“Ah!” said Micah, smiling. “Yes, there he is. Rafe is very kind, I think. He’s probably helping that man.”
Kaab turned sharply to Micah, but there was nothing except innocent delight in her expression. “Do you . . . like him?” Kaab asked, wishing that her Xanamwiinik tutor had been more explicit in the nuances of such terms.
Micah nodded energetically. “Of course! He’s like my cousins, only he doesn’t care about gardens. He loves equations. And distances! I think you should talk to him about your home, and how far away it is. If it takes me a day from the farm, and the farm is twenty miles away . . . how long did it take to travel here?”
“Ninety days,” Kaab said.
Micah’s eyes widened. “Then you’re at least 1,800 miles away! If you were traveling by horse. But no, you came from the sea. I must ask Rafe how fast boats go. But you are from very far away! How did you travel so far? I’m sure he’d like to know.”
“I’m sure he would,” Kaab said dryly, thinking back to his clumsy interrogation earlier. This Rafe was very interested in things she was quite sure her family did not want him to know. Which made him a good person to stick close to. The Balam couldn’t afford to have their monopoly on chocolate trade with the Land threatened. Not with things as they were back home, with the Tullan army just waiting for an excuse to attack.
“Who is he still helping over there?” she asked Micah, just for something to say.
Micah frowned. “I don’t know. I think they’re arguing now. But he is rubbing his hands on his thighs. Our friend Joshua says that he only does that when he wants to kiss someone.”
Kaab laughed, but she felt an odd lurch. Even from this distance she could sense an intensity between the two men. Perhaps Micah was right.
“But why,” Micah said, “does he want to kiss someone he’s arguing with?” She sighed. “I like Rafe,” she repeated. “But I don’t think he makes very much sense sometimes.”
Kaab thought of how many long months had passed since she had kissed anyone. Of the games she had played with Citlali, thinking that nothing too serious could come of them. She had seen quite a few pretty girls since she’d arrived (though she had to admit the University seemed remarkably devoid of that particular enticement). “He ought to kiss him,” she said.
Micah wrinkled her nose. “Cousin Daniel tried to kiss me once. I hit him on the head with a turnip and he never tried again.”
Kaab laughed until she had to wipe her eyes. “I think that was very wise,” she said.
• • •
Uncle Chuleb was waiting for Kaab when she returned home, kneeling with a brush and open codex upon a reed mat he had laid out in the courtyard garden. The gum trees, brought at great expense from home by the previous generation, were lit in the late evening chill by a series of oil lamps in sconces that hung from the trees on long ropes of finely braided henequen. A natural spring—almost certainly why her ancestors had bought the land here—fed a series of man-made streams and waterfalls that made the house feel like an oasis of home in a wide desert. Muscovy ducks and other waterfowl kept to the ponds and beneath overhanging rocks. Her uncle had arranged himself beside the largest waterfall, beside which grew the squat bread nut trees they kept wrapped in gauze throughout the long winter. He looked a picture of refined nobility, with his hair arranged in two loops beneath a stiff jade-beaded head cloth, and a mantle printed with the family pattern draped over his chest and left arm. She imagined he was reviewing the records of the recent shipment, but when she approached she saw that he was in fact composing in the family book, the formal record of the history of the Balam.
“Niece,” he said, when she had come close enough to acknowledge. “You took your time returning. Did you learn anything interesting?”
“Much, Uncle,” she said, and knelt across from him. “What are you recording in red and black?”
Uncle Chuleb did not buy a note of her innocent tone, but it amused him. “Your arrival, dearest niece. For it comes to me that I might have cause to write more about you before long. And what did you learn?”
“That saffron costs a great deal, but in abundance smells of smelted copper and annatto.”
Her uncle smiled. “You intrigue me. I look forward to the gilded hares at tomorrow’s feast. And what else?”
“That there are great conflicts between the nobility and their intellectuals, who are not the same here. That some of their intellectuals are very interested in the mysteries of the Four Hundred Siblings and the secrets of moving great distances across the seas. I very much doubt that any of them have found it. But it seemed to me that if they do, there is a chance that their merchants might use such knowledge to take their own ships to our ports.”
She did not spell out the rest of the implications. Chuleb, a minor Kinwiinik noble who had married into the family very young, understood them as well as she. With the monopoly broken by the Locals themselves, the other trading families might use that to invalidate the Balam mandate to the port. And some of these Trading families had lived for generations with the Tullan, whose insatiable political ambitions now threatened even the southern coastal cities of the Kinwiinik. Formally, all Traders owed their first loyalty to other Traders of all families. Practically, their relationships were more complex. Local ships in trading waters had the potential to break the delicate political balance in the lands of the gods. It could bring a war that would destroy Balam power—and possibly the autonomy of the Kinwiinik themselves. She remembered the stories of Nopalco, the river that ran red for thirteen rotations of the great calendar wheel. And she thought—of course she did—of her role in bringing on this crisis. If her irresponsible actions contributed to the destruction of her people, her home . . .
She shook her head, a violent negation.
“It is good that you brought this to me, Niece. I take it that you met one of the students interested in this subject?”
“He’s Fenton’s son.”
Chuleb did not look unduly surprised. “And perhaps you can continue to cultivate his acquaintance?”
“Of course, Uncle.”
“Good. Just as a precaution, Niece. I have been aware of the current climate in the University, but the men in charge are conservative and easily threatened. They would rather eat stones than learn something new. As long as we encourage them, the few revolutionaries like young Fenton won’t have enough support to make their new discoveries.”
“Ah,” Kaab said, and felt a little ill. It was best for her family, of course, to support the Board of Governors against the students. But she had felt Rafe and Micah’s enthusiasm. Rafe, at least, would understand some of the implications of his discovery. Micah clearly lived for her equations and the joy of solving them. But what was necessary was not always just. Had her parents not struggled to make her understand that? Even sick with the illness that would kill her, Ixmoe had spoken to her daughter with the lessons of the elders: Passion in excess is as much of a vice as passivity, my little bee. You must not recklessly waste the heat of your head-spirit, or you will attract the punishment of the gods for powers not held in sacred moderation.
Her uncle noticed her preoccupation. “Are you well, Kaab?”
She smiled, with an effort. “I was recalling my mother.”
“May
