Up a shallow set of stairs, the obsidian doors to the main Debating Chamber stood open. Neys and Silv strode forward to the light.
“Praeis Shin, Resaime Shin, Theiareth Shin, all Noblest Sisters t'Theria answer the summons of their Majestic Sisters, the Queens-of-All,” they announced in unison, then stood aside.
“Our cue, daughters.” She squeezed Res's and Theia's hands. “When you address the Majestic Sisters, close your eyes and raise up your hands. Stay that way until instructed to do otherwise. Let's go.”
The Debating Chamber, at least, had not changed. A dozen heavy marble tables, each large enough to seat twenty, stood in a semicircle under the portraits of the Majestic Ancestors. The floor's mosaics depicted the peninsula and islands of t'Aori on a blue-grey sea. It was a rich and solemn room, but somehow diminished in its emptiness. Aside from the Queens, the only occupants were a quartet of servants busy around the kitchen pit by the left-hand wall.
The Queens-of-All stood around one of the ancient central heating pits. They had not aged well. Praeis had been there when the Queens had taken the rule. They were vibrant then. Two of them had live bellies, rolling with the precious burden of their daughters. Now they looked old, with sagging faces and pale skin that stood out starkly against their plain black robes. Their daughters were nowhere in evidence. Praeis found herself wondering if they were still alive.
Despite the changes, Praeis still knew them all: blunt, broad Ueani Byu, subtle Aires Byu, whose attention could be like a knife against your skin. Between them stood the First-Named Queen, Vaier Byu. She could be underestimated, if you were not careful, but it was she who ruled the triumvirate, as the triumvirate ruled the t'Therians.
“Welcome home, Noblest Sister Praeis Shin.” Vaier Byu stepped forward. “And to your daughters, our Noblest Sisters Resaime Shin and Theiareth Shin.”
Praeis closed her eyes and raised her hands, palms out. “For my daughters and myself, I thank my Majestic Sisters.”
“You are most welcome.” Aires Byu's voice was smooth and quiet, but nonetheless it filled the room. Cloth rustled. “Open your eyes, Praeis Shin, find a seat for yourselves and your daughters. Food is being brought.”
“Thank you, Majestic Sisters.” Praeis opened her eyes.
She and her daughters sat stiffly on a single sofa under a rendering of the five Mother Queens. The Queens-of-All each took individual seats. Praeis felt surrounded and hoped it didn't show. The cooks brought glasses of water and teas, and platters of fish strips and fried rice cakes. Praeis smelled the food and instantly began to salivate. She helped her daughters to portions and took a piece of fish for herself, trying not to feel the eyes of the Queens on her.
“Now then.” Vaier Byu picked up a glass of green tea and sipped at it. “What have you been told?”
Praeis licked her fingers in appreciation of the warm food. “Only that I have been pardoned, and that I am needed.”
Aires Byu dipped her ears, in acknowledgment or approval, Praeis wasn't certain which. “Do you have any ideas about how these things came to be?”
Praeis spread her hands. “I assumed plague, Confederation, and time.”
“Decent assumptions.” Ueani Byu caught up a rice cake and munched it down in two bites. “And not far from wrong.”
“I am at the service of t'Theria and our Queens,” said Praeis. “Where I have always been.”
“And your daughters?” asked Ueani. “These childless children of yours who've never seen t'Aori until now? What about them?”
Res's cheeks twitched. “Our loyalties are our mother's.” She spoke more fiercely than she should, and forgot to close her eyes, but her words were good. Praeis took her hand and pressed it quietly, hoping to smooth out the fist it had knotted into.
“Very right and proper.” Aires Byu picked up another rice cake. “Very firm, too.”
“That's enough, Aires,” said Vaier Byu. “Your daughters do you credit, Praeis Shin. I am glad you are back before us.” She studied the depths of her glass of tea. “Do you know how many of us the plague has taken so far?”
Praeis's shoulder muscles quivered. “I had heard half.”
“Half.” Vaier Byu sipped her tea. “It may well be half. The truth is, we do not know exactly. Nor do any of the near family, nor any of our old allies. We only know our cities are emptied, our armies diminished, and our survivors, what few there are, are left scarred, deaf, and sometimes crippled.
