Children of God

by Mary Doria Russell

  “Of course not. He’s probably looking for more tailless monsters to couple with—” Then the news sank in. “What have you heard?”

  “He is affianced, my lord husband. A VaPalkirn child. The regent’s eldest.”

  “Elli’nal? She’s hardly out of swaddling!”

  “Precisely.” Ears falling, her husband gaped at her. “It is a masterly stroke, don’t you agree?” she instructed him. “Inbrokar is the central state of the Triple Alliance, with Mala Njer to the west and Palkirn to the east. A marriage contract with Elli’nal leaves the Palkirn government quiet at Kitheri’s back while the child grows. Then he may deal with his western neighbor, Mala Njer, on pragmatic grounds.” A moment passed, but he understood. “Mala Njer can be many things to Inbrokar, my lord husband. Protector. Partner. Prey. Perhaps Kitheri wishes to reconsider the terms of our alliance.”

  “I have not been informed of this Palkirn marriage,” Ma said

  “Nevertheless …”

  He followed her glance to Taksayu, her Runa maid, sitting in a corner: the very model of silent, deferential attention to her mistress. Who could be trusted to make friends among others of her kind. Who spoke K’San well; who heard things and reported them. Who had the intelligence required to appear stupid when it was useful.

  “Well, then!” Ma burst out, flummoxed. “What does Kitheri want with my daughter?”

  “Nothing at all, my own dear master,” said Suukmel sweetly. “It is not your daughter whom Hlavin Kitheri wishes to meet but your wife.”

  Ma threw his head back and roared. “You can’t be serious,” he cried.

  “Quite serious, my lord. Furthermore, I should like to meet him.”

  It was hard to say which was more shocking: a woman’s use of the word “I” or the notion that her husband would permit her to meet any unrelated male, let alone one of Kitheri’s revolting nature. “Impossible,” Ma said at last.

  “Nevertheless,” she said, eyes steady.

  It was common knowledge that more than half of the uxorious Ma Gurah Vaadai’s considerable success as a diplomat, and nearly all his satisfaction in life, was his wife’s doing. Hidden away, gathering information, judging, measuring, working twice removed—after sixteen years of marriage, the lady Suukmel Chirot u Vaadai continued to surprise her husband, to horrify and challenge him. Not beautiful but knowing, adroit, desirable. Not mad, he thought, and yet what she proposed certainly was …

  “Impossible,” he repeated.

  Nevertheless.

  TWO DAYS LATER, MA GURAH VAADAI, AMBASSADOR OF THE MALA NJERI Territorial Government to the Patrimony of Inbrokar, went to the Kitheri compound to present his personal credentials to the forty-eighth Paramount: to this shameless poet, this bald assassin, this perverted prince who wished to meet Suukmel.

  The encounter was to be purely ceremonial, yet another tedious example of Inbrokari protocol, as convoluted and nonsensical as the Kitheri compound itself with its mismatched towers, its palisades and balconies connected by swooping ramps, soaring archways, by fretted and carved galleries. Generations of Kitheris had lived here, each new paramount honoring his dead father with a newly winged roofline, a pointless martello, a spiraling turret, a stratum of carving, another tier of covered walkways. The entire palace was physical demonstration of the folly of novelty. It was, Ma Gurah Vadaai thought, typical of the Kitheri dynasty to preach invariance and practice innovation. Bred and trained for combat, Ma hated the place, as he hated hypocrisy and pretense, even though his duty now was to practice hypocrisy and preserve pretense. Only Suukmel’s enjoyment of subtlety made this fatuous game tolerable.

  Both the Paramount and the ambassador could sing in High K’San, though Inbrokari custom demanded that they pretend that this was not so, the better to slow and complicate the ritual. But the Paramount’s responsum to Ma’s opening oratorio was beautifully sung, and one had to admit that the Runa interpreters and protocol experts were excellent. Ma’s own women had no reason to correct anything said on his behalf by the Inbrokari Runao assigned to translate his Malanja for the Paramount, nor were there any errors in the translation of the Paramount’s lyrics. And as much as the Runa ordinarily hated music, the Paramount’s staff never so much as flicked an ear during the ceremony. Far more familiar with the procedure than either Jana’ata, they actually seemed to enjoy it, and discreetly led the solemn way through stately exchanges of elaborate greetings, elaborate presents and elaborate promises.

