The Braided World (8 page)

Joon seated herself on a divan. “Oleel remained hidden on the barge that day because of you, Captain.”

She
was
warning him. He thought of Bailey paddling blithely down the river, trying to make friends with people who might hide what they felt for the sake of courtesy.

Below the roof deck, the fog evaporated, and the angle of sunshine brought a blinding glare to the river. He and Joon turned away, to find seats under the awnings. Several hoda sat on the edge of the roof, legs dangling over, heedless of the heights, within earshot if Joon needed them. Their shaven heads made them look naked, compared with Joon's luxurious hair. And they were shorn of much else, of course, in the casual cruelty of the Dassa. He saw that the hoda chatted in sign language among themselves, and he let
himself eavesdrop a moment, picking up phrases: gossip and mundane things. The Dassa didn't forbid the hoda their hand-signing.
Some
form of communication smoothed out the tasks of the day. So the taking of tongues was more an emblem of domination than a silencing effort. Indeed, the pervasive hoda silence said
submission
very well.

Joon, leaning back along the divan, stretched out a hand toward one of the servants, and the hoda hurried to her. The servant began to unfasten Joon's jacket. When it fell away, Joon's shoulders and arms were bare.

“I think, Captain,” Joon said, “that humans are not woven together in the way of the Dassa. You are more separate among yourselves.”

“I had not thought so,” Anton said. Until today.

“We can learn from each other.”

The servant removed Joon's woven reed sandals.

He wondered what it was she meant to teach him.

Ignoring the hoda's ministrations, Joon said, “My father is preoccupied in this season, Anton. He may need reminding that our guests came among us to search. I can remind him.”

The woman did pay attention. She had discerned what he wanted rather faster than her father.

As the hoda retreated to the sidelines, Joon adjusted her position, causing her skirt to move up, revealing her lower legs.

Joon was gradually dispensing with clothes. What the devil was he supposed to do? He managed to say, “If the king would hear you without offense, I would be grateful to you.”

Joon smiled. “I will risk offense.”

“Do not, rahi.”

“He will indulge me.” That seemed the end of the conversation. She seemed so relaxed, and still guileless, looking at him with almost casual interest, as though he were just beginning to bore her. “Will you indulge me, Anton?”

Joon was offering sarif—courteous sex. It was the Dassa
way with each other. He hadn't considered until now that it would extend to him and his crew

Slowly, he stood up. He had no idea what to do. Part of his mind wondered what article of clothing was coming off next. Another part wondered what Vidori would make of all this. “Lady” he said. “I can't stay. I'm a guest in your father's palace.”

She didn't move, but kept regarding him with a calm expression. Then, in one graceful motion, she stood up, her feet quickly finding her slippers.

“I am sorry our meeting was not more cordial, Captain.”

“It was a very courteous meeting, Lady. I do thank you.”

“But Captain, it was not.” In a bemused tone of voice, she said: “You have no sarif in your home lands.”

“No. I fear not.”

“Hmm. How do you care for one another, then?”

“In the human way. Similar to you.”

“But different.” She smiled.

He muttered further thanks and somehow managed to excuse himself, descending the ladder with a hoda following him down to show him out.

As he emerged from Joon's quarters, Shim was waiting in the corridor. Her expression quickly decayed into dismay, seeing his face.

“The interview did not go well, Anton?”

He glanced at her as they returned across the bridge.

“I have no bloody idea.” He hoped that his behavior had not seemed terribly rude to Joon, but since sarif was, after all, only casual courtesy, he feared he had just insulted a princess.

Bailey's arms hurt from paddling, but she was pleased that she had the hang of it. She had even learned how to avoid dripping water on herself when she lifted the oar to the other side. The river had fallen a full meter in the last two days, since the rain had stopped, and it made the currents
easier to navigate. Along this tributary of the Sodesh, she saw evidence of the land's returning, with hillocks of mud exposed, and bridges emerging between them. The islets, the ancestral farms, separated by streams, tributaries, and rivers. This is what the Dassa meant by braided lands. It was a hauntingly beautiful river world, one that almost brought her to song. Perhaps Puccini… But what was she thinking? Oh, it was a sly thing, that singing, always wanting to slip out. She pushed the song back. Pesky things.

