Daniel Abraham
THE
PRICE OF
SPRING
Books by Abraham
(The Long Price Quartet):
A Shadow in Summer
A Betrayal in Winter
An Autumn War
The Price of Spring
THE PRICE OF SPRING
Daniel Abraham
To Scarlet Abraham
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For the last time on this project, I reflect on the people who have
helped me get to the end of it. I owe debts of service and gratitude to
Walter Jon Williams, Melinda Snodgrass, Emily Mah, S. M. Stirling, Ian
Tregillis, Ty Franck, George R. R. Martin, Terry England, and all the
members of the New Mexico Critical Mass Workshop. I owe thanks to Connie
Willis and the Clarion West '98 class for starting the story off a
decade ago. Also to my agents Shawna McCarthy, who kept me on the
project, and Danny Bator, who has sold these books in foreign lands and
beyond my wildest dreams; to James Frenkel for his patience, faith, and
uncanny ability to improve a manuscript; to Tom Doherty and the staff at
Tor, who have made these into books with which I am deeply pleased.
Thank you all.
THE
PRICE OF
SPRING
PROLOG
Eiah Machi, physician and daughter of the Emperor, pressed her fingers
gently on the woman's belly. The swollen flesh was tight, veins marbling
the skin blue within brown. The woman appeared for all the world to be
in the seventh month of a pregnancy. She was not.
"It's because my mother's father was a Westlander," the woman on the
table said. "I'm a quarter Westlander, so when it came, it didn't affect
me like it did other girls. Even at the time, I wasn't as sick as
everyone else. You can't tell because I have my father's eyes, but my
mother's were paler and almost round."
Eiah nodded, running practiced fingertips across the flesh, feeling
where the skin was hot and where it was cool. She took the woman's hand,
bending it gently at the wrist to see how tight her tendons were. She
reached inside the woman's sex, probing where only lovers had gone
before. The man who stood at his wife's side looked uncomfortable, but
Eiah ignored him. He was likely the least important person in the room.
"Eiah-cha," Parit, the regular physician, said, "if there is anything I
can do..."
Eiah took a pose that both thanked and refused. Parit bowed slightly.
"I was very young, too," the woman said. "When it happened. Just six