Otah clasped his hands, fingers laced together.
"He isn't a bad man, my son," Otah said. "He's clever and he's strong,
and he cares about people. He feels deeply. He's probably a better man
than I was at his age."
"Forgive me, Most High," Ana Dasin said. "I don't know what you want me
to say."
"Nothing. Nothing in particular. Only know that this life that we've
forced on you ... it might have some redeeming qualities. The gods all
know the life I've had wasn't the one I expected, either. We do what we
have to do. In my ways, I'm as constrained by it as you are."
She looked at him as if he were speaking a language she hadn't heard
before. Otah shook his head.
"It's nothing, Ana-cha," he said. "Only know that I know how hard this
time is, and it will get better. If you allow room for it, this new life
might even surprise you."
The girl was quiet for a moment, her brow furrowed. She shook her head.
"Thank you?" she said.
Otah chuckled ruefully.
"I'm not doing a particularly good job of this, am I?" he said.
"I don't know," Ana Dasin said after a pause. Her tone carried the
shielded contempt of an adolescent for her elders. "I don't know what
you're doing."
Making his way back through the crowded belly of the ship, Otah wondered
what he had thought he would say to a Galtic girl who had seen
forty-five fewer summers than himself. He had expected to offer some
kind of wisdom, some variety of comfort, and instead it had been like
trying to hold a conversation with a cat. Who would have thought a man
could be as old as he was, wield the power of empire, and still be so
naive as to think his heart would be explicable to an eighteen-year-old
girl?
And, of course, as he reached the plank stairway that led up, he found
what he wished he had said. He should have said that he knew what
courage it took to face sacrifice. He should have said that he knew her
suffering was real, and that it was in a noble cause. It made them
alike, the Emperor and the Empress-to-be, that they compromised in order
to make the lives of uncountable strangers better.
More than that, he should have encouraged her to speak, and he should
have listened.
An approving roar came from the deck above him. A reed organ hummed and
sang, flute and drum following a heartbeat later. Otah hesitated and
turned back. He would try again. At worst, the girl would think he was
ridiculous, and she likely already did that.
As he drew near the hold, he heard her weeping again, her voice
straining at words he couldn't make out. A man's voice answered, not her
father's. Otah hesitated, then quietly stepped forward.
In the gloom, Ana Dasin knelt, her arms around a young man. The boy,
whoever he was, wore the work clothes of a sailor, but his arms were
thin and his skin was as pale as the girl's. He returned her embrace,
his arms finding their way around her as if through long acquaintance;