Master of None

by N Lee Wood

  Wandering out to the men’s courtyard, he scanned the various men watching him expectantly, sahakharae and kharvah alike. Raemik stepped out from the portico into the bright sunlight, shading his eyes with one hand while his skin shone like ivory.

  “She left me the library,” Nathan told him as if no one else had been listening. Raemik didn’t appear impressed.

  “To do what with?”

  “I don’t know. Anything I like, supposedly.” The men whispered to one another in puzzled surprise, as unsure as he about what this strange legacy meant. Suddenly, Nathan grinned and grabbed Raemik by the hand. “Come with me,” he said, and pulled the boy along at a trot.

  They ran along the corridors down to the carved door of the main wing, turning past the halls leading to the women’s inner sanctum. The routine Dhikar loitering along the atrium turned, startled, but made no effort to stop him as he dodged past her and opened the doors to the library.

  “Nobody can enter without my consent,” he said, and waved his hand with a flourish toward the open door. “Do come in, Raemik.”

  The boy had never been inside the library, and ventured into the spacious room warily, as if expecting some exotic monster to jump out at him. Nathan waved cheerfully at the bemused Dhikar before he closed the door with a solid thump, making the boy jump.

  “What do you do in here?” Raemik asked, puzzled.

  “Work.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Translating.” He waved a hand at the thousands of antique books around them, the mere tip of the iceberg. “All this, into Hengeli.”

  The boy stared at him, then at the books, with genuine bewilderment. “Why?”

  “Because the Pratha Yaenida said I had to.”

  Raemik looked around thoughtfully. “Won’t that take you a long time?”

  Nathan laughed. “Oh, yes, a very long time. It’s an impossibly absurd Sisyphean task that will take me all the rest of my miserable life, and if I lived to be two hundred and never slept another day again, I would never see the end of it.”

  The boy was now regarding him with a cautious expression, as if the strange monster he suspected lurked in the shadows had trans-muted itself into Nathan. “And this makes you happy?”

  “No, but you really have to admire the bitch, don’t you?” he said, startling Raemik.

  He had used the obscene Vanar term bich’chú, which transposed itself quite neatly in Hengeli, he thought. “Don’t you understand, Raemik? I can do anything, say anything I want here, and no one is going to stop me.” He fumbled in a drawer for the meager collection of his Hengeli music cubes that had made it through Vanar’s formidable censors. Raemik crouched in alarm as the opening violins of Saint-Saëns’s ancient “Danse Macabre” echoed through the book stacks.

  Nathan hiked his sati up around his knees to jump up onto one of the chairs, then onto the top of the massive table, and began to dance with wild extravagant abandon. As Raemik watched the crazy yepoqioh pirouette and prance to music the boy had obviously never heard before in his life, his astonishment gave way to a slow grin.

  “Come on,” Nathan said, and reached down to yank the boy up to the tabletop. Together, they capered across the table with chaotic exuberance, shouting with glee and kicking ancient books and readers off with bare feet as the orchestra built to the thunderous crescendo, drums rolling, cymbals crashing, trumpets blaring, violins shrieking, the two of them laughing until tears rolled down both their faces. Nathan had never seen the boy so animated, and by the time the music finished, they were both out of breath and sweating.

  He flopped down on the edge of the table, Raemik beside him, both gasping and giggling like fools. “Aren’t you afraid of what Yronae will do if she catches you doing this?” Raemik asked.

  Nathan began laughing again. “That’s the whole point, Raemik. She won’t. They took all the monitors out of the library. Yaenida has made sure I’ll keep on doing the job she wanted me to by making this place my own private sanctuary. Nobody can see us or hear us, this is the one place on the entire planet that is totally mine. I can do and say anything I want here.”

  He watched the comprehension dawn in the boy’s face. “Anything?” “Except raise goats.” He noticed the small box he’d been given in the women’s hall on the floor where it had tumbled out of the folds of his sati during his mad dance. Hopping down, he retrieved it and leaned against the table to open it. Inside was a small, brown biscuit wrapped in tissue paper. He held it out toward Raemik. “What is this?”

  “It’s a memorial cake.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “You’re supposed to eat it.”

  “Now?”

