“What—exactly—was that all about?” a woman’s voice said quietly at his elbow. She had spoken franca, but the liquid off-world vowels were unmistakable, and Warreven was not surprised to see a woman in the drab coat of a pharmaceutical leaning on the rail beside him. He knew her slightly: Sera Ax Cyma, her name was; she was new to the planet, and they had had dealings in the traditional court where he was an advocate in a matter of trade. Those dealings had been settled with satisfaction for both sides, and he answered willingly enough.
“It’s the end of Aldess’s mourning. Agede—the Doorkeeper, he holds the doors of life and death—has released her, and the Heart-breaker is reblessing her marriage.”
“I guessed some of that,” Cyma said, and sounded faintly pleased with herself. “But why’d he spit the rum on her?”
“It’s a blessing,” Warreven said. “Traditional.” In the hall below, he could see Aldess discreetly wiping her face with one corner of her new shaal.
“I see. And the dancers—vieuvants—” She corrected herself hastily, and Warreven nodded. “They’re representing the spirits?”
“More or less,” Warreven began—he never quite knew how to explain the spirits to off-worlders—and felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Raven.”
There weren’t many people here, in the White Watch House, who would call him by his childhood nickname. He turned, already smiling, to see Tendlathe Stane beside him. “Ten. It’s good to see you. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks.” Tendlathe looked at him, refusing to match the smile. “Father wants to talk to you.”
“Why?” Even as the word slipped out, Warreven regretted it, but knew better than to apologize.
Tendlathe shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, and tilted his head toward the off-worlder in unspoken warning.
Warreven sighed. Everyone knew that Tendlathe opposed the pharmaceuticals’ influence, but there was no point in being actively rude. He nodded to the woman. “If you’ll excuse me, mirrim?”
“Of course,” Cyma said, backing away, and sounded relieved to be clear of their conversation.
“So what does he want?” Warreven asked, and followed Tendlathe along the length of the gallery toward the stairs.
“I don’t really know,” Tendlathe answered. “He just said he wanted to be sure to talk to you before you left.”
Warreven made a sour face. A summons like that from the Most Important Man could mean almost anything, from a trade case—and the advocacy group was handling half a dozen right now, in both the off-world and the traditional courts—to some business between Stane and Stiller. He had acted as a go-between for Temelathe before…. He shook the thought away. There was no point in speculating; Temelathe would tell him soon enough.
Now that the main part of the ceremony was over, faitous had appeared in the main hall, carrying trays of food and braided feel-good and jugs of sweetrum. Warreven stopped to snag a cup of sweetrum from a passing woman, and Tendlathe looked over his shoulder, showing teeth in a not entirely friendly smile.
“Think you’ll need that?”
“You tell me,” Warreven answered, and this time Tendlathe did laugh.
“I told you, I don’t know what he wants. But—” He stopped abruptly, tried again. “Look, Raven, I haven’t seen you in ages. Can we get together after this? We can talk properly then, not like here.”
Warreven hesitated. There were a lot of reasons he hadn’t seen much of Tendlathe over the past eight or nine years. They had been at the Concord-sponsored boarding school in Rivers-edge together, and they had spent holidays together at Temelathe’s mesnie outside Gedesrede, along with half a dozen other children of Important Men and Women. They had come of different clans and Watches—collected, Warreven had realized very early, to improve Temelathe’s position as Speaker of the Watch Council—but for some reason Temelathe had taken a liking to him. When he had turned eighteen—human years, bioyears, not the longer calendar years—Temelathe had proposed a marriage between him and Tendlathe. It had been contingent on a change of Warreven’s legal gender, of course: a great honor, but an even greater sacrifice, given the patrilineal structure of both his own and Temelathe’s mesnies. Luckily, Tendlathe had been equally unenthusiastic about the proposal, and it had been relatively easy to decline. Though if he had not been the one to become the wife, Warreven admitted, it would have been a tempting offer. But now there was too much between them, not just politics, but the marriage that hadn’t happened as well as the one that had to make it simple to retrieve the old ease. He had waited too long, and Tendlathe looked away.
“It’s not that important.”
“What do you want, Ten?”
Tendlathe looked back at him. They were much of a size, both thin and slight, so similar in looks and coloring that when they were children strangers had usually assumed they were siblings, to their mutual disdain. Tendlathe had grown his beard as soon as he was able, but the narrow dark line, coupled with the long hair pulled back into a severe braid only seemed to emphasize the matching length of chin. “It’s Aldess,” he said at last. “I want to talk to someone who deals with the off-worlders regularly.”
So Aldess was thinking of going off-world for help with her next pregnancy, Warreven thought. It made sense: the Concord Worlds had better technology anyway, and they were used to dealing with these complications. He said, “All right, but I don’t know what I can tell you. When?”
“After this is over,” Tendlathe said. “Come by the house—our house, not here—I’ll give you dinner, if you’d like.”
“You don’t have to feed me,” Warreven said. “Besides, I have plans.” Something flickered in Tendlathe’s eyes, disappointment, maybe, or annoyance, and Warreven couldn’t quite repress a sense of satisfaction. And that, he knew, was ridiculous: he and Tendlathe had defined their relationship years before, and they had both ruled out anything more than friendship. He grinned, at himself this time, and said, “I’ll come by at the twentieth hour?”
Tendlathe nodded. They had reached the dais then, and he stopped a calculated distance from the Most Important Man. Before he could say anything, however, Temelathe turned to face them, waved one big hand in welcome.
“Raven! Come up here.” He turned to the man at his side, an off-worlder in the severely cut uniform of one of the Big Six. “This is Warreven… Stiller, the one I told you about. The one who might have been my daughter-in-law.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Warreven saw Tendlathe freeze for a fraction of a second, his handsome, bony face going absolutely still, and then he turned on his heel and stalked back through the crowd, heading toward the table where Aldess was holding court. Warreven allowed himself a sour smile and stepped up onto the dais. “That was a long time ago, my father. I decided against it, and so did Tendlathe. I remain a man, thank you.” He saw the off-worlder looking at him, saw the familiar movement of his eyes checking the shape of hips and shoulders and chest, looking for the indicators of true gender. “Legally, at any rate, which is what matters.”
The off-worlder’s eyes snapped away, fixing on something in the distance, over Temelathe’s shoulder, and Warreven was pleased to see a faint color rising under the man’s fair skin. If he’d been on Hara long enough to be doing business with the Most Important Man, he’d been there long enough to know better than to be so obvious about it. Harans might actually have the same five sexes as any other human beings, but law and custom admitted only two.