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