny glasses, and Baelam himself took charge of dispensing the coffee, thick and potent with cardamom. Bored, his knees starting to stiffen, Nathan resisted the urge to stretch his aching back. Yronae signaled for her water pipe. Baelam had retrieved it effortlessly and put it together for her within seconds.

“Qanistha bhraetae,” Yronae said, and as Baelam looked up from setting up the pipe curiously, Nathan realized with a start Yronae had been addressing himself.

“Hae’m, bahd’hyin pratha?” he said hastily. His voice sounded too loud in his own ears.

“Younger brother, would you dance for me?”

Nathan stared at Yronae in incredulity. “Khee, pratha h’máy?” He must have misheard her.

Her expression was empty. “Dance for me, little brother.” Mechanically, he got to his feet and walked the few steps out onto the bare floor. He turned and stood helplessly as Baelam’s fingers flicked, a signal to the musicians. Qim tapped out a slow beat on his drums, the lutes picking up the melody.

Nathan continued standing as the music began, knowing Baelam had chosen something very simple for him. He appreciated the boy’s small kindness, even through his panic. Conversation had ceased, all attention on him as the music played on. A fine haze of smoke drifted from Yronae’s nostrils, her face enigmatic.

The music continued relentlessly. Isolated in the middle of the floor, his reflection in the polished wood wavering like water, Nathan stood numbly. He spread his hands out from his sides awkwardly, and took a few fumbling steps in bad imitation of the skilled dancers now watching him from their place beside the musicians. There was no derision in their faces, nor pity, either. They watched gravely, as did the women in the room, while Nathan groped with the dance.

He stopped, red faced, and let his arms drop to his sides. The music faltered and died. No one spoke in the heavy silence.

“I’m sorry.” He glanced up at Yronae, embarrassed. “I don’t know how to dance, pratha h’máy.”

She brought the tip of the water pipe to her mouth, murky bubbles rippling through the squat cut-glass reservoir as she inhaled. Her chosen mix differed from Yaenida’s blend of narcotics and therapeutic drugs, the aroma less pungent but far more bitter. “Then play something on the lute for me, qanistha bhraetae.” The words came out as smoke, cut into swirls by the motion of her lips.

Nathan had no idea why she was humiliating him. He hadn’t so much as touched a kapotah lute since the day he sketchily picked out a children’s song for his two potential co-kharvah. “I cannot play, pratha h’máy,” he said, as he knew she knew.

The silence in the room stretched for several long moments. He stood with his muscles tensed, keeping his head down, unwilling to look up at her, as if that would somehow make her stop whatever she was doing to him.

“Qanistha bhraetae,” she said, her voice utterly calm. “Perhaps you might recite a poem, just one, that you have written. A simple one, very short. Surely, that should be easy enough?”

Why?
Why was she doing this? “I have never written any poems, pratha h’máy,” he said, his voice thick.

This time the silence went on even longer. He heard the distant rumble of thunder and the first hesitant tap-tap of raindrops on the rooftops, striking the calibrated copper tiles in a natural music of their own. Even nature knew how to better write songs than he did.

“Come sit by me, little brother,” Yronae said finally. He didn’t trust himself to look up, uneasy as he crossed back to take his place, sweep back the sati hem, kneel, and press his hands against his thighs to keep them from trembling. He had expected the conversation in the room to resume, and knew by their total silence she had not finished with him. “Do your injuries still trouble you, little brother?” She didn’t sound that concerned.

“No, jah’nari pratha.”

“Do you still intend to speak at the Assembly of Families?”

He forced himself to look up at her profile. She gazed off across the vast emptiness of the room, absorbed in watching the raindrops batter themselves against the glass catches and drip down the intricate network of tumbling cups into a tiny pool of fish. Her black hair, streaked with silver, had been drawn back from her face in intricate plaits. Heavy earrings drew the holes in her lobes into straight lines, fine strands of gem-studded metal looping from ear to ear under her chin. He could see the glint of the support behind her ear to hold most of the jewelry’s weight off her fragile ear-lobes. He stared at her until she finally turned her head to look at him, the tiny bells suspended from the chains under her chin tinking softly.

“I am Nga’esha,” he said, keeping as much of the anger as he could out of his voice. “It is my right.”

For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer. She brought the pipe up to her mouth, thoughtfully. No one spoke, the tension so palpable he wanted to scream. She blew out a fine stream of smoke and regarded it with distant attention.

“It is your right,” she said finally, her voice far too soft. “However, I would prefer you did not. I will do what is necessary to keep further dishonor being brought on this Family by involving the Nga’esha name in this matter. It is also my right to forbid you to leave the Estate, to confine you to the men’s house or to your library. Should that prove not enough to deter you... other means exist.”

He felt the omnipresent dread in his chest hollowing him out. How could anyone have lived with this fear for so long without exploding? He felt both nauseous and relieved, finally meeting the problem head on.

“If you feel it shameful for me to speak my heart to the Assembly, then I will renounce my Nga’esha name, become naekulam again. Even naekulam have the right to be heard.” His voice was unsteady; he hated that.

“That would be very foolish, little brother,” she warned him. “Your right to speak does not mean you will be heard. You have no chance of success; this obsession of yours is futile. Beyond the usual consequences of loss of Family, your Nga’esha name also protects you. It would be risky to throw it away.”

His eye still throbbed, the dark bruising turning a mottled green. He touched his swollen cheek casually, as if brushing away a small itch. The gesture was not lost on her. “I understand that, pratha h’máy,” he said cynically.

