THE (tlpq-4) (60 page)

"I will be sure to sketch out the options," the woman said in voice that

assured Ana that she would make room in her schedule to help Danat with

his father's arrangements.

Ana found her mother in the guests' apartments. Her return trip had been

postponed, the steam caravan itself waiting for her. The blue silk

curtains billowed in the soft breeze; the scent of lemon candles lit to

keep the insects away filled the air. Issandra sat before the fire

grate, her hands folded on her lap. She didn't rise.

Ana would never have said it, but her mother looked old. The sun of

Chaburi-Tan had darkened her skin, making her hair seem brilliantly white.

"Mother."

"Empress," Issandra Dasin said. Her voice was warm. "I'm afraid our

timing left something to be desired."

"No," Ana said. "It wouldn't have mattered. Tell father that I

appreciate the invitation, but I can't leave my family here."

"He won't hear it from me," Issandra said. "He's a good man, but time

hasn't made him less stubborn. He wants his little girl back."

Ana sighed. Her mother nodded.

"I know his little girl is gone," Issandra said. "I'll try to make him

understand that you're happy here. It may come to his visiting you himself."

"How are things at home?" Ana asked. She knew it was a telling question.

She started to take a pose that unasked it but lost her way. It wasn't

part of their conversation anyway.

"The word from Galt is good. The trade routes are busier than Farrer's

seafront can accommodate. He's filling his coffers with silver and gems

at a rate I've never seen," Issandra said. "It consoles him."

"I am happy here," Ana said.

"I know you are, love," her mother said. "This is where your children live."

They talked about small things for another hour, and then Ana took her

leave. There would be time enough later.

The Emperor's pyre was set to be lit in two days. Utani was wrapped in

mourning cloth. The palaces were swaddled in rags, the trees hung heavy

with gray and white cloth. Dry mourning drums filled the air where there

had once been music. The music would come again. She knew that. This was

only something that had to be endured.

She found Danat in his father's apartments, tears streaking his face.

Around him were spread sheets of paper as untidy as a bird's nest. All

of them were written upon in Otah Machi's hand. There had to be a

thousand pages. Danat looked up at her. For the length of a heartbeat,

she could see what her husband had looked like as a child.

"What is it?" Ana asked.

"It was a crate," Danat said. "Father left orders that it be put on his

pyre. They're letters. All of them are to my mother."

"From when they were courting?" Ana asked, sitting on the floor, her

legs crossed.

"After she died," Danat said. Ana plucked a page from the pile. The

paper was brittle, the ink pale. Otah Machi's words were perfectly legible.

Kiyan-kya-

You have been dead for a year tonight. I miss you. I want to

have something more poetic to say, something that will do

you some honor or change how it./cels to be without you.

Something. I had a thousand things I thought I would write,

but those were when it was only me. Now, here, with you, all

I can say is thatl miss you.

The children are starting to come back from the loss. I

don't know i f they ever will. I have no experience with

this. I had no mother or father. As a child, I had no

family. I don't have any experience losing a family.

The closest thing I have to solace is knowing that, if I had

gone first, you would have suffered all this darkness

yourself. That I have to bear it is the price of sparing

you. It doesn't make the burden lighter, it doesn't make the

pain less, it doesn't take away any of the longing I have to

see you again or hear your voice. But it does give the pain

meaning. I suppose that's all I can ask: that the pain have

meaning.

I love you. I miss you. I will write again soon.

Ana folded the letter. Thousands of pages of letters to the Empress who

had died. The last Empress before her.

"I don't know what to do," Danat said.

"I love you. You know I love you more than anything except the children?"

"Of course."

"If you burn these, I will leave you. Honestly, love. You've lost enough

of him. You have to keep these."

Danat took a deep shuddering breath and closed his eyes. His hands

pressed flat on his thighs. Another tear slipped down his cheek, and Ana

leaned forward to smooth it away with her sleeve.

"I want to," Danat said. "I want to keep them. I want to keep him. But

it was what he asked."

"He's dead, love," Ana said. "He's dead and gone. Truly. He doesn't care

anymore.

When Danat had finished crying, his body heavy against her own, the sun

had set. The apartments were a collection of shadows. Somewhere in the

course of things, they had made their way to Otah Machi's beda soft

mattress that smelled of roses and had, so far as Ana could tell, never

been slept in. She stroked Danat's hair and listened to the chorus of

crickets in the gardens. Her husband's breath became deeper, more

regular. Ana waited until he was deeply asleep, then slipped out from

under him, lit a candle, and by its soft light gathered the letters and

began to put them in order.

