“The region is full of rocks, lakes, and thick forests, Nahas.” Aware that he was still standing in the doorway, Psal tentatively placed his right foot into his father’s room, then dragged the left one inside also. “The tower could find no sparser…No, Nahas, I will not allow you to leave the conversation unfinished.”
Nahas rubbed his forehead and turned from the window. He stared at Psal as if pondering the strange creature he had spawned. Then he looked outside again and pointed to a tall, looming structure outside. “It looks like an ancient temple. I suppose you and Ephan will want to explore the ruins. But first things first. Soil samples, and mapping.…”
Psal bit his bottom lip. “Father, about Cassia—”
“You wanted the girl because she wanted you.” Nahas was not looking at him. “That was her greatest virtue. Not her only virtue, of course, but it was the virtue you most admired because you’re a boy who hungers for love. A king’s son should not be ruled by such heart hunger. Such emotions show a diseased mind, something far worse than a diseased body.”
“The Peacock Clan does not disdain my ‘diseased’ body.” Psal grasped his father’s arm and yanked hard. “Or my diseased mind! Cassia does not. The Peacock Clans honors all people, whatever their illnesses. They do not kill their—”
“Enough!” The king pulled his hand away, raised a clenched right fist.
Psal flinched. The dull ache in his hip pleaded for soothing pharma, but now his body betrayed him, trembling. He winced. Showing his pain shamed him, but either Nahas had not seen it or had mercifully decided to ignore it.
The king’s arms, freckled and tanned, relaxed. It gestured at the world beyond the window. His voice was soft again, patient. “The knowledge of keening is our wealth, Firstborn. Our tower science has helped us survive. We own much. Food, fertile regions, lakes, seashores. You believe a marriage between you and Cassia will end the skirmishes—at least with Tsbosso’s clan. But can you not understand? I cannot let a studier marry into the clan of our enemies. Would you not allow your wife to seduce away our secrets?”
“No, Father. I would not.”
“See, that is where we differ,” the king said. “Truly, I think that within ten days of marrying into their clan, you would betray us.”
“And why would I do that, Nahas?”
“To help Tsbosso defeat other Peacock Clan chiefs,” the king said. “Because you are too eager to please any who claim to love you, Firstborn. The Peacock Clans—strong as they are—are disorganized and always warring among themselves. Who can count the number of their chiefs? And Tsbosso, your friend, is the wiliest of them. Even now, the friendship between you and that scheming chief troubles me. When you have proven yourself capable of honoring our clan’s laws, I will consider allowing you to marry Tsbosso’s daughter. In the meantime, if you need a woman, visit the comfort women as Ephan and the others do. The conversation is ended.”
Psal looked about the king’s chamber to hide his hurt. His gaze fell on a red linen cap lying on his parents’ sleeping mat. Similar to the leather caps worn by Wheel Clan warriors and studiers, this cap was worn by chiefs’ sons on ceremonial occasions. It was unusual to have both a studier and a prince’s cap, but Psal’s own red cap rested on a shelf in the Firstborn’s Chamber, a room he rarely visited. He assessed his father: the close-cropped auburn hair, the muscular arms, the strong body. How grievous that one so nature-blessed should be so unlucky to bear a son with my cursed form. And yet…he allowed me to live.
“Nahas, if I find a girl from our clan who loves me in spite of my infirmity—or because she thinks I might someday become a chief—any marriage would be an unhappy one. Even if the girl loved me, she would tease me relentle—”
“Or you would think she teased.”
“Whatever the cause, we would not be happy. This is how these things go.”
“Is that how those things go?” The king walked from the window and placed his hand on his door. “Firstborn, sometimes you speak like an old man, sometimes like a little child, sometimes both. You are neither. Now, hurry. The dawn is breaking and you have much exploration to do.”
Stung by his father’s words, Psal blurted out. “Nahas, one day I will leave you, and with that leaving I will leave all that you value.”
“You speak your heart’s intentions too freely,” the king answered. “Should I trust you to keep our secrets, when you cannot keep your own?”
Psal didn’t answer.
“And one thing more, Firstborn. You may enter anytime, of course. You’re my son. And you are Firstborn. But think twice if you open my door only to challenge me.”
Head bowed, jaw tight, Psal limped from his father’s chamber past the keening room toward the studier room. In other clans, the position of studier of worlds was inherited or earned. Or it was cast like a mantle onto the shoulder of some intelligent child by communal vote, and that child would be taught all the lore, tongues, and beliefs of one of Odunao’s great clans. Not so the Wheel Clan. They chose damaged boys to be studiers. Such children were expected to be grateful. The Master of the Wintersea had taught his students that they were ghosts, and that being a ghost was an honorable thing: ‘A studier is dead while he lives,’ the old teacher had said. ‘Because, though damaged, he has been spared death, which others think was his rightful due. Thus, he is a ghost, an intermediary between all clans, a mediator between the living and the dead, the Creator and the created, the organic and the inorganic world. A citizen of all the tribes.’ We are not kings of the earth. We are its very dust.
He entered the studier room, where he found Ephan sorting through a basket of pharma jars.
Swiveling on his stool, Ephan settled two circular crystals held together with a little wire frame on his nose, then strapped a large dagger to his right thigh and placed a slingshot and several empty jars onto the cart. “That certainly ended well.”
Psal limped past him. “If you cannot console me, be quiet. Or speak of other matters.”
“This is a watery region. Emon plants should be abundant.” Emon, the Studier’s Herb. So called because studiers with painful illnesses, like Psal, often reeked of it.
“I suppose so,” Psal answered. Where was Cassia today? What was she doing?
He sat on a low, wheeled bed, made comfortable with cushions, that Ephan had designed and built for him. Grumbling, he rolled toward Ephan, who now stood beside the parchment-cluttered shelf. Ephan lifted a brown clay jar containing a sticky white balm that protected those afflicted with the Wheel Clan disease against the sun, and Psal tried to think of exploration, discoveries and soil samples—such things that delighted studiers and bored warriors. He found no joy except when he thought of Cassia.
Ephan opened two more clay jars containing pharma against the venom of reptiles and insects. He rubbing his hands with these ointments, then passed the jars to Psal.
Through the window, the new terrain grew more distinct. The unmaking night was over.
Psal touched his nose, so very like his father’s, a nose like a sloping mountainside. Unlike his father and the rest of the Wheel Clan, Psal was not pale-skinned. Nor was he dark like those from his mother’s Macaw clan. His skin was honey-colored, and long black hair circled his head in a tangle of loose curls. Not
