Master of None

by N Lee Wood

  “Calidris? That’s just a freight depot, there’s hardly anyone there.” “Exactly. It’s small enough to ensure complete security. He’ll be safe there. I want him removed to a Nga’esha station immediately.”

  Nathan started. “No,” he objected. “I’m not leaving Vanar.” Yronae snarled in frustration, punching the dais beside her with one fist. “I am sick and tired of your pigheaded yepoqioh defiance, Nathan Nga’esha. You will leave if I say you leave!”

  “It’s not much of a difference either way: a hostage isolated on a station or a hostage down here, hiding like a mole in the dirt.” He couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice.

  “The argument is moot,” Madhupi interrupted evenly. “You would need Pilot cooperation to transfer him to a station in the first place, which they are unlikely to give. And while I’m sure most of Vanar would be pleased to see him gone, you don’t defuse a bomb by putting it in a box and hiding it at the back of a storage cabinet.”

  Yronae swore, a remarkably vulgar curse he had rarely heard from a Vanar, and never from a woman. Even Mahdupi’s eyebrows lifted. “Then instead of constantly naysaying me, you tell me what compromise they might find acceptable!” Yronae snapped.

  Mahdupi smiled and sipped her coffee. “I haven’t the vaguest idea, Pratha. I haven’t spent all that much time in their company to know what Pilots might possibly want.” Yronae, absorbing her meaning, turned on Nathan with narrowed eyes.

  “But you have.”

  “Yes,” he retorted hotly. “Mostly what they want is to be amused. I think they must be very amused right now, Pratha Yronae.”

  Mahdupi chuckled as Yronae glared. “Pratima was your lover,” she said doggedly. “She would listen to you. Talk to her, reason with her. Surely she wouldn’t wish any harm to come to you as a result of her reckless actions.”

  He glared at her, furious. “Willful, selfish, stupid, thoughtless bitch,” he whispered.

  Her jaw clenched, the muscles along smooth cheeks twitching. “You will not dare refuse, Nathan, not and jeopardize the entire Family. The contempt you show for the Nga’esha name would be severely penalized—”

  “Don’t threaten me,” he said softly. “It’s beneath you.”

  She flushed, calming herself by visible effort. “I will not—do you hear me?—will not permit the dismantling of seven centuries of Vanar culture on the caprice of lovesick Pilots. But whether I like it or not, you now wield considerable influence for which I need your cooperation. I have offered you your freedom, which you have foolishly turned down. I have offered you more wealth than most men could ever dream of, and that doesn’t seem to interest you either. I somehow doubt offering you a more substantial role within the Family hierarchy will satisfy you. What you do want is as unreasonable as what our Pilots are demanding. It’s impossible. I know you have no reason to feel any loyalty toward me, to the honor of the Nga’esha or to Vanar. But neither of us will leave this room until we have reached an agreement.”

  “No loyalty?” he said in disbelief. “Why do you think I chose not to leave Vanar, Yronae?” He used her name deliberately, watching her eyes widen, but she didn’t protest. “I know you’ve despised me. You don’t agree with my beliefs, but you haven’t gone so far as to unlawfully silence me. Not because you were protecting Nga’esha interests, but because it was right. Your honor won’t let you do otherwise.

  “But your honor didn’t keep you from using me to negotiate with my own people, just as you would use me again, and I have never refused you, never. What more do I have to do to prove to you I am as Vanar as you are, possibly even more so because I chose to be. I’ve paid ten times over to be given that right.”

  Yronae remained silent. He walked around the dais to stand in front of her, looking her straight in the eyes.

  “Look at me,” he said softly. “Open your eyes and see that I am not so different from you. Yes, I am angry, and yes, I want changes. But is what I want really so unreasonable? All I want is to walk down the streets of Vanar with my head held proudly, as you do. I want to be free to go where I want, on Vanar, as you do. I want the right to see my daughter, to help raise her to grow up to love and respect me. I want to choose what I do with my life, and not live in constant fear and submission. I want only what is just, and I want your help to do it. I need your help.”

  He paused, gauging her reaction. Her face had paled, but she was listening.

