Kherishdars exception, p.1
Kherishdar's Exception, page 1
part #1 of The Books of Kherishdar Series
Emma would have me tell you that this is my story. That, in fact, I should make it my story, and more about me than it is about anyone else. She would say, ‘Hasn’t everyone heard enough from the men of Kherishdar? What about the women? You deserve a voice!’ And ‘Why do you have to share the spotlight’—she had to explain that concept to me, aunera, ‘—with anyone else? You are important, too!’
Laurence would sneer at her and say that of course this story is all about me, and call it proof of our hypocrisy. And then they would argue and leave me to listen and sift the truth from the space between their barbs.
They are both right. They’re both wrong. I know my own importance, and my own insignificance, and those things can live together without contradiction.
I like my aunera. Emma, Laurence, Ruben, the others. I imagine you will too, even seen through the lens of an Ai-Naidari eye. But they are what they are, and they are you: alien. Even after knowing me so long, they still don’t understand here, in the heart, what it is to be Ai-Naidari. They understand in their heads, you perceive, but in the place where poetry is grasped, in the space between heart-beats, that makes sense of a heart-beat, they still don’t know, and never will. We are too different, you and I, aunera.
And I am all right with that. Perhaps you know enough of Ai-Naidar to know what an extraordinary statement that is, and yet I make it.
This, then, is not my story, any more than any story about an Ai-Naidari is about that Ai-Naidari. It is particularly not my story because it’s also Farren’s, and Kor’s, and Ajan’s, and Qevellen’s. It’s about Thirukedi and the Exception and all the Shames and Exceptions that have been. It is about Kherishdar, because there is no such thing as an Ai-Naidari outside the context of her society.
And it is also, a little, about me, and the choice I made. But I am not aunerai, and I know that my choice was as much a result of other people’s as it was of mine. There is no ‘I’ without ‘we.’
I think that may be what this story is about... to you. It is hard for me to know your minds, aunera, any more than you seem to be able to understand ours.
So then. Here is our story.
Emma thinks it’s about me. Laurence is sure it is.
We’ll see what you think, when it’s done.
—Haraa Nai’Qevellen-osulkedi
The first time
I looked into your eyes
I saw the fullness of my life
beginning to end
and every love I ever loved
or would
was a single word
set down in a poem
I would write to illuminate my devotion
I have loved you forever
and you knew.
—Theme Poem #1: Qor ("Breath")
Ereseya, The Hagiography
We were not two months into Qevellen’s creation when Kor found me and said, “If you would not have yourself married, Haraa, I suggest you find some significant pastime outside this House and away from Farren’s sight.”
It was late spring, and the garden in our new house was in full flower. In the years to come, it would be manicured and tamed... but no one had had time to devote to it yet, and I loved its wildness. The bench I’d chosen was shrouded in the fern-like sprays of cloudsbreath and encircled on one side in brightsheaves, the lilies that the first head of Qenain had brought to the Emperor so long ago. My mind was on her, and Qenain’s former lord... inevitably, given how little time had elapsed since he’d been my life. But Kor could not have chosen a better way to shatter my reverie. “Excuse me?”
“Our head of household,” Kor said, sitting on the bench facing mine across the path, “is very enthusiastic about fulfilling his responsibilities... and the Summer Trysts are approaching. Right now he is involved with my Guardians, but now that the matchmaking fever is on him I doubt you will be exempt from his efforts.”
Yes, there’s a word for that. After all this time learning your language, I feel I shouldn’t stint on teaching ours, and this one might interest, so here it is: theqilare. Not ‘match-make,’ but ‘grasp the pattern of generations.’ We feel very strongly about the importance of theqilare, which is why it would be pointless to try to discourage Farren from his efforts. Besides, I knew a little of him by then, enough to have seen that he was far, far more stubborn than his ajzelin. One wouldn’t think it, to contrast Kor’s stern demeanor with Farren’s gentleness. But Farren clung far harder to decisions and ideas, and goddess help anyone who tried to pry his fingers loose.