  Just as Ma Gurah Vaadai began to wonder if he would sink back against his tail and fall asleep standing in the stifling heat of this princely oven, there was a final exchange of elaborate farewells and he woke up sufficiently to sing, as required, in close harmony with the Paramount. This done, Ma was preparing, with relief, to make his escape when Hlavin Kitheri rose from his pillowed, padded, gilt and jeweled daybed and approached the Mala Njeri ambassador with amused eyes.

  “Dreadful, isn’t it?” the Paramount remarked, glancing at the cramped and airless stateroom and displaying a dismay not unlike Vaadai’s own, carefully concealed. “I have begun to hope for a fire. At times, the solution to a maze is to reduce it to embers and walk straight through the ashes.” He smiled at Ma’s surprise and continued, “In the meantime, I have caused a summer encampment to be established in the mountains, Excellency. Perhaps you will join me there and we may come to know one another in comfort?”

  The formal invitation arrived at the ambassador’s residence the next morning and, six days later, Ma Gurah Vaadai was taken upriver in an embassy barge, accompanied by his official interpreter, his personal interpreter, his secretary, his cook, his body valet, his dresser and his wife’s maid, Taksayu.

  He’d assumed that the Paramount was simply indulging in Inbrokari understatement when he referred to his “encampment.” Ma expected the place to be as extravagant and awful as the Kitheri palaces but, to his surprise, the camp was a simple series of pavilions, scattered throughout a high valley cooled by mountain breezes. Apart from the fact that the tents were of gold tissue, supported by silvered poles and upholstered with divans of the softest and most finely woven fabric Vaadai had ever felt, the site was as austere as a military bivouac.

  “More to a Mala Njeri soldier’s taste, I dare say,” Kitheri called out, approaching the dock without an escort as the barge was made fast. Kitheri smiled at the ambassador’s evident surprise and held out an arm to steady Ma as he climbed out of the barge. “Have you eaten?”

  It was not the last time that Ma Gurah Vaadai would be thrown off balance by this man. At rest, in informal conversation, the odious Hlavin Kitheri was a person of dignity and presence. The other guests at the encampment were intelligent and interesting as well, and the opening banquet was unusually tasty, its presentation exquisite.

  “You are kind to say so,” Kitheri murmured, when the ambassador complimented the meal. “I am pleased you have enjoyed it. The result of a new pastime. Or rather, the revival of an old skill. I have established a hunting reserve here in the hills.”

  “The meat is wild-caught,” one of the other guests confided. “Good exercise and excellent eating afterward.”

  “Perhaps the ambassador will join us in the morning?” Kitheri suggested, his face gilded by sunlight filtering through woven gold, the extraordinary amethyst eyes transmuted to topaz. “I hope you shall not be shocked by our customs here—”

  “We stalk naked as the Heroes,” one of the younger men told Ma eagerly.

  “My young friend has a poetic nature,” Kitheri remarked, reaching out to grip the young man’s ankle affectionately. His gaze returned to Ambassador Vaadai, who was trying not to shudder. “As naked as our prey, a practical man might say.”

  “This herd is aware of us, naturally,” an older man commented, “but my lord Kitheri hopes to backbreed to more naive stock.”

  “To recapture the experiences of our forefathers,” Kitheri explained. “One day, the best of our sons will come here to bring to life their heritage, s
o that they may earn the old strengths in the old ways.” But then, surprisingly, he looked directly at the maid, Taksayu, silent in the corner all this time, sitting among the ceremonial interpreters who attended every gathering, needed or not. “The game program would involve utility Runa only. Specialists, I believe, we have bred to a point of intellectual maturity that will allow emancipation soon. But perhaps the Mala Njeri ambassador disagrees?” he said, returning serene eyes to a dumbfounded Ma Gurah Vaadai.

  “Fascinating legal problems,” one of the others offered before Ma could speak, and the discussion quickly became scholarly and intense.

  The evening chorale was glorious. Kitheri, Ma was informed, had studied such things during his exile at Galatna and believed that the melodies were best stripped of accumulated embellishment so that the supple lines of the original harmony could be appreciated, pure and plain, and as clean as the days when men hunted with their brothers and friends simply to provide for their wives and young ones.

