Master of None

by N. Lee Wood

Genres: Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Political Thrillers

Synopsis

- N. Lee Wood is the author of "Looking for the Mahdi (Ace, 1996), "Faraday's Orphans (Ace, 1997), and "Bloodrights (Ace, 1999). "Looking for the Mahdi was selected as a "New York Times Notable Book and was also short listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.- The author's blend of sociology, feminism, and science fiction is reminiscent of such classics as Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 1986), Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness (Ace, 1969), and Sheri S. Tepper's "The Gate to Women's Country (Doubleday, 1988).

Release date: September 3, 2007

Publisher: Aspect

Print pages: 404

Sample

Prologue

NATHAN FOLLOWED THE SAHAKHARAE FROM THE MEN’S GATE INTO THE wide portico surrounding the star-shaped courtyard. Blue shadows cut the sunlight into brilliant shafts through a lace of stone, hurting his eyes. In the center of the garden, water cascaded over layers of rough, black rock into a pool. Koi flashed under the ripples, tiny shivers of striated jewels, ruby, pearl, and gold.

Two young men reclined on the grass, half hidden by the tall heads of flower blossoms nodding in the heat. Obviously infatuated with one another, their hands slipped inside undone clothing to expose smooth brown skin gleaming with sweat. They broke off their embrace and stared in silence as the sahakharae ushered Nathan along the path across the cloisterlike garden.

A dozen or so men occupied the interior courtyard. In the cool arcades around the garden edge, old men lounged against stone pillars in the shade, conversing in quiet voices. All but one were wrapped in milky blue sati to protect them from the sun, the gauzy edges of cloth pulled over heads to shade their wrinkled faces. Fans of colored paper warded off insects. The loner wore nothing at all, stretched naked on the lip of stone, his body sun baked to mahogany, his own sati folded neatly for use as a pillow.

As the old men caught sight of Nathan, they hushed, watching him in silence. He tried to keep his attention politely focused on the intricate braid swinging between the sahakharae’s shoulders, but couldn’t help glancing around the courtyard.

A group of boys sat on the fountain edge, the youngest no older than ten, a thick tumble of black hair screening his face. They laughed as they splashed each other with water, flicking wet fingers and dodging the drops. Alerted by the change in sound, they glanced around, smiles vanishing as they watched with wide, inquisitive eyes.

Nathan found it hard not to stare back. The naked man sat up, one hand shading his eyes as he squinted in the sunlight. The courtyard was so silent Nathan could hear the faint melody of birds overhead. He was acutely aware of his shabby appearance, the ragged edge of his linen sati, his own short braid and dusty bare feet.

The sahakharae extended one hand mutely to direct him to a passage leading into the dark interior. As Nathan passed the old men, he held his hands together in greeting, bowing his head in respect. The old men did not respond, but the naked man nodded a fraction in response. The youngest child by the fountain suddenly giggled, his high laugh cut short as his companions shushed him.

Nathan stumbled after the sahakharae up the curved stairway, his eyes not yet adjusted to the gloom. From outside, the Nga’esha House dominated the hill like a huge fortress, a city in miniature. The interior seemed even larger, a rambling web of arches and corridors connecting numerous wings. The sahakharae halted at a carved doorway of the main wing, pulling one side open and indicating to Nathan to go in with a graceful motion of his hand and a small bow.

Nathan stood alone as the door closed behind him. A thrill of panic shot through his gut before a door opposite opened to admit him. The woman regarding him was young, dark hair pulled back severely from around a narrow, heart-shaped face, brown eyes hard but, he hoped, not hostile. She wore loose saekah trousers, the bloodred sheer fabric gathered in cuffs at her ankles, the pleats of her watery blue tunic brushing just below her knees. Dozens of heavy gold bracelets stacked both arms, extending from wrist almost to elbow.

With the palms of his hands together, he pressed his crossed thumbs hard against his sternum, fingertips nearly touching his chin, exactly as he’d been taught. Keeping his spine straight, he let his head fall forward on his neck, eyes down, and stood rigidly in this awkward position.

He heard a faint staccato of breath, and realized she had laughed. When he looked up, she was smiling, her eyes crinkled in amusement. He knew he’d done something incorrect, but not what. To his relief, it didn’t seem to matter much as she nodded politely toward him, signaling an invitation to enter.

