"They followed him out of love, and out of loyalty," Suukmel said serenely. "Hlavin Kitheri began to seem the embodiment of their own greatness. They loved him for what he and they had become, and they would have done anything for him."
"So when the Paramount let it be known that he desired that such men should be bound closer to him, they forgot or forgave Kitheri’s reputation for—" He stopped, unwilling to offend her.
"Sexual… sophistication, perhaps?" she suggested, amused at his delicacy. "Yes. These men willingly gave their third-born sisters or daughters to his harem."
"Even knowing that the children of those matings would have no appointed place in the hierarchy?"
"Yes, knowing that the lives of those born to Kitheri’s house would not be decreed by birth or governed by death. So be it, such men said. Let the future carve out its course, like a river in flood. Neither did they falter at Hlavin’s lifting of the breeding bans on certain merchant thirds. Can you understand how ’revolutionary’ this was?" she asked, using the H’inglish word. "We had always been careful stewards of our inheritance. Our honor was to pass down, undegraded, whatever legacy we ourselves had received. To bequeath more was dishonor: this implied theft. To bequeath less was dishonor: this implied profligacy. But Hlavin showed us all that there could be creation! Something, out of nothing! Poetry, wealth, music, ideas, dance: out of nothing! Stewardship could encompass increase! Everyone began to see this, and we all wondered—even I wondered— what had we been frightened of all these years?"
LIKE AN ANCIENT HUNTER DROPPING MEAT AT HIS WIFE’S FEET, HLAVIN Kitheri had laid all he accomplished at the exquisite feet of the lady Suukmel Chirot u Vaadai. It was to please her that he took the final step, opening the last door, letting both Chaos and Wisdom free.
From all over Inbrokar, his young consorts had come, veiled and guarded and ignorant. For Suukmel’s sake, and perhaps in guilty memory of his late sister Jholaa, Hlavin Kitheri brought the wonders of land and sea and air into his seraglio; filled his palace with Runa tutors, storytellers, talking books, with Jana’ata politicians and scientists, bards and engineers. At first, his girls were separated from the men with a pierced wooden screen; later, with heavy curtains only. Still later, it began to seem quite ordinary and acceptable that the ladies should hear the debates, now and then comment audibly on them, and finally participating fully in the colloquia from behind the merest suggestion of a gauzy walclass="underline" transparent, diaphanous, floating.
These girls bore Kitheri children. The first was a son he called Rukuei, neutered as an infant and given to Suukmel to be fostered at the Mala Njeri embassy. But there were many other children as the years passed, and one of these was a daughter who did not know it was forbidden for females to sing. When Hlavin Kitheri heard that small, high, pure voice, his heart’s very rhythm paused, made motionless by beauty.
Except for the evening chants, Hlavin himself had not sung in years. Now, with a relief more profound than the consummation of any physical yearning, he found his way back to poetry and music. He brought in musicians and choirmasters, and let the women and children sing, depending on the shimmering loveliness of their voices to drown his society’s lingering ability to find scandal in the new. Once again, he created a torrent of cantatas, chorales, anthems: for his consorts and his young.
By the twelfth year of Hlavin Kitheri’s reign, the Principality of Inbrokar was the most powerful political entity in the history of Rakhat— wealthier than Mala Njer, as populous as Palkim—and Hlavin Kitheri held undisputed sovereignty over the central kingdom of the Triple Alliance. Already, he had made close allies among his Chirot and Vaadai contacts in Mala Njer. In a year or two more, it would have been time at last to take the Palkirn girl as his wife and establish a legitimate succession, now that he had brought about the revolution he had no word for.
"WHEN DID YOU FIRST REALIZE WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN THE SOUTH?" Daniel Iron Horse asked, many years after Kitheri’s death.
"Almost from the beginning, there were signs," Suukmel recalled. "Less than a season after Hlavin acceded to the paramountcy, the first of the refugees appeared at the gates of Inbrokar." Stunned and terrified as refugees everywhere always are, with stories of fire, of betrayal and death in the night, their lives had been spared by Runa whose loyalty and love these few Jana’ata had earned, and whose warnings these few had heeded. "My lord Kitheri appreciated the irony, Dani. He himself once said, ’I fathered the destruction of the new world at the moment of its conception.’»
"There are limits, of course, to anyone’s breadth of view," Danny pointed out. They sat silently for a time, listening to a midday chain chorus, the sound of which spread from compound to compound across the valley. "It seems to me, my lady, that if things had been only a little different—" Danny hesitated. "Perhaps Supaari VaGayjur might have become the first and most useful of Kitheri’s supporters."
"Perhaps," Suukmel said after a long time. "What made him contemptible in the old regime were the very traits that would become most admirable in my lord Kitheri’s paramountcy." She paused, thinking. "The merchant would have made an excellent chancellor, for example. Or he might have headed a Ministry of Runa Affairs…" Chest tight, she looked at Danny, who was her equal in height, and in many other things. "Perhaps," she said steadily, "it all might have been avoided, but at the time? There seemed no other way…"
22
Southern Province, Inbrokar
2047, Earth-Relative
"SOMEONE HAS ASSEMBLED THE TRADE GOODS YOU SPECIFIED. THEY’RE cached near the lander site," Djalao VaKashan informed Sofia and Supaari when she finally showed up in Trucha Sai. She was days late. "There are djanada patrols everywhere out there."
"Cullers?" Supaari suggested warily. "Or inspection teams, perhaps, just taking census for the new paramountcy?"
"Someone thinks neither," Djalao said, ignoring the other Runa who crowded around them, and who were beginning to sway uneasily. "At Kirabai, the people say these are men from the north, from Inbrokar City. They have foreign Runa with them—from Mala Njer, someone thinks. The elders at Kirabai had to call on interpreters whose lineages are very old, to understand them."
Djalao was not visibly frightened, but she was concerned. All the village councils were talking about what this meant, what was changing. "The patrols ask always about Supaari," she told them quietly. "They ask also about foreigners."
"Is it safe for us to travel?" Sofia asked, stomach tightening. "Perhaps we-but-not-you must wait until this trouble is over."
"Someone thinks, we-and-you-also can travel, but in redlight only. It might be best for you to go without delay." Djalao looked at Supaari and switched to K’San. "Lord, will you permit one of us to lead you?"
There was a noticeable silence and Sofia made a half turn to be able to look at Supaari. He was standing very straight, staring at Djalao. "Am I a lord," he asked, "who can permit or forbid?" Then, ears dropping, he brought himself to acceptance. Eyes on the middle distance, somewhere to Djalao’s left, he lifted his chin. "Apologies," he said finally. "Someone will be grateful for your guidance."
Everyone shuffled, embarrassed. Sofia could see that it cost Supaari something to say this and understood that Djalao intimidated him in a way no other Runao did; the subtleties were lost on her, as were the details of the interminable discussion that followed, encompassing as it did political and geographic considerations about their route to the Magellan lander. She had done all she could during the six months of preparation for the voyage home. Now there was no choice but to trust that Supaari and Djalao would make the right decisions.