  Ma Gurah Vaadai went to his tent that night disarmed and slightly dazed, but emerged from it hungry and sharp-minded at first light. Wearing neither robe nor badge of position, he was secretly pleased by the opportunity to reveal that he had maintained himself well during the soft years of peace. Unclothed, one’s character was exposed and, observing the Paramount, Ma was impressed to see that what might have been merely an impression given by superb tailoring was, in fact, genuine. Most reshtars ran to fat in their middle years, but Hlavin Kitheri had remained taut and strong in maturity.

  The hunt was exhilarating from the start. Several times Ma found himself paired off with Kitheri, who had a short reach but powerful pedal grasp and a formidably efficient kill. Perhaps more remarkable, Kitheri was generous in his strategy, noting Ma’s position and passing the prey on to him without hesitation, setting up and helping to execute several exhausting but quite wonderful snares, and Ma Gurah Vaadai’s spirits rose with the suns, doubts dimming in their glare.

  Kitheri is right, Ma thought. This is what we need.

  To match a Runao, stride by stride, heartbeat by heartbeat, was to transcend the self, to lose all consciousness of separation until you were one with the prey. And then: to reach out from behind, to grip a doe’s ankle and bring her down into a headlock, to lift the jaw and expose the throat, slicing through it with a single clean action—to do all this and to eat the meat in the end—was to survive your own death: to die with the prey and yet to live again.

  He had almost forgotten what it was like.

  As far as Ma Gurah Vaadai was concerned, the day could have been improved upon only if Suukmel had been there waiting in a tent for him to heave a carcass at her feet as he sang an ancient song of triumph. Kitheri confessed himself a trifle disappointed: some of the Runa had spoiled the hunt by offering themselves. His breeders had ear-notched each lineage and marked the children of these docile females for ordinary butchering later, he told the others. The more sporting individuals, those who dodged away successfully or fought briefly and then eluded pursuit, were also noted. These would be bred to the males who had been most protective of the young, in the center of the herd.

  That night, muscles satisfyingly sore, mind empty of compressed court intrigue and rigid international politics, it occurred to Ma that Kitheri’s agility and strength and capacity for plan were all of a piece with what he had done to his entire family. Suukmel was right, Ma thought, eyes opening in the dark. This is not madness but ambition.

  He resolved to remain on guard, not to be seduced again, but the next morning, as well-trained and beautifully liveried domestics collected the equipment and struck the pavilions and organized the return to Inbrokar, the ambassador found himself inviting the Paramount to join him in the embassy barge as an honored guest of the Mala Njer Territory. The day downriver passed agreeably and as they approached the docks of the capital, it began to seem both prudent and pleasant to invite the Paramount to the embassy for the upcoming Mala Njeri Festival of Suns.

  And, yes, the ambassador told the Paramount in answer to a casual question, the lady Suukmel would be in residence.

  LIKE A HUNTER STRIPPED TO STALK, HLAVIN KITHERI ARRIVED A WEEK later at the embassy of the territory of Mala Njer wearing the simple robes of a scholar, one powerful shoulder becomingly bared, his jewels superb but chastely set. He had told the flattered ambassador that he admired the forthright informality of Mala Njer, which did not waste effort on pointless ceremony, so the call-and-response chorale in his honor was brief. Thus, the forty-eighth Paramount of Inbrokar was left free to stroll un-hobbled by protocol through the embassy gathering, greeting dignitaries and acquaintances with graceful ease, commenting on the festival’s long history, allowing himself to be drawn into a discussion of Mala Njeri chant harmonics.

  With an unerring instinct for danger, he identified the men most hostile to him—men whose dedication to stability and law was most honorable and unimpeachable. In brief, private moments, he sought their advice on one question or another, listened gravely to their opinions, was circumspect in his own. Now and then, he would mention matters that such men might turn to their families’ advantage. And as the day passed, he saw wariness and suspicion become alloyed with a willingness to suspend judgment.