“If the Getesaph chose to attack today, we could repel them, but it would be a close contest.”
Praeis's ears wanted to fold against these words, but she forced them to stay still.
“What is not publicly known, of course, is how close it would be, although it is widely suspected. Also suspected is the uncertainty that this year's harvests can be brought in, or that next year's can be assured. No one, of course, could miss how few fishing boats are still able to go out. The shortages are not yet felt, but they will be, in another year. Then there is the fact that our sisters and daughters are still dying.” She raised her eyes and focused them on Praeis. “You can understand, then, Noblest Sister, why we chose to join the Confederation.”
Praeis dipped her ears in silent agreement.
Vaier Byu took another swallow of tea. “You can, I think, also understand this. There are those who say the price we have negotiated for the salvation of our Great Family is too high. They say we will not all die from the diseases spread by this new weapon, or even from the famine that may, or may not, be coming. They say we should not bind ourselves to those who have shed our mothers’ blood and robbed us of our mothers’ souls. There are many who lay out these opinions. More, we fear, than there are of those who agree wholeheartedly with us and Confederation.”
“Among these,” said Aires Byu, “are your blood sisters Senejess and Armetrethe.”
Praeis bowed her head.
Oh, Sisters, what have you been doing while I've been gone?
There are not many of us, Praeis Shin,” Aires Byu went on, “who can stand out against our sisters. But you have before, and you are now.”
Praeis raised her eyes and opened her mouth.
“Do not say you don't understand.” Aires Byu leaned forward. “You went against your sisters when you traded Urisk Island and four thousand lives for a swift peace. You are an isolated, alien thing in this respect.”
Praeis felt her fingers curl and her ears try to fold up. She held herself rigid. The Queens spoke nothing but the truth. She could sit and hear it. She could. Her daughters leaned closer to her. She felt their warmth and drank it in. They knew the story, most of it anyway.
Aires watched all this, but the set of her ears did not change. “Yet, you can build accord like no one we have ever met, and we have met masters of the art. You can deal with enemies and make them come to terms.
“We sit isolated here for the propaganda of holding our Ancestor's city. Our people work among those who are building consensus against us, in an attempt to bring them to our side, but there is little they can do to sway whole families.”
Praeis licked her lips. “There is a group of Humans called the Bedouin who have an ancient saying that describes us well. They say ‘me against my sister, me and my sister against my cousin, me and my cousin against the world.’ ”
Vaier Byu laughed. “Very good. Who knew the Humans understood such things?”
“Praeis did.” Aires Byu dipped her ears again. “Praeis knows many things, and she will tell them all to her Majestic Sisters, will she not?”
Praeis's ears flickered back and forth. “About the Humans, Majestic Sister, or about my blood sisters?”
“Ancestors Mine!” Ueani hurled a scrap of rice cake into the heating pit. “You're being asked to spy for us, Praeis Shin. To get out there and find out who's with us and who isn't. To subvert those who aren't over to our side, if you can, and to give us their names if you can't. You have your own friends out there. Get them. Work with them. We cannot allow this disaster we've created to fall apart. There are too many dead bodies and unattended souls out there as it is.”
Praeis's jaw hung open. She panted, but got control of herself and closed her mouth. Theia pressed close to her side, and, reflexively, Praeis wrapped an arm around her.
Vaier and Aires Byu both glowered at their sister.
“I don't care!” Ueani Byu jumped to her feet. She began to pace back and forth, working figure eights around the chairs. “We've had enough subtlety here. We are the Queens-of-All, and there's no one to hear our voices but cooks and shit cleaners! We've got to get out of here, back into the thick of our lands and people, but we don't know where we can go in safety or whom we can trust. You”—she stabbed a finger at Praeis—”are going to find out for us! You are going to gather the loyal following we need, and you are going to hand us your living sisters to try for high treason if we tell you to. Yes? Good?”
Ueani Byu stood there, feet spread, fingers flexing. Praeis felt her heart beat wildly. Her nostrils clamped shut and her ears cringed. For a moment, she thought if she refused, her Queen would go for her throat.
Praeis swallowed hard and forced her nostrils open. “Why me?” she asked, ashamed at the weakness in her voice. “It cannot be that my Majestic Sisters have no allies.”