  “We are both at fault, Yronae. I have never thought of you as my sister, family in name only, but not in my heart. You’ve never seen me as anything but aeyaesah yepoqioh, a bad practical joke your mother inflicted on your Family. But I am Nga’esha. I am proud to be Nga’ esha. If now you need my help, just ask me for it. Say, ‘help me, little brother.’ ”

  Mahdupi put a hand over her mouth as if to hide a smile, but her eyes were somber.

  “I promise you nothing—” Yronae began.

  “I don’t want promises. Say, ‘help me, little brother,’ ” he repeated firmly.

  “I will not beg!”

  “It’s not begging, Yronae. I’m your brother. All you have to do is ask for my help. As I’ve asked you for yours.”

  She stood with her lips pressed so tightly together they were bloodless, as if she had to keep them clamped shut to prevent the hated words from spilling out. Her chin trembled, her entire body shaking as she turned away from him, stalking across the room with aimless fury. Mahdupi moved to her side and placed a gentle hand on her arm, stopping the frenetic movement.

  “Help me, little brother,” Yronae said stonily, her back to him. He exhaled, unaware until then he’d been holding his breath. “My pleasure, Pratha Yronae.”

  XLIII

  ONCE IT WAS CLEAR THE HENGELI WERE NOT GOING TO CONTINUE their assault, the Nga’esha began to return to the House. Or what was left of it. The west half of the House had nearly been obliterated, many of the women’s lavish rooms buried under rubble. One wall of the council room had fallen, the roof gone, leaving the once burnished parquet flooring exposed to the elements. The men’s quarters had been relatively unscathed, and men were doing their best to make their women comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings, mingling freely for what might possibly have been the first time. But while repairs had begun almost immediately with the usual Vanar efficiency, many of both sexes still wandered the ruins aimlessly, dazed and tearful.

  Push that button, pull that trigger. Nathan wondered how tiresome and dull Yaenida would have found this violence inflicted from a safe distance on a people with no experience of war. He watched as one of the dozens of taemorae sifting through the debris suddenly fell to her knees and vomited, still holding onto a severed hand—Dhikar, he noted distractedly, to judge by the silvery threads of implants dangling from the jagged stump. The two stoic Dhikar Yronae had assigned as his omnipresent bodyguards didn’t so much as blink.

  The attack had been conducted with impressive precision, demolition confined to the Nga’esha House, and even then only to areas the Hengeli thought most vulnerable or likely to yield results. Yronae’s personal quarters and administrative offices had been targeted, but when whoever had ransacked her state-of-the-art equipment had realized they were only facades for the real machinery safe underground, the search was abandoned and the remains torched.

  The damage to his library was impressive but mostly superficial. There was nothing in the old pratha’s archives of value to their rivals, anything of a sensitive business nature long removed. Yronae had little interest in antiquated literature or obsolete cultural records. The shelving had been pulled down with savage force, books and papers scattered and trodden on. Although some of the ancient books had been irreparably destroyed, like Yronae’s offices, the information within them was preserved in the data archives deep underground. The entire room could have been burnt to the ground without the loss of a single word. Still, the wanton vandalism saddened him.

  The huge table of native wood had been methodically hacked to kindling. Whatever it
was suspected of concealing, it had been nothing but a very antique, very beautiful slab of venerable timber, and its destruction made him angry.

  Broken glass crunched underfoot, hidden under the scattered papers. He kicked torn pages aside to find the shattered remains of Yaenida’s water pipe. He squatted in the wreckage, picking up fragments, then sighed. Any fleeting notion he had that somehow it could be put back together again evaporated. He let the broken pieces fall from his fingers.

  “Qanistha bhraetae,” he heard a voice say behind him. He stood and turned toward the door of his library. Four taemorae stood just outside the door, or at least what was left of a door hanging on twisted hinges after an explosion had ripped it to shreds. Even in the midst of the devastation, the women still rigidly adhered to the Family formalities. They would not, could not enter without his permission. He smiled bleakly, put his hands together, and bowed with almost ironic correctness.

