Balance! This was the very thing Ira’il lacked when dealing with the Kitheri Reshtar. Hlavin was third-born and Ira’il a first, but the Kitheri outranked every other family in the Principality of Inbrokar, so using the Reshtar’s name in direct address or deciding who held right to the personal pronoun was a complicated and dangerous task. Without a Runa protocol specialist to advise him, Ira’il felt constantly on the verge of toppling into some unforgivable error.
To make matters worse, Ira’il had no idea why he’d been chosen to accompany the Reshtar from Gayjur to Inbrokar when Hlavin’s exile was suspended for the birth of his sister’s child. Granted, Ira’il had so admired the Reshtar’s extraordinary poetry that he had defied his own family and renounced his right to transmit the Vro patrimony, in order to join the glittering society of Galatna Palace. But other men had done the same, and Ira’il himself was a poor singer who knew just enough about poetry to understand that his own verse would never rise above cliché. The only time he came to the Reshtar’s attention was when he uttered some regrettably obvious praise for another man’s lovely metaphor, or hit the wrong note in a chorus. So he had been content to sit at the edges of the Reshtar’s court, feeling honored simply to be in the company of such artists. Someone, after all, had to be the audience.
Then, inexplicably, Hlavin Kitheri had reached out and pulled Ira’il Vro from obscurity, inviting him to attend the inauguration ceremonies of the extraordinary new Darjan lineage that the Reshtar had permitted to come into existence.
"Oh, but you must be there, Ira’il," the Reshtar had insisted when Ira’il had stammered a demurral, "to see the jest played out in full! I promise, you shall be the only one aside from me who will understand the whole of it."
Ira’il could only presume that the Reshtar enjoyed his company—a startling notion, but irresistibly flattering.
Everything about this excursion had been startling, really. Entering Inbrokar for the first time, Ira’il had been amazed by the Kitheri palace, here in the center of the capital. It was architecturally impressive but oddly quiet—very nearly empty, except for the family itself and its domestic staff. Ira’il had expected something more exciting, more alive at the very heart of his culture…. He turned away from the city and looked down at the kitchen yard and the Runa gate through which the merchant had just left. "One might have expected a glorious duel," he told the Reshtar then, hoping that Hlavin would forget the earlier use of dominant language. "The peddler could have taken Dherai. You’d have moved up to second."
"I think he did," the Reshtar said serenely.
"Apologies," Ira’il Vro said, flustered into another gaffe. "I’m not sure I follow—. Apologies! One doesn’t understand—"
Of course not, you dolt, Hlavin Kitheri thought, gazing at the other man with something approaching affection, for he did enjoy Vro’s company immensely—particularly the idiot’s clumsy slights and graceless attempts at recovery. There were wondrously comic elements to this entire drama, and it had been fascinating to set it in motion. Supaari means to leave the city, the Reshtar had realized as his ludicrous brother-in-law stole away with his prize like a skulking scavenger, and the radiance that filled Hlavin Kitheri’s soul rivaled those moments when the resolution of an improvised song came to him in midperformance. I could not have planned it more perfectly, he thought.
"I think the peddler killed my honored brother Dherai," the Reshtar said then, voice musical and clear, his limpid lavender eyes celestial. "And Bhansaar! And their brats. And then-in a delirium of bloodjoy, drunk on the dense, hot odor of vengeance—he killed Jholaa and my father, as well."
Ira’il opened his mouth to protest: No, he’s just left.
"I think that is what happened," the Reshtar said again, placing a brotherly arm across the other man’s shoulders and laying his tail cozily atop Vro’s own. "Don’t you?"
8
Inbrokar
During the Reign of Ljaat-sa Kitheri
THERE WERE QUESTIONS THAT COULD NOT BE ASKED, AND THE MOST powerful of these was, "Why?"
"What?" and "When?" were necessary, of course. "Where?" was usually safe. "How?" was permissible, although it often led to trouble. But "Why?" was so hazardous that Selikat beat him when he used the word. Even as a child, Hlavin had understood that this was her duty. She beat him for his own good: she feared for him, and did not want the best of her students to be made an example of. Better a tutor’s whip than the slow and public extraction of instructive consequences, should any younger brother breathe treason.
"Am I a tailor’s dummy then?" he had demanded at the age of twelve, still fearless and unsubtle. "If Bhansaar dies, they’ll throw the cloak of office over me, and snap! I am Judgment! Is that how it works, Selikat?"
The tutor hesitated. It was a Reshtar’s fate to observe his elders’ ascendance, all the while knowing that if either proved out sterile or died before breeding, the extra son would step into the vacated position and be accorded the assumption of competence. Not tall but neat and agile, Hlavin was already physically as adept as Dherai, who was destined to be his nation’s champion, should any challenge to the Patrimony be made. And even Jholaa was brighter than Bhansaar, who could remember all that he was taught and apply it, but rarely drew an inference or came to a conclusion on his own, and who would nevertheless preside one day over Inbrokar’s highest court.
"The oldest songs explain it, sir," the Runao told him, her eyes closing and her voice taking on the rhythm if not the melody of the chants. "Ingwy, who loves order, spoke to the first brothers, Ch’horil and Srimat. ’When women gather, Chaos dances. Therefore, separate Pa’au and Ti-ha’ai, the fierce sisters you have married, and keep them apart and captive.’ With trickery and cunning, Ch’horil and Srimat conspired with other men until all had subdued their wives and daughters. But when they themselves did the culling and the butchering, the men, too, became blood-drunk and fought. ’We cannot wall ourselves up,’ they said. So Ingwy commanded, ’Let those who are wise decide who among you is too fierce to live, and let those who are strong kill the fierce ones condemned by the wise.’ And because Ch’horil the Elder was strong and Srimat the Younger was wise, from that time on, the first-born males of each sept were charged with combat and ritual killing, the second-born with adjudication and decision."
"And do you believe that?" Hlavin asked her bluntly.
Her eyes opened. "It all happened long before the Runa were domesticated," Selikat replied, dropping her tail with a soft and possibly ironic thud. "In any case, of what importance is the belief of an insignificant tutor, my lord?"
"You are not insignificant. You are tutor to the Kitheri Reshtar. Tell me what you think," the child ordered, imperious even then, when it seemed that nothing more awaited him than an exile designed to distract him from futile resentment and dangerous questions.
Selikat drew herself up, a person of some dignity. "Stability and order have always been paid for with captivity and blood," the Runao told her charge, calm eyes steady. "The songs tell also of the Age of Constancy, when everything was as it should be and each man knew his place and his family’s. There was respect for those above and courtesy from those below. All elements were in balance: Stewardship triumphant and Chaos contained—"