Master of None (11 page)

“Good,” he said in his own primitive Vanar. “Good you Hengeli very much to say.” He was distantly aware of how drunken his voice sounded, and he struggled to remember the words at all.

Then they sat together awkwardly, isolated by his lack of vocabulary and her stiff reserve.
And I’m going to be married to this woman for what might end up being the rest of my life?
he thought dryly, and wished she hadn’t sat down beside him.

A dancer tottered, then her feet slid out from under her, dragging down the line on either side. Her companions laughed as she crawled drunkenly on hands and knees out of the dance toward the cushions piled around the pillars. Kallah watched them, slapping her palm against one thigh in time with the music, ignoring him as completely as if she had forgotten his existence.

“You,” he said, gesturing with his hand toward Kallah, then at the dancers, “
nartamasi
, dance, no?”

She glanced at him, intrigued, before he remembered it was bad manners for a man to initiate a conversation. Then she shook her head, and said something he didn’t understand. He nodded knowingly, as if he did, while fervently hoping she asked him no questions that would reveal his pretense. After a few more strained moments, Kallah patted his hand and rejoined her friends, to his relief.

He finished his glass, and watched it magically refill as one of his new “sisters” passed by. Almost as a game, he drained one after another, just to see how long it took before it was replenished. Soon the room spun and his ears burned. The skin on his face felt like it was all trying to crawl into a point on the bridge of his nose. He knew he was very drunk, and didn’t care. He hadn’t been drunk in a long time. It was satisfying. He polished off another.

Another dancer went down, and he laughed with the rest, clapping his hands loudly in rhythm to the music. A few of the women turned toward him, faces flushed with the dance and wine. On impulse, he pointed to himself, then toward them questioningly. They laughed, and beckoned playfully for him to join them.

He lurched to his feet, his stomach rebelling at the sudden shift of gravity. Men did not dance with women, he knew, but the astonished delight on the women’s faces told him that the violation of etiquette would be allowed this once. He was drunk, he was the evening’s celebrity, and most important, he was a foreigner. He knew he could be forgiven a good deal for his alienness, and would get away with much more than a native. He pushed the sleeves of his mati up his arms as one of the women slipped the end of his sati between his knees and tied it firmly around his waist to keep him from tripping over it. Gripping the forearms of the women on either side of him, he slowly bounced on the balls of his bare feet in imitation as they linked into the circle, coordinating their steps with the music. The line abruptly jerked, and he felt himself nearly lifted off the floor as the circle moved. Sheer cloth billowed as they kicked and whirled, dozens of feet jingling with gold ankle bracelets, stamping a complex rhythm against the floor.

The shorter woman on his left took up the responsibility of teaching him steps, and the rest rewarded his efforts with cheers and laughter. The musicians played slowly, then gradually faster, accelerating the pace until he felt as if he had somehow become a disembodied part, caught up with the pulse of the dance, his feet remembering steps without his conscious effort. He felt the sweat on his palms making his grasp slippery, and he held on tighter, feeling his partners’ fingers dig into his own arms. The tempo sped up, dancers whifling faster and faster, reaching the limits of their abilities. He concentrated on the movement, not feeling the ache in his shoulders as he was pulled along, the burning in his calves as he pushed himself to dance as fast as he could.

A dancer two down from him missed her step, and he found himself yanked off balance, not realizing he had fallen into a near dream state until it had been broken. He tumbled to the floor, sitting down heavily, exhilarated and exhausted. His wet face suddenly hot and uncomfortable, he laughed with the rest, tangled into a pile of arms and legs and sati. His heightened senses became aware of the smell of sweat and perfume, his rapid heartbeat echoing in his ears, the rainbows of colors through a lingering haze of sweet smoke, and most of all, the touch of women’s hands as they helped him off the floor, their arms around his waist, the heat of their bodies as they balanced him against their hips, half guiding, half carrying him back to his place by Yaenida’s now empty chair.

His excitement subsided as he caught sight of Kallah, frowning disapprovingly in his spinning vision. Music vibrated in the pit of his stomach. An aftertaste of wine with a hint of bile rose at the back of his mouth. He pretended he hadn’t seen her.