Inside, she gestured toward a small fountain flowing from the wall, the pipe designed to shape the continual stream of water into a coiling arc splashing into the wide shallow basin. He had learned enough to understand by now what was expected, stepping into the basin to hold his hands under the running water, scrub briefly at his face, and wash the unclean dust of the outside from his feet.

Once ritually cleansed to her satisfaction, he followed her down the hall, her sandals and his wet bare footsteps noiseless against the thick carpet. She led him through a wide stone entry into a huge, sunny room, sunlight pouring in from double rows of arched windows supported by deceptively frail columns. Brilliant white plastered walls reflected prismed rainbows from cut glass. The smell of hot earth and honeysuckle drifting through open windows mixed with the scent of burnt incense. Long streamers of silk hung from the ceiling arched high overhead, rippling in the slight breeze, tiny brass bells sewn to weight their ends. Dark and light grains of wood wove an intricate maze on the inlaid floor, spiraling toward the center of the spacious room, the burnished wood reflecting the raised platform like an island on the surface of a still lake.

Half a dozen other women were scattered around the edges of the room, on low settees or large floor cushions, some dressed in the traditional close-fitting silk mati underneath lengths of shimmering blue silk elaborately folded and wrapped around slender bodies. Gold jewelry sparkled on dark skin, long black hair laced with pearls and gems. The rest wore bright saekah trousers and kirtiya cinched at the waist with ornate belts. One of them idly fingered a carved staff lying beside her, eying him distrustfully.

An old woman reclined on the dais, dressed only in a loose tasmai, her frail body half buried in pillows. One arm stretched over an edge, the tip of a water pipe dangling from her fingers. She blew a stream of smoke from her thin lips, watching him with heavy-lidded reptilian eyes, the sclera as yellowed as her teeth. She reminded him of a hawk: contemptuous, powerful, the hint of steel hidden under velvet feathers.

The younger woman bowed loosely toward her, and seated herself with two other women at a discreet distance. He stood uncertainly, listening to the faint laughter of boys in the garden outside as she nodded. “Be welcome, Nathan Crewe,” she said in his native language, her husky voice gentle. The sound carried clearly across the vast room. “A pleasure to see you again.”

He had had to petition at the Nga’esha gates for several weeks before he was granted another audience, this time following the correct and complex formalities. Making a spectacle of himself a second time would not be tolerated. Despite her apparent congeniality, he knew his intrusion into the agenda of the Nga’esha pratha h’máy had better be of interest to her, rather than merely vital to him. He inhaled a deep breath, more for courage, and strode toward her, stopping exactly three steps away from the dais. Methodically, he swept the edge of his white sati to one side and knelt, knees together, buttocks resting on his heels, right foot crossed against the flat of the left. He put his palms against his thighs, fingers together, and inclined his torso in a slight bow, paying scrupulous attention to the details.

“I pray, l’amae, that I find you in good health,” he said in Vanar, carefully parroting phonetic sounds he had memorized, words he barely understood, “and wish you continued long life and good fortune.” His tongue strained against the complex diphthongs and glottal stops threatening to choke him, the endless nasalized umlauts his surly tutor had literally tried to pound into his skull.

Suppressed laughter whispered around the room. His cheeks burned with a sudden flush. “I said that wrong, didn’t I?” he asked the older woman, switching to his native Hengeli.

The old woman squinted in amusement as much as from the smoke curling in her eyes. “Not at all; entirely correct,” she assured him in the same language. Her lilting accent would have been sensual in a younger woman. “You are making excellent progress indeed.” He settled back on his heels, and stared at her as if for the first time. Compared to the other women in the room, her dress was somber, no jewelry but the bracelets on her forearms, the blue birdsilk tasmai robe pulled around her with the Nga’esha family emblem hand-embroidered against each shoulder. He had been allowed to see her only once after his release from custody, and her health had clearly worsened since that nearly disastrous fiasco. Her skin had paled to a sickly yellow beneath the olive complexion, thinning white hair exposing the bumps of her skull. She seemed brittlely thin, her ankles more like knots on sticks covered with bloodless parchment.

He knew Yaenida was not simply old, but ancient, in the way only those who could afford repetitive regenerative treatments were. Yet her dark eyes were still as energetic, as shrewd and hard, as the day he had first met her.

“Pratha Yaenida,” he said, trying to keep his pulse down, “I’m not making much real progress at all.”

