The Braided World (7 page)

Nick frowned. “I don't think
revertants
is a very good name, though. Sounds creepy.”

“How about Homo sapiens, then? The hoda are Homo sapiens.”

Nick's face must have showed how sweet that news sounded. “That's great,” he said.

Zhen narrowed her eyes. “Don't applaud yet. We've still got a few problems.” She moved to the hoda woman and took her by the arm, leading her to stand in front of Nick.

The hoda was staring up at Nick, as though she thought she'd done something wrong.

Zhen said, “Tell her to open her mouth.”

“You tell her, Zhen—you're supposed to be learning Dassa.”

Zhen turned to the hoda. “Open up the mouth.”

The hoda did so, revealing a small mouth that was healthy in all respects save one. Instead of tapering, the end of her tongue was flat, where it had been sheared off. A puckered red line demarcated the fluted ridge where the incision had been made.

“That,” Zhen said bitterly, “is what the Dassa think of people like us. So how much do you think they're going to care about our problems?”

Nick had seen enough. “You can close your mouth,” he whispered to the hoda, and she did so, with a look of gratitude. It made him sick to see such a look on her face, when he'd done nothing for her, could do nothing for her.

Standing at the hatchway, and taking no notice of all this, the noblewoman was adjusting her auburn hair in her elaborate bun.

“We are
not
among friends here,” Zhen said. “Of course, they only mutilate girls, so you don't have anything to worry about, Venning.”

But Nick was plenty worried, even about Zhen. She had a wicked tongue. Sooner or later, someone in the Olagong was bound to notice.

Anton stood at the far end of the footbridge leading to
the Lady Joon's pavilions. She had practically commanded him to call on her, and in fact he was eager to cultivate her as an information source. Shim had tried to talk him into a tunic and leggings in the Dassa style for his interview, and when this effort had failed, she'd looked worried about the impression he would make. She frowned now, as they crossed the covered bridge. Rain lashed down, sluicing in waterfalls off the thick roof matting.

They started across the bridge. Anton noticed Shim fidgeting as they walked. “What's the matter, rahi? You're fretting.”

“But-tons,” she said, using the human word. “Not expected.”

Shim could not get over the buttons on his jumpsuit; it was not the first time Anton was bemused by what the Dassa focused on.

“Anything else I should know, besides that I look bad?” He threw her a smile, but the irony fell flat as she hurried to say, “Oh, Anton, thankfully I haven't said so.”

Guards parted at the far end of the bridge, and Shim led the way along wood floors burnished to mirror-brightness. The odor of floral perfumes was stronger here than in the king's pavilions, and for a time the underlying smell of mildew gave way to a sweet, not unpleasant musk.

They paused at last in front of a wall of finely woven screens. Anton tried to guess which one would open.

He was wrong. The Lady Joon's chancellor, Gitam, slid open one of them and, smiling a greeting, waved him into the room, leaving Shim outside.

Joon's quarters were simple and fine, in the style of effortless beauty so typical of the Dassa. Lustrous black reeds formed lacquered screens framed in carmine wood, or what on Earth was mahogany. In the middle of the spacious room, a carved ladder led up to the ceiling, stopping at a closed door. A swag of woven cloth hung from the steps of the ladder. From behind this, the Lady Joon appeared.

“Captain Prados, thank you.”

“Please, Lady my name is Anton.”

“Oh, now I will have to practice saying my t's.” Her smile was playful.

She beckoned him behind the tapestry, where chairs and couches, all without backs, formed a seating area. The beat of rain came softer in these quarters, and he suspected there was another level above this one.

The guest sits first, Shim had told him. He did so, finding the nearest chair.

Joon wore silver cloth, finely woven and without ornament except for a belt. The clasp bore what looked like a tiny portrait. She settled herself on a facing chair, more relaxed than she had been in her father's company.

“That is a lovely painting on your belt, Lady” he said.

“Oh yes, it is a favorite. My grandmother painted it for me. A portrait of
her
grandmother.”

“In my world we have paintings, too.”

“Similar. But different,” Joon ventured.

It was a complicated thought. Anton wondered if Joon knew that the crew saw this world exactly in those terms.

“Your family is one of beautiful women,” Anton said.

Joon responded, “Oh yes. And powerful. We are of the king's line.” She regarded him with an unnerving glance. ‘Anton,” she began carefully, “I will not compliment you on how well you speak our language, since I have been rebuked by my father for doing so.”

After a pause to digest whether she had complimented him just now or not, Anton replied, “There was no offense taken, Lady. Not by me.”

“Thankfully.” Joon sat without any mannerisms or idle movements, a stillness that would have appeared stiff in someone less graceful. She might have been a predator ready to spring—or prey frozen in indecision.

Under the floor, pipes rattled with a pulse of water. Joon gazed at him, allowing the silence to lengthen.

“My people have returned from the—air craft, Lady” he said finally. There was no word for
shuttle
, or
space ship
, or even
humans.
“I have brought you a small token.” Fishing in his pocket, Anton produced the thing he and Shim had agreed upon. Colored pencils. Suitably
useful
, Shim had pronounced, since nothing Anton had could be
caWedfine.

He crossed over to her and handed her the gift, wrapped in a swath of Dassa cloth, taking care not to touch her.

Joon took out the pencils, examining them closely.

He sat again. “For drawing, Lady. You will need to cut them a little to keep them sharp.”

“To make them bleed?”

“No …” He struggled to make sense of it, then had it: “No, they aren't paints. Not bright colors, but soft ones.”

“Like ink pens.” The Dassa had elaborate writing sets, with tubes supplying continuous ink. And every Dassa was literate, even the hoda, since they were schooled until adolescence. “I am thankful that you thought of drawing pens for me, amid all your troubles.”