  “Whenever you feel like, really.”

  He sniffed it doubtfully. “Why did they give it to me?”

  “You’re Nga’esha. Everybody gets one.”

  “You got one, too?”

  Raemik smiled, his enigmatic expression back. “Even me.” “You’ve already eaten yours, I take it?”

  “Last night.”

  The boy wasn’t going to enlighten him, Nathan decided. He nibbled the edge of cake, finding it tasteless and gritty. A coarse fragment wedged itself between his back molars, resisting his efforts to dislodge it with his little fingernail. He finished off the cake with distaste, then he poured himself a glass of xerx brandy from Yaenida’s private decanter to help wash down the dry biscuit. “God, that tastes like shit. You want one?” he asked, holding the decanter up toward Raemik.

  The boy shook his head solemnly. “You were supposed to be remembering Pratha Yaenida when you ate it.”

  “Believe me,” Nathan said after he’d swished the liquor around in his mouth to rinse his teeth, “I’m not likely to forget Pratha Yaenida anytime soon. I really am going to miss the old girl.” Raemik ducked his head to hide the smile. “So now would you be so kind as to explain to me yet another of these inscrutable Vanar rituals?”

  “From her we came. To us she returns,” Raemik said simply. The significance of the words made Nathan’s stomach lurch. “Oh,” he said, and looked into the now empty box in disbelief. “You mean she’s actually in the cake?”

  “Her ashes are.”

  “Oh, no . . .” Clapping one hand over his mouth, he swallowed hard to keep from vomiting while he quickly poured himself another glass of brandy. He managed to keep it down, barely.

  He discovered an interesting fact he had never been aware of before: there were no cemeteries on Vanar.

  XXIX

  AFTER FIRST CONSULTING HIS WIFE, AELGAR FINALLY GRANTED Nathan permission to build a greenhouse at the far end of the estate where he had already established his garden plot. He was allowed the use of a single garden drone, the barely sentient machine doing the arduous labor of lifting heavy stones into place for the last of the foundation walls while Nathan struggled with mixing enough mortar to keep up with it. Three walls had already been completed, the framing in place and waiting for the large partitions of paned pseuquartz lying on the grass to be erected.

  The sahakharae had been briefly interested in all the activity, once he’d explained he could grow different species of flowers inside. Most lost interest and wandered off after he’d enthused about trying to raise the svapnah he still longed to decipher. But his rambling lectures on modified pseudo-sporophyllous leaves and xenoamphicribral tissue development didn’t much interest many of the sahakharae. Other than Raemik, who he suspected would have been just as devoted had Nathan been a fanatic sewage engineer, he rarely had much of an audience.

  Today, however, Raemik had disappeared again while one of the younger sahakharae had decided to sit on the grass, arms around his knees, and watch Nathan work. A small lute lay beside him, strings gleaming in the sunlight.

  The door frame had already been constructed, a large stone plinth in place. While the drone went back for another load of stone for the back wall, Nathan examined the glassless door on the ground, then glanced at the sahakharae.
/>   “You want to give me a hand here...? He struggled to recall the boy’s name. The one always busy making up songs, was all he could think of.

  “Qim.”

  “Qim.”

  Between the two of them, Nathan got the bare door hung and balanced on the hinges.

  “How did you learn to do this?” Qim asked.

  Nathan chuckled. “I wasn’t always a Nga’esha.” He gauged the boy shrewdly. “Are you really interested, or are you only here pretending as a means to an end?”

  Qim smiled, most of the sahakharae long habituated to Nathan’s directness. “I will pretend to be interested, if you will pretend to believe me.”

  Nathan dusted his hands off on the pair of makeshift work shorts he’d sewn himself, plenty of pockets bulging with spare tools and hardware. “Never mind. Is there something I could do for you, Qim?”

  The sahakharae’s eyes shifted, his manner subtly altered in a manner Nathan recognized. The Vanar found it damned difficult to come out with a simple request. Nathan groaned inwardly, hoping whatever convoluted circuit Qim used to arrive at his purpose would be shorter than usual.

  “Everyone has remarked on what a strange legacy the old pratha h’máy left you.”

  After a beat, Nathan said without enthusiasm, “Uh-huh. Look, do you mind if I work while we talk?”