  “Qanisthaha bhaginae?”

  “The pratha h’máy has sent us to ask if you require any assistance.” He looked around at the wreckage, then, unable to hold back, began laughing. Fortunately, they could see the black humor in the situation as well, and smiled.

  “Please, cousins, be welcome.”

  They were happy enough to take instructions from him without undue offense, carting off the hopeless rubble while salvaging as much as they could from what was left. Once the remains of Yaenida’s great table had been removed, the carpenters had plenty of room to work and swiftly repaired those shelves still standing or rebuilt those that had to be replaced. Even the two Dhikar grudgingly helped with some of the manual labor, while keeping one eye constantly on him.

  Yronae visited briefly only once to examine the renovations, all of the Nga’esha House under refurbishment. He thanked her earnestly for the workers she’d allocated to him. She’d grunted, noncommittal, and left without a word.

  He was pleased to find his small collection of music cubes, although many of them were still missing, scattered into the general mess after someone had stomped on the antique coffer to break it open. The machinery with the player was beyond hope, and one of the taemora graciously fetched her own personal system. He selected Mozart’s Coronation Mass, and smiled when the taemorae glanced at each other, puzzled by the “Gloria” movement. The mix of men’s and women’s voices reverberated in the cavernous room, one of the very few choral works the Vanar Customs had reluctantly allowed him to keep once he had convinced them the language was far too ancient for him, or anyone else on Vanar, to decipher.

  They hadn’t understood, he thought as he watched Vanar women hammering and sawing and reconstructing his library to the exuberant voices of long-dead singers. He didn’t need to understand the words to understand the music.

  For their part, the taemorae endured it patiently before one of them asked him courteously if they might be allowed to listen to their own music. Mozart’s ebullient chorus was replaced by the whining insipid melodies Vanar women preferred. But they were happy, and he was having his library repaired.

  Once the shelves had been replaced came the more tedious task of trying to organize the old books back into some semblance of order. Two of the taemorae had been called away to more pressing work, while the remaining two helped him collect what books were still intact, sorting them into various woven wicker boxes, guessing at categories by titles. Any damaged books or loose pages were placed into other boxes for him to try to sift through later.

  “I don’t know what to do with these, Nathan Nga’esha,” one of them said, interrupting his fruitless interpretation of a scrap of an obscure Vanar document, wondering if he’d ever find what it had been ripped out of. His eyes ached.

  He looked up from where he sat cross-legged on the floor surrounded by a sea of orphan paper. She held several crudely bound portfolios. “What are they?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s not in Vanar.”

  He gestured to a pile next to him. “Leave it there, then. I’ll get to them when I have time.”

  He finished sorting what he could and gave up on trying to decipher the Vanar text of those he couldn’t, dumping them into a general box to file later, before he picked up the top portfolio with casual interest, opening it to find a carefully organized assortment of obsolete data chips with the oldest reader he’d ever seen in his life. He inserted the first chip and skimmed the first few pages. The hair on his arms prickled as he read, his breath shallow in wonder.

  A couple hours later, the taemora had to repeat his name to get his attention. “What?” He blinked up at her, still dazed.

  “We’re going now,” she said. “We’ll come back tomorrow morning with new doors and windows.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. . . .” He held up the ancient portfolio. “Where did you find these?”

  She shrugged. “In a pile of books under a smashed bookshelf, just like everything else.” The young woman hesitated, then asked kindly, “Are you all right? You seem unwell.”

  “I’m fine, l’amae.”

  She left, unconvinced, as he returned to words written hundreds of years before in an archaic Hengeli script, reading well into the night.

  XLIV

  “READY?”

  Standing outside Pratha Yronae’s makeshift council hall, he felt as nervous as Namasi Sahmudrah looked. This hadn’t exactly been the career-enhancing case she’d hoped for, he knew, but it certainly would be one to establish her reputation for the historical records. Margasir adjusted his sati pin, stood back, and nodded his approval.

  “As I’ll ever be,” Nathan said.

  Namasi Sahmudrah smiled wryly. “Last chance. No second thoughts?”

  “Plenty.”