“Which troubles, rahi?” He certainly had his share, but she might know if he faced others he knew nothing of.

“Oh yes, the trouble with your great ship, where you do not thrive, and in your blue lands across the sky where you do not thrive, and then coming among us, so similar yet different.” She paused, and he struggled not to show his surprise over her concise summary.

She went on. “The trouble with Sen, and with Bailey, and the small ship on the Sodesh which is resting on the lands of Huvai the reed merchant.”

Sen—that would be Zhen—whose
trouble
was that she was female. And Bailey … but what could Joon know of his issues with Bailey Shaw?

“Rahi, you have a longer list than I do.”

“It is a difficult list,” she agreed.

“Is the shuttle on lands it should not be?”

Joon fingered the painted brooch, hesitating. Then she said, “Some do not approve of hoda with such privileges.” She added, ‘Although hoda cannot be male, thankfully.”

Anton said, “If humans are powerful, it implies the hoda are not well used. Is that right?” The rains faded into a light patter, and the room grew warmer.

“I do not say what is right, Anton. Only what is so.” And he thought her eyes took on a more sorrowful cast.

“When we came here,” he said, “we hoped to be free to come and go. To explore. But the king is cautious for our sakes.”

“Hmm.
Cautious.
That is an interesting criticism.”

“I mean no disrespect.”

“But you wish to come and go.”

“Yes. Since we are searching for something.” He hesitated, but she rescued him.

“To thrive.”

He nodded. To thrive, indeed. But the Olagong hid its secrets, and he thought the Dassa hid the Olagong. The
Restoration
was surveying the region from high altitudes, using a drone. It sent back real-time images of the delta lands.

They'd seen no archeological sites or evidence of buildings. The drone had lingered over the holdings of the Voi in the west, relaying views of a people even more primitive than the Dassa, living in tents and squalor. They used no radio— as did the Dassa—nor electricity. If the Quadi had left a prize on this world, Anton felt sure it was here, in the Olagong.

Pursuing this line, Anton said, “For instance, Lady I have heard of the lands called cloud country. This is a place I would see firsthand.”

“To search in it?” She seemed amused. “But Anton, there are only clouds and dirt paths. If there were Quadi secrets there, would not many generations of Dassa have found them?”

Nick said the region was a site of pilgrimage. Not sacred, in the Dassa's secular culture, but treasured, like the delta system. Like the variums. The custom was to go to cloud country for walking meditation. Nick thought this might be a vestigial practice with roots in a Quadi custom.

“Sometimes,” Anton said, “a new set of eyes sees new things.”

This brought a laugh. “Oh, Captain, I will have to remember such a saying.” She rose. “Let us explore, then.” She gestured to the ladder. “I will present my viewing room.”

A servant appeared at some signal he'd missed, and ascended the ladder first, fastening back a trapdoor in the ceiling. At Joon's gesture, he followed the hoda, climbing up with Joon behind him.

He stepped onto a covered roof deck, bright in the vanishing rains, with the clouds grown thin as a fishing net.

The air sparkled with a faint mist, and stabs of sunshine gilded the wet timbers and eaves of the surrounding pavilion, brightening them from muddy brown to rosy tan.

They were high above the Puldar River, higher than any of the other rooms and levels, except for the king's pavilion, across the inlet. He stepped to the unfenced edge and
looked out over a land suddenly filled with a gloaming light. The river appeared through tatters in the mist, like an unrolled bolt of silver brocade.

Joon spoke from close behind him. “It is beautiful?”

Anton turned to her. “Yes.”

Her dark skin lent strength to the beauty of her face, and her half-circle earrings looked more like cutting blades than baubles. He knew that Joon was destined to be queen one day; then she would lead the army. She looked born to do so, as indeed she was.

She glanced past him, pointing at the river.

“There is your Bailey, of course.”

Looking to where Joon pointed, he saw someone paddling alone in a small skiff, the only person in sight with short white hair. Boats parted before her as she headed out into the center of the Puldar. It seemed that Bailey had done what she pleased for so many decades that she took orders as merely suggestions.

“She seeks what you came for,” Joon said. “Your lost pri. That the Quadi left behind.”

“Yes.”

“But what does this pri look like, Captain? We are confused about this.”

“We don't know.”

“Strange to search for something when you don't know what it resembles.”

He smiled at the notion, because, stated that way, it
did
sound strange. “We do it all the time, in my culture,” he said. They searched for the code. But there was, of course, the question of why, if the information was in coded form, the Quadi hadn't sent it to Earth with their original radio message. Anton thought that the reason was obvious. Who would believe such a thing, unless they had seen such code brought to life, in the hoda?

Joon looked back at the river as Bailey disappeared around a bend. “In my culture, the born to bear are not free to come and go like your Bailey.”

“But the Dassa seem to tolerate old humans better than young ones.”

“Some Dassa.”

“But not the uldia.”

“Do not think, Captain, that the uldia are separate from us. We are woven together, all of us, because of the rivers, the birth waters, and sarif Every Dassa man and woman has two ties, thankfully. One to one's mother, the other to one's uldia of the birth waters. This tie is a birth tie, never broken.”

A knowing came to Anton then. He had been thinking in terms of political factions and rivalries, but it was not so clear-cut. Kinship was the essence of it, and the uldia were, in a sense, kin to each babe they birthed. Nick had missed this; in carping about his restrictions, he'd ignored a thing any Dassa could have told him: Kinship was not just a matter of blood.

He thought, too, that Joon was warning him that Bailey was in danger. That they all were. That it was not just a group of traditionalists who feared outsiders.

She turned away from the edge of the deck, and as he followed her she said, “Oleel is my uldia.”

“I didn't know.”