666 - Next Time

After the Fenjitzas, the Fenjitza and First Amitzas left and he politely put Intheras off a follow up question or two – as if he didn’t know what the old news hound would be sniffing around -- Atzana had a dozen letters for him to approve and sign, and after that four audiences that could not be set aside, delegations who had travelled moons to speak to him.  Even after the Sack, still fresh and clear in every city Arkan’s mind, and the establishment of the new form of government, people still needed to speak to the Imperator.  Perhaps they needed to speak to the Imperator even more than before all the changes.

The new Nellan Ambassador had arrived, with full black robes, heavily beaded with coloured crystals, his wife and his entourage in matching garb, and courtesy absolutely required that Minis meet him personally.   He received them in the Highest Office since nothing less would do and he didn’t particularly want or need to offend the man.

He sat and drank kaf with them, said the right words, welcomed them to their new posting.  The man and his wife left, hopefully feeling soothed and valued in their new position.  It was likely that either he or someone in his entourage was a new spy, but then that was to be expected. Irefas would keep an eye on them as they settled in.

The door had barely closed on them when he sprang up and out to Atzana’s desk.  “Could you hold everything after dinner until I let you know?”

“Of course, Minis.  Don’t forget to eat!”  Is everyone in the Marble Palace conspiring to feed me? “Gannara sent word that everyone was in the bedchamber, not the archery range any longer.”

“Of course.  Thank you, Atzana.”

 **

He could hear their voices down the hallway since the great doors were open.  They didn’t sound tearful, or upset, more thoughtful and the relief he felt was enough that it stopped him where he stood, just listening to them.  He put out a hand and just leaned against the marble railing, setting his forehead against the cool stone.  I was so frightened that everyone would still be grieving.  Well, we are, but it’s not quite like losing a child.  It’s more like losing the latest hope of a child and that is much less of a grief.

But everyone’s tone was subdued.  The women laughed at something, their laughter only a little forced.  Gan’s deep voice chiming in, like music.  The voices of my family.  They support me and they don’t even know I’m here.  Muunas, Selinae… Ten Gods… thank you.  Thank you for this joy, even if we don’t have children yet.  Their voices faded and they must have gone deeper into the suite.

He straightened, took a deep breath, and went in, and through the room, to the balcony where he could see his wife and alesinae next to the Crystal Fountain of Life. “Hey, shouldn’t you all be badgering me to have dinner?  You are all too skinny and should eat!”

It wasn’t a good joke, but it got them to smile at him as he crossed to gather Farasha in his arms, as if his hug and the rushing of the water could enfold her and hold her safe from hurt. “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

He could feel her twitch as she caught her breath.  “Next time.  There’s always next month.”

Minis shook his head, no, but his eyes were open and he stood back, taking her hand on one side and Kyriala’s on the other, Gannara reaching to complete the circle.  He gripped their hands firmly, managed to say it quietly enough that the fountain covered what he said.  “Loves…just between the four of us.  It might not just be us.  There’s a problem in Arko.  It looks like no one is having children in the city now.  Not for the past six moons. I have to try and talk to the Ten and see if the Gods have any answers for us.”

They all stared at him.  Then Kyriala said, quietly, “That makes me feel better and worse at the same time.”

665 - You Have Reconsidered?

“Is this not for the First of the Mahid to deal with?” Inensa’s voice was calm.

“The honourable Sera’s father has been called to the Highest Office and has been there for more than a bead.”  That was alarming.  Her son needed to speak to his grandfather for that long?  There was something not right going on.

“Then I shall certainly see what I can do to resolve this Mahid problem.  Bring them to Risae’s Garden room, if you would.  I’ll receive them there.”  She rose and Dau, who had Tesha on her lap at the moment said. “I’ll keep her, she’ll be fine with us.”

“Thank you, Daurama,” she ran gloved fingers over her daughter’s head, making her squirm.

“Mama!”

“Be good for Auntie Dau, all right?”

“Yes, Mama. I’m always good!”

