A Betrayal in Winter

done, likely the execution of Otah Machi in there as well. With as many

rituals and ceremonies as the city faced, they'd be lucky to get any

real work done before winter.

The yipping of the mine dogs brought him back to himself, and he

realized he'd been half-dozing for the last few switchbacks. He rubbed

his eyes with the heel of his palm. He would have to pull himself

together when they began working in earnest. It would help, he told

himself, to have some particular problem to set his mind to instead of

the tedium of travel. Thankfully, Stone-Made-Soft wasn't resisting him

today. The effort it would have taken to force the unwilling andat to do

as it was told could have pushed the day from merely unpleasant to awful.

They reached the mouth of the mine and were greeted by several workers

and minor functionaries. Cehmai dismounted and walked Unsteadily to the

wide table that had been set up for their consultations. His legs and

back and head ached. When the drawings and notes were laid out before

him, it took effort to turn his attention to them. His mind wandered off

to Idaan or his own discomfort or the mental windstorm that was the andat.

"We would like to join these two passages," the overseer was saying, his

fingers tracing lines on the maps. Cehmai had seen hundreds of sets of

plans like this, and his mind picked up the markings and translated them

into holes dug through the living rock of the mountain only slightly

less easily than usual. "The vein seems richest here and then here. Our

concern is-"

"My concern," the engineer broke in, "is not bringing half the mountain

down on us while we do it."

The structure of tunnels that honeycombed the mountain wasn't the most

complicated Cehmai had ever seen, but neither was it simple. The mines

around Machi were capable of a complexity difficult in the rest of the

world, mostly because he himself was not in the rest of the world, and

mines in the Westlands and Galt weren't interested in paying the Khai

Mach] for his services. The engineer made his casewhere the stone would

support the tunnels and where it would not. The overseer made his

counter-case-pointing out where the ores seemed richest. The decision

was left to him.

The servants gave them bowls of honeyed beef and sausages that tasted of

smoke and black pepper; a tart, sweet paste made from last year's

berries; and salted Hatbrcad. Cehmai ate and drank and looked at the

maps and drawings. Fie kept remembering the curve of Idaan's mouth, the

feeling of her hips against his own. He remembered her tears, her

reticence. He would have sacrificed a good deal to better understand her

sorrow.

It was more, he thought, than the struggle to face her father's mortal

ity. Perhaps he should talk to Maati about it. He was older and had

greater experience with women. Cehmai shook his head and forced himself

to concentrate. It was half a hand before he saw a path through the

stone that would yield a fair return and not collapse the works.

Stone-Made-Soft neither approved nor dissented. It never did.

The overseer took a pose of gratitude and approval, then folded tip the

maps. The engineer sucked his teeth, craning his neck as the diagrams

and notes vanished into the overseer's satchel, as if hoping to see one

last objection, but then he too took an approving pose. They lit the

lanterns and turned to the wide, black wound in the mountain's side.

The tunnels were cool, and darker than night. The smell of rock dust

made the air thick. As he'd guessed, there were few men working, and the

sounds of their songs and the barking of their dogs only made the

darkness seem more isolating. They talked very little as they wound

their way through the maze. Usually Cehmai made a practice of keeping a

mental map, tracking their progress through the dark passages. After the

second unexpected intersection, he gave up and was content to let the

overseer lead them.

Unlike the mines on the plain, even the deepest tunnels here were dry.

When they reached the point Cehmai had chosen, they took out the maps

one last time, consulting them in the narrow section of the passageway

that the lanterns lit. Above them, the mountain felt bigger than the sky.

"Don't make it too soft," the engineer said.

"It doesn't bear any load," the overseer said. "Gods! Who's been telling

you ghost stories? You're nervous as a puppy first time down the hole."

Cehmai ignored them, looked up, considering the stone above him as if he

could see through it. He wanted a path wide as two men walking with

their arms outstretched. And it would need to go forward from here and

then tilt to the left and then up. Cehmai pictured the distances as if

he would walk them. It was about as far from where he was now to the

turning point as from the rose pavilion to the library. And then, the

shorter leg would be no longer than the walk from the library to Maati's

apartments. He turned his mind to it, pressed the whirlwind, applied it

to the stone before him, slowly, carefully loosening the stone in the

path he had imagined. Stone-Made-Soft resisted-not in the body that

scowled now looking at the tunnel's blank side, but in their shared

mind. The andat shifted and writhed and pushed, though not so badly as

it might have. Cehmai reached the turning point, shifted his attention

and began the shorter, upward movement.

