The day the ship sailed from Merr Ono, he was in her cabin telling her about his earliest days with Settsimaksimin but broke off and asked her why she avoided the cabin passengers when she was so much more suited to their society than those… ah… no doubt goodhearted men in the crew; he got a cool gaze that looked into his souls and stripped his pretension bare, or so he thought.
After several moments of silence, she sighed. “I don’t like him. No, that’s not right. He turns my stomach. I’ll be polite to him at supper, but I won’t stay around him any longer than I have to.”
“Why?” He’s a cultivated intelligent man. His poems are praised from Andurya Durat to Kukurul for their power and innovation.”
“Have you read any of them?”
“Yes!”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree. I’ll grant you a certain technical facility, but there’s nothing in them.”
“You can’t have read Winter Rising.”
“Ah! Dan, I’ve spent the better part of a hundred winters doing little else but reading.” She pushed her fingers through her duckfeather curls. “I read Winter Rising and came closer to burning a book than I thought I ever would. Especially the part when he mourns the death of a servant’s child. His family chern lies half a day’s journey downriver from the Pottery. I have swept up too many leavings from his justice,” the word ended in an angry hiss, “to swallow his mouthings about suffering he himself is responsible for. I don’t care how splendid the poem is,” she shook her head, put her hand on his arm, “I’ll admit the skill, but I can’t stand the man. And I can’t forget the man in the poet.” She moved away from him. “Play with him all you want, Dan, but keep a grip on your skin and don’t take any commissions from him. The Jade King doesn’t send openfisted fools to negotiate trade rights.” She dropped into a chair and sat with her hands clasped loosely in her lap. “If you’re going to keep traveling with me, you might as well understand something. I despise him and all his kind. If the world wagged another way and it would make any real difference to his landfolk, I’d be the first to boot him out of his silky nest and set him to digging potatoes, where he might be useful and certainly less destructive.”
“Brann, do you really think your cherished sailors would be any better, put in his place? It would be chaos, far worse than anything the Envoy had done. I’ve seen what happens when the beasts try to drive the cart. He has tradition and culture to restrain him, they’ve nothing but instinct.”
“Beasts, Dan?”
“By their acts shall you know them.”
“By their acts shall you know their masters.”
“Aren’t they to be held responsible for what they do?”
“Give them responsibility before you demand it from them. Ahhh, this is stupid, Dan. We’re arguing abstracts and that’s bound to be an exercise in futility.” She laughed. “No more, not now. I wish you could have seen my home. Arth Slya isn’t what it was, even so… I was born a free woman of free folk. We managed our own lives and bowed our heads to no man, not even the King of Croaldhu. If I had the power, I’d make the whole world live that way.”
“You sound like Maksim.”
“That’s interesting. Do you know what he’s doing in Cheonea? Tell me about it.”
He shrugged. “It’s foolishness. Rabble is rabble. Changing the name doesn’t change the smell.”
Brann snorted. “Shuh! Dan, I know you sons of Phras, you and your honor, it’s a fine honor that scorns to touch a loom or a chisel but makes an art of killing. I loved your grandfather, Ahzurdan; Chandro was a splendid man as long as he was away from Phras, one who knew how to laugh at the world and how to laugh at himself, but not in Bandrabahr. When he went home, he turned Phrasi from his toes to his buckteeth. You might think that’s a proper thing to do, but me…
hunh! I went with him once, the last trip we made together. I remember I said something about a pompous old fool strutting down the street, a joke, he’d laughed at things like that a hundred times before. He hit me. You know, it was funny. I just stood there gaping at him. He started calling me names. Vicious names. Then he tried to hit me again. That’s not a thing I tolerate, no indeed. Well, there was a bit of a brawl with Yaril and Jaril rallying round. Last I saw of him, Chandro was laid out yelling, some meat gone from one buttock and a thigh, a broken shoulder bone and a bruised belly where I missed my kick or he might have been your uncle not your grandfather. There was a ship lifting anchor right then, I made it onboard a jump and a half ahead of the kashiks. Never saw him again. Sad. After that I came back to Jade Halimm, apprenticed myself to a potter and settled into clay and contentment.”
By the time they sailed from Halonetts, beginning the last leg of the journey to Kukurul, Ahzurdan was sweating and nightmare-ridden, trying to fight his desire for dreamsmoke. He wallowed in despair; he’d thought having the demonic Brann around would somehow cure him of this need, but she grated on his nerves so much she was driving him to the dreams to escape her. In spite of this, he couldn’t stay away from her.
She listened with such totality it made a kind of magic. He was uneasy under this intense scrutiny, he rebelled against it now and then, but it was also extraordinarily seductive. He began to need her ear worse than his drug; they broke for meals and sleep, but he came drifting back as soon as he could, and, after a few hesitations, was lost once more in his memories. Bit by bit he began telling her things he’d made himself forget, things about growing up torn between a father who wanted him to join his older half brothers in the business and a mother whose scorn of business was profound, who’d been sold into marriage to pay the debts of her family (a minor branch of the ancient and noble Amara Sept). Tadar Chandro’s son bought her to gain greater prestige among the powers of Bandrabahr, got a son on her, then proceeded to ignore her. She hated him for taking her, she loathed his touch, she hated him almost as much for leaving her alone, for his insulting lack of interest in her person or her sex. But she knew better than to release any of her venom beyond the walls of her husband’s compound, he wouldn’t need much excuse to repudiate her, since he’d already got all the good out of her he was going to get, no, she saved her diatribes for her son’s ears.