He didn’t remember falling asleep, but remembered waking once, knowing it was far late in the night. He lay curled on his side, fists tucked under his chin, his head resting on the firm thigh of a young sahakharae. His neck hurt from being in one position for too long, his cheek damp with sweat. The boy smiled at him, stroking Nathan’s hair from his forehead. He rolled onto his back, distantly aware of his dislike of sahakharae but unwilling to give up his pillow, and glanced around the room through an infant hangover.

Most of the women had gone, and those left were mostly Yaenida’s family. They lounged around on cushions scattered haphazardly across the wide floor in various stages of consciousness, a few sprawled comatose, but most smoking water pipes and talking quietly between themselves. The musicians still played, but the dancers now were men dressed in ornate costumes leaving their young, lithe bodies half naked as they swayed seductively in a complicated spiral, taut muscles undulating. A boy child about two years old, still diapered, imitated the dancers, potbelly bared, chubby hands held splay-fingered above his head as he spun around and around in an erratic circle. A few of the women cheered him on, to the baby’s unmistakable pleasure.

Nathan rolled his head to one side far enough to see his new sister Yronae leaning back against one of her kharvah, Baelam, a rather unattractive, serious-faced young man who kneaded her shoulders with studious attention. Her eyes half closed, she watched two sahakharae, the couple he had seen caressing in the garden, as they wrestled naked but for a single strip of cloth between their legs bound up around their waists. Their hands groped over their smooth, oiled bodies in an almost stylistic ritual, feet shuffling as each sought to overturn the other. Straining muscles stood out in sharp relief.

One slipped, their bodies slapping together, limbs twisting together like snakes mating. The other swung his hip into his opponent, tossing him onto his back. As he fell, he clutched the cloth around the other’s waist, taking him down to the floor with him, their braided hair swung like whips. After a moment’s struggle, he was pinned to the floor, his opponent’s body pressed down on his like a lover. They panted, chests heaving, their open mouths nearly touching. Nathan could clearly see the frustrated desire in their faces as they stared at each other.

Yronae nodded, and they disentangled, bowed, and began again. She glanced at him, her dark eyes glittering with too much alcohol and arousal. When she smiled, it was definitely not a sisterly expression. He smiled back weakly and let his eyes close.

When he woke the second time, he was alone, the room empty and silent. Sunlight through the screens spackled the room with brilliant coins of gold. He groaned. His head pounded with a full-grown hangover, and he badly needed to piss.

“Home sweet home,” he muttered to himself. “I wonder where the toilet is?”

VII

H
E SLEPT FITFULLY PART OF THE MORNING ON THE SMALL SLEEPING
mat he had been relegated to in the boy’s communal room, his head bludgeoned by a now monster hangover and his stomach in serious rebellion. By midmorning, the headache had lessened to a point where he could stagger toward the men’s baths to vomit.

He still felt bad enough that he didn’t mind the sahakharae’s eager hands caressing his body with curiosity, almost grateful to let them carry him as though he had no will of his own. They soaked him in a huge pool of near scalding water, scrubbing his head and body like a baby. It took all his effort to concentrate on not throwing up rather than on the language, their conversation no more to him than nonsense sounds. He hadn’t even objected when they lingered over his genitals, inspecting the gold hair of his groin with more curiosity than titillation.

When they lifted him weak-kneed from the bath and stretched him belly down on the thin mattress on the floor, one of them pressed a cup of dark, syrupy liquid into his hands with an encouraging smile and a few gestures. Nathan grimaced at the bitter taste, but within minutes the pain lessened noticeably and the nausea was gone.

A soft warmth spread through his body as one of the naked sahakharae, an older man with bulging arms and strong fingers, settled himself onto Nathan’s buttocks, kneeling with one leg on either side, and began massaging his back and shoulders. He felt the man’s weight pressing the bones of his pelvis into the thin mat.

Nathan’s mind drifted, and he realized with a dull start he had been thoroughly drugged. He twisted his head to glance over his shoulder at the man kneading the aches from his body, distantly admiring the way the sahakharae’s muscles rippled all the way up his arms and across his smooth chest. Beside him, a younger sahakharae sat with slender arms balanced across his knees. The naked sahakharae smiled, even teeth shockingly white, a knowing expression in his dark eyes. Remotely, Nathan realized the sahakharae could do anything at all with him and not only was he incapable of stopping them, he couldn’t even work up enough energy to care. He sighed dreamily, rolling his head back on his arms, and closed his eyes.

