The Braided World (25 page)

Homish's eyes snapped open. “Messages. Oh yes, I've heard about your messages.” He gestured at a chancellor, who looked confused. “Messages,” Homish spat at him. “The spindle, you fool, the spindle.” The attendant fled the room.

“Now we come to the subject,” Homish said. Nirimol helped him to sit up straighter, as the attendant returned with a tall sheaf of spindled papers. The spindle was set upon the floor at the old man's elbow.

Homish's hands were trembling as he reached for the middle of the spindle, pulling at several paper rounds that came loose, having slits through the radius on one side. “Here, here …” Homish was fumbling with two of the plates, but one of them slipped to the floor. His fingers traced the ridges upon the paper, trembling in his excitement.

Anton stepped forward, astonished at the flurry of activity, hoping for something from this decayed Third Power of the Olagong.

With surprising vigor, Homish waved a paper round at Anton. “You came to the Sodesh in your air barge—that is the first river, but the tenth day. Ten and one accumulate to eleven, as any numerator can tell you. Eleven! But the year is 5042—that is eleven again. There is a message for you, if you were wise, Anoon. But a man who flees a king's hospitality is not wise. That is one reason we know that you are not true-born.”

Homish fluttered his hands at Nirimol, who withdrew another paper round from the spindle, handing it to his chief. Now, with a paper in each hand, Homish waved them at Anton, looking like a skinny bird trying to take off

“The Sodesh, I say! Landing right on Huvai's isle, the twenty-first isle, in the records. Now that is one short of double your number.” Here Homish looked slyly at Anton, as if checking to see if he had guessed the significance.

Anton had not.

“But Huvai's birth number is ten, and that equals one. Twenty-one and one arrives at twenty-two! You see?”

Clearly the old man thought this was a triumph of numeration. Anton felt he should respond. “Very interesting, rahi. Please tell me, by your pardon, how my number of eleven can help me.”

Homish's face collapsed into a deep grimace, and he licked his lips. “How? How?” Slowly, his face relaxed into confusion. He turned to Nirimol, clutching at his chancellor's tunic. “How was it, Nirimol? Eleven and eleven, because Huvai's birth number …”

Nirimol bent close to Homish's ear and said, “Because eleven is the climbing number, my lord.” He straightened up, but Homish still looked unhappy. The chancellor bent down again. “The cloud country, my lord.”

Homish's face flared to understanding. “Yes, the cloud country! The numbers say you must climb, Anoon, and walk the upper regions, just like any novice judipon. You are no better! All must walk among the clouds and from walking learn the wisdom of the land. All wisdom is in the land, Anoon, all wisdom.”

Homish slapped the papers off his bed. “We record everything. It gives us something to do.” He glared at the attendants clustered around the room. “They are all useless old men frittering away their pri-less years on numeration and dreams. But wisdom is in the land …”

“What is in the cloud country, rahi?” Anton had come close to the bedside, despite the disapproving looks of Nirimol. “What should we look for?”

Homish regarded the paper round in his hand. He traced his fingers over the bumps. Then he grabbed Anton's hand. The old man's fingers were as cold as granite, and as strong. “You will pardon my touch, Anoon,” he whispered. ‘An old man can offer no sarif and a young man wants none from such as me.”

Then, feathering Anton's fingers along the paper,
Homish crooned, “Yes, yes, feel the numerations of the land. But you must be blind to feel them …”

The ridges and humps of the paper pressed into Anton's fingertips, like a language impossibly foreign. But it was not the paper that Homish wanted him to read. It was the land…

“What is it, rahi? Help me.”

But Homish dropped his hands, exhausted.

Nirimol motioned a hoda to remove the backrest. “Sleep now, Homish-rah,” he said.

“No, no. No potions,” Homish pleaded. He fought to sit up without the backrest, and succeeded, despite several chancellors’ coming forward with broths and blankets. He looked at Anton, as though Anton might save him. Indeed, Anton wanted to clear the room, open the windows, and pull out the tubes. But Nirimol was in charge, and Nirimol said his lord must sleep.