“Nonsense—”

“Please,” he interrupted more sharply than he intended. The younger women in the corner glanced up with narrowed eyes, murmuring between themselves. “Please,” he repeated, softening his tone. “I am not. You don’t do me any favors by lying to me, Yaenida.”

She frowned, her thin mouth marked by deep fissures in her skin. He sat very still, knowing he was taking a huge risk by speaking to her with such intimacy. Once she had found his naive familiarity with her charming. He remembered how amused she had been by his shock once he realized the depth of his ignorance. Now he had no excuses to forget exactly who and what she was. Or who and what he was now.

Vanar was a closed world with only one major corporate interest: interstellar Worms, the lifeline linking over three hundred systems with Vanar at their core like a tiny spider in a giant web. No one owned the Worms; they were simply a mysterious artifact of space. But only Vanar Pilots were capable of flying ships in and, more importantly, out again at another part of the universe in one piece. Since the secretive Vanar Pilots were the only creatures who could guide the luxury liners and cargo freighters safely across the huge expanse of space, Vanar maintained its monopoly on not just interstellar trade but on all travel between solar systems.

Vanar charged a moderate sum for each Worm transfer, affordable to each individual shipper, and service remained cheap and reliable. But the traffic added up to an enormous fortune for the Nine High Vanar Families who controlled the Worms.

Hundreds of thousands of people outside Vanar were directly employed by her companies; millions more worked for companies servicing other Vanar corporations. The Nga’esha Corporation owned half the stations in the known star systems, which comprised all of the systems under Hengeli sovereignty. The politics of a hundred planets were shaped and moved by Vanar corporate interests. He could almost feel the weight of that enormous wealth around him, channeled through the High Families into the hands of the few great l’amae like the pratha h’máy Yaenida dva Darahanan ek Qarshatha Nga’esha, quite likely the most powerful being in all the inhabited systems. His chest began to ache as he realized he’d been holding his breath.

“All right,” she conceded, breaking the tension, and waited for him to speak.

He exhaled and tried to keep his relief off his face. “I asked to see you exactly because I am having a lot of trouble with both your language and your culture. I’m a botanist...I was a botanist,” he corrected himself. “I was never very good at xenosociology.”

She brought the tip of the water pipe to her mouth, sucking it thoughtfully. Turning her head, she blew a thin stream of pungent smoke away from him out the side of her mouth, keeping her eyes on him. They glittered in her cavernous sockets. “I take it you are dissatisfied with your current tutor?”

“No,” he said hastily, “absolutely not.” At their last meeting, he’d had to abjectly beg for help to get even the sullen elderly woman the Nga’esha family paid to coach him in Vanar language and protocol. He wasn’t about to jeopardize even that small benefit by criticizing his tutor to her employer. “Any fault or misunderstanding is entirely mine—”

Yaenida chuckled. “Oh, do stop it, Nathan, and get to the point. What is it you want from me?”

“Be my teacher again, just for a few minutes.” He waited, and when she inclined her head, he said, “What does it mean when a woman gives a man three shafts of grain?”

Her eyebrows raised in surprise, making her look owlish. “What kind of grain? What color?”

“Thin yellow stalks, so high.” He measured with his hands. “Multiple heads of grain, reddish, definitely nothing native, but not in the Triticum or Oryza genera, either. Possibly a hybrid variant of some monocotyledonous grass related to the Avena family.” He saw her draw on her pipe to hide her mirth. Bubbles sputtered in the pipe through a cloud of thick liquid. The smell of the drugged smoke cloyed the back of his throat. “I think the common name is muhdgae. Dark brown color. Seed pods are already open. They’re tied together with two pieces of ribbon—one a burgundy color, the other a sort of pale purple.”

“Ah,” she said, knowingly. “A young lady from the Changriti motherline?”

He nodded.

She looked out the window at the scuttling clouds. “How interesting. Is the young woman’s name Kallah, by any chance?”

“Yes,” he said, his stomach sour.

“Did she offer it to you personally?”

“Yes.”

“Did you take it directly from her hands? Publicly, in front of witnesses? Female witnesses?” Yaenida was grinning.