By the time Yaenida sent for him in the late afternoon, he had been dressed, his new blue sati properly folded, wrapped, and tied around his body. His nails were cleaned and trimmed, and now that it had grown out long enough, his hair was braided into a short queue reaching nearly to his shoulder blades. He had eaten a full meal, and both the hangover and the drug had long vanished, leaving a feeling of well-being in their wake. He walked down the long corridor, the weight of a solid gold bangle one of the sahakharae insisted he wear around his left ankle making him hyperaware of the way the folds of his sati kicked out in front of him. He didn’t feel quite as good when Yronae slid open the doors.

The Dhikar chief Vasant Subah turned as he entered, her hands clasped casually behind her back, and merely raised an eyebrow as he flinched away from her reflexively. He wondered, not for the first time, if she had been the would-be assassin in the night. She smiled at him coldly, then bowed slightly to the two women sitting cross-legged on pillows arranged on a low raised dais in front of the massive low table. One of them was Yaenida Nga’esha.

The other was Eraelin dva Hadatha Changriti.

Yaenida’s daughter politely directed Qsayati Subah from the room and closed the door behind them, leaving him alone with only the two women.

He stopped three paces away from the two women, hands together, crossed thumbs to his chest, and mumbled his greetings. “Tah byáti, l’amaée.” Managing to wobble only slightly as he brushed the folds of his sati apart with his foot, he knelt with his legs tucked under him, palms against his thighs, and bowed from the waist.

When he straightened, he looked up at the slender Changriti pratha h’máy sitting rigidly erect next to the old woman. Wearing a dark burgundy kirtiya and saekah trimmed with gold thread, Eraelin Changriti had one leg curled under her, her hand resting on the knee of the other in a position Nathan could now recognize as one used only by higher-ranked women. She glared at him with narrowed eyes, her face with flattened cheekbones making her expression harsh. He could see the unflattering similarity between her and her daughter.

Her scowl reminded him eye contact was another of those Vanar hierarchical formulae he had yet to master. But he dared not avert his gaze abruptly enough to risk being considered tactless. Nuances were all-important. He turned back to Yaenida, looked slightly past her at an angle just enough to be polite, trying to appear attentive without looking directly at either of them.

The younger woman spoke to Yaenida in rapid Vanar, her caustic voice unpleasant. Yaenida listened politely as she puffed on her water pipe. When she had finished, the old woman turned to Nathan.

“My
tulyah
, l’amae Eraelin dva Hadatha ek Ushahayam Changriti, would like to impress upon you the fact that she is the pratha h’máy of the Changriti Family, one of the great Nine Houses.” Yaenida regarded him with a bland expression he couldn’t read.

“I already know that, Pratha Yaenida.”

Her smile barely twitched the ends of her thin mouth. “I believe the point she wishes to make is that even though you are now Nga’esha, you still do not and will never have sufficient status to sully her personal name with your barbaric accent. When you are required to speak to her at all, you will address her as
jah’nari l’amae
.”

He glanced at the younger woman watching him closely. “Hae’m, jah’nari l’amae,” he said, doing his best to inject a note of earnestness into his struggle with the subtle pronunciation.

His effort went unappreciated. Eraelin frowned, replying in a swift rush of words. Yaenida nodded gravely, listening until the woman was finished. As Yaenida spoke to her quietly, the younger woman’s face grew darker with anger. She snorted when Yaenida had finished, then glared at Nathan as she replied. He caught only a scattering of words, not enough to understand but sufficient for the sense of alarm in his gut to increase. Yaenida sighed as the younger woman concluded her tirade.

“I’ve explained that while you are currently studying Vanar, you are not yet capable of conversing in our language. Although I’ve assured her you will be competent enough soon, she has expressed doubt you will ever be sufficiently fluent. She feels this proof you might inject an undesirable genetic trait into the Changriti line. But even if you do have the intelligence to learn our language, she considers you too old and too foreign to genuinely adapt to Vanar customs, and are thus unfit for marriage to her heir.”