Ledana shook her head. Out where she lived, everyone knew the basics of firearms. She was a fair shot herself. “Come on,” she said, “let’s find our seats before everyone swarms in.”
Shkan made an assenting noise, and she preceded him into the auditorium.
The only thing Ledana didn’t like about the Shadow Theater was the seats. She wished they’d gone for less authenticity with the damned wooden seats and instead installed cushions. But she loved the hanging lanterns and the wooden grilles with their carved shapes depicting scenes out of Shparoi folklore, from jackalope chorales to dawn fortresses shattered by archaic cannons.
After they took their seats, Shkan listened with a critical ear to the jumble of last-second rehearsal coming from the pit orchestra. “I’d forgotten that you tune to a different standard scale,” he remarked.
“Does it bother you?” Ledana asked.
“No,” he said, but she could tell he wasn’t sure.
Then the bells rang and the lights in the auditorium dimmed, signaling the start of the performance. For the next two hours, Ledana almost forgot she was here with a man, and one she was determined to bed, at that. Instead, she was captivated by the way the actors contorted themselves and their props before the lights to form shadow figures against the back of the stage with its ever-shifting colors.
Tonight’s story was about two lovers and the quest that one of them underwent to reunite himself with the other man, only for the two of them to be transformed into a flower-offering to the gods. For the flowers, a new set of curtains in green swished across the back of the stage, spangled with blossoms made of black sequins and dark crystal. Ledana was dazzled by the stage lights playing over them.
On reflection, maybe she should have picked something with a happy ending if she hoped to get laid, except she loved the building so, and shadow plays in general.
When the lights came back on and people began to file out of the auditorium, Shkan raised Ledana’s hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to it. “I didn’t realize you liked tragedies so much,” he said, grinning. “Should I take this as an omen? Or do you just like very flexible people?”
Ledana didn’t bother hiding her delight at the overture. She only hoped he was as good in bed as he was handsome. “It’s the only shadow play running here for the next two months.” She slipped into the high language for “month.”
His eyes crinkled.
“Besides,” Ledana said as she followed Shkan back into the foyer, “I don’t believe in tragedies, or omens.” No sense beating around the bush. “How do you feel about siring a kid? Because I know a few contortions myself.”
Shkan linked arms with her and smiled.
Author’s Note
I like Jedao’s mom Garach Ledana very much, but I only feel a little sorry for killing her off so ignominiously. I am afraid that when you slaughter as many characters as I do, you get inured to it.
By the way, when I was a kid growing up in Texas, I was convinced jackalopes were real. The hexarchate may be full of cockamamie Asians in space, but since I’m a Texan, some of those cockamamie Asians are cockamamie Asian Texans in space. (I take a particular fiendish delight, when people ask me where I’m from, in saying, “Houston.”) As for cockamamie Asians who like guns, I am reminded of the time I took a semester of riflery at college. Despite being surrounded by great white hunter types, the best shot in the class was a five-foot nothing Asian woman who weighed maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, who dimed the target every time. I took vicarious pleasure in her skill (I was the worst shot in the class).
By the way, the deal with this family and their geese is that in the very first draft of Ninefox Gambit, Jedao was an out-and-out Hollywood-style psychopath (I have never claimed to have good taste in tropes) and one of the dreadful flashbacks involved him vivisecting a live goose as a boy. I had the good sense to cut that scene, but in its honor, my family has roast goose (humanely killed, we hope) for dinner at Thanksgiving.
Honesty
NIDANA WAS FOUR years old when she learned what her second-oldest brother’s name meant.
Jedao was nine at the time, still skinny—certainly skinnier than Rodao, the oldest, who was fourteen and tall, and already broad at the shoulders and chest. Jedao and Ro both had to go to school. Nidana couldn’t wait until she was old enough to go to school with them. Ro said that she should enjoy not having to study while she could, but Nidana didn’t see that what Ro did with the slates was all that different from all the games she played on them. Plus he got to go out and play with his friends at school. Ro said that wasn’t what you did at school, which was very confusing.
“‘Honesty’?” Nidana said, tugging at Jedao’s shirt while he was cleaning Mom’s glassware. Nidana knew she was supposed to be careful, so careful, in this room, even more careful when someone was working with the shiny glassware. But she was also curious, and she couldn’t wait. “Why did Mom name you ‘honesty’?”
Jedao’s eyes softened as he put down the beaker so he could ruffle her hair. “Beats me,” he said. “I have always had the sneaking suspicion that she picked names out of one of those adventure novels she likes to read. I haven’t been able to find evidence, though.”
They were speaking in Shparoi, their birth-tongue. Their mother was Shparoi. So was Rodao’s sire, and Jedao’s, although not Nidana’s. Most people realized that Nidana and Jedao were related, because they had inherited their mother’s tilted smile and her eyes. The three of them had learned the high language second, not first. Rodao spoke the high language flawlessly, although he refused to say why it was so important to him, putting Nidana off with, “You’ll find out someday.” But Jedao never would lose the local Shparoi dialect’s drawl.
“I can help,” Nidana said, brightening at the thought of helping one of her brothers with something. She was starting to be able to read without pictures, although pictures were better.
“If you find it, let me know,” Jedao said. He frowned at the beaker. “There’s still a speck on this. You’d better go, Nidana, before Mom decides that you’re old enough to learn how to do this.”
She went.
The next day, she had not found evidence in any of the books she could reach. (She had also narrowly avoided pulling down a bookcase on herself, although she was oblivious to this fact.) But she decided that she could find something else to be helpful with, and set off after Jedao. Like everyone in the heptarchate, she had developed a keen sense of passing time from an early age. She might be able to meet him on the way home from school.
They lived at the edge of town—not even properly a town, Ro had remarked once—and Ro and Jedao hiked to a stop where a flitter picked them up with some other local kids. Jedao had taught Nidana the route over the course of weekends, almost certainly without Mom knowing. Definitely without Ro knowing. Mom wouldn’t have cared—she let all of them explore the surroundings however they pleased—but Ro disapproved of an awful lot of things.
Nidana had a good sense of direction, something else she shared with Jedao, and she knew to wear a jacket and bring water and something to eat. Jedao always made her lunch in the morning because Mom tended to forget. But that meant that she had a rucksack with snacks and meat pastries. (The rucksack also communicated its location to the household computer system at all times, something she wouldn’t learn until she was six. Mom might be terrible at feeding people on time, but she liked making sure no one got lost.)