back against the wall, Psal clutched the child with both hands now. “The other clans, Great Queen. Such damaged little ones…they allow to live. Mother, this one will live. This one should live.”
He could give no valid reason for wanting the child to be spared. Certainly a vague hope of the child’s future usefulness was not enough to disdain the Wheel clan’s age-old edict. Male children born ill, damaged, or deformed were killed. Mercy generally did not triumph over the cruel tradition. Psal’s father—nature-blessed Nahas, chief of the Nahas longhouse, king of all the Wheel Clans—had mercifully allowed Psal to live.
Yet once again, Psal told himself, the error of that mercy is being shown to all.
Psal pushed past shame. “They will not think you weak, Father. Nahas, this child might prove valuable to our clan. As I have, Father. Am I not valuable, Father?” Tears clouded his sight as he waited for the king’s answer. “Am I not loved, Father?” He wiped his eyes with his forearm and pointed to his clubfoot, the mark of his ignominy. He lifted the twisted shriveled left leg, a thing he always hid. “I have lived, Nahas, and have proven myself. Am I not a competent studier, Father, deft in all tongues, skillful in all natural lore including tower science?”
The child in his arms gasped for air, a half-hearted fitful cry, hurting its own cause. Yet it must have desired life for it turned its head from Cyrt’s dagger and buried its face in Psal’s black studier’s tunic as it grasped his thumb.
The king spoke to Cyrt and not to his Firstborn, his voice impatient, but not—unlike Hinis—cold. “Cyrt, take the child.”
Darkness as Psal closed his eyes. Darkness as he pressed his back against the wall, wishing it would swallow both himself and the child. Light again when he lifted his eyelids and looked on Narena. Narena—she who eyed all damaged children with a shudder—glared at him in silent scorn, and Betri…now clutched…now asked, “Studier, can you not see the child is suffering?”
“Firstborn, you shame your father. Be more of a man.” Although gentle and playful toward healthy children, Cyrt never showed mercy to Damaged Ones. Only Ephan had somehow earned his begrudging respect. He spoke now to Ephan, who had hurried down from the rampart. “King’s Favorite, tell the Firstborn, this isn’t a battle he’ll win.”
“Cloud,” Psal begged Ephan. “Plead for me. Plead with your mother. Tell her you have lived, you have thrived these fifteen years.” He held his breath, hoping Ephan—King’s Favorite—would help his cause.
Ephan leaned forward, whispered in Psal’s right ear, “Well did our old master nickname you ‘Storm,’ for you blow both good and bad away. Look now, did they not grant you time to use soothing pharma to kill the child? More than that you did not ask. Little though that mercy was, you should have taken it. Now morning docks in this unexplored region, our studier tasks await us, and the child still lives. Let Cyrt take it outside.” Ephan held a warning finger before Cyrt’s face, spoke as if he, a studier, was a warrior’s equal. “But, Warrior, take care you kill the babe quickly and mercifully.” Ephan reached for the newborn, but Psal clutched it tighter.
“Let me send it from this world,” Psal pleaded. “I’ll use pharma to soothe it softly and swiftly into a painless death. Please, I will. I will.”
The hands of his fellow studier gently pulled the child from his own tightly clenched fingers; the newborn was turned over to Cyrt. Psal leaned against the wall, his arms empty. Once again, he lost the battle against traditional “good sense.”
The child’s cries faded as Cyrt carried it from the longhouse. Throughout the gathering room, women, children, warriors—even the other three studiers—stared at Psal. Psal took several deep breaths. He placed his empty hand on his left leg. What will the others see when they look at me? A petulant ghost dragging its lame leg away in defeat. He glanced at the hearth, then at the Residential Corridor to the left of the gathering room. No escape there. Other warriors had awakened and were walking toward the hearth. He looked in the opposite direction, the passageway known as the Chief’s Corridor. There, past the Chief Studier’s room with its glut of pharma, past the royal chambers, past the grain storerooms, the armories and the ice rooms with fermented meat, the solitude of the stables awaited him. There, on the farthest edge of the longhouse, he could chew himself into oblivion on Tomah bark. He could be bowed and cowed by sleep. In dreams, he could forget his ignominy.
Except, he reminded himself, a Tomah-wracked body was not a body a studier should have. And a Firstborn should not hide his grief in enslaving pharma. I am still Firstborn of the Wheel Clan. Even so, wouldn’t it be better to be cast into the fearsome night rather than live with this people?
He stood unmoving until all eyes but Ephan’s turned elsewhere. Then, rejecting Ephan’s outstretched hand, he followed his friend toward the Chief’s Corridor.
“Cloud,” he asked Ephan as the din of the gathering room faded. “Why am I not more accepting of my fate? As a Firstborn, I should be brave. As a studier, I should unflinchingly toss myself into the embrace of the unmaking night as if we were lovers. But here I am. Studier and Firstborn. Both and neither.”
Ephan drew a long breath. “Unfortunately, it is an uncommon predicament.”
Psal wiped his snotty nose and tear-wet face. “I know it. I know it. And here I stand, being so much and so little, stinking up Nahas’ longhouse.”
“A small stink, not a great one.” Ephan walked into one of the studiers’ rooms and waited for Psal to enter.
“Why must you joke? I’m telling you my heart.”
Ephan turned, smiled his broken smile. “You had me pondering smells that could stink up a three-hundred-chamber longhouse. I could not help but joke. But do not fear. Perhaps you will do great unsmelly things yet. Only, do not attempt to change things now. Wait until you’re a chief. Why battle alone? And so publicly?”
“I didn’t battle alone. The child was on my side!”
“How exasperating you are!”
Away from the hearth, Psal considered how his father had ignored him. He forced confidence into his voice. “Nahas, come here! We must speak! Now!”
In the dimly-lit corridor, several young girls on ladders were uncovering the shutters in the ceiling windows while others switched on the roof’s sun crystals or extinguished candles. Ephan, the girls, and three women carrying grain from the storage rooms all gave Psal warning looks. He challenged all with a Firstborn’s haughty frown and waited at the entrance of the king’s chamber for Nahas to approach.
When the king entered his royal quarters, he walked past Psal. “Firstborn,” he said with unconcealed impatience. “If you’re here to tell me of the new region, speak on. But if I am to be confounded and assaulted by one of your tantrums—”
“You did not honor me as Firstborn, Father.” Half-remembering the pose and attitude of some long-dead warrior, Psal tried to make his body—blasted like a weed in a heavy storm—imitate strength. “You should have.”
“Firstborn”—the king walked to an unshuttered window and leaned against it, his back to Psal—“I had hoped your training as a studier would change the propensities of your heart. But your anger against your own people is still too great.”
Psal crossed his arm. “If I hate my own people, then you should allow me to leave.”
“That
