The Braided World (13 page)

Without ceremony, the barge was under way, as the guards poled them off the sunken stairs. As they did so, Shim came toward them. “The king will have Anton sit near him,” she said.

Maypong gave a lovely smile in response. As they rose she snarled at Anton, “Say little.”

He looked from one woman to the other. They both looked calm and rattled at the same time. Shim, her round face very pretty indeed, and Maypong, more petite, thinner of face. But he didn't think her diminutive in any other sense.

The king sat among nobles in the front of the barge, with the smallest of platforms serving as chairs. Vidori sat
with one leg crossed over his lap, the other outstretched. It seemed the only way to sit in long pants on the risers, so Anton did the same. The women, in tunics, sat sidesaddle. No one brought infants today.

As was his custom, the king wore black and gray, and went armed. That and the presence of many soldiers lent a more martial air to the outing than the otherwise festive mood would suggest. The nobles had grown very quiet as Anton took a place among them. He wondered if his presence was upsetting them and if any of them guessed that Vidori had not invited him. Among these nobles, Anton noted the androgynous beauty of the men. At times he had to take cues from the hairstyle to distinguish them from the women.

Maypong sat beside him, her upper lip sweating but her face studiously calm. The king glanced at her. It was only for a split second, but he thought Maypong faltered under that gaze. He'd exposed her to some displeasure, and was sorry for it.

But for now Vidori had assumed a casual demeanor, and was talking animatedly with a few of the viven, the palace-raised. Among them were relatives of the king, including numerous brothers who lived in the palace, and his sisters, some of whom attended on him. There were many cross ties and relationships here, and now Anton was in their midst, needing to make conversation, he thought, despite Maypong's warnings.

He turned to the nearest Dassa man. “A beautiful day to be on the river, rahi,” he said.

The man looked startled to be spoken to. “It is the only day to be on the river.”

Maypong leaned in to say, “The floods have receded, and this ceremony honors the season, Anton.”

The viven had used no honorific. The Dassa never appended one to Anton's or his crews’ names. Shim said it was because they were not Dassa. She smiled when she said it, but the crew knew an insult when they heard one.

The center of the Puldar was shallow enough to allow the crew to pole the craft, which they preferred to do rather than using the graceless barge engines, a recent technological development, and one seldom used because of the Dassa distaste for the noise and smoke that resulted from burning ethanol fuel. The current was in their favor, and the barge poled along with muffled splashes, nearly submerged under the clamor of the forest, the restless cries of the near-Earth creatures that called this place home.

The king was speaking to him. “We shall have silks made for you, Anton. For next time.”

Maypong pounced. “Oh, rahi, humans do not ever wear silk, as the captain has said so many times.”

“Ah.” Vidori smiled at his companions as though to say,
Who knows what the humans do?
“But someday the green clothes will fall off.” The group laughed at this.

“We have more green clothes where these came from, Vidori-rah,” Anton said.

The smiles left the retinue. His remark had perhaps been clumsy, Anton realized. Into the silence, Maypong plunged: “But first the clothes will fall off, of course.” She had made it clear that Anton had not contradicted the king about whether the clothes would rot off. It was not elegant, but the group's tension faded.

Maypong's upper lip glistened in the sun. Anton felt sorry for her, but he was rather enjoying himself. He had to admit it was glorious to be outside, with the rains gone, and to have made clear to the king that he was impatient to make progress.

Maypong begged permission from the king to stroll with Anton so that he could better view the river, and they began a slow pacing of the barge's perimeter. Maypong was calmer now, and they walked for a time without speaking. A few others walked as well, and from time to time entered the silken tent where platforms were set up for meal preparation.

The river was filling with boats that now followed the
barge, with much waving and calling back and forth. An iridescent bird skimmed over the water, scooping in its bill a load of water insects. Its sapphire plumage flashed in the sun, as achingly blue as Dassa silk, as Joon's gown the day he'd first seen her. Along the banks, woody vines plunged from trees into the river, like hoses sucking up water. Up and down them skittered beetles, reptiles, even monkeys, using the lianas as a pathway between river and canopy.

