Heartsick but resolved, she returned to packing.
“You cannot mean it,” Jaran said as he stared at the Heir to Qenain, aghast. The words that tumbled out came in Implacable, though he had no right anymore to use it. “You must not. I will not allow it. There is no future there, Givela!”
Unperturbed, his niece—his very pregnant niece—returned his gaze with all the serenity of a woman who’d made up her mind. She’d always been a touch headstrong, Givela… a proper niece for someone whose esar was the kevej, the daring, the risk-taking, and a surprising one to have come out of his far more rigid sister. Givela had been born a tranquil spirit, but while she never raised her voice, nor argued, she also never wavered once she’d made up her mind. But this once, this very important once, she could not be allowed her head.
“I mean this,” he said. “I will apply to Thirukedi myself to have you barred from following me.”
“Thirukedi has already accepted my petition,” she replied.
He stopped, his horror complete.
“My irimkedi wishes to come with me, and my fathrikedi. Also, three of Qenain’s Guardians. That, I fear, is the balance of our new household… and it will not be a fruitful one. At least, not for long. My child will be the first and last to be born on alien soil.” She rested her hand on the curve beneath her breasts. “My Servants cannot have children, and all the Guardians are male. But even if we had more volunteers, I fear that Thirukedi would not allow it. I sense that He is well with us accompanying you in your exile, Father, but He does not want us to breed there. “
“No,” Jaran replied, hoarse. The very idea was abhorrent: a community of Ai-Naidar cut off from Kherishdar and the guiding touch of the God of Civilization? Who would want such a fate? Within a generation, would they even be Ai-Naidar anymore, absent the society of their peers? “I imagine not. But I cannot allow it. Givela… please. Stay home. You have a future here!”
“And what future is that?” she asked, stripping the grammars to show him the steel in her soul. “Qenain is broken, Uncle. What would I ascend to, now?”
“Thirukedi would find you a place—”
“My place,” she said firmly, “is with you.”
“Will you make that choice for your Winter’s Child as well?” he shot back, ears flattened. “Be reasonable, Niece! It is not one life you are throwing away, but two… six, if you count the others!”
She met his eyes, sudden, grave, so grave he couldn’t find insolence in it, only grief. “If it is throwing our lives away, Uncle… why are you doing it?”
He sat abruptly, gracelessly, put his face in his hand, the layers of his sleeve dragging over his lap.
“You made your choice,” she said. “There must be something in these aunera worth giving up Kherishdar for.”
“I am not giving up Kherishdar for them,” he said, low. “I am leaving Kherishdar to save it from myself. Because I am tainted, Givela, and I love Kherishdar too much to spread maien.”
He heard the whisper of her robes as she crossed the room and settled on the floor at his knee, as she had as a child, fleeing to him to escape the exasperation of her mother... or coming to him to comfort him when it was he who was exasperated with the Lady. She rested her head against his leg, grounding him out of his sorrow with the familiar pressure. So much history. He had been grooming her to replace him since she was old enough to walk. She would have been magnificent. “You knew, though,” she said. “That your path would lead you here eventually. And still you continued.”
“Yes,” he said, hoarse.
“So there must be something in it worth pursuit. Is that not the purpose of your esar? The risks fulfilled, which become amazing things. And you did bring something amazing to Kherishdar, Uncle. The black blossom that will extend our lives. What else have you learned from these aunera?”
“Does it matter, if I am not there to see the fruits of it?” he asked, quiet.
“You have regret.”
“Of course I have regret,” he said. “But… I also have love. I don’t know how to choose between those things. That is why Thirukedi has done it for me, perhaps. Because there should be no such choice at all.”
“These creatures love you, then.”
He thought of Lenore, so wistful over Kherishdar’s peace, her yearning bled over into passion and a tenderness which she touched him. And of Andrew, who remained shy and reserved, and yet rested a hand on him with such wonder. He had no idea how to explain what it was to be trusted by people who trusted so little. He could feel the wounds in them that longed for a mending. The thirsts in them that he had unexpectedly quenched, not with water, but with wine, so that they were all intoxicated, and not sure if it was wise to drink so deeply. “They do. And I do not know if they love as often as we do. I don’t think… I don’t think that they can. It is not supported by their societies. It is…” He sought a word. “Dangerous. Transgressive.”
“Love is deviation?” she asked, startled.
That didn’t feel right. “Love is… rare and precious. To us also, but for them, it is as if they come into the world without its guarantee.” That felt closer. “Sometimes even their parents do not want them.”
She shivered. “How can that be? How can they survive that way?”
He thought of the wars Andrew had told him about, several long nights after Lenore had fallen asleep: two men, talking of things the human said were traditionally the work of men, though that had changed… as it must have, Jaran thought, for a world convulsed in eternal conflict must chew through its male population and hunger for new victims to fuel its destroying furnaces. He had paid close attention to those stories, of the complex web of relationships, good and bad, that resulted in so much death. “They don’t,” he said. He looked down at her. “And there is no guarantee that they will not re-create that world where we go. Do you still feel so certain of your desire?”
“But they will have us,” Givela said. “Surely we have some say in how the world is run?”
“There will be seven of us, and nearly a hundred of them. They will breed, and we will die out. How much say do you think we could have?”
“Well, if we die out, we will not live to see what they make of it, either way,” she said. “And meanwhile, you will have company. It is not enough to have love, Uncle. You must also have family. You will be no good to these alien lovers of yours if you wilt of grief.”
“And you don’t think I will to see you with me, consigned to exile?”
“I think you have no choice,” she said, unperturbed. “So you will grow resigned to it, and come to be glad of it in time. And I… I will see new things, and that will interest me more than overseeing the dissolution of Qenain.”
He felt it then: the spasm of pain that she was concealing so well. She had loved Qenain, had expected to run the capital world’s premier, and first, House of Flowers. Had been proud to be heir to a tradition that had resulted in the creation of all of the Ai-Naidari Houses of Flowers. Could he blame her for not wanting to be present at Qenain’s death? He sighed and rested a hand on her head, between the ears… felt her relax. They both knew the touch was his acquiescence.
Perhaps it was inevitable. Qenain had begun with transgression... with a Regal daring to love beneath the Wall of Birth. Its ending had been implicit in its inception, as with all things. Thirukedi had made that first transgression right. Was this, then, His doing so again? Or had Jaran gone so far there was no hope for healing?
“They’re all sure of it,” he said, turning again from the constant turmoil of his thoughts. “Not just you. You did not talk them into it.”
“They love you, Uncle,” she murmured. “It did not require much convincing. It would have been harder on them to be left behind.”
He bent until he could rest his brow against her glossy hair, and tried not to weep. As with the aliens, he was not sure whether to be grateful or shattered at this newest turn in his fate. But if the God of Civilization had permitted it, surely he was allowed to be a little more glad than unhappy.
“One Ai-Naidari child, born on alien soil,” Givela murmured. “I wonder what he or she will be like.”
