Chapter 9
In countless odeons and poems there are tales of families separated by war, famine, titan, or contagion, and in these there always comes a moment when they are finally reunited.
They spy one another, cry out each other’s names, and are overcome with delight, embracing and laughing and weeping as the years and leagues apart suddenly dissolve.
Yet now, as I gazed upon my sister Fotia who I had not seen in nearly six years, all those stories seemed a bitter joke. We did not run to each other, or grasp hands to confirm our flesh was true. We simply stared, as if we were strangers awkwardly forced into this encounter.
Which we were, I realized. I had never seen Fotia ride in all our childhood, and most definitely not like that. I had no idea how she’d come to learn such a thing—or how she’d come to be in this place, of all places, at all.
“Mm—what?” said Trikao. “What do you say there?”
Fotia took a step toward the table, squinting at me. “You…are gray,” she said.
“P-pardon?” I said. “I what?”
“Your skin. It’s gray. I’d heard some of your kind changed their skin, but…I didn’t think I’d…” She trailed off, then again said, “How are you here, Din? Of all the people I imagined to find drinking wine with Grandfather Trikao, I never expected you.”
I gaped at her, but thought—Grandfather Trikao?
Trikao’s eyes shot back and forth below his huge white eyebrows. “I take it you two are…acquainted? No, no, I see it now…You are related? Is this so?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “We are, sir. Though I have not seen my sister Fotia in some ti—”
“Five years,” she said. “And four months. A few weeks on top of that. I can’t do the math right now. I’ve not the mind for it.” She looked at me, and something bright shone in her glance—but it was neither love nor joy. “Again. What are you doing here, Din?”
I cleared my throat awkwardly. “I…it’s as Trikao said. I am here to investigate the death of the Burav girl.”
“You’re the one who locked up Castus? You’re the one who’s here to hang my friend?”
“I’m not here to hang him,” I said, nettled. “I am here to…”
I stopped.
Her friend, she’d just said. And what was it Trikao had told me earlier?
I was not intimate with Castus. My son and his betrothed were close with him, however. I can send for them to come to the city, now that there’s no danger. “Betrothed…” I said slowly.
I turned to look at my sister. I saw a flash of worry cross her face, only to be replaced by a very familiar look of defiance.
“You are…to marry?” I said, agog. “Fotia—you’re betrothed to this man’s son?”
She stuck her chin out at me. “Yes,” she said. “I damned well am, Din.”
I felt myself coloring. “My little sister is going to marry…a gentryman? Of the Armentas?”
There was a long, awkward silence. I had been carefully curating the family trees of these two houses throughout this investigation, but I’d never expected to add my own sister to one side.
Trikao cleared his throat. “I, ah, will give you both a moment.” He stood, bowed, began to walk away, then paused to step back quickly and pick up his tiny thimble of wine. “Pardon,” he whispered. Then he turned and left us.
Fotia and I stared at each other. Then, emanating an air of the utmost hostility, she sat down in the chair opposite me, pushed her black hair back from her face, and smiled coldly. “So. What shall we talk about, brother?”
—
“How…” I stammered. “How are…”
“How are you doing today?” Fotia proposed. “Is that what you wish to ask me?”
“Wh-what?”
“Oh, quite well, Dinios. I am doing wonderfully on this fine evening. How goes the wet season for you? What other inane chatter shall we indulge in?” Her eyes went bright with anger.
“How else are we to bridge over the yawning gap of—what is it now?—three years of total silence? Of no word, nothing whatsoever about your whereabouts, or your damned well-being?”
I felt my face grow flushed and hot. “It wasn’t total,” I said.
“No?”
“No! I sent money, and I know you all got it.”
“Oh, money,” said Fotia contemptuously. “Yes, very warm and intimate, that! By hell, I didn’t even know if you were alive, Din, did you know?
I genuinely thought you might be dead, and what we were getting was just bereavement pay!
And now here you are, alive and whole and swanning about in your fancy blue coat, chatting up people I know so well—but terribly surprised to see me! ”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“What is?”
“Imperial bereavement pay is far higher than my monthly dispensations. If I’d been dead, you would have been granted lands and, depending on the circumstances of my death, entitlements.”
Fotia stared at me. I immediately sensed that this had been an extremely stupid answer.
She raised a hand and made a gesture. One of the tavern clerks came scurrying up. “A pot of sackwine, please,” she said, “and a large one. I shall need it to get through this conversation.”
“I have been,” I said, slowly sitting, “very much engaged with imperial work.”