  He did not yet know how to bring about the transformation he hungered for. The very language of his thoughts hampered consideration of the problem: there was no word in K’San for the kind of cleansing, purifying revolution that danced in Hlavin Kitheri’s mind. Combat, battle, struggle, yes; warrior, champion, duelist, adversary, enemy—the K’San lexicon was lavish in its vocabulary for such things. There were words as well for rebellion and revolt, but these implied impieties, not political upheaval.

  Sohraa, Hlavin Kitheri thought. Sohraa.

  To a poet’s ear, sohraa had a lovely sound—like the breath of wind on a hot still day, whispering of coming rain. Yet nearly all the words based on sohraa were associated with disasters, with degradation and degeneration. It was the stem word for change, and he had heard it often these days—from military men called back from inspection tours of the outer provinces, from bureaucrats currying favor with the new regime, from tributary nobility coming to pledge fealty, from foreign embassy personnel sizing up this new embodiment of Inbrokari strength. The ruling castes of Rakhat felt vaguely diminished and disturbed by the stink of change on the wind, but it was dangerous to point out that Hlavin Kitheri’s own poetry had destabilized society to an alarming degree. Safer blame fell on the insidious foreign influence, which had affected simpleminded Runa villagers along the Masna’a Tafa’i coast. The campaign to clean out rebel villages was typical of the south—corrupt, inefficient and insufficient. Anxiety flowed beneath Jana’ata society like an underground river of unease, murmuring sohraa, sohraa, sohraa.

  Now Kitheri bided his time, for pursuit can drive the quarry away. When the attention of the festive embassy crowd had shifted to the banquet table, he contrived to drift toward the large central wind tower: a hollow pillar of unaesthetic proportion, its louvers replaced with decorative grillwork that slightly but tellingly decreased the column’s capacity to move air into the compound’s main courtyard. The stonework was nearly seamless.

  His tension did not surprise him; a future lay in hazard. “He sings now to architecture!” they would say, should any notice him, and he risked undoing all his careful work of the past season by reawakening the rumor of madness. Nevertheless, he thought. And sang, in a voice pitched low but resonant and pure, of the night-bred chrysalis, cool and concealed, warmed by the suns at last; of Chaos emerging to dance in daylight; of veils parting, blown by the hot winds of day; of Glory flaring in sunlight.

  The sounds of the large room, humming with conversation and with eating, did not alter. Resting a negligent shoulder against the pillar’s cool and polished stone, near the fretted window of her lair, he asked, “And what does my lady Suukmel hear as she listens?”

  “Sohraa,” the response came, soft as the breez
e that heralds rain. “Sohraa, sohraa, sohraa.”

  IN THE BEGINNING, HE SENT HER JEWELS OF UNMATCHED BRILLIANCE AND clarity, lengths of shimmering fabric heavy with gold thread, anklets and rings for her feet, tiny silver ornaments to be fastened to her talons. Bronze chimes of extraordinary length, their tone so low as to resonate in her very heart, and sweet-sounding bells to hang from her headdress. Silken awnings, embroidered and bejeweled, finely wrought enameled casks. Perfumes that brought mountain, plain and ocean to her chamber.

  All this was refused—returned, untouched.

  And so: Runa weavers, whose skills were unrivaled by any on the continent. A superb cook whose pâtés and roulades were of greatest savor and delicacy. A masseuse, storytellers, acrobats. All these were invited into the lady’s chamber. All were spoken to with interest and courtesy, but sent away with polite regrets. And all were questioned closely by Hlavin Kitheri himself, when they returned to his palace.

  The Paramount sent next a single fragile egg of the mountain ilna, nestled in a bed of fragrant moss. Then a meteorite that had flashed down from the suns’ realm, and a simple crystal flask containing a lavish length of umber syn’amon from beyond those suns. One perfectly formed k’na blossom. A breeding pair of tiny hlori’ai whose breathy courtship song had provided melody for the oldest of Mala Njeri’s sunset hymns. These, too, were refused—except for the hlori‘ai, which she’d kept for one night, enchanted by their beauty. In the morning, Suukmel herself had opened their cage and released them.

  The next day Taksayu appeared at the front gate of the Kitheri compound and announced to the porter that she wished to be taken into the presence of the Paramount. To the astonishment of his horrified household, Hlavin Kitheri relayed instructions that this Runa maid be allowed in by that entrance and escorted with courtesy to his own chamber.