voices began to swell. Otah closed his eyes. It was a song he knewa
court dance from the Second Empire. The harmonies were perfect and rich,
sorrowful and joyous. This, he understood, was a gift. Galtic voices
raised in a song of an empire that was not their own. He let himself be
carried by it, and when the voices fell again, the last throbbing notes
fading to silence, he was among the first to applaud. Otah was surprised
to find tears in his eyes.
Ana Dasin, at his side, was also weeping. When he met her eyes, she
looked down, said something he couldn't hear, and walked briskly away.
He watched her descend the stairs below decks as the singers began
another, more boisterous song. Otah's gaze flickered to Issandra. In the
dim light, the subtle signs of age were softened. He saw for a moment
who she had been as a younger woman. She met his eyes with a profound
weariness. Fatter had his hand on her arm, holding her gently to him,
though the man's face remained turned away. Otah wondered, not for the
first time, what brokering this agreement had cost Issandra Dasin.
He glanced at the stairs down which her daughter had vanished, and then
back, his hands shifting into a pose that made an implicit offer.
Issandra raised an eyebrow, a half-smile making a dimple in one cheek.
Otah tugged at his robes, straightening the lines, and stepped carefully
down from the dais. The girl Ana would be his daughter too, soon enough.
If her true mother and father weren't placed to speak with her in her
distress, perhaps it was time that Otah did.
Below decks, the Galtic ship was as cramped and close and ripe with the
scent of tightly quartered humanity as any ship Otah had sailed with.
Under normal circumstances, the deck now peopled with the guests of the
Dasin family would have given room to a full watch of sailors. Instead,
most were lurking in the tiny rooms, waiting for the songs to end and
their own turn with fresh air to come. Still, Otah, Emperor of the
Khaiem, found a way cleared for him, conversations stopping when he came
in view. He made his way forward, squinting into the darkness for a
glimpse of the rabbit-faced girl.
Galtic design divided the cargo hold in sections, and it was in one of
these dark chambers that he heard the girl's voice. Crates and boxes
loomed above him to either side, the binding ropes creaking gently with
the rolling ship. Rats chattered and complained. And there, hunched over
as if she were protecting something pressed to her belly, sat Ana Dasin.
"Excuse me," Otah said. "I don't mean to intrude, but ... may I sit?"
Ana looked up at him. Her dark eyes shone in the dim light. Her nod was
so faint it might almost have been the movement of the ship. Otah
stepped carefully over the rough board, hitched his robes up to his
shins, and sat at the girl's side. They were silent. Above them, the
singers struck a complex rhythm, like jugglers tossing pins between
them. Otah sighed.
"I know this isn't easy for you," he said.
"What isn't, Most High?"
"Otah. Please, my name is Otah. You can call me that. I mean all of
this. Being uprooted, married off to a man you've never met in a city
you've never been to."
"It's what's expected of me," she said.
"Yes, I know, but ... it isn't really fair."
"No," she said, her voice suddenly hard. "It isn't."
Otah clasped his hands, fingers laced together.
"He isn't a bad man, my son," Otah said. "He's clever and he's strong,
and he cares about people. He feels deeply. He's probably a better man
than I was at his age."
"Forgive me, Most High," Ana Dasin said. "I don't know what you want me
to say."
"Nothing. Nothing in particular. Only know that this life that we've
forced on you ... it might have some redeeming qualities. The gods all
know the life I've had wasn't the one I expected, either. We do what we
have to do. In my ways, I'm as constrained by it as you are."
She looked at him as if he were speaking a language she hadn't heard
before. Otah shook his head.
"It's nothing, Ana-cha," he said. "Only know that I know how hard this
time is, and it will get better. If you allow room for it, this new life
might even surprise you."
The girl was quiet for a moment, her brow furrowed. She shook her head.
"Thank you?" she said.
Otah chuckled ruefully.
"I'm not doing a particularly good job of this, am I?" he said.
"I don't know," Ana Dasin said after a pause. Her tone carried the
shielded contempt of an adolescent for her elders. "I don't know what
you're doing."
Making his way back through the crowded belly of the ship, Otah wondered
what he had thought he would say to a Galtic girl who had seen
forty-five fewer summers than himself. He had expected to offer some
kind of wisdom, some variety of comfort, and instead it had been like
trying to hold a conversation with a cat. Who would have thought a man
could be as old as he was, wield the power of empire, and still be so
naive as to think his heart would be explicable to an eighteen-year-old
girl?
And, of course, as he reached the plank stairway that led up, he found
what he wished he had said. He should have said that he knew what
courage it took to face sacrifice. He should have said that he knew her
suffering was real, and that it was in a noble cause. It made them
alike, the Emperor and the Empress-to-be, that they compromised in order
to make the lives of uncountable strangers better.
More than that, he should have encouraged her to speak, and he should
have listened.
An approving roar came from the deck above him. A reed organ hummed and
sang, flute and drum following a heartbeat later. Otah hesitated and
turned back. He would try again. At worst, the girl would think he was
ridiculous, and she likely already did that.
As he drew near the hold, he heard her weeping again, her voice
straining at words he couldn't make out. A man's voice answered, not her
father's. Otah hesitated, then quietly stepped forward.
In the gloom, Ana Dasin knelt, her arms around a young man. The boy,
whoever he was, wore the work clothes of a sailor, but his arms were
thin and his skin was as pale as the girl's. He returned her embrace,
his arms finding their way around her as if through long acquaintance;
his tear-streaked face nuzzled her hair. Ana Dasin stroked the boy's
head, murmuring reassurances.
Ah, Otah thought as he stepped back, unnoticed. That's how it is.