  “No, please. It would be an honor to watch and learn from you. Perhaps I might play something to make it more pleasurable for you?”

  “Sure, whatever.” Nathan had already stepped over the plinth to examine the door, engrossed in lifting the first quarter of glass into the frame and tapping small nails into the wood to anchor it in place. The costly pseuquartz glass was as unbreakable as steel, and although Nathan didn’t worry about stray blows from his hammer, habit made him wince in reflex.

  The boy fine-tuned the strings on the lute for a moment before he began picking out an intricate melody. After Nathan had the fourth quarter of glass tacked into place, he paused to listen, baffled. The sahakharae drummed his thumb and little finger on different areas of the wooden lute to keep a rhythm as the rest of his fingers danced over the strings, creating the sense of more than one instrument.

  Qim glanced up to gauge the effect, then back at his hands with a satisfied look. When he finished, he set the lute on the grass beside him, leaned back, and waited confidently for Nathan’s reaction.

  “You’re very good,” Nathan said.

  “Thank you.”

  “It sounds familiar.”

  Qim looked down at the lute, toying with the strings idly. “I don’t know why it should. You never listen to me when I play music in the men’s garden.” The boy’s tone wasn’t reproachful, nor, did it seem, was he making any sly sexual approach. Farce as it might be, Nathan and Margasir had declared themselves in an exclusive arrangement, and the young sahakharae wasn’t likely to trespass. Whatever Qim wanted from Nathan, he wasn’t after that sort of rapport.

  “Yes, I do,” Nathan said, drawn into the verbal game despite himself. He took a roll of malleable caulk out of his workbox and began pressing it into place. “And that’s not the sort of music you usually play.”

  The sort of music Qim usually played was geared to pleasing Pratha Yronae and her coterie, who preferred the elaborately pretty if bland music popular with many Vanar women. Then he recognized where he’d seen Qim before.

  “I wrote that piece myself. Did you like it?” Qim asked.

  “You’ve played in the kaemahjah, haven’t you? You and your friends.” He remembered the quartet of flute and dulcimer, lute and drum, and where he’d last heard Qim play. And who he’d been with. And what they’d been doing. His hands fumbled with the caulk, and he paused, closing his eyes for a moment until the ache went away.

  Qim watched him curiously. “Sometimes. Although you have not come to listen to us in a long time.”

  Not since his marriage. Not since Pratima had left. “No, I haven’t.” Nathan resumed caulking the glass with determined concentration. “What do you want, Qim?” he asked impassively, and wished now the boy would go away and leave him in peace.

  “Raemik says you play Hengeli music in your library.”

  Nathan pressed the caulk into the gap, his thumb leaving an undulating pattern. “He does, does he?” he said with overt skepticism. Raemik spoke to very few people, and Nathan knew he especially avoided sahakharae. “And he’s told you this himself?”

  To his credit, the boy had the grace to look chagrined. “Not . . . personally. But I have never heard Hengeli music before. I would very much like to hear some.”

  “I’ll be happy to lend you a few cubes.” He took a putty knife from a pocket in his overalls and trimmed the caulk, the excess curling away in neat corkscrews. He glazed the rest of the door in silence, aware that the sahakharae remained where he was. When he’d finished, he swung the door open and closed experimentally to inspect the balance, and was satisfied.

  The drone returned with the final load of stone, hooked itself into the small mixer for the mortar, and resumed constructing the back wall. Nathan cut open another bag of dry cement and poured it into the mixer, the drone measuring the proper amount of water itself. He shook his head, fine powder dusting his skin and hair, then glanced in irritation at the sahakharae still watching him silently.

  “Is there anything else you wanted?” Nathan said crossly.

  “Have I offended you in some way, jah’nar bhraetae? Is my music unpleasant to your ear?”

  The boy seemed genuinely anxious, which only fueled Nathan’s exasperation. “No, Qim. Your music is...I like your music. It just reminds me of... someone.”

  “Ah,” Qim said quietly. Nathan continued working while the sahakharae sat cross-legged on the ground, watching. After several minutes of silence, he said, “You should come back to the kaemahjah. It isn’t good to love anyone so much, Nathan Nga’esha, especially not a woman.”