Up ahead she saw the king's terraced pavilion, both lovely and forbidding. It looked taller than ever with more of the building piers showing. Squinting, she saw that someone in military uniform waited for her on the dock nearest the crew hut.

It was Anton, singled out by his black hair. She waved.

He didn't wave back. Oh damn, he was going to be in a mood.

She could justify her little excursion. She'd made friends at one of the compounds, one presided over by a Dassa woman named Samwan. Bailey was eager to convey what she'd learned, what Nick had failed to learn, since Anton had seen fit to keep the crew cooped up in the palace.

Incredibly, the woman had twenty-three children. In the Dassa scheme of things, Samwan was generously supplied by the tithes of men's labor: the produce, game meat, and coin that all fathers owed to all children. Rather than raise up children, some women might choose an occupation— some, indeed, were soldiers—but in this case, they too, tithed to the household compounds. Meticulous records of tithes were kept by the judipon, the men who formed the social service network and accounting system of the Dassa's economy. They came into the compounds bearing allotments of food and supplies, and distributing treats to hordes of children. Less cheerful tasks were to adjudicate disputes between households and to distribute hoda servants as the need presented itself. The third power of the Dassa exer-sized subtle control in the kingdom, apportioning wealth.

Yet the judipon, for all their influence, took a vow of
river hands:
passing wealth through themselves, keeping little.

It was a fine system, one that Bailey could thank God had never been thought of on Earth. One could never trust people to distribute money fairly, after all, and where was the challenge of beating out the competition if there essentially was none?

Next to the pier, she squinted up at him. ‘Anton, tie this thing, will you?” She threw the rope for him to secure.
Keep the man busy for a moment; men like that.
The rope slapped onto the dock, then slipped into the water.

Bailey poled off from the pier leggings with her paddle, trying to keep from bumping against it. She pulled the rope back into the boat. “Let's try this again, shall we?”

Anton watched her struggle with the skiff on the choppy current. “I would have thought you knew how to do this by now, Bailey.”

“Usually there's someone helpful on the dock, though.” She cast the line out again, and this time Anton caught it, tying it to a cleat. He reached down to hand her up, giving her a chance to climb up the crossbars on the pier.

He glanced at her hat.

It was a gift. When at Samwan's compound she'd mentioned the need of a hat to keep off the sun, and the mistress's hoda were set to devising a head-covering-with-brim. The first designs were hopeless, but she quite liked this one.

Bailey threw him a smile. “Like it?”

His hand came around her elbow. “Yes, it's smashing.” He led her down the dock. “While you've been out trying on hats,” he said, “the king's been looking for you.”

“Whatever for?”

“Stick around and you'd know more.” She could see that he was enjoying this, keeping her in the dark. Then he turned serious. “It's dangerous for you to be out there, on the river, alone. I'd like your support, Bailey. I'd like everyone's support, so that we're all… paddling in the same direction.”

She pushed her hat more firmly on her head so as not to
lose it in the breakneck pace Anton was setting. “Where are we
paddling
at the moment, Captain? It would entirely help if I had the sense we were in fact going somewhere.”

Anton kept his gaze straight ahead, maneuvering her to the left to ascend a long ramp. “To the plaza,” he said.

“Oh dear, dressed like this?” But where they were headed at the moment was not the question she'd intended to ask, as Anton very well knew.

He said, “Vidori is taking a walk to view his plaza, and we're invited.”

“Well, I saw it this morning, and I can tell you it's nothing but mud.”

“You've been gone all morning or you'd know that about one hundred hoda have been in the square since dawn shoveling mud and washing the flagstones.”

Bailey took advantage of his softening grip by pulling out of his reach and stopping in her tracks. “I've been
productive
this morning. I've been at Samwan's compound, and I've discovered some very interesting things that Nick, for all his training, has failed to notice.” She had his attention. Those black eyes, so startling in a fair-skinned boy.

