“They’ve let it take over,” Tendlathe said. “And that’s why we—why Hara can’t sign the Concord.” He took a deep breath. “The point I was making is, I think Colde’s father was right. Kids shouldn’t be taught this, not the way we were—I think that’s what ruined Haliday, Raven, and it’ll ruin you, too, if you’re not careful. We need to be very careful that we understand the difference between fact and truth, and I’m not having a child of mine exposed to that.”
Warreven stared at him for a moment. They’d had this argument before, in one form or another—it defined the basic difference between Traditionalists and Modernists, and Warreven had been a Modernist from the day he’d walked out on Temelathe’s offer—but this was the most extreme version he’d heard Tendlathe espouse. “Well, if you don’t go to the off-worlders, I doubt you’ll have that problem.”
“What do you mean?” Tendlathe’s face was tight and set behind the narrow beard.
Warreven sighed, already regretting the words. “Just what I said. Aldess has had four miscarriages already, not a live birth yet in, what, eighteen bioyears? She’s not stupid, she’s never been stupid about this sort of thing, and if she says she needs help from the off-worlders, then I’d trust her.”
“Then you won’t help me.”
“I won’t try to talk her out of it,” Warreven said.
“You never liked her,” Tendlathe said.
“No, I don’t,” Warreven answered, “but I think she’s right.”
“I might’ve known you’d be jealous,” Tendlathe said. He sounded remote, almost thoughtful—you would have said calm, Warreven thought, except for the grip of his hand on the arm of his chair that made his knuckles stand out white against the gold of his skin.
“I’m not jealous—”
“It was you who turned me down.”
Warreven took a deep breath, no longer bothering to keep control of his temper. “I said I wouldn’t marry you, and I wouldn’t change my sex. That’s my right, under law and custom, to say what I am, and I made my choice to be a man. And I would still have slept with you. Then.”
Something ugly writhed across Tendlathe’s face, and for an instant Warreven thought he’d gone too far. He let his hand slide down the stem of the wineglass, ready to smash it into an improvised dagger. It was a trick he’d learned in the wrangwys bars and dance houses, never expected to use in Temelathe’s house—Then Tendlathe slammed his hand against the arm of his chair, the sound very loud in the quiet space, and Warreven let himself relax.
“I’m not wry-abed,” Tendlathe said, through clenched teeth.
“Fine,” Warreven answered. But I am. He let those words hang, unspoken, not needing to be spoken, set the undamaged glass carefully on the table beside the half-full jug, and pushed himself to his feet. “We both made choices, Ten. Live with it.”
Tendlathe looked away, tight-lipped, said nothing. Warreven hesitated for a moment, wishing there were something he could say that would bring back the old days, said at last, “Good night.” Tendlathe muttered something in return. Warreven sighed, and turned away, letting himself out into the cool dark of the garden.
~
Player: (Hara) an off-worlder who is involved in trade, or who is willing to pay for sexual favors; not a common term outside of Bonemarche arid assimilated areas.
Trade: (Hara) specifically, the semi-organized business of sex (paid for in money or favors) between off-worlders and indigenes of either legal gender; because these transactions take place outside the normal social systems, and involve unusually large sums of money and/or metal as inducement, an indigene in trade, whether a man or a woman, is not necessarily considered to be a prostitute. By extension, the term also covers indigenes and off-worlders who facilitate the buying and selling of sexual favors, and the various permits that allow off-worlders to stay on Hara.
2
Warreven
Lightning flickered beyond the windows, too far away as yet to hear the thunder. Warreven counted the seconds anyway, to fifteen, and then to twenty—more than eight kilometers away, too far to worry about—then dragged his attention back to the courtroom. No one had noticed the lapse: the judges—one from each of the clans involved in the case and a man from the White Watch to arbitrate—were still murmuring over their note boards, heads close together, bodies inclined toward the center. Behind them, the notice board displayed the particulars of the case in letters and a machine-read strip for the off-worlders that flashed brighter than the lightning. Warreven wasn’t wired; he looked instead toward the table where the brokers were waiting. Beyond them, he could see the IDCA agents and their advocate, Dinan Taskary, punctiliously respectful in his formal suit; they were technically the greater danger to his client, but he was more concerned with the brokers. All three of them—all men, or maybe the third, the slight one who wore no jewelry, was only passing—were sweating, and that was a good sign. They were all indigenes, Green Watchmen, two Maychilders and an Aldman; if they were sweating, it was not from the heat, but from worry.
Thunder grumbled, and Warreven glanced again toward the window. The storm was getting closer, a darker band of cloud shouldering up beneath the gray outriders, blue-black against the orange tiles of the roofs of Ferryhead on the far side of the harbor. As he watched, lightning flashed again, a jagged, multi-forked bolt from cloud to ground. He counted again and reached fifteen before he heard the thunder.
One of the judges looked up at the sound, an older woman, dressed in an off-world shirt and narrow trousers, but with strands of shell and glass beads woven into her graying hair. She beckoned to the nearest clerk, and said, “Lights, please.”
The young man nodded and crossed to the central podium, where he fiddled with the room controls. The lights came up strongly, blazing to life in the inverted bowls of the hanging lamps, and threw a distorted reflection of the courtroom across the lower half of the window. The clouds still visible in the upper half looked even darker by contrast.
Warreven stared at the reflection, picking out his own image—common enough, distinguishable only by position and by the loose mane of hair—from among the line of lawyers and advocates and the brokers and seraalistes that filled the spectators’ seats at the back of the room. In the imperfect mirror, the groups of people waiting for their cases to come up looked like shapes in a kaleidoscope, the bright colors of the indigenes’ traditional clothes vivid against the duller off-world palette. By contrast, the three judges behind their tall bench looked like a painting formally composed, the triangle of bodies leaning together over the one man’s noteboard, blending, through the brown arms out-stretched to balance the women on the ends, with the polished wood below.
“Æ, Raven.”
The voice was barely a murmur, but Warreven winced and turned his eyes back to the courtroom.
“Are you all right?”
Warreven nodded, knowing perfectly well why the question had been asked, and made a show of recalling something on his noteboard. The Stane judge, who as the White Watch spokesman had ultimate authority over the court, was a stickler for the proprieties and would be looking for an excuse to throw the case to IDCA. Under the cover of the gesture and the flickering text, he answered, “Sorry.”