“Doing what? Can you tell me that? Or will I get nothing?”
“I was attempting to explain my silence. I have been busy doing many awful things for the Iudex, and trying to get promoted, so that I can keep paying off Father’s debts.”
“For three years? You were kept busy for three years?”
I opened my mouth, wondered what to say that could possibly satisfy, and closed it again.
“I see,” she said icily. “But here you are on the Plains of Tala. And I note the look of surprise has not yet left your face. So. I’ll assume you didn’t know I was here.” She sighed. “Did you intend to ever visit our home while you were here, brother? To seek me out even once?”
Again, I felt a heat in my cheeks. “There is a ring wall between here and home.”
“And you’ve imperial credentials! It’d be an easy thing for you to visit.” She let out a low laugh. “How much like Father you are! Always leaving the room, slipping out the door to escape to your strange business.”
This cut me deep. I looked away and touched my head. I recalled Ana’s discussion today, about how my augmentations were “maturing” whether I liked it or not, and felt anger flash hot within me.
“How am I the one earning this castigation?” I said. “You seem to have gotten the very good end of whatever deal this was.”
“Have I?”
“Oh, clearly! Your skin’s the same color you were born with. And now, aren’t you engaged to a gentryman? To the son of Trikao Armenta? Hell, Fotia, I almost wond…” I forced myself to stop talking.
“Say it,” said Fotia.
“I did not say anything.”
“But I know what you were going to say.”
“I thought the sum of this conversation,” I said rather acidly, “was how little we knew about each other after all these years apart.”
The bar clerk returned with two tiny glasses and a pot of sackwine so ripe it made my eyes water when he opened it.
Fotia swiftly and expertly poured a glass, tossed it back, then looked me in the eye and said, “You, Dinios, were going to say that I had found another source for money, weren’t you?
After we’d used you up, for all your pay. ”
I coolly met her gaze. “Well. That was exactly what Grandmother told me I was doing, when I left. Something about being the man of the house. Shouldering family burdens. And Father, of course, said nothing at all.” I poured myself my own little glass and drank it.
“As Kols, we are quite accustomed to financial desperation, Fotia. So—I am given to wonder.”
“Then you’re a poor investigator, and you know fuck-all, dear Din. Because then you’d know that Trikao Armenta—”
“Oh, you mean Grandfather Trikao?”
The smile became a scowl. “I have great fondness for that man. I’ll not see you mock him.”
I waved at her to continue.
“The inheritance of the Armenta spreads does not pass through him. So it will not pass to Ippeas.”
“Ippeas,” I said, tasting the name in my mouth. “That’s the boy, then? Your fellow?”
“Oh, titan’s taint,” muttered Fotia. Again, a glass expertly poured and swiftly drunk. “You can’t do this, Din.”
“Do what?”
“You can’t come swaggering back into my affairs, playing the role of the stiff, disapproving big brother. Not after three years of absolute silence!”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s love, then,” I said. “Because it can’t be money. Not if he’s not inheriting. It’s not like just being part of a gentryclan doesn’t grant him fortune and privileges few could imagine.”
At that, a shadow passed over her face. “Maybe some, yes,” she said. “But not the Armentas. Not these days.”
A long, heavy silence. I turned the tiny glass about in my hand, watching the purple dregs wash about. I poured myself another glass, and then—slowly—one for her.
I studied her out the side of my eye. How strange it was, to see her face, yet beautiful and mature—and suddenly so full of genuine fear.
“How are you here, Fotia?” I asked. “How did you come to be in this place, out of all the Empire?”
She sighed deeply and drank. “Honestly, I…I don’t quite know. We were in Daretana, scraping by. Using most of the money you sent to pay down Father’s debts. The rest we used for food. Got very used to lentils. And Grandmother aged, and got sicker, and we needed help there.”
“It wasn’t enough, then?” I said. “All I sent you—that wasn’t enough?”
“Not with an aging woman, a dying man, and three growing girls. Especially Karatho and Ithipia, who were still quite young then.”
I looked away, dismayed. How wretched, how futile it all was: I’d sold away decades of my life, and had still come up short.
“So we needed money,” Fotia continued, “as we always did. But Daretana changed in the years you were away. The golden safety brought by the Legion, as the imperial declarations so love to say. A horse breeder bought up the farm down the road from us. Raised mounts for the Legion and the work at the sea walls. One day, for a lark, I joined the farmer in breaking his steeds.”
“Breaking…?”