Pushing the others away, he said, “Take the hose, take it, damn you all.” A hoda came forward and, pulling the covers to one side, removed the tube, even as Homish struggled to stand. Nirimol steadied him.

Homish came up only to Anton's chest. His feet were bare, his toenails so long they curled like sheep horns.

“Now that you have spurned the king, where do you live, Anoon?” came the quavering voice.

“On the islet the king gave me, rahi.”

Homish nodded. “Oh yes,
the king gave you
, because you tricked him. Does a guest trick a host? Does he?”

“I was told it was the law, rahi.”

“The law!” Homish turned to Nirimol. “He talks of the law to the law keepers!” Nirimol's reaction was contemptuous.

“I am the law,” Homish croaked. “In the Olagong, all come to the Third Dassa for the law, as you do not. But if we talk of the law, then I will tell you the law says that hoda may not own the isles, nor any handful of soil.” He advanced on Anton, pointing at him. “You are hoda, all of
you; though you sail through the air, and some of you are not female, yet you are degenerate. You pollute the rivers if you stand on the isle in ownership.” He staggered forward, forcing Anton to back up. “Pollution. That is what you are.” When Anton didn't react, Homish lost control. “Get out, get out!” Supported on Nirimol's arm, the old man got up an alarming head of steam, driving Anton to the apartment entrance.

“Rahi, my pardon,” Anton was saying, but Homish went on.

“I dreamed that you died, you and your hoda crew, and your body was cast into the river. All bodies cast into the river. Yes, a true dream.”

Nirimol motioned a hoda to help him get Homish back into bed, but still Homish fought him. Finally he turned on Nirimol. “Let go of me, you river turd.”

Slowly, Nirimol released his grip, his eyes like weathered bone.

Swaying, the old man looked utterly incapable of standing unsupported. But he did stand, and more, taking a few rigid steps toward Anton. His eyes were pleading, and Anton closed the distance between them, unsure whether the old man would beat him or hug him.

Homish pulled on Anton's sleeve, pulling Anton's face down to his lips. He whispered in his ear, his breath a fetid inundation. “Don't trust them,” he whispered.

“Who?” Anton whispered back.

“The judipon,” Homish said, barely audible. “River hands will pull you under.”

He released his grip on Anton's sleeve. Then, pulling himself as tall as his stature allowed, Homish raised his hand in an imperious gesture.

“Get out, I say!”

Anton locked gazes with the old man, half addled, but only half. Then he turned and strode from the bedchamber, sucking in a deep breath of river air, discharging the medicinal fumes from his lungs.

“Let me paddle, Maypong-rah.”

“No, Anton,” she said, “but you may bring out the meal I have prepared.” She looked back from her paddling, eyeing a small bundle.

Turning out of the Nool River into the Sodesh, they had left Homish's pavilion. The river was milky in the morning light.

A river rat swam by, its top-of-the-head eyes swiveling to note the skiff. Anton had yet to see a crocodile or any venomous snakes. Perhaps the Quadi judged them dispensable—this being one of a thousand questions regarding what the Quadi did, and why
All wisdom is in the land
, Homish had said. A nice folk saying, but Anton was already formulating a plan to hike to the canyon lands, as the old man had urged. Maypong thought it decidedly too dangerous, being so far from Vidori's protection and given that it was nothing but a place of superstition.

As Anton unwrapped the meal of figs and cooked roots, he asked her, “If Homish believes the canyon lands confer
wisdom, maybe it's something concealed in jungle growth—in ruins or caves.”

“Anton,” she had responded, “would I have kept such knowledge from you? Do you think I am so bad a chancellor?”

“I know you'd tell me what you know. I'm looking for what you
don't
know.”

“If I don't know, how can it be possible for me to tell you?” She turned a brief smile on him. “You will have to help me to eat, since I am paddling, Anton.” She was challenging him to feed her while she sped their skiff over the water.

