Father had been a robust merchant of as'shelik, or silks, and his wares--which he acquired from traders as far away as Alken--had by now come into the possession of men and women throughout the town and the surrounding area. By the time he was struck from this world, Yhako had become so knowledgeable in the trade that he was prepared to run his competitors the country over. The Fagash brothers controlled the trade from points west of Tavenar, and although they had the larger business and profits, Yhako had them down on sheer acumen. But even as he was prepared to do such a thing, he actually had no intention of doing so. Yhako was devoted to his studies, and believed that his true purpose lie in advancing his knowledge and that of the people around him. He saw his as'shelik merely as a means to support the family, and it had done a good job of this thus far, so there was no reason for expansion. The business required a single man to manage it the day long, but two men together could have administered it in half a day.
Like Yhako, Ansidrion was devoted to his studies, and put nothing before them. He learned the as'shelik trade from Father--dutifully, it seems--but never intended to take part in it. Shortly after Father's death, but before my own birth, Yhako and Ansidrion came to an agreement. When they came of age, both men would spend their days in the two activities they enjoyed most (Yhako in studying and supporting his family, and Ansidrion in studying and sleeping); they agreed that they would study together at night, and Yhako would work days for both men, while Ansidrion would spent that time sleeping for both men. Although I was raised on it, I believed this to be a terrible deal. Ansidrion lazed about for half of his life, sleeping from five hours before noon until five hours before midnight, while Yhako worked his entire life, catching nary a nap. But even in my youth, I recognized Yhako to be the smartest man I had ever met, and although I disagreed whole-heartily with his philosophy and lifestyle, I learned never to question his deals. If he committed to something, there must be a wise reason for it.
It was my mother, naturally, who exercised the most influence over me in my youth. With my brothers' days both accounted for, Mother looked after my upbringing—and that of Qhema, when she was still young enough—and nowhere was her transformation more pronounced than in the contrast between the two of them. Qhema was ten years older than me, and left when I was but six years old, but in her boundless, indestructible warmth, she left an indelible mark upon me. She spoke to me with patience, and cared for me when Mother lost hers. Mother could be terrible and I went in constant fear of her, even as I loved her. In her terrible swings of mood and changes of ruling Mother was not a person to trust, and knowing that she could change at any moment had the potential to shake any sense of security I might have had. This, perhaps, is why I became such a quiet, almost sullen child. I offered myself constancy by way of my own emotions. With a mother governed by arbitrariness, one brother who was the living embodiment of sloth and vain pursuits, and another who was far too brilliant and visioned to be trusted, it was Qhema who supplied me with my desired stability and affection. From her potent grace and remarkable capacity for affection, to her serene beauty and forward, aggressive sense of style, I genuinely believed she was a princess. Even into my teen years, I was convinced that she was not my sister, but a delegate of God who had come to me to minister love to me when the others around me could not provide. Once, when I was nine years of age, I obstinately argued to Ansidrion that he had never known or seen Qhema, that she had been visible and audible only to me, and that any knowledge he had of her came solely through me. There was, of course, a mountain of evidence to the contrary, but it was a manifestation of my selfishness that I still refused to believe that she had been real to anyone but me.
My youth was not, however, as unpleasant as I have made it sound. My mother cared for me and looked after my upbringing, arranging for me to have monthly meetings with our local priest. Yhako spent much of his days locked in his office or else doing business about the city, but when he did have a spare minute or two, he sought me and treated me as well as he knew how to interact with a child. He and Ansidrion, when I saw them, called me Dofit, which meant boy, but they did it with the condescended affection that was suitable for two grown men to don with a child. My brothers had had a much different upbringing than I, with a loving, happy father and a mother who, I am told, was much as I had known Qhema to be: sweet, loving and liberal. Our eldest brother, Sirlay, had lived with the family at that time, and he doted upon his younger siblings with the love of a boy who would always know more of the world than they, but was not so far removed that he had forgotten what it had been like to be their age. At the time of my birth, our father had been dead for thirteen months, Sirlay had already left the country permanently, and Yhako and Ansidrion were stocky young men of 14 and 13 years.
Nothing, however, was so different than the different mothers we had had. We had all been grown and nurtured within the same womb, but once I loosed myself from the powerful grasp of my mother's uterus, nothing was the same. Yhako and Ansidrion had had a mother who was full of youth and love, fostering in them a healthy intellectualism and encouraging them even to undertake studies that might lead them to heretical conclusions. She was among the few women in Ilepya to learn to read, as she had taught herself with scraps of letters and documents that she had, in her youth, scavenged from the alleys outside of aldermen's homes. She passed onto them a deep curiosity in and admiration for letters—both the academic letters that Sirlay studied at the University of Grontinion, and in the physical letters that people wrote to one another—as she believed that these carried all the secrets of the world and of men's souls.
Yhako and Ansidrion called this woman Fulviya, and they told me that she had died a half year before my own birth. Instead, the woman I knew was old and grey and bitter, shouting at anything that she found even the least bit offensive, and taking advantage of her position as senior member of the household by taking absolute control over what passed within the walls. She did not permit even the slightest mistake, and I once even saw her take a harsh and bitter beating to Ansidrion for speaking ill of the Iqharepur. Ansidrion was a large and powerful young man, so she had to use all of her strength against him before he yielded to her, and almost as soon as she had finished, she took to her bed and kept there for days to recover her strength.
Thankfully, I never received more than a mild paddling, as I was usually unwilling to cross her. I was raised to question nothing and accept everything on the authority of those above me in life, so even when I disagreed with her, I felt it was futile to argue. Before that occasion, Ansidrion had never suffered a beating before, but he was not particularly injured by it, and did not think much of it. “It is good that this has happened,” he told me later. “This has reminded me that this woman is no longer my mother; Fulviya was but she is dead now, and there is longer any remnant of her here.”
The existence of my life, in fact, was exactly what brought about this new woman. I cannot exactly explain the circumstances of my birth; was my mother pregnant for thirteen months? Did she somehow conceive me four months after Father’s death? Yhako and Ansidrion would later accuse that I was born of another man’s cloth, but this accusation was motivated by other consequences at this time, and in my adulthood, Yhako confirmed to me several times that he saw a great resemblance in me to our father.
I am not sure what exactly Fulviya believed was the cause of my existence. If anyone knew what caused me, it would be her, but it is possible that even she did not understand where I had come from. When she first discovered she was pregnant, she believed that her symptoms had been delayed, and perhaps she had conceived me during my father’s lifetime, and that I had grown slower than usual. But the action of either carrying a living being inside of her for over a year, or else conceiving a child with a man who had been dead for four months, disturbed her deeply. She had already been affected by the death of her husband, whom she loved dearly, and she was in the midst of a search for answers. When she discovered this mysterious pregnancy, she saw it as a sign from God; a rebuttal of everything that she had ever done, for all of the sciences and letters that she had ever believed in denied the existence of her present experience. What else could it be, if not a sign from God that those letters and those sciences were untrue?