“Yes,” he said. He had bumped into Kallah Changriti, quite literally, when she passed him while in the company of another young Changriti woman. She had acknowledged his halting apology and bow with an arrogant nod of her head, but her shy smile completely spoiled the effect. She’d said nothing to him, but when she glanced back, he impulsively winked at her. Her eyes had widened and she’d clamped a hand over her mouth to stop the laugh, then disappeared in the crowd still clutching the arm of her companion. That one friendly gesture had been his fatal mistake. A week later, he had unwittingly accepted her strange gift—a gift that had nearly gotten him killed.

“She just walked up to me with a couple of her friends and shoved it in my face without a word. I didn’t know what else to do, so I took it. I didn’t want to be impolite.”

She laughed, leaning back into the thick cushions. “Impolite!” Her laughter came from deep in her chest, rumbling and wet.

His face prickled with alarm. “But what does it mean, exactly?” he pressed as her laughter subsided.

She laboriously dragged in another lungful of pungent smoke. Smiling broadly, she shook her head in amazed disbelief. “It means, my poor ignorant child, you are both astoundingly lucky and standing nose deep in a large pond of watery pigshit. Or have I confused another of your colloquial expressions?”

“L’amae, please,” he persisted. “Have I screwed up again?”

“Not at all. You’ve been offered a proposal, sweet boy—and may I point out an extraordinary but favorable one—for matrimonial union with a High Family. By taking Kallah’s symbolic gift from her own hand, you’ve accepted. May I have the honor to be the first to offer you my sincere congratulations.”

“Oh God,” he breathed, his fears confirmed. “Kallah is the daughter of Pratha Eraelin Changriti.”

Yaenida reclined even deeper into the pillows, obviously amused by his situation. “Quite so,” she admitted.

“The Changriti pratha h’máy hates me,” he said, pronouncing the words with the distinctness he would use for a child. “Two days after that, she tried to have me murdered!”

The healing gash in his side twinged with the memory of the frantic struggle in the dark, the choking smell of bitter cinnamon in the cloth clamped over his nose, the blade scraping by his ear to impale the sleeping mat. Only the advantage of his size and strength as well as the skills learned as a boy growing up hard had saved him. The would-be assassin had vaulted through the small half-moon window, vanishing like a cat over the rooftops, leaving him crumpled on the floor and bleeding more from his nose than from the wound along his ribs. The pahlaqu guardian where he lived had been summoned by the hospital, and viewed the torn scrap of dark burgundy silk in his fist with zealous indifference, strongly advising him to forget the incident had ever happened. Yaenida echoed that opinion.

“An accusation I should be careful to speak of very discreetly, were I you,” she warned him. “If Pratha Eraelin dva Hadatha Changriti wanted you dead, you would be dead, and she would not appreciate your slanderous allegations of incompetence.”

“Then she was quite competent in scaring the hell out of me. I can’t marry her daughter. I would be living in the household of a woman who would make my life nothing but a large pond of watery pigshit.”

“But, Nathan,” she chided, nearly laughing, “you did accept.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing!” he protested, his hands gesturing for emphasis, breaking strict Vanar convention. The women in the corner looked up sharply. As two stood, Yaenida waved them away impatiently. He forced down his anxiety. Never show anger, never. He knew better. “How was I supposed to know what she was offering?” Nathan continued, keeping his voice low and his sweating palms on his thighs. “Isn’t there some way of explaining this to her? I can’t legally be held to agreements I didn’t know were being made, can I?”

She smiled at him pityingly, and he bit his lip to shut up. Ignorance of Vanar law, he’d already been well taught, was no excuse.

“Nate,” she said, using the intimate name he hadn’t heard from her since his imprisonment. The unexpected familiarity made his throat hurt. “Kallah is a respectable and influential member of a High Family, and you are in no position to be choosy. Believe me, you could do a lot worse.”

“I don’t have anything against Kallah Changriti, although she’s probably more interested in me because I’m ‘exotic’ rather than from any real affection. Surely it’s not my sparkling wit and charm. Come on, Yaenida, I can barely even talk with the girl!”

Yaenida raised one eyebrow, which he took for concurrence. “Isn’t there some way around this without breaking protocol or upsetting her? You’re the Nga’esha pratha h’máy, can’t you explain to her I didn’t understand what life would be like for me in Pratha Eraelin’s House?”

“The pratha h’máy of a High Family does not involve herself with the problems of naekulam,” she said ironically. “That would be too far beneath my dignity.”

He stared at her in disbelief.