“Unless, of course, you are busy,” Kor said mildly when I didn’t answer.
I raised my eyes to regard him, and this he allowed, as he always did, with supreme self-assurance: Kherishdar’s only priest of Shame, for even among us there are singular powers and he was heir to one of those few mantles. He had always worn his power easily, but having found both ajzelin and lover, he had grown into something somehow harder to live with—and easier. He had been terrifying for his clarity of thought and uncanny insight into the Ai-Naidari heart, and for the fact that you knew, just looking at him, that there was no impediment between the exercise of that talent and your own soul. Now that he was happy and that happiness distracted you from who he was, you sometimes forgot he was also Shame until he surprised you with some painfully astute observation... like he was now about my idleness, and its probable cause.
“I suppose it would be useless to deny that I don’t want a husband right now,” I said. “So I won’t. And I’m guessing I am not showing some secret sign of an error that could be Corrected by the application of a spouse, or you wouldn’t be warning me. Yes?”
His mouth twitched. “It is a great pleasure to be known so well, qirini.”
‘Sister,’ that means. I hadn’t heard it from him before and was surprised to find it flattering. “I thank you for telling me, then. Are you heeding your own warning yourself?”
He chuckled. “Shame is always busy.”
“Not too busy for a spouse,” I pointed out. “After all, Shame now has time for a lover and an ajzelin.”
“A lover and an ajzelin are more than enough,” Shame said, and it was Shame speaking now... something about the way his words felt like statements of fact, rather than opinions. An implacability. And, as always, I couldn’t hear it without trying to needle him.
“And your duty to the generations?”
“Fulfilled, I hope, by the Winter Tryst,” he said. “Which I have attended since I have been of age.” He lifted a brow. “And you have not. Does it concern you?”
“The prospect of it?” I shook my head. “I’ve certainly had more lovers than you. A few more, anonymous or not, won’t trouble me.”
“I didn’t imagine it would,” he said. “But the Tryst is not about taking a lover.”
I eyed him and folded my arms, the silk of my sleeves hissing over my lap. “Don’t you start, osulkedi.”
He laughed then, rising. He had a good laugh. It made him more approachable. “Ah, Haraa. How can I, when I have never stopped?” Canting his head, he finished, “Your ishas, no less than mine, can and perhaps should be executed elsewhere.”
I thought of the Gate-town. “I know.”
“Will you require escort? Ajan, or one of the others.”
I smiled at that. “You’d spare me Ajan?”
“Of course.”
But something in his eyes, which were too amused: “Because you know I won’t take him.”
He chuckled softly. “I offered because if you had wanted him, you would have needed him, and I would have given him to you gladly.”
“But you did know I wouldn’t,” I pressed.
He smiled at that. “Say rather that I suspected.” At my skeptical look he laughed again. “You are not always easy to predict, Haraa. It’s… refreshing.”
“For Shame, who knows all,” I said boldly. Because if he had called me sister, I could tease him. “I would have thought it would irritate you.”
“If it does, I’ll let you know.”
“Qirini,” I said, tasting the sobriquet.
“Yes.”
It was still flattering on consideration. I flicked my ears back casually to hide their tint. “I’ll give your warning all due consideration.” And, smiling too, “If I can do my part to protect you from Farren’s fervor, I will. Because, apparently, an ajzelin and a lover is more than enough work without adding a wife to the mix, for Kherishdar’s sole Shame.”
He snorted. “Enjoy the day, Haraa.”
The garden was still beautiful after he left. Maybe more so, for having had him in it to stress the contrasts. He was dark and austere and had an abruptness to his motions that would have given my deportment teachers attacks. Not because he was without grace, but because he managed to have it without the stately finish they taught all fathriked. The memory of it made the sway of the brightsheaves seem genteel, and the garden patches looked wilder for their lack of constraint. Farren might have found the juxtaposition arresting. I found it funny. I was, in fact, smiling.