She examined the pipe in her hands for a long time, then set it down beside the divan and rolled onto her stomach to look directly at him, leaning on her weight on both elbows with her face close to his. “Then I will offer you another alternative, Nathan Crewe.” She mangled the pronunciation the way most of the Vanar did, but he was surprised she used his name at all, then just as abruptly realized she had not added “Nga’esha” to it. “You may leave Vanar.”

It took several moments before the shock of her words registered. “Excuse me?” his voice croaked in disbelief.

A hint of a smile twisted the edges of her mouth. “You are free to leave Vanar. My mother left you a percentage of the income of the Nga’esha Estate, and that is yours, no matter where you go. You will be a rich man, Nathan. Very, very rich. You may go wherever, do whatever you like. But you may never come back to Vanar.”

Now he was terrified. This was a death sentence. She must have read the alarm on his face, knew what he was thinking. “No one will harm you,” she said. Her words were soft, calm. “You will have the complete protection of the Nga’esha all your life, on my honor as the pratha h’máy of this House.”

“You’re letting me go?”

“Yes.”

He couldn’t absorb it, couldn’t understand it. “Why?”

Now she smiled in earnest, amused. “Because I choose to.”

That had always been the answer to everything. He was here because one Vanar woman had chosen for him to be, he could leave because another chose to release him. He would live or die, because the women of Vanar determined he could.

“My daughter, Aenanda?”

“Will stay here and be raised in her mother’s House, as all Vanar girls are.”

He would never see her again. Although he might likely never see her again anyway, even here.

“I’m free to leave Vanar?”

“Whenever you wish,” she said. “There is transport waiting for you. It will take you anywhere you want, any world you choose.”

He stood up shakily, feeling as if he were locked in a dream, and stared down at her. She returned his look evenly, and suddenly he knew it was true, saw the honesty there, realized he truly was being liberated, not executed.
Free.

“Now?” It came out in a whisper.

“If you like,” she said mildly.

He turned away, gazing around at the people still watching him quietly. He looked at the women. Suryah regarded him with tilted almond eyes glittering in the subdued light. Resting on one elbow, her head propped in her hand, Dhenuh’s expression was one of mild interest, not hostility. Mahdupi lounged beside her on the wide divan, the older woman’s intelligent face unreadable, her gnarled hands clasped loosely one over the other. He turned to study the men: Qim, Baelam, Aelgar. They looked back at him neutrally.

Slowly, he took one step toward the archway leading to the long hall, toward freedom, his body quivering with adrenaline. Another, a third, and another. The reality crested, broke over him like a cold ocean wave, threatening his footing in the undertow. He turned, walking uncertainly toward the men, hesitated, suddenly wandering blindly, not knowing where he was going any longer. His steps teetered like a child’s toy pulled haphazardly on a string. He faltered and stopped, unable to see the exit, and stared down at his feet, his arms hanging loosely. No one spoke.

“I would no longer be Vanar, would I?” he asked. “No.”

He looked up to see Yronae watching him speculatively. “I would become naekulam without Family.”

She smiled thinly. “All non-Vanar are without Family, Nathan Crewe. It would be no different than if you’d never been here at all.”

He stared at her, then turned toward Qim. “Play,” he said, his voice harsher than he had intended.

Qim jumped, startled. “What?”

“I would dance for my bahd’hyin. Play the song you wrote, Qim. Play ‘Thunder in the Mountains’ for me.”

The musician’s eyes flashed in alarm. “But that is a man’s song. I can’t—”

“Play it!”

Qim flinched, exchanged a worried look with the other musicians, then glanced at Yronae for approval. She raised an eyebrow but nodded slightly. He gulped, then bent his head over the drums as if he could somehow hide there. His fingertips began their soft beat against the skins, the echoes rolling off the high ceiling and the far walls, blending with the sound of rain falling heavier now against the roof.

Nathan bowed once to Yronae, his hands together, thumbs against his chest, then drew the edge of the sati from his head and wrapped it twice around one arm to anchor it. He closed his eyes, listening to Qim’s drums, waiting for the bass lute to begin. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing, simply knowing that whatever it was, it was right. He tried to recall the hollow, imagining the weave of bodies around him, the smell of smoke, the gleam of sweat on bare arms and backs as the dancers began their step.

He kept his eyes closed while he started to sway, trying to get the rhythm of the drum into his head, get the beat of it into his heart. Holding his hands out with awkward formality, determined, he forced himself to start the dance, let his feet slide on the floor. Tried to forget everything except the sound of the music.

It was too difficult; it felt stilted, artificial, as he moved. He opened his eyes to keep his balance, catching Qim’s astonished, frightened eyes, Yronae’s impassive face. His jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. He turned, stamped, turned again, stamped, listening to the swell of the drums, the melody of the lutes coming in behind it.

It hadn’t been like this in the hollow, not for him, not then. He had not understood, not wanted to understand. He had made himself stand apart, watching. Like the scientist he prided himself to be, an uninvolved observer. He didn’t belong here, had always been a stranger. He could leave, stop at any time and walk out, walk away, never come back. Everything he had lost and longed for all these years would be returned a hundredfold. He would be a fool not to.

He gritted his teeth and tried to imitate the movement of the dancers in his memory, wanting to become like them, wanting to
become
them. Waiting for the singing to begin, he realized the musicians would not, could not sing the words, not here. Qim would play to Nathan’s execution, but he would not bring the blade down on his own neck.

Oh God, what am I doing?

Nathan stumbled, uncertain, then heard fingers pluck stringed instruments, their rapid tempo beginning to fill in the gaps between the relentless drumbeat rolling in the pit of his stomach.

Equilibrium is everything,
Pratima had told him.
Everything is equilibrium.
Suddenly, he knew he didn’t need the words. And he was in it, felt the music move like a live thing through him.