And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.

THE WORLD ITSELF SEEMED TO HAVE CONSPIRED TO MAKE THE DAY SOMBER. Gray

clouds hung low over the city, a cold constant mist of rain darkening

the mourning cloths, the stones, the newly unfurled leaves of the trees.

The pyre stood in the center of the grand court, stinking of coal oil

and pine resin. The torches that lined the pyre spat and hissed in the rain.

The assembly was huge. There weren't enough whisperers to take any words

he said to the back edges of the crowd. If there was a back. As far as

he could see from his place at the raised black dais, there were only

faces, an infinity of faces, going back to the edge of the horizon.

Their murmuring voices were a constant roll of distant thunder.

The Emperor was dead, and whether they mourned or celebrated, no one

would remain unmoved.

At his side, Ana held his hand. Calin, in a pale mourning robe and a

bright red sash, looked dumbstruck. His eyes moved restlessly over

everything. Danat wondered what the boy found so overwhelming: the sheer

animal mass of the crowd, the realization that Danat himself was no

longer emperor regent but actually emperor, as Calin himself would be

one day, or the fact that Otah was gone. All three, most likely.

Danat rose and stepped to the front of the dais. The crowd grew louder

and then eerily silent. Danat drew a sheaf of papers from his sleeve.

His farewell to his father.

"We say that the flowers return every spring," Danat said, "but that is

a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that

renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient

vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and

untested.

"The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen

forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced.

It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of

renewal is paid.

"And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us."

Danat paused, the voices of the whisperers carrying his words out as far

as they would travel. As he waited, he caught sight of Idaan and Cehmai

standing before the pyre. The old poet looked somber. Idaan's long face

carried an expression that might have been amusement or anger or the

distance of being lost in her own thoughts. She was unreadable, as she

always was. He saw, not for the first time, how much she and Otah

resembled each other.

The rain tapped on the page before him as if to recall his attention.

The ink was beginning to blur. Danat began again.

"My father founded an empire, something no man living can equal. My

father also took a wife, raised children, struggled with all that it

meant to have us, and there are any number of men and women in the

cities or in Galt, Eymond, Bakta, Eddensea, or the world as a whole who

have taken that road as well.

"My father was born, lived his days, and died. In that he is like all of

us. All of us, every one, without exception. And so it is for that,

perhaps, that he most deserves to be honored."

The ink bled, Danat's words fading and blurring. He looked up at the low

sky and thought of his father's letters. Page after page after page of

saying what could never be said. He didn't know any longer what he'd

hoped to achieve with his own speech. He folded the pages and put them

back in his sleeve.

"I loved my father," Danat said. "I miss him."

He proceeded slowly down the wide stairs to the base of the pyre. A

servant whose face he didn't know presented Danat with a lit torch. He

took it, and walked slowly around the base of the pyre, cool raindrops

dampening his face, his hair. He smelled of soft rain. Danat touched

flame to tinder as he went, the coal oil flaring and stinking.

The fire roared. Smoke rose through the falling rain, carrying the body

of Otah Machi with it. And pale petals of almond blossoms floated over

the crowd and the pyre, the palaces and the city, like the announcement

that spring had come at last.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The Price of Spring is the fourth and final novel of the Long Price

Quartet by Daniel Abraham. The first three are A Shadow in Summer, A

Betrayal in 117inter, and An Autumn War. His short fiction has been

published in the anthologies Vanishing Acts, Bones of the World, The

Dark, and Logorrhea, and been included in Gardner Dozois's Year's Best

Science Fiction and The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror edited by Ellen

Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant, as well. His story "Flat Diane"

won the International Horror Guild Award for best short story. His

novelette "The Cambist and Lord Iron" was short-listed for the Hugo and

World Fantasy awards. He is also the coauthor of Hunter's Run with

Gardner R. Dozois and George R. R. Martin. He lives in New Mexico with

his family.

Document ID: d4dccf77-5d33-43fb-8a65-34632bb606de

Document version: 2

Document creation date: 2010-04-03

Created using: doc2fb, FB Editor v2.0 software

This book was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.0.35.0.

Эта книга создана при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.0.35.0 написанного Lord KiRon