Daniel Abraham - THE

Daniel Abraham

THE

PRICE OF

SPRING

Books by Abraham

(The Long Price Quartet):

A Shadow in Summer

A Betrayal in Winter

An Autumn War

The Price of Spring

THE PRICE OF SPRING

Daniel Abraham

To Scarlet Abraham

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For the last time on this project, I reflect on the people who have

helped me get to the end of it. I owe debts of service and gratitude to

Walter Jon Williams, Melinda Snodgrass, Emily Mah, S. M. Stirling, Ian

Tregillis, Ty Franck, George R. R. Martin, Terry England, and all the

members of the New Mexico Critical Mass Workshop. I owe thanks to Connie

Willis and the Clarion West '98 class for starting the story off a

decade ago. Also to my agents Shawna McCarthy, who kept me on the

project, and Danny Bator, who has sold these books in foreign lands and

beyond my wildest dreams; to James Frenkel for his patience, faith, and

uncanny ability to improve a manuscript; to Tom Doherty and the staff at

Tor, who have made these into books with which I am deeply pleased.

Thank you all.

THE

PRICE OF

SPRING

PROLOG

Eiah Machi, physician and daughter of the Emperor, pressed her fingers

gently on the woman's belly. The swollen flesh was tight, veins marbling

the skin blue within brown. The woman appeared for all the world to be

in the seventh month of a pregnancy. She was not.

"It's because my mother's father was a Westlander," the woman on the

table said. "I'm a quarter Westlander, so when it came, it didn't affect

me like it did other girls. Even at the time, I wasn't as sick as

everyone else. You can't tell because I have my father's eyes, but my

mother's were paler and almost round."

Eiah nodded, running practiced fingertips across the flesh, feeling

where the skin was hot and where it was cool. She took the woman's hand,

bending it gently at the wrist to see how tight her tendons were. She

reached inside the woman's sex, probing where only lovers had gone

before. The man who stood at his wife's side looked uncomfortable, but

Eiah ignored him. He was likely the least important person in the room.

"Eiah-cha," Parit, the regular physician, said, "if there is anything I

can do..."

Eiah took a pose that both thanked and refused. Parit bowed slightly.

"I was very young, too," the woman said. "When it happened. Just six

summers old."

"I was fourteen," Eiah said. "How many months has it been since you bled?"

"Six," the woman said as if it were a badge of honor. Eiah forced

herself to smile.

"Is the baby well?" the man asked. Eiah considered how his hand wrapped

his wife's. How his gaze bored into her own. Desperation was as thick a

scent in the room as the vinegar and herb smoke.

"It's hard to say," Eiah said. "I haven't had the luck to see very many

pregnancies. Few of us have these days. But even if things are well so

far, birthing is a tricky business. Many things can go wrong."

"He'll be fine," the woman on the table asserted; the hand not being

squeezed bloodless by her man caressed the slight pooch of her belly.

"It's a boy," she went on. "We're going to name him Loniit."

Eiah placed a hand on the woman's arm. The woman's eyes burned with

something like joy, something like fever. The smile faltered for less

than a heartbeat, less than the time it took to blink. So at least some

part of the woman knew the truth.

"Thank you for letting me make the examination," Eiah said. "You're very

kind. And I wish the best of luck to you both."

"All three," the woman corrected.

"All three," Eiah said.

She walked from the room while Parit arranged his patient. The

antechamber glowed by the light of a small lantern. Worked stone and

carved wood made the room seem more spacious than it was. Two bowls, one

of old wine and another of fresh water, stood waiting. Eiah washed her

hands in the wine first. The chill against her fingers helped wash away

the warmth of the woman's flesh. The sooner she could forget that, the

better.

Voices came from the examining room like echoes. Eiah didn't listen.

When she put her hands into the water, the wine turned it pink. She

dried herself with a cloth laid by for the purpose, moving slowly to be

sure both the husband and wife were gone before she returned.

Parit was washing down the slate table with vinegar and a stiff brush.

It was something Eiah had done often when she'd first apprenticed to the

physicians, all those years ago. There were fewer apprentices now, and

Parit didn't complain.

"Well?" he asked.

"There's no child in her," Eiah said.

"Of course not," he said. "But the signs she does show. The pooled

blood, the swelling. The loss of her monthly flow. And yet there's no

slackening in her joints, no shielding in her sex. It's a strange mix."

"I've seen it before," Eiah said.

Parit stopped. His hands took a pose of query. Eiah sighed and leaned

against one of the high stools.

"Desire," Eiah said. "That's all. Want something that you can't have

badly enough, and the longing becomes a disease."

Her fellow physician and onetime lover paused for a moment, considering

Eiah's words, then looked down and continued his cleaning.

"I suppose we should have said something," he said.

"There's nothing to say," Eiah said. "They're happy now, and they'll be

sad later. What good would it do us to hurry that?"

Parit gave the half-smile she'd known on him years before, but didn't

look up to meet her gaze.

"There is something to be said in favor of truth," he said.

"And there's something to be said for letting her keep her husband for

another few weeks," Eiah said.

"You don't know that he'll turn her out," he said.

Eiah took a pose that accepted correction. They both knew it was a

gentle sarcasm. Parit chuckled and poured a last rinse over the slate

table: the rush of the water like a fountain trailed off to small, sharp

drips that reminded Eiah of wet leaves at the end of a storm. Parit

pulled out a stool and sat, his hands clasped in his lap. Eiah felt a

sudden awkwardness that hadn't been there before. She was always better

when she could inhabit her role. If Parit had been bleeding from the

neck, she would have been sure of herself. That he was only looking at

her made her aware of the sharpness of her face, the gray in her hair

that she'd had since her eighteenth summer, and the emptiness of the

house. She took a formal pose that offered gratitude. Perhaps a degree

more formal than was needed.

"Thank you for sending for me," Eiah said. "It's late, and I should be

getting back."

"To the palaces," he said. There was warmth and humor in his voice.

There always had been. "You could also stay here."

Eiah knew she should have been tempted at least. The glow of old love

and half-recalled sex should have wafted in her nostrils like mulled

wine. He was still lovely. She was still alone.

"I don't think I could, Parit-kya," she said, switching from the formal

to the intimate to pull the sting from it.

"Why not?" he asked, making it sound as if he was playing.

"There are a hundred reasons," Eiah said, keeping her tone as light as

his. "Don't make me list them."

He chuckled and took a pose that surrendered the game. Eiah felt herself

relax a degree, and smiled. She found her bag by the door and slung its

strap over her shoulder.

"You still hide behind that," Parit said.