Well, that, and twitching, fingers grasping the edge of the bench. The last thing I wanted was a husband. Shemena forfend.
I rose from the bench, feeling that I had lingered too long in my idleness. Thirukedi had elevated me and given me a task, and in His kindness allowed me time to cope with the absolute disaster that had been my relationship with Jaran, the lord of Qenain now exiled. I still hurt, but I had been studiously ignoring the fact that I would never stop hurting unless I gave myself something to do that didn’t involve the endless examination of those last weeks and what I might have done to change things.
That I’d been avoiding my duty because doing it would remind me of him… well. I was done with letting ij Qenain control my life. He had chosen the aunera over me. Over all of Kherishdar. I was proud enough to find that mortifying, and pride can galvanize you into motion and keep you there, when you might otherwise find yourself faltering.
In those days, slipping out of Qevellen was easy for many reasons. The foremost was that it was not yet full of children, so no one was employing any of the ways adults contrive to keep them corralled. That would change, given Farren’s determination: bells on the doors, little half-height gates, chiming curtains. But it was also easy because it’s such an open house. Kor mentioned it was constructed for the First Servant of Shame, presumably to his specifications, so that might account for its eccentricities... except that given the kind of personality attracted to Shame’s priesthood I would have expected the First Servant to have wanted a cave, not this temple to open spaces and garden views.
That’s how I escaped: by taking one of the ubiquitous garden paths entirely around the building and to the gate. I had never seen a house this size on such an enormous plot... only in the Temple District would it have been possible, and only in an old house, built when mores were different. Gardens are supposed to be public amenities. I can’t remember the last time I saw a large one that was also gated.
We were an odd house, and an odd House. Farren has told you those are separate words? Gadare is the building. Eqet is the group of family members. It’s important that you think a little like us, aunera, if you’re to find this story bearable—or even explicable. So remember this, the whimsicality of Qevellen. A House with eight males and one female. What was Thirukedi thinking?
Maybe I would ask Him.
I was going there now—to see Him. Walking to center. We say vaesha. To move toward Him, or more abstractly toward civility, or peace, or harmony with others. He had made me osulkedi, and that made Him my lord. Strange thought. Perilous one, after how I’d fallen out with my last lord. At least, I thought, I would not be likely to fall torridly in love with Thirukedi. A woman might like her lovers older than her, but there are limits.
Surely Qenain had broken me, to have left me with such ideas.
There are fathriked who find the outdoors distressing. I was never one of them. The spring sunlight on my head, warming the curls that brushed alongside my neck and cheeks... that felt good. The piquancy of late spring flowers gave the air some needed spice, particularly in the Temple District where the breezes carried the powdery, sweet smell of incense. The busyness of it, even here, where there were fewer residences: I loved it. Kherishdar has a rhythm, and I now lived a different part of the pattern. I found it invigorating, experiencing those differences. To have been rakadhas, thrust from the caste that had defined me almost all my life, had been painful. But having been ejected from the process of re-evaluation, I found acclimating to my new state stimulating.
I digress. You would too, walking through the graciousness of late spring, in the blossom-strewn byways of Kherishdar.
Farren told you perhaps that the city is separated into wedges—the atan—and that’s true. That’s how we know which Regal Household is responsible for which segment of the city. But the city itself is built in rings, and to walk toward center from the Temple District, one goes through the public parks and plazas devoted to the Trysts, and afterwards into the administrative ring with the great Regal Households, and finally, the point at the center, where Thirukedi dwells. But the parks were an unsettling reminder of the forthcoming Summer Tryst, so I might perhaps be forgiven for being preoccupied when I ascended the steps to Thirukedi’s residence, and there nearly collided with another woman. She was gray-pelted, like me, but a watery color, one that darkened toward the tips of her hair and her ears, like she’d been left in the rain. Even her eyes were a wan yellow, like a piece of amber that had clouded over. I would have found her insipid except she met my gaze with a shocking directness and laughed at the sight of me, and I knew then who she was. Who she could only be.
