She was just Awhero, no other name. She had two daughters and a son. They, too, were malghaste. If parents were malghaste, then the children were also malghaste. But, in a way, Awhero said, it was better for women than being born to the other Mahahmbi castes, the religious, the royal family, the merchants.
“Why is that?” Genevieve asked.
“I like to live. I have almost seventy years. If I had been born woman in another caste, I would not live so long.”
Genevieve was curious about that, started to ask about that, but she heard her husband’s voice from upstairs and knew the interlude was over.
“I’ll come back,” she said. “May I?”
“I may die if you do, if I do, if you do,” she replied.
Genevieve figured that out on her way upstairs. If Genevieve came back, and if Awhero had stayed, and if then Genevieve said anything about it, Awhero might die. So. She would say nothing about it.
21: The Mahahmbi
Once aware of Awhero’s cellar, Genevieve haunted the place. Whenever Dovidi woke at night, she slipped from the room she shared with Aufors and took the baby down to the kitchens. Three men were on night duty, one near each outer door and one in the communications room, but all three of them were usually dozing, and when this was the case, she did not even stop in the kitchens. It was only a step through the concealed door and down a short flight into Awhero’s cellar. There she sat on a cushion holding the baby, nursing him, playing with him, while Awhero—accompanied by a sister or a few cousins or a clutter of old aunts who, it seemed, never went anywhere without their tambours and flutes—sang ballads and laments or chanted lengthy episodes from the life of Tenopia.
Tenopia was malghaste, so it was claimed by the malghaste themselves, though she had come from the sea. As a young woman she had left Galul and gone into Mahahm, where she had been found by the son of the Shah, sitting beside a well in an oasis. The son of the Shah was so taken with her beauty that he took her into his own household, despite Tenopia’s habits of disobedience. Among other derelictions she had sneaked away from her attendants without a veil, she had danced on the desert, she had sung with the great voices . . .
“Voices, Awhero?” Genevieve interrupted startled, looking up from the baby. “What voices?”
“Great voices that sing in night, from sea.”
“Here? In Mahahm-qum?”
“Sometimes we can hear them here, in Mahahm-qum. We hear them better when we are in Galul.”
Giving Genevieve no chance to ask more about this, Awhero resumed her chant, the drums their tapping, the little flutes their piping, and Genevieve did not choose to interrupt. She was so caught up in sleeplessness and nursing at all hours, so tuned to the slightest catch in the baby’s breathing, the least murmur—all of this interspersed with worry about Aufors and the Marshal—that she was not thinking clearly. The time spent among the malghaste was more dreamlike than real. Their music was dream music, the joy in their singing faces was sublime, like the presumed bliss of angels. Genevieve told herself that once she caught up on her sleep, she would ask sensible questions and understand all of it much better. Meantime, she let herself relax among the women, who became more numerous with every night that passed.
One morning, while most of the staff were at breakfast, there came a thundering from the in-city house door. Aufors gestured for the guard to stand aside, put on his gloves and the mask that hung ready at the door, and opened the hatch to confront Ybon Saelan, minister of the Shah, who asked to see Prince Delganor.
“The Prince is not seeing anyone,” Aufors said, in the elegant and stylized Mahahmbi he had been practicing for a season. “In any case, we don’t admit anyone by this door. We use the gate outside the walls to avoid defiling ourselves with the uncleanliness of your streets.” He then shut the hatch and reported to the Marshal, who was of the opinion that the minister would go away.