Children of God

"What is it that you sing with him, after the chants?"

"The Sh’ma: a song of our mother’s people."

Shetri had given up trying to work out Ha’anala’s notions of kinship. Music, on the other hand, was something he appreciated. "It’s beautiful."

"As are your own songs." She was silent for a time. "Someone thanks you for singing to Isaac. The Sti chants make the heart quiet. Someone wishes she understood the words, but the melody is enough."

Shetri paused in their procession, willing now to ask a question that made him uneasy. "How is it possible for Isaac to know the whole of an epic, hearing it but once? Someone studied years…" He looked away, embarrassed. "Is he a memory specialist or is such a feat normal for your… mother’s kind?"

"Our mother says that Isaac’s mind is made differently from anyone else’s anywhere. Isaac would not be like anyone else, even if he were among his own people."

"A genetic freak," Shetri suggested, but she didn’t understand. She knew the evening chants but very little modem K’San, and he couldn’t summon any similar idea in Ruanja. Falling silent, he set himself to study the low-growing foliage around them, noting the herbs that grew here, and leaned over to slice a stem of feverbalm, inhaling its fragrance. He was glad of the distraction, gladder still that the girl was not contemptuous of a man who cared about plants.

Until Ta’ana had proposed a match, Shetri had never in his life considered taking a mate, not even privately, not even after he had first learned of the deaths of Nra’il and his heirs. Ha’anala was young, he knew, but he himself felt newborn in the world. He wondered if Ta’ana had spoken to the girl already. He had no idea how these things were arranged; he was a third, and had never expected to care. "Ha’anala. It’s a strange name," he said.

"Someone was named for a person her father admired."

It seemed to him that she neither revealed nor concealed her identity. Perhaps she thought it obvious—and indeed, it had been to Ta’ana. Or perhaps she had told Shetri himself, but he had understood her Ruanja imperfectly and missed some subtlety. Her soul seemed to him like colored glass: translucent but not transparent.

He was embarrassed to find that he was staring at her again; she would not submit to being gowned, let alone to veiling, and her scent was intoxicating. Shetri gazed back toward his sister’s encampment in the distance, makeshift and muddy with the night’s rain. Very soon he would have to ask his sister to choose between nakedness and hunger. The valet was the most expendable Runao now; given Ta’ana’s abandonment of her veil, he suspected that the dresser’s time was coming. "We must move on to Inbrokar City. Ta’ana is concerned that they may not let us in if too many others have already taken shelter there," he told Ha’anala as they walked again. "What will you do, when Isaac’s wounds are healed?"

She did not seem to answer directly. "It’s wrong to eat Runa," she said. She stopped walking and met his eyes. "Sipaj, Shetri, otherwise, we would stay with you."

He had to listen to her words in his mind again, to be certain: she had used a form of address that meant him personally, not him as a part of his sister’s household. Before meeting Ha’anala, he had rarely spoken to a female not of his own family, but the meaning of Ha’anala’s scent was now unmistakable, and her eyes were the color of amethyst, and she looked at him with what he imagined might be the unfrightened gaze of a Runa courtesan. "Someone is…" His voice faded away. Then, recalling himself regent and determined to be honorable, he began again, "Someone’s nephew Athaansi—"

"Is of no interest," Ha’anala finished decisively. "Your sister will find another wife for him. Perhaps two." Shetri reared back, shocked. "Sipaj, Shetri, everything will change soon. There will no longer be any ’sires’ to waste," she told him, using the K’San term she’d learned from Ta’ana.

She had thought hard about what she must do. On the right foot, there was love for and obligation to Sofia, and a desire to ameliorate unavoidable sorrow. On the left, a need for refuge, for survival on her own terms. Ha’anala could not, would not turn against the Runa, whom she loved and understood; neither could she idly witness the destruction of her own kind. The solution had come as she watched Ta’ana and her maid working together with a practical equality as they organized the little band of refugees for the next leg of the journey.

The people themselves will choose from among us, Ha’anala thought. And we djanada will begin again, having been chosen.

Raised by Runa, Ha’anala had no wish to alarm a male, but she had confirmed Ta’ana’s own worst fears about the war. There would be no more talk of Isaac as hostage—he was to have full status as a brother-in-law.

"Sipaj, Shetri," Ha’anala said then, "someone has discussed this matter with Ta’ana, and we-but-not-you are agreed. Isaac wishes to remain with people who sing, and someone wishes you for a husband. Your sister agrees." She looked at Shetri until his own eyes dropped; he had begun to tremble, and she herself was hardly less driven by the need to fill an emptiness she had never felt so physically. "It remains for your consent," she said, her voice not quite as steady as she might have wished.

It was all he could do to order his thoughts in K’San and when he was as ready as he could be, he translated them into Ruanja for her. "Someone," he said quietly in a language ill-suited to his tongue and task, "has no experience. Someone studied the Sti epics all his life. There is—there was a small estate, ten day’s travel south of here, but now someone’s sister says there is nothing. Everything is gone. Someone can promise nothing—not even food—to…"

She waited for him to find his words, familiar with Isaac’s need for silence in which to think. After a time, she said, "To study poetry seems an enviable life."

She turned away then and looked south, toward the broad, flat plains she’d traveled over, and thought of all that had happened since leaving Trucha Sai. She thought again of the people, and how much she loved them; of their engulfing affection and their never-ending concern; of their beautiful, terrible need to touch, to speak, to watch, to care. She closed her eyes, asking herself what she wanted.

This, she thought. I want to live among people who sing, who are quiet enough to let Isaac think. I want to be with this shy and awkward man, who is kind to Isaac and who will be a good father. I want to belong with someone. I want to feel at the center of something, and not the edge. I want children and grandchildren. I don’t want to grow to be old and die, knowing that when I die, there will be no more like me.

"I won’t go back," Shetri heard her say, but in a language he did not recognize.

She spoke again, and this time he understood. "Someone’s father once told her that it was better to die than to live wrongly. I say: better to live rightly." Once again, he was confused by the mix of languages she needed to think this way. So she said, "Someone can feed herself and her brother. And you, until you learn." He knew this to be so. She had brought back wild game; roasted, it was tough and fibrous, but the remaining domestics were convinced they could make such meat palatable, given time to learn its preparation. "Someone requires a promise: you will not eat Runa."

It seemed a small thing, somehow, almost reasonable, very nearly sensible, to throw aside the very basis of Jana’ata civilization, merely because this extraordinary girl asked it of him. "As you wish," he said, wondering if this conversation too were some drugged illusion, knowing suddenly that it was not the power of the Sti inhalants but her fragrance, her nearness—

He should not have been surprised. If Ha’anala was who his sister said she was, then she had grown up with Runa and mating was no mystery to her. Even so, that morning, under a wide sky, with three suns’ witness, and no wedding guests but wind and herbs, Shetri Laaks found that it was once again necessary to reassess his capacity for astonishment.