“Because you have traded t'Therian lives for peace,” said Vaier Byu. “We have no one else who has done that. We may require you to do it again. Once before, you were our hands and eyes and did for us things which no one else could, or would do. We can trust you to act for us as we can trust no other.”
So there it was. The real reason she had been allowed to come home. The Queens needed someone who could and would betray her family. Praeis looked at the floor. The harbor islands sprawled under her feet. She panted hard and did not try to stop herself.
At last, she closed her eyes and raised her hands. “Obedience first, obedience second, obedience third.”
It was nearly dark by the time Praeis and her daughters were released from the Queens’ presence. Two soldiers Praeis didn't know drove them out of the city and into the working lands. Walls enclosed factories, fields, and orchards, so it was like driving through a cement maze.
Here and there, the walls opened up to reveal distressingly weedy lawns for the crematoriums. Praeis remembered only two on the whole length of road between the city and home. Today, though, she had counted eight, and each one of them had its fire going. The familiar, dreaded, sweet-sour burning scent from the bodies being burned before their ashes were commited to the earth of the Ancestors filled the damp wind. At the smell, both Theia and Res grew quiet and huddled closer to her, and Praeis held them gratefully.
Finally, the road took a sharp corner and the walls opened up again. This time, though, Praeis saw rain damp grass and a few sprawling trees no one had ever bothered to prune.
Then she saw home.
Its walls were smooth white cement. She and her sisters had spent hours scrubbing the cursed things. Any breach of family discipline would get them sent out with hoses and soap. Four adolescents sat on top of the walls, either as lookouts or just looking. As the car drove past the wall, the daughters turned and shouted. Praeis couldn't understand the words.
Behind the walls Praeis could just see the four chimneys and peaked slate roof of the main house. The wide wood and iron gate glided into view. The timbers were a little darker than they had been, and there were flecks of rust on the reinforcing iron bars and hinges, but it remained the entrance to her home.
Their driver braked roughly and gestured to the roadside. “Here we complete our commission.”
Praeis dipped her ears. “Thank you. With me, Daughters.”
Resaime and Theiareth clambered out of the car, fast enough to make themselves clumsy.
“PRAEIS!”
Praeis barely had time to turn around before the gate swung open and the floodwave of family broke against them. Cousins crowded around, becoming a blur of hands and faces as they were hugged and touched and tugged at. Voices laughed and called, and babbled out more questions than could possibly be answered. Praeis felt warmth mounting inside her. With half an eye she watched her daughters. Res and Theia hesitated a little. They'd seldom had such a crowd around them, but they quickly relaxed into it, touching and being touched, laughing, naming themselves and having names called back to them. A fierce happiness surged through Praeis, one she hadn't felt in years. She was passed from hand to hand. She grasped arms and shoulders and ears, shouted names and greetings until she was hoarse. The happiness in her blood and skin filled her with fire and strength enough to make her drunk and dizzy.
Then, she looked up and saw that the hands she held belonged to her sisters. Proud, wide-eyed Senejess, and warm Armetrethe, who'd lost her left arm in a skirmish years ago.
“Armetrethe! Senejess!” Laughing, Praeis threw herself into her sisters’ embrace.
“Praeis!” Their strong arms wrapped around her. They all whooped with love and joy as they held one another, drinking in scent and sound and solid presence.
I'm home. I'm home!
thought Praeis, almost delirious with the wonder of holding her sisters.
“Well, come now!” Senejess finally said. “We cannot stand here making riot in the streets. Let's get ourselves indoors.”
With her sisters’ arms tight and strong around her shoulders, Praeis let herself be steered toward the house. The cousins and daughters flocked around them, blocking the view of the grounds and the outbuildings. Here and there, she caught a glimpse of a familiar wall, or cluster of stones in the garden and her heart lifted until she thought it could go no higher.
They spilled through the doors of the main house and into the great room. The family fanned out, dropping onto the sofas arranged in clusters around the tiled space. The vibrant greens, blues, and golds created stylized scenes of sea cliffs and forests to surround them all. The tall slit windows let in the daylight to mix with the mellow light of oil lamps. Praeis inhaled the scent of warm oil with a start. The electricity probably wouldn't come on until after dark. She hadn't thought about power rationing in years.