“For one thing,” she went on, “the judipon. They have their fingers everywhere—knee-deep in family affairs, advising, cajoling, meeting in committees to decide disputes. They're inveterate busybodies, they know everyone's secrets, and yet the Dassa actually seem to
like
them. They're only males, by the way, as Nick guessed.” She shrugged. “He gets some things right, Anton, but of course he's limited by the situation.” The
situation
that Vidori kept them in the pavilion, and Anton complied. Of all the crew, only Bailey was welcomed abroad. Nick said it was out of respect for her age, and that she was beyond bearing years.

“So you don't need to worry about me. They're a peaceful people from what I've seen.” After all, the little incident with that fellow breaking into their sleeping hut hadn't been repeated, had it?

But Anton wouldn't let it go. “We're dealing with a
brand-new culture, and you don't have the training, Bailey. I'm afraid you're not being cautious.”

She sighed. “Of course I'm not being cautious, you ninny. Cautious is what's wrong with this expedition. Cautious is why it took me eight years to convince the authorities to even let our ship launch. Cautious is what's keeping us cooped up in this house of cards. No, I'm not cautious. Nor should you be, Anton Prados. How does it look to the Dassa that an old woman's the only one with the guts to go paddling on the river?”

She backed up a half-step at the look on his face. Oh dear, she might have gone too far. She lifted her chin to brazen it out.

His voice came more gently than she expected. “We
will
go on the river. Soon.”

They stared at each other, neither one giving in. She hadn't quite seen this stubborn side of Anton before, back an eternity ago when she made her impulsive choice for captain. But it
was
her choice, for better or worse.

“I'm trying to befriend him, Bailey.”

Vidori. The old fox who was playing political games, no doubt.

“We depend on his support right now, and thank God we're getting it. But he has to pick his way cautiously among factions whose customs tell them people like us are despicable. When I have his confidence, I will leave this pavilion, with his blessing. Not without it. That is my plan. It's proceeding faster than you may imagine, something you can't know, since you're seldom here.”

Bailey drew herself tall. She wasn't accustomed to back talk from a twenty-four-year-old, captain or not. “Well, then.” She took off her hat and patted her hair. “In that case, we'd better not keep his majesty waiting.”

The plaza was still full of mud, but hoda continued their labor of shoveling and bearing out pallets of muck. The king
sloshed through the mud undeterred, ruining a fine pair of brocaded boots. The sun had cooked up the mud into a stew of rotting fish and jungle muck, creating a smell strong enough to singe nose hairs.

Out in the open square Bailey's hat drew a stare from Shim.
Skin cancer
, Bailey wanted to say, not that she knew how to say it in Dassa.
Wrinkles.

From tiers of porches around the plaza, Dassa gathered to watch the king's retinue, all two dozen of them, including guards, the noble viven, the chancellors, and Anton, Nick, and herself. Zhen wasn't invited, and would have hated wasting the time, anyway. She was preoccupied, setting up a huge amount of equipment in the crew huts.

King Vidori was striking in his black and gray silk tunic and leggings. He had been most cordial to Bailey, complimenting her on her head-covering-with-brim. He spoke slowly, out of consideration for the language difficulties. Then he strolled farther into the plaza, nodding to viven on the high porches and conversing with Shim. The retinue walked behind, stopping when he stopped, proceeding at his whim.

She had to admit that the man was a formidable presence. Such people needed careful handling, as Anton was attempting to provide, of course. But she'd met heads of state and singers who considered themselves divas, and she knew how to accord respect in public and then do exactly as she wished in private. It required a delicate mixture of manners and villainy, something every starship captain certainly needed to master.

The retinue had stopped.

Two new people were standing in the center of the plaza. One woman, dressed in palace finery, stood next to another woman with hair flowing down her back—the first time Bailey had seen a Dassa woman's hair unbound. The sun lit copper threads in her hair, causing her shoulders and back to shimmer. As Bailey watched them, she saw that the
long-haired woman was very young, a teenager. A terrified one.

An old man—a member of the judipon by his simple attire—joined the two, carrying a wire basket.