  “I hardly need advice on love from a damned sahakharae,” Nathan snapped. “And you have neither the age nor the experience to justify it.”

  Nathan would have welcomed a quarrel, but instead the sahakharae swallowed, visibly shaken. Hands together and pressed to his forehead in the most deferential fashion, he bowed in contrition. “You are of course entirely correct. Please forgive my presumption, jah’nar Nga’esha, I meant no offense.”

  Nathan’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Forget it, Qim, it’s ...not a problem. I’m touchy about foolish things.” The boy straightened uncertainly. “If you want to come by my room later on tonight, I’ll lend you whatever takes your interest.”

  Qim bowed again, this time with ordinary courtesy, and got to his feet. “Thank you. I will be honored.” Nathan didn’t watch him go.

  He continued the work on his greenhouse, expending his anger on hard exertion, stopping only when it became too dark.

  It wasn’t Qim who showed up that evening, however, but Margasir who appeared in the doorway waiting to be noticed and invited in.

  “Yahaem ayo,” Nathan said, surprised as he took the soundpearl out of his ear. He had been listening to some of his Hengeli music to decide which the boy might like.

  Margasir came in, bowed his thanks as Nathan waved him to sit down. Even with his new práhsaedam, he had to follow the usual Vanar ritual of sipping liberally spiked coffee and commenting on innocuous subjects until the sahakharae got around to the point. Margasir, thankfully, knew how little patience Nathan had with formality and kept it to a minimum.

  “I had a chat with one of my protégés this afternoon.” “ ‘Protégés’?” Nathan grinned. “Is this where I throw a temper tantrum to protest my jealousy?”

  Margasir at least smiled at Nathan’s attempt at a joke. “No. This is where I prove myself as useful to you as I promised I would be. You may not realize it, being only an ignorant yepoqioh naeqili, but you’ve managed to attract a práhsaedam with a distinguished reputation. Families with promising boys engage me to train them to become sahakhara
e. Every one of my protégés has gone on to find placement in the High Families. You know this one. Qim, the musician?”

  Nathan grimaced. “And no doubt he complained to you about what an uncivilized ill-mannered yepoqioh naeqili I am.”

  “Actually, no. He’s come to me at a much older age than I usually teach, and still has much to learn. He told me he had offended you, and wished to be instructed in how to make amends.” Margasir laughed ruefully. “I didn’t tell him I have absolutely no idea. If you were Vanar-born, I would know. But if you were Vanar-born, the question would never have come up in the first place.”

  Nathan leaned back against one of the floor pillows scrunched behind him against the wall and rested his arm over one raised knee. Here, in the privacy of his own room, he preferred comfort to tradition. Likewise, Margasir copied Nathan’s more casual pose, although he looked far less at ease with it.

  “I wish people would learn that it’s much easier for me to offend them than for them to offend me. He didn’t offend me. All he wanted was to borrow some music cubes. And being Vanar-born, of course, he couldn’t just come straight out and ask for it, he had to play childish games first.”

  Margasir frowned disapprovingly. “Childish? It might interest you to know that Qim is seven years older than you.”

  “Qim? But he’s just a boy!”

  “He’s had the best regenerative therapy from a very young age. Of course, his Family could afford it. Qim’s full name is Qim dva Daharanan Changriti.”

  Nathan’s jaw dropped. “He’s Changriti?”

  Margasir raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Son of the late Changriti pratha h’máy’s grandniece.”

  Nathan absorbed this. “What the hell’s a Changriti son doing becoming a sahakharae?”

  “Ah, now that’s an interesting story.” Something in the sahakharae’s tone told Nathan he wasn’t likely to enjoy it. “Some years ago, Qim met a woman from a very badly positioned Common Family. They were both promising music students and fell madly in love. Now had Qim simply obeyed his Family and married the High Family woman selected for him, he and the girl could have remained lovers and no one would have objected. But he was foolish. He refused, insisting he would marry only her. To prevent such an unprofitable marriage, the Changriti made her family a lucrative offer arranging for the girl to be transferred to one of their more remote stations off-world, out of the way. Her family was delighted with such an excellent deal. The girl was not.”