The room was so crowded Paula could not see the bed. She backed away toward the wall. Everybody was talking at once. Melly was crying, and Ketac took her away. David stood by the bed like a guard. Paula’s face felt tight and stretched. She was still surprised by the death. Tanuojin came into the room.
His hair was down over his shoulders and his back. Sleep rumpled his face. His eyes were intent on Saba. David saw him and grabbed his shirt in both hands.
“Bring him back. Bring him back.”
Paula went toward them, elbowing a way through the gaping slaves and onwatchers. His gaze never leaving Saba, Tanuojin thrust David hard away from him, but the young man clung to him, his hands fisted in Tanuojin’s shirt.
“Bring him back, you did it before—if you’re a god you can bring him back—”
Paula took him by the arm, turning him to face her. “David, stop.”
“Bring him back.” He twisted to shout at Tanuojin, his mouth open, and she slapped him with all her strength. He ran out of voice. He stared at her, round-eyed, his mouth open and empty. Ketac appeared beside her and took him out of the room. Tanuojin sat down on the edge of the bed. There was nothing he could do; she had known that as soon as she touched Saba. She drove the other people out, to leave him alone with the dead man.
Under the sweet odor of incense she could smell the rotting body. She had been sitting here a watch and would sit here two watches more, Melly beside her shedding tears like a sweat behind her veil, and Boltiko beside Melly, her mouth thin as a seam.
The incense had a woody smell, like cedar. The smoky air and the constant drumming of the rUlugongon had her half-drugged. Her aching eyes dressed each of Saba’s sons, standing around the dead man, in a shimmering cloak of light. They were in the entry to the rAkellaron House. Beyond Ketac and Dakkar the Gold Wall rose, spangled with the names of the rePriman. The people of Vribulo were filing through the right side of the double doorway, around the body on its bier, and out the left. From talk she overheard she knew many of them had come from Matuko, and some from other cities, as far away as Ponka on the far side of the Planet.
David stood near the foot of the bier, between two of his tall brothers. He looked like an old man. His cheeks glistened. He was crying again. She looked away from him, made uncomfortable by his grief, made lonely. She had never loved Saba that much. Now that he was dead her circumstances were utterly changed. Her only assets were her influence in the Middle Planets and her relationship with Tanuojin.
Tanuojin himself had been stripped by the death. The highest ranking officer in the fleet, he had no ship, since Ybix would go to Ketac. Officially he was ranked only eleventh or twelfth in the Chamber; Leno would be Prima now, who hated him. None of that would get in his way. He had enemies, but she was his only rival.
Sometime in the next watch David went out and did not come back. She was too numb to care where he went. Probably he would be better off away from the sight of his father. Melly collapsed with much exhibition, and was carried out. Paula’s eyes throbbed. She was determined to sit there until the end. The steady stream of people passed by. They moaned, or reached out to touch Saba, or put something down by the body. The bier was covered with bits of paper and grass braided into rings, mourning symbols.
She closed her eyes a moment. When she looked Tanuojin had come in. He stood by the foot of the bier. Above the neck of his shirt, a metal chain crossed his collarbone. It was Saba’s order medal; she wondered if anyone but her knew he wore it.
One bell rang. The crowd went away. The slaves shut the doors. Boltiko rose, groaning with effort, and stood over the bier. “My boy,” she said, in a low voice. She laid her palm against Saba’s cheek. “My poor boy.” Paula was beside her. The two women turned to each other, reaching out, and took each other in an embrace.
They went up to the Prima Suite. David was not there. Paula poured three fingers of Ponkan gin into a cup and drank it all. The others of the family were wandering around, even Saba’s daughters, with their children, their faces unveiled. Ketac sat in her chair, by the window.
“That’s my chair,” she said, and he moved.
The cold air coming through the window made her feel better, her head clear. Ketac slouched against the wall beside her, one foot propped on her chair.
“Who will be the Akellar now?” she said.
“Dakkar is the heir.”
“I think you’d make a better Akellar than Dakkar.”
Ketac straightened. He put his foot on the floor. “So do I.” He looked around the room. Two of his sisters came in, chattering about children.
“Can you take him?” Paula asked.
“I can try.”
“Where? Not in Matuko, that’s his ground. You’d better do it here.”
“I’m in sack shape,” he said. Two more people came into the room, and he lowered his voice. “I’ll go to Ybix. I can turn the pressure up to double and work up my strength.”
“I’ll call you when he comes here to claim his seat in the Chamber.”
“Good.”
She held her jaws together against a yawn. Junna stood just outside the door in the hall. She wondered again where David was. The bland innocence on Ketac’s face almost made her laugh. Saba had preferred him to Dakkar anyway, and obviously he had been thinking about it. He did not come virgin to this bridal. She closed her eyes.
David had disappeared into the city. She knew better than to look for him. Leno was taking over the Prima’s offices on the second floor, and his eight wives sent a slave to ask when Paula and Melly would move out of the Prima Suite. Melly was going back to Lopka, her father’s city. Paula was busy watching Dakkar and had no place to go anyway.
Tanuojin had gone back to Yekka, but every other Akellar was in Vribulo. Leno proclaimed the first session of his Primat for the eighteenth high watch after Saba was made ash. The wives’ slave brought Paula a pointed invitation to move out of the suite. That same watch, Dakkar arrived in Vribulo to claim his father’s place in the rAkellaron.
She went down to the second floor, to talk to Leno.
She could not see the door to the Prima’s office through the thick press of men around it. She wound a way through them to the open door. The waiting room was jammed. The benches were full of men, and other people stood leaning against the walls between the maps and recognition charts. At the table in the middle, Leno’s pitman argued in a loud voice with a man in a patrol uniform. She went around him to the half-glassed door in the back and knocked.
“Who is it?” Leno called. He sounded angry. She tried the latch, which was unlocked, and went into the long room.
Tanuojin was sitting on the bench before the middle window. Leno glared at her from the middle of the room. “You could wait until you’re asked.” He pulled his belt up over his stomach. Both of them were giving off a marginal reek of bad temper. Shutting the door, she crossed the room, going in between them.
“Leno,” she said, “let me stay here. You can open up the rest of the Prima Suite—there’s plenty of room.”
His lips parted with surprise. Tanuojin laughed. The Prima flung his arms out. “Here. No.” He wheeled away, his broad back to her. A dark patch of sweat showed between his shoulder blades. “Get out. I’m busy.”
“I have to have someplace to stay.” She glanced at Tanuojin. “When did you get back? I thought you were in Yekka.”
“Last watch.”
Leno loomed over her, his hands on his hips, his blunt head forward. “I told you to leave.”
“I have nowhere to go.” She raised her eyes to his face, shining with temper. He and Tanuojin had been arguing before she came in. She put that away in her mind to think about later. Her eyes on the Prima’s angry face, she said, “I suppose you’ll want Saba’s presidency?” She turned back to Tanuojin. “I’m sending Newrose a notice of Saba’s death—what about Dr. Savenia?”