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