Maypong pointed ahead to the choppy waters where the Puldar poured its brown waters into the clearer, main river. “See,” Maypong said, “there is the great Sodesh. Today is an auspicious day for river viewing, the first proper day for the king to view the braids.”

Anton recited what he knew of the braids: “The Puldar, the Amalang, the Nool; tributaries of the Sodesh.”

“Yes. Vidori has the Puldar. The Amalang is Oleel's, in her realm of the uldia. The judipon have their pavilion upon the Nool. All are braided together to form the Sodesh, our life river.” She glanced at him as they walked. “That is the most you can know about us.”

“I'm sure there is very much more.”

“It is all there, Anton, in the braids.”

“Sometimes,” Anton ventured, “the rains make it all one river.” And of course, the flooding brought with it the rich soils of the uplands to enrich their farmlands.

Maypong dipped her head, her acknowledgment that he had said something less than stupid. As she did so, her earrings swayed, showing off the exquisite miniature scene of a bird in flight.

“It renews us, and reminds us that we are not truly separate from each other.”

They walked in silence for a time, past the kneeling hoda, facing inward toward the barge, waiting to be useful. As they walked, Anton saw that some of the viven had paired off, and were touching from time to time, in a casual but deliberate way, decidedly sexual. No one paid this the slightest attention.

He thought of the Princess Joon then, and as though reading his mind, Maypong said, “The Lady Joon would have come on the viewing today.”

“Why didn't she?”

“Did you not see her at the top of the king's stairs?”

Anton had not, but his attention had been utterly focused on Vidori and himself.

“She attends her father on the first viewing of the season. But she declined, seeing you.”

“Why?” He could imagine why. He hadn't seen her since their unsettling interview.

“Well, but she did not want to be seen with you, of course.”

He paused, thinking that now he had the answer to Shim's question about how the interview went. “Does she believe I haven't shown her respect?”

“Have you not?” Maypong looked pointedly at him.

Anton took a deep breath. “She offered … cordiality … that I could not accept.”

Maypong sighed. “Thankfully you have me as your chancellor at last.” She gazed out as they moved into the Sodesh. ‘Also, Oleel would not like the lady to share a barge with you.”

“Oleel is her uldia, and Oleel does not like humans. And,” he added, guessing, “Joon is afraid of Oleel.”

“Not afraid, but bound to her uldia because Joon's own mother is dead, and therefore her bond is all the stronger to her birth-water mother.”

“So she can befriend me, but not in public.”

“You begin to understand us, Anton.”

“God, I hope so.”

The barge continued its stately pace, gliding by the shoreline compounds, the poles rising glistening from the water and plunging down again. Near Anton, one of the poles rose from the water bearing a fulva husk, having speared a birth pouch of some creature—perhaps fish or
fowl. It was jarring to remember that he was not in a normal place. That was Neshar: lulling, jarring.

Just as this thought came to him, the tent fabric blew away from one of its fasteners. Past the fluttering silk, Anton saw a Dassa couple lying on a raised platform. The woman's naked back arched at the pleasure her lover was giving her. Anton thought her partner was a man, but it was hard to tell with her knees in the way…

Turning from the view, Anton met Maypong's gaze.

She smiled. “Sarif”

“Right.” He knew what it was. But in full sun, on the king's barge, it was unexpected. “So that” —he gestured at the tent—” is for privacy.”

Maypong looked at him with a hint of amusement. “Certainly not. It is for shade, Anton. If one is going to remove one's clothes, of course.”

“Of course.” He wished she wouldn't smile that way, as though he still had not learned some simple lessons. The fact was, there was very little about Dassa sexuality that was simple. Joon—and her father—came suddenly to mind.

The fabric behind him whipped frantically, causing a hoda to come forward to secure it again against the struts.

A silence ensued. Poles dipped into the water. Curtains stayed tied down. He blurted out: “Joon and her father—are close?” Anton had been wanting to ask. Maypong was the only person he
could
ask.

She looked over at him, frowning. “The lady is his favorite, of course.”

“Favorite what?”

“Favorite daughter. Oldest child. What else?”