“That is sometimes debatable but I agree with you right now.” It was hard, sometimes, to not just smile at her little girl’s nonsense and her lips twitched with amusement as she turned to follow Erlas.

Risae’s Garden room was a tiny space on the Honorakia level, where the Imperial women’s quarters met the Serulean stairs up from the Mahid level.  Inensa paused to let her servants remove her skates and replace them with soft blue kidskin shoes.  It was still hard to look down at herself and see colour in her clothing.  Her gown -- really a split trouser gown, that shockingly daring fabrication by the Imperatrix’s designer -- was mostly black lace, a dusty black, almost a charcoal colour rather than true onyxine, the lace over a shockingly bright blue. Blue shoes. She accepted her blue and black feather fan as she rose to climb up the enormous pink marble staircase, to her meeting.

It would be in one of the five Goddess garden rooms in the women’s halls, full of the sun-loving plants cherished by Risae in Her aspect of surgeon and vivisectionist.

Just as her father tended his menagerie of flamboyantly coloured toxic flowers and insects and animals, she had taken up tending the sun-loving poisonous plants.  The enormous datura with its white flowers as large across as her hand, the tiny blood-red berries of the boringly named Flat-leaf, the various Arkanherb trees, trained to a ‘weeping’ form so that the frosted buds swayed in the breeze from the open windows, filling the garden with their musky green scent.

She settled into her favourite woven chair, and waited.  She had an idea who these women might be and when the four were shown in, with chairs for them, and followed by a servant with the afternoon kaf service on it, she was only mildly surprised.

The four women were dressed in black, though no one made onyxine any longer, black and formal Mahid as she used to be.  For a moment she felt a pang of loss for that uniform anonymity.   

The eldest sank into a credible curtsy and the other three followed suit, despite all of them carrying toddlers. They were some of the young women who had been married into the Mahid... right at the end of their running loose, by Second Amitzas in anticipation of regaining control of Minis.  Anticipation that the Eclipse Court would need to breed more Mahid.

“Sofonisba,” Inensa said.  “Alaria. Melforasha. And young Sulatesha.  Alaria, as I recall you attacked me last time we saw one another, for making you be a Mahid.  It seems that your freedom is something you four have reconsidered, perhaps?”

664 - Did They Give Their Names?

Inensa Mahid sat in her chair overlooking the Mahid training hall, next to her friend, the Imperatrix’s mother, Daurama Liren. She held her place in her book with her gloves in the nearly shut volume, watching the Onyxine Razor Fans practice all around the babies who, even if some were female, did not seem frightened of the rumble of the faibalizitskai wheels as the girls passed silk handkerchiefs to each other, trying to keep the whole lot in the air at the same time and yet not missing a catch or a throw.

The handkerchiefs were weighted and the team had found that their ‘Graces’ training crossed over well into faib. Tesha Riala jumped and bounced in the midst of the floating kerchiefs with Elsha’s boy.  There were not enough children born of the last eleven Mahid women, to have the crèche opened, and everyone seemed more comfortable in the training hall, where the girls still did their dance training, and now some faib.

“Inensa,” Daurama set down her embroidery.  Even in the bright lights of the hall it would be hard for her to see her stitches, they were so fine.  “Aren’t you afraid that they’ll run into or knock over the babies?”

She asked it, every time.  “No, Dau.  I’m sure of it.”  Inensa set her book down on the table and rose up to her own skates.  She had taken it up, since Minis loved it so much... and Jorasa and her faib team were so thrilled with it.  She had to admit it was exciting when she got good enough to move fast in the Marble Palace.  She bent her front knee and pushed off, low, timing her glide in-between the darting, laughing Mahid girls.  Laughter.  So strange in the Mahid corridors.

Tesha turned around, reaching for a blue kerchief, saw her coming and raised her arms for Inensa to catch her up, hold her close as she turned and scooted back the way she came, this time between Elsha and Borasa instead of Eforasa and Amitza.

She could feel her daughter’s giggling against her and despite herself, she smiled as she straightened.  “Now is that proper for a well-brought up Mahid girl?” She asked Tesha, sternly.