  She nodded. “Let’s do it, then.”

  Over the past week, the young vaktay had become more than his speaker, she was as close to being a friend as he’d ever had with a Vanar woman. She had been the one to take his discoveries to the

  Pratha Yronae. He’d been sent for many hours after, kneeling nervously as she examined Namasi’s evidence. But all the pratha h’máy had demanded of him was clarification of a couple of Hengeli phrases. Otherwise, she’d said nothing, to Nathan’s disquiet. She obviously did not like what she had read, but two days after, Namasi burst into his library without even knocking, to the consternation of his Dhikar bodyguards.

  “She did it!” Namasi said excitedly. “She’s demanded the Assembly grant us an immediate hearing, and we’ve got it!”

  The Assembly might have dragged their feet forever, but hadn’t dared to refuse a request by the Nga’esha pratha h’máy.

  They had spent long hours in the privacy of his library breathing in the smell of new wood and fresh paint, books and papers still stacked in untidy piles as they debated this approach, argued heatedly over that, feverishly translating the archaic Hengeli with an electric urgency. Margasir had kept them supplied with food and tea, scuttling uneasily past Nathan’s Dhikar bodyguards. Now, moments away from leaving for the Assembly, Nathan realized he knew almost nothing about Namasi’s personal life, wondered what she did outside their time together, whether or not she had some kharvah at home waiting for her return. His curiosity got the better of him.

  “Vaktay Namasi,” he said. She paused inquiringly. “Are you married?”

  Even Margasir gave him an odd glance.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “What does he...or they... think of all this?”

  “He doesn’t agree with you.” She smiled. “He fears you threaten his security, that you would like to take away all the benefits without enough in return to justify it.”

  “He can save his breath. I’ve had exactly this argument myself with my eccentric práhsaedam,” Margasir groused, “to no avail.”

  Nathan didn’t point out that a few days ago the sahakharae would never have dreamed of addressing a High Family Vanar woman with as much familiarity as he did now Namasi Sahmudrah. They both obviously understood the change in their rapport.

 
“Right,” he said. And took a breath before nodding at the Dhikar. But when the doors were pulled back to allow them in, his sister waited for him while pacing with barely contained impatience, not bothering with the observance of Family customs. A good many of his other female relatives had also assembled, the buzz of conversation dying away as he walked with diligent observance of the formalities, stopping exactly the proper distance from her and bowing with the precise amount of respect. She inspected his appearance critically. Pratha Yronae had involved herself in the discussions of their strategy, even down to his choice of attire. Nathan was Nga’esha, and he would do his best to behave in a manner befitting the Nga’esha.

  “You’ll do,” was all she said. And that concluded the audience. He had thought it more appropriate to use the men’s public transportation to get to the Assembly of Families, but the pratha h’máy overruled that idea. The city of Sabtú might have fallen into an unnatural sense of subdued calm after the attack on the Nga’esha, but she still expected some opposition to be waiting for them at the Assembly. Private vehicles were rare, usually belonging to intercity freight handlers or those battered work floats common in the agricultural fields. Nathan hadn’t even known Yronae owned her own hover-float, and he wondered what it was used for. Whatever it was used for, by the musty smell of the interior, it wasn’t used very often.

  He and Margasir climbed into the rear compartment, their backs to Namasi and Yronae in the front of the float. Fortunately, this part of the float was also enclosed, protecting him as much as the women from any dust or wind. A single Dhikar drove the small vehicle, and they sped off to leave the rest of the entourage following behind the best they could.

  Nathan had expected to draw considerable attention, but the float wasn’t even able to come anywhere near the Assembly. The immense crowd swelling through the streets numbered in the thousands, the entire city seemed at a standstill. Margasir twisted in his seat to stare past the women in astonishment. Nathan fixed his gaze on his clenched hands between his knees, unwilling to even look out the windows at the mass of people staring in at him. The crowd was mostly women, not unexpectedly, and although the mood was hostile, there was little show of aggression, no waving of signs or fists or chanting of angry slogans the way any other world might have displayed. Which made it all the more ominous, Nathan thought.