She sighed. “Nobody cares about how unpleasant your life would be in the Changriti House, and I’m sure Kallah is well aware of what her mother is like. No doubt part of her reason for making such an absurd offer in the first place was to antagonize Eraelin. But your feelings are not important, and would not be of interest to anyone.”

Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, fighting the impulse to ball his hands into fists.

“It is a remarkable development, however,” Yaenida mused thoughtfully, speaking more to herself. “Although on reflection, not that absurd. You wouldn’t be any liability to business alliances. Kallah already has two kharvah from favorably positioned Families as well as a houseful of excellent sahakharae.”

“But I’m not a kharvah or a sahakharae.”

“Ah, but you are the irresistible combination of both!” she said, her eyes lighting up. “What is more tempting and seductive than the unique, especially when it’s safe? If she couldn’t acquire you as sahakharae, her only other option is marriage. There’s certainly nothing wrong with your seed, wonderfully exotic as it is, Nathan, but you are still naekulam, without Family. It is not unheard-of, but rare, for such an offer to be made to someone with so little to bring into a union. You should be delighted.”

“What if,” he said carefully, “it was explained to Kallah that I am only a stupid foreigner, that not only had I misunderstood but that I was already committed to marrying someone else?”

Her eyes were bird bright, sparkling in the sunlight. “I had forgotten about your sort, Nathan,” she said softly. “So very . . . passionate. A flair for the dramatic. Well, well, you have fallen in love with yet another of our fair young maidens, and are now trapped in the timeless predicament of love and rivalry? How entertaining.”

He held himself as rigorously erect as possible. “It is not a question of love, l’amae Yaenida. But if I am to ‘unite,’ if that’s the word for it, I would prefer doing so with a different House.”

“Tell me, dear boy,” she said, smiling broadly. Her teeth were smoke stained, the gums atrophied away from the roots. “Just to satisfy an old woman’s curiosity, who is this charming maiden who has warmed your blood and stolen your heart? Who is it you wish to wed?”

He sat back on his heels and hoped his face was unreadable. “You.” It took her a moment to react, then her eyes widened. She started to cough violently, strangling on the smoke and laughter competing for control of her lungs. The younger women stood, distrustful and alarmed, to be waved back by Yaenida’s impatient arm, bone-thin wrist snapping in the air, the bracelets jingling. She continued to laugh for a long minute, her eyes streaming, until Nathan flushed and looked down. The three slowly retook their seats, glaring suspiciously at him.

“Oh, Sweet Lady Mother!” Yaenida gasped, setting off another round of laughter, then wiped away the tears from her wizened cheeks. “Thank you, Nathan, I haven’t had such a thrill in years.”

He kept silent, his jaw clenched. She coughed lengthily, a deep, wet, chronic congestion, still chuckling.

She spoke in rapid Vanar, and one of the younger women left long enough to return with a glass of green-tinted water as another two knelt by her side. One fanned her face anxiously as the other tucked the fingers of one hand around Yaenida’s wrist while she studied the medical scanner in her other. Yaenida submitted impassively without even acknowledging her presence as the women loaded a medgun and pressed the muzzle against her upper arm. It hissed as Yaenida gulped the water noisily to ease her cough. He could smell the delicate scent of mint and medicinal bitters. Within a few minutes, her cough had eased and the color returned to her face.

“Come now, my love,” she finally rasped out, handing the empty glass back without looking at the women and waving them away imperiously. Her attendants withdrew to the window reluctantly, hovering like flies around a corpse. “Am I supposed to believe you prefer these ancient bones to Kallah’s supple young flesh?”

She drew the edge of her embroidered tasmai away from her body, holding the elegant folds of cloth open just far enough to reveal the shadows of her slack breasts, the dry skin hanging in folds from brittle ribs, the glint of gray hair in the bony recess of her groin. The women around her murmured, puzzled. “Tell me you find me irresistible,” she said softly. “Tell me your blood runs hot with desire at the sight of this body. Could you really perform your duty as a kharvah on this worn carcass?” Her face was contorted in a smile of scorn and resigned loss.

He swallowed hard, and raised his head to stare unblinkingly into her eyes in clear breach of protocol. “Pratha Yaenida, were you to honor me as a member of your House, I would perform my duty in any manner you required, and would do so with pride and pleasure.” He hoped he sounded far more confident than he felt.

