hard, I think. One of my daughters is married there, and my brother is a
decent man. They'll treat me well while I make arrangements for my own
apartments."
"It isn't fair," Idaan said. "They shouldn't force you out like this.
You belong here."
"It's tradition," Hiami said with a pose of surrender. "Fairness has
nothing to do with it. My husband is dead. I will return to my father's
house, whoever's actually sitting in his chair these days."
"If you were a merchant, no one would require anything like that of you.
You could go where you pleased, and do what you wanted."
"True, but I'm not, am I? I was born to the utkhaiem. You were horn to a
Khai."
"And women," Idaan said. Hiami was surprised by the venom in the word.
"We were born women, so we'll never even have the freedoms our brothers do."
Hiami laughed. She couldn't help herself, it was all so ridiculous. She
took her once-sister's hand and leaned forward until their foreheads
almost touched. Idaan's tear-red eyes shifted to meet her gaze.
"I don't think the men in our families consider themselves unconstrained
by history," she said, and Idaan's expression twisted with chagrin.
"I wasn't thinking," she said. "I didn't mean that ... Gods ... I'm
sorry, Hiami-kya. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry ..."
Hiami opened her arms, and the girl fell into them, weeping. Hiami
rocked her slowly, cooing into her ear and stroking her hair as if she
were comforting a babe. And as she did, she looked around the gardens.
This would be the last time she saw them. "Thin tendrils of green were
rising from the soil. The trees were bare, but their bark had an
undertone of green. Soon it would be warm enough to turn on the fountains.
She felt her sorrow settle deep, an almost physical sensation. She
understood the tears of the young that were even now soaking her robes
at the shoulder. She would come to understand the tears of age in time.
They would be keeping her company. There was no need to hurry.
At length, Idaan's sobs grew shallower and less frequent. The girl
pulled back, smiling sheepishly and wiping her eyes with the back of her
hand.
"I hadn't thought it would be this had," Idaan said softly. "I knew it
would be hard, but this is ... How did they do it?"
"Who, dear?"
"All of them. All through the generations. How did they bring themselves
to kill each other?"
"I think," Hiami said, her words seeming to come from the new sorrow
within her and not from the self she had known, "that in order to become
one of the Khaiem, you have to stop being able to love. So perhaps
Biitrah's tragedy isn't the worst that could have happened."
Idaan hadn't followed the thought. She took a pose of query.
"Winning this game may be worse than losing it, at least for the sort of
man he was. He loved the world too much. Seeing that love taken from him
would have been had. Seeing him carry the deaths of his brothers with
him ... and he wouldn't have been able to go slogging through the mines.
He would have hated that. He would have been a very poor Khai Maehi."