Page 28
She waits for me to go on. I have been sitting beside her enjoying the sun when I came to ask her to face a roomful of strangers. I should have begun with the dinner.
“I’m inviting the grove representatives and two caravan factors to dinner tonight. They’ll ask about the road, and probably about you. I’d like you to join us if you want to hear the questions and answer for yourself.”
“Would I be there as your wife?”
“As Vai. The marriage is on record, and the request to cancel it is already with the council. Neither changes because you eat with us.”
She looks across the courtyard at the northern windows.
“I won’t tell them I’m staying.”
“I won’t ask you to.”
“All right,” she says. “I’ll come. I’d rather hear what they’re saying than have Ziku improve it afterward.”
I stay after she agrees. She has the sun on her face again, and I have found no urgent reason to stand. When the shadow of a branch reaches her shoulder, she puts on her coat.
“Don’t you have work?”
“Yes.”
“Then go and do it. I’m not going to rescue your petitions over dinner.”
I get up and take the northern walk. At the meeting-room door, I discover I have left enough time to work only if I stop looking back into the courtyard.
At sunset, I wait outside the hall while Reivaka seats the guests.
Vai comes along the eastern walk in the green dress.
The cloth fits at her waist and falls freely from her hips. She has pinned up her auburn hair; copper curls escape at her temples, leaving the side of her neck bare. I have seen the dress on the seamstress’s table, but nothing about the folded wool prepared me for this.
She stops in front of me.
“Does it look all right?”
“You look beautiful.”
She stops smoothing her sleeve.
“Oh.”
The curl beside her cheek moves when she breathes. I could touch it without taking a step. A flower presses against the bark at my collar, and I cover it before the people in the hall see what her arrival has done to me.
Vai looks at my hand covering the bud.
“You could let that one out.”
“If I start, there may be more.”
She smiles slowly. “I’ll risk it.”
I lower my hand.
The flower opens. Vai passes me into the hall, and I follow, so occupied with the bare nape of her neck that Reivaka has to say my name before I hear the first introduction.
The grove representatives rise. Neimura sits near the end of the table with the two factors, the copied road dates beside his plate. Reivaka finishes introducing Vai and points the visitors toward their places.
Vai sits at my right.