“Oh! The Emperor’s newest osulkedi. What a pretty girl you are!” Had I thought her eyes mild? When she leaned toward me I found them bright enough. Sultry, even. I was so busy with them I didn’t see the tap under my chin coming. “How do you like it so far? Or should you have stayed in your first caste? You’re certainly decorative enough.”
I jerked away, offended.
“Oh, she has opinions, at least!” The woman chuckled. “Good for you, pretty girl.”
“My name,” I said from between bared teeth, “is Haraa nai’Qevellen-osulkedi, and I don’t care if you’re the Exception. Don’t call me ‘pretty girl.’”
“Oooh, she figured me out.” A sly grin, as if we were sharing a secret. “Very good! You’re as smart as you look. People rarely are. It’s very disappointing.”
The nakked at the door weren’t staring at her. I don’t know how. I would have to ask Ajan or Vekken how that worked. How you trained a Guardian not to be outraged by the one Ai-Naidari in all the empire who was allowed to be this offensive.
“Anyway,” she said. “I’m on my way. Have fun with your master, pretty girl.”
“He’s your master too,” I growled. “And my name—”
“—is Haraa, I know, you’ve told me,” she said dismissively. “But I don’t have to call you that. And honestly, you haven’t earned it from me.” More serious, her eyes abruptly grave, almost angry. “Everyone has to earn everything from me, little osulkedi.” Traipsing down the steps now, as lightly as a maiden. “And no man is my master, nor woman either! How lucky I am, am I not, to be so free? I bet you envy me.”
Shocked, I exclaimed, “I do not!”
She flung a grin over her shoulder at me. “Why the boots, then, pretty girl? Where do you wish you were going? Far, far away...” She laughed. “Good luck with that. You live here, and trapped, and always will.” And then she sailed down the path, back toward the gates.
Have you ever been angry enough to want to kick something? Goddess, aunera. How she infuriated me! And it was in this mood that I passed into the halls of Thirukedi’s personal temple, trailing my own incense of pique and offense. I wasn’t proud of it, but I had never met the Exception, whom we call Nesthae. I’d somehow thought of her as a sad and distant figure, not someone who could flirt at me with her eyes while mocking me with her words.
It was petty of me, but I thought, as a Servant led me to Him, that at least my pelt and eyes didn’t look like someone had diluted them with too much water.
It’s a given that all Ai-Naidar love Thirukedi. Farren wouldn’t tell you this aphorism, because it is old and more in keeping with Kor’s way of looking at reality, but we say that your reaction to Him reveals how you respond to love. I think that’s naïve. Thirukedi’s presence in our lives is more than the revelation of love. It’s also a gift, a gift intangible and irreplaceable and awe-inspiring and precious.
Or maybe this is something I told myself to make peace with the complexity of my feelings every time I saw Him.
This time He was waiting in a garden. The seat of Civilization has many of them, and Thirukedi is known for His talent for flower arrangement, so the setting was no surprise. But I had never seen Him outside. He was seated on a bench, in a way that suggested immobility because His robes were so heavily layered that they fell in statuesque folds whenever He stopped moving. Beside Him was a shallow basket, an in it a single tinsel leaf.
Something about that leaf drew my eye at the time. But the scene overwhelmed me, because here was Civilization amid Nature, where He had no jurisdiction: the one place the god who never rested could rest, if only He could set down His mantle.
I was relieved that it was for me to kneel and rest my brow on the ground. I preferred that to showing Him my face and forcing Him to acknowledge whatever I was failing to hide in my eyes. I closed them too, just to be sure, and inhaled the sun-warmed scent of soil and grass. Have you noticed that, aunera? That soil smells different during the day than it does at night when it is cool and damp?