He leaned forward and held out a piece of fruit. She turned toward him, and he placed it in her mouth, but in the chop of the current, he touched her lips. The intimacy of the touch took him by surprise.

She made eye contact, then. He was the first to break it. So she had said she was willing, and he had said no thanks. They were getting good at communication.

“Anton, we are alone on the Sodesh. We could find shelter here. I know many places.”

“Maypong-rah. We are … you are my advisor. Appointed by the king. It is a serious role.”

“Thankfully, yes. You have said so many times. But I think now we may also be friends.”

Her paddle dipped and pulled, never dripping on her tunic. She was deft on the river, deft at most things. But he would rather have her a friend than a lover. It might be best not to have any lover at all, as Bailey had sternly advised him.

He continued, “We have a different way of looking at it, Maypong-rah. Humans would think if all friends have sex together, then sex is trivial.”

“How peculiar that you should think so, Anton.”

“Sometimes humans are bothered if sex doesn't mean anything.” Although that afternoon with Joon had been hardly more than lust.

“Oh, it means everything,” Maypong said. “Where would the Olagong be if people had sarif with only this person or that one, and our bonds were so few? How would we care for each other throughout the braided world, if we had not touched each other? Where would we drown our desire for each other? Sarif is the river of our hearts.
Trivial
is not the right word.”

“No, your pardon, Maypong-rah.”

“But you must let me know when you decide to change your mind,” she said cheerfully.

They continued to share their small meal, Maypong paddling with relentless rhythm, Anton parceling out the food. In the still air, the river's surface held a reflected world of rippled forest, made of sunlight. His heart lifted to be on the river with her, on such a day. Boats and barges passed them on both sides, the occupants gazing at them directly or furtively. A few waved, no doubt having picked up the gesture from Bailey.

On the shoreline Anton noted yet another war barge, tied up to a pier, with its cargo of fallen soldiers from the latest border skirmish.
Killed by hoda
, some of them, the hoda that were swelling the ranks of the Vol. The Voi were certainly not Quadi. Anton had persuaded the king to allow the ground mission to examine a Voi cadaver. Zhen's genetic analysis showed that the individual was closely related to the Dassa.

“Anton.” Maypong was alert, straining to look upriver, but still paddling steadily.

In the distance, a barge now commanded the middle portion of the Sodesh.

“The Princess Joon,” Maypong said.

He watched the poles flash up and down in unison, like the segmented legs of a giant water insect. Somehow he hoped she would pass them by.

“She will have you on her barge,” Maypong said, paddling still.

He thought that likely if Joon had her way. And he didn't
want to offend Joon, both for her own sake and for her political position. “Shall I go with her, Maypong-rah? Tell me the proper thing.”

“She will expect it.”

“What does she want?” The craft grew larger, coming on.

Maypong lay the paddle over the gunwales, gaining time, letting their skiff move backward on the current. “To be queen,” she said.

Anton swallowed, seeing the house of cards take on another story. That was the politics of it, of course: that tryst with Joon, her pursuit of him, and now, coming down the river. What a fool he'd been.

“How am I a part of her plan?”

“Perhaps she wishes to use you—your high armament. I can't say what her schemes all are. But you must choose, Anton.”

“Choose?”

“Yes, to go or not. You chose once, did you not?”

By the tone of her voice, Anton wondered if Maypong was jealous of what had transpired between him and Joon. But no; Nick had said there was no such thing as sexual jealousy here. It would be like taking it amiss if one's lover shook hands with someone else.

Maypong had turned around and was now facing him, waiting. Waiting for him to choose.

Only a couple of hundred meters away, poles began retracting. He saw a woman in vivid blue standing at the side of the barge, surrounded by many hoda.

Maypong locked gazes with him. “Refuse her,” she said.

“I will,” he answered.

She frowned, her upper lip beaded with perspiration. “The difficulty is that you will offend her and she will be disgraced in public.” Maypong had withdrawn her knife from her belt. “Unfortunately, we are having an accident.” She plunged her knife into the reed bottom of the skiff and then again.