“Well, there is physical closeness.” The Dassa practiced incest, without any sense of shame. Even the women sought others in their compounds without regard to relation.

“This disturbs you,” Maypong said.

He paused, but there was only one answer. “Yes.”

“You must not think this way in the Olagong, Anton.”

She stopped. “Why is a daughter pleasuring her father disturbing?”

He sighed. Where to begin? It wasn't, of course, a matter of inbreeding, since sex and reproduction weren't even linked here; that was where all the problems between Dassa and human began. But incest was also a matter of power and trust…

“It's complicated,” he said.

“Not for us,” she murmured.

The bargemen poled mightily to keep the barge from swooping into the center of the Sodesh, a wide, glossy corridor stretching for kilometers toward the mist-covered hills.

He couldn't argue from an interbreeding standpoint. It was enough that the uldia saw to it that the right Dassa swam in the right variums. He tried the viewpoint of the difference in power. A mother has power over her son, so that sarif, or cordial sex, might be coerced psychologically. And this was even truer between a king and his daughter …

When he finished explaining this, Maypong stared at him. “Why would someone coerce sarif? How can it be cordial, if it is forced?”

“Maybe someone wishes to …” He searched for the Dassa word for
dominate
, then settled on, “to win a bad kind of respect?”

“But Anton, how can it be winning respect to receive something that is so freely available?”

“Or maybe,” he said, “someone doesn't wish to be—cordial, and the other person too strongly desires it?”

Maypong looked at him with troubled eyes. “Does this happen, among your people?”

“It is against our laws, but yes.”

She shook her head. “Some laws you should not need.”

How had she turned this into
human
moral lapse? They would never sort this out.

Anton saw Vidori standing in the prow, conferring with a bargeman. He could not admire him … and yet, somehow,
he did. As he watched, he saw that the course was changed to make for the outlet of another river.

The viven had taken notice, and all attention was now focused on this new direction.

Maypong whispered to Anton, “It appears you will have your wish, after all.” Her face had turned serious.

The king, however, seemed in an expansive mood. He announced to the viven, “We will present the …” Here he used a word that Anton didn't recognize. “My visitors are curious, and it has been long since I took the pleasure of viewing it.”

“The ruins,” Maypong whispered. “The ancient site. The king is granting your wish, Anton. I hope it is worth it to you, given the high price, and the fact that there is nothing there.”

Anton watched as the barge approached the confluence with the Amalang River. Oleel's river.

Anton nodded to the king, making eye contact. Vidori smiled in ironic fashion, as though it were a game. But truly, Anton had no idea what Vidori's game was.

The barge navigated the currents with some difficulty, and then they were moving up the Amalang, a more narrow tributary, darker, greener than either the Sodesh or the Puldar. The waters cooled to turquoise under the cathedral branches of the trees, and the day faded to a golden green twilight. The viven were silent now, and the sound of the poles measured their progress with rhythmic splashes. The tent in the middle of the barge stood empty now, as the retinue grew somber and attentive in the realm of the uldia.

They passed the canoes of the uldia, women in gray tunics and sometimes robes who looked at them askance. And then the uldia fortress emerged in front of them, all in stone, and as large as the king's palace, though not as lovely. They quickly glided by the pavilion, not hailed or stopped by the gathering uldia who stared and pointed at them. The king looked steadfastly upriver, urging all speed on his barge captain.

They passed a large floating mat teeming with insects.

“River ants,” Maypong said.

The mat was composed of twigs and grasses, allowing, Maypong said, huge mounds of ants to scour the river surface for food. The ants were rather larger than Anton had ever seen, and he thought the river must feed them well.

It was an hour of steady poling, but they finally pulled up to shore, whereupon hoda stepped into the water to secure the barge with ropes.

Amid the flurry of activity, Anton asked Maypong, “What are the protocols, Chancellor?”

“Anton, you have asked to see this sunken place. Now you will see it.”

“There are no taboos, or things I should avoid doing?” He meant to see it all, now that he was being given the chance. At her blank look, he added, “The site is not considered sacred?” He wished Nick were with him, to see with expert eyes what would be their first glimpse of Quadi leavings, aside from the satellites.