“Yeha, mama.”

“Hm.  You’re right.”

She sat down with Tesha on her lap and they watched the others swap out the sticks and hoops of Graces, for the silk handkerchiefs.  They never mentioned that this was part of their heavy training, for the exhibition matches they were still doing, since they didn’t have a full second string that a real team needed... and they were only now touching on the truly professional, as their fathers and brothers and uncles had been.  Their coach, when asked for his secrets, training up a Mahid girls team so incredibly fast only smiled and said ‘They’re Mahid.  Put it down to that.”

“Mama, I want skates.”  Tesha wiggled on her lap and bounced.

“To ask properly you would say “Mama, I would like my own skates, please.”, Inensa said.

“MamaI’dlikemyownskatesplease!” Tesha said in a single breath.

“I will look into it.”  Daurama picked up her embroidery and smiled to herself. This child picks things up, but I’m not used to being a mother.  I truly don’t know if the next thing I say to her will ruin her or not.  We don’t know what Mahid is, or should be.  I could be doing this all wrong.

Itasas sat down in the middle of the floor, suddenly howling that the toys he wanted had been put away and Elsha scooped him up, plunked him into the barbarian sling on her shoulder and went right back to her training as he, tears still wet on his face, began to crow and thump on her side with his little legs.

“Dowager Imperatrix?” It was Erl, one of her son’s household servants.

“Yes?”

“Sera... there are four women asking to speak to you, personally.”

“To me?”  As Dowager Inensa supported Kyriala, and Farasha.  She did not hold office hours officially of any kind.  That kind of thing was for her son to do.  “Did they give their names?”

“Yes, Sera.  They say they are Mahid.”

663 - There's Something Wrong

The Fenjitza chewed thoughtfully on the end of her pen, feeling the tap of the clip against the bottom of her silver mask.  At first it had been one or two letters from maskers up in the mountains, concerned about a consistent problem in the area, that of infertility.  The stack of letters on her desk showed a pattern that followed the river down to Arko itself.  Not consistently.  It had been a problem intermittently for at least a generation, among the miners in the mountains.

Now... now there seemed to be an explosion of the problem and it had hit the city itself, despite Risae’s Protocols for cleaning the water.  Could it be an illness in the water?  That made no sense given the variability of the spread. The Fessas goddess’s protocols for cleaning the water were both thorough and quite exacting.

The midwives in the city... across the city... were now reporting that there were no pregnancies for them to monitor.  None.  From the Imperatrix whom she was advising, down to the lowest oka.

“Narilla?”  It was the Fenjitzas at her door.  It stood open so that she could hear the choir in the main Temple hall and should anyone need her attention.  “Do you have a moment?”

“Of course, Radas.”

He came in, as she rose for him and they both settled down on cushions to one side of her tiny desk. She poured kaf for them both from the pot that an acolyte had just brought her. “I have a problem that I think only the Goddesses might have an answer to,” he said without preamble.  “I’ve had reports from my priests and dekinases that there are a lot of newly married men who are...” he paused, as if searching for a way of saying something delicately enough.

“... concerned that they are potent?  Because they and their wives don’t have children on the way yet?”

He looked concerned,  “Ah.  Yes.  Exactly.”

“The midwives in the city are reporting that they have no one to tend.  There are no young women looking to have a midwife attend on her before her birthing time.”

“But perhaps they don’t feel the need?”

“I wish, Radas.  Let me tell you.  When a woman is bearing she finds a midwife who can be with her, early.”

“I’ve had a number of Arkan medics come to me,” he said somberly.

“Have you spoken to any of the Haians in the city?”

“Not yet.”

“We need to report this to the Imperator.  Aside from this possibly affecting him and the Imperatrix, it’s an Empire’s problem.”

“Do you have any reports from elsewhere in the Empire?  I don’t.”

“Only from a trail of small mining villages from upriver.”

“Let me gather my notes,” he said, setting his kaf cup down.

“I’ll meet you at the portico.”