Free THE (tlpq-4) by Daniel Abraham Page A

hope," Balasar said. And then, his voice growing reflective,
    "There's hope, and that's actually quite new. I hadn't realized it had
    become quite such a rare thing, these last few years."
     
    "How nice," Otah said more sharply than he'd intended. Balasar looked at
    him more closely, and Otah waved the concern away. "I'm old and tired.
    And I've eaten more Galtic food than I could have wanted in a lifetime.
    It's astounding you people ever got up from your tables."
     
    "You aren't expected to finish every dish," Balasar said. "Ah, I think
    the entertainment has begun."
     
    Otah looked up. Servants and sailors were silently moving across the
    deck like a wind over the water. The glow of candles lessened and the
    scent of spent wicks filled the air as a stage appeared as if conjured
    across the deck from Otah's dais. The singers that had hung from the
    rigging had apparently made their way down, because they rose now,
    taking their places. Servants placed three more chairs on the dais at
    Otah's side, and Councilman Dasin and his family took their seats.
    Fatter smelled prodigiously of distilled wine and sat the farthest from
    him, his wife close at his side, leaving Ana nearest to Otah.
     
    The singers bowed their heads for a moment, then the low sounds of their
    voices began to swell. Otah closed his eyes. It was a song he knewa
    court dance from the Second Empire. The harmonies were perfect and rich,
    sorrowful and joyous. This, he understood, was a gift. Galtic voices
    raised in a song of an empire that was not their own. He let himself be
    carried by it, and when the voices fell again, the last throbbing notes
    fading to silence, he was among the first to applaud. Otah was surprised
    to find tears in his eyes.
     
    Ana Dasin, at his side, was also weeping. When he met her eyes, she
    looked down, said something he couldn't hear, and walked briskly away.
    He watched her descend the stairs below decks as the singers began
    another, more boisterous song. Otah's gaze flickered to Issandra. In the
    dim light, the subtle signs of age were softened. He saw for a moment
    who she had been as a younger woman. She met his eyes with a profound
    weariness. Fatter had his hand on her arm, holding her gently to him,
    though the man's face remained turned away. Otah wondered, not for the
    first time, what brokering this agreement had cost Issandra Dasin.
     
    He glanced at the stairs down which her daughter had vanished, and then
    back, his hands shifting into a pose that made an implicit offer.
    Issandra raised an eyebrow, a half-smile making a dimple in one cheek.
    Otah tugged at his robes, straightening the lines, and stepped carefully
    down from the dais. The girl Ana would be his daughter too, soon enough.
    If her true mother and father weren't placed to speak with her in her
    distress, perhaps it was time that Otah did.
     
    Below decks, the Galtic ship was as cramped and close and ripe with the
    scent of tightly quartered humanity as any ship Otah had sailed with.
    Under normal circumstances, the deck now peopled with the guests of the
    Dasin family would have given room to a full watch of sailors. Instead,
    most were lurking in the tiny rooms, waiting for the songs to end and
    their own turn with fresh air to come. Still, Otah, Emperor of the
    Khaiem, found a way cleared for him, conversations stopping when he came
    in view. He made his way forward, squinting into the darkness for a
    glimpse of the rabbit-faced girl.
     
    Galtic design divided the cargo hold in sections, and it was in one of
    these dark chambers that he heard the girl's voice. Crates and boxes
    loomed above him to either side, the binding ropes creaking gently with
    the rolling ship. Rats chattered and complained. And there, hunched over
    as if she were protecting something pressed to her belly, sat Ana Dasin.
     
    "Excuse me," Otah said. "I don't mean to intrude, but ... may I sit?"
     
    Ana looked up at him. Her dark eyes shone in the dim light. Her nod