Her eyes narrowed as she drew the tasmai wrap back over her skeletal body protectively, her green-veined hands fussing with the intricate folds. “I almost believe you,” she said, and looked out of the windows at thin clouds skimming high in the afternoon blue. The younger women stared at them with perplexed expressions. “From anyone else, I would suspect such an audacious scheme was nothing more than brazen ambition and greed. But not from you.” She glanced back at him, her look as hard and cool as marble. “Explain yourself.”

He looked down at his hands still pressed against his thighs. “I have no one to talk to,” he finally answered. His throat hurt, as if trying to swallow against a stone lodged there.

She snorted. “Is that all?”

“For godsake, isn’t that enough?” he asked, and heard his own voice catch with repressed anger. “I’ve been on Vanar over a year, and I’m dying in this isolation! Living in a charity shelter isn’t all that much different from prison, Yaenida, and at least in prison I had you to talk to.”

“There are no prisons on Vanar.”

“I wasn’t ill, l’amae,” he said, knowing his resentment leaked out, “and the people asking me all those questions weren’t doctors.”

Her eyes watched him impassively as she worried the stem of the pipe with her teeth, squinting as tendrils of smoke escaped from her nostrils and curled past her face. He felt his frustration rising.

“My life is constant hell here. No one dares talk to me; they’re all too nervous even without that Changriti bich’chú stopping me in the street to keep me properly terrified.” She raised an eyebrow at his use of vulgar slang to refer to the Qsayati Vasant Subah, head of the Vanar security police. “Not that it matters since I can’t learn this damned language, with or without my tutor. I’m naeqili te rhowghá, and I know exactly what that means, she’s managed to teach me that much,” he said sharply at her surprise. “I’m in fact worse than the lowest of outcasts: everyone knows who I am, but I’m treated like some dangerous animal set loose by accident. I try and stay out of trouble, sitting around doing nothing until I’m out of my mind, but the instant I go out, I make one mistake after another. I have nowhere else to go, Yaenida, I need your help, please!” He was shouting, leaning forward on his knees as he gestured angrily toward her.

From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the younger women rise, snatching up her staff and striding toward them with protective hostility. He only knew one way to respond, and immediately “turtled,” elbows against knees, his forehead against the back of his hands pressed against the floor. He cursed inwardly, prepared for the blows, and hoped she’d at least spare his head.

He heard rather than saw the argument: a fast whipping of Vanar, one voice sharp, the other cracked with age but strong. Yaenida’s emaciated fist smacked against the cushions. The only words he caught were “Get out.” A fast padding of feet, the glimpse of satin-clad heels past his face, and the sudden silence pressed against his ears.

“Vultures,” Yaenida muttered. “I’m not dead yet.” She grunted as she shifted awkwardly on the pillows, then said, “Nathan, you look ridiculous. That position is for small children. Don’t be so damned idiotic. Get up off the floor and give me a hand.”

He was up instantly and helping her to her feet, her bony talon cold in his hand, her elbow in the other as frail as a stick. She was startlingly light: a decent puff of wind could have carried her off. He half carried her, her legs like stilts as she hobbled, to the wide windowsill, settling her on the ledge overlooking the garden. Crystal and bronze wind chimes hung from the corners of fluted roofs, their clear sound blending with trills of songbirds. The sun shone directly on her face, outlining every crease with unflattering clarity.

“Ah, Nathan,” she said gently, and stroked his cheek, her hand as smooth and dry as parchment. “You do tempt me, you do. Not a kind thing to do to an old woman in my condition.”

He caught her hand and brushed a kiss against her palm before he released it—a purely Hengeli gesture. She smiled and with a graceful motion invited him to sit on the ledge opposite her. When he hesitated, she said with mock seduction, “We’re alone, no one’s watching. We can do whatever we like.”

He wondered just how true that really was but settled his back against the stone across from her, one leg drawn up casually, hands laced around his knee. He was more grateful for this private familiarity and breach of propriety than he could have told her.

“Let me give you some advice,” she said, gazing away from him to the garden below. “I have had five husbands in my life, as well as any number of sahakharae. Sahakharae come and go, as sahakharae do, interchangeable amusing things. All but one of my kharvah have died. He’s old, like me, and we are comfortable with each other. We have had many children, our children have children, and we have even lived long enough to see our grandchildren’s grandchildren. Many dozens of them. He would not understand, an