The storm's energy turned and leapt ahead, spreading like spilled water,

pushing its influence out of the channel Cehmai's intention had

prepared. Cehmai gritted his teeth with the effort of pulling it back in

before the structure above them weakened and failed. The andat pressed

again, trying to pull the mountain down on top of them. Cehmai felt a

rivulet of sweat run down past his ear. The overseer and the engineer

were speaking someplace a long way off, but he couldn't be bothered by

them. They were idiots to distract him. He paused and gathered the

storm, concentrated on the ideas and grammars that had tied the andat to

him in the first place, that had held it for generations. And when it

had been brought to heel, he took it the rest of the way through his

pathway and then slowly, carefully, brought his mind, and its, back to

where they stood.

"Cehmai-cha?" the overseer asked again. The engineer was eyeing the

walls as if they might start speaking with him.

"I'm done," he said. "It's fine. I only have a headache."

Stone-Made-Soft smiled placidly. Neither of them would tell the men how

near they had all just come to dying: Cehmai, because he wished to keep

it from them, Stone-Made-Soft, because it would never occur to it to care.

The overseer took a hand pick from his satchel and struck the wall. The

metal head chimed and a white mark appeared on the stone. Cehmai waved

his hand.

"To your left," he said. "'t'here."

The overseer struck again, and the pick sank deep into the stone with a

sound like a footstep on gravel.

"Excellent," the overseer said. "Perfect."

Even the engineer seemed grudgingly pleased. Cehmai only wanted to get

out, into the light and hack to the city and his own bed. Even if they

left now, they wouldn't reach hlachi before nightfall. probably not

before the night candle hit its half mark.

On the way back up, the engineer started telling jokes. Cehmai allowed

himself to smile. There was no call to make things unpleasant even if

the pain in his head and spine were echoing his heartbeats.

When they reached the light and fresh air, the servants had laid out a

more satisfying meal-rice, fresh chickens killed here at the mine,

roasted nuts with lemon, cheeses melted until they could be spread over

their bread with a blade. Cehmai lowered himself into a chair of strung

cloth and sighed with relief. To the south, they could see the smoke of

the forges rising from Machi and blowing off to the east. A city

perpetually afire.

"When we get there," Cehmai said to the andat, "we'll be playing several

games of stones. You'll be the one losing."

The andat shrugged almost imperceptibly.

"It's what I am," it said. "You may as well blame water for being wet."

"And when it soaks my robes, I do," Cehmai said. The andat chuckled and

then was silent. Its wide face turned to him with something like

concern. Its brow was furrowed.

"The girl," it said.

"What about her?"

"It seems to me the next time she asks if you love her, you could say yes.

Cehmai felt his heart jump in his chest, startled as a bird. The andat's

expression didn't change; it might have been carved from stone. Idaan

wept in his memory, and she laughed, and she curled herself in his

bedclothes and asked silently not to be sent away. Love, he discovered,

could feel very much like sorrow.

"I suppose you're right," he said, and the andat smiled in what looked

like sympathy.

MAATI LAID HIS NOTES OUT ON THE WIDE TABLE AT THE BACK OF THE LIbrary's

main chamber. The distant throbbing of trumpet and drum wasn't so

distracting here as in his rooms. Three times on the walk here, his

sleeves heavy with paper and books, he'd been grabbed by some masked

reveler and kissed. Twice, bowls of sweet wine had been forced into his

hand. The palaces were a riot of dancing and song, and despite his best

intentions, the memory of those three kisses drew his attention. It

would be sweet to go out, to lose himself in that crowd, to find some

woman willing to dance with him, and to take comfort in her body and her

breath. It had been years since he had let himself be so young as that.

He turned himself to his puzzle. Danat, the man destined to be Khai

Machi, had seemed the most likely to have engineered the rumors of

Otah's return. Certainly he had gained the most. Kahn Machi, whose death

had already given Maati three kisses, was the other possibility. Until

he dug in. He had asked the servants and the slaves of each household

every question he could think of. No, none of them recalled any

consultations with a man who matched the assassin's description. No,

neither man had sent word or instruction since Maati's own arrival. He'd

asked their social enemies what they knew or guessed or speculated on.

Kahn Machi had been a weak-lunged man, pale of face and watery of eye.

He'd had a penchant for sleeping with servant girls, but hadn't even

gotten a child on one-likely because he was infertile. Danat was a bully

and a sneak, a man whose oaths meant nothing to him-and the killing of

noble, scholarly Kaiin showed that. Danat's triumph was the best of all

possible outcomes or else the worst.

Searching for conspiracy in court gossip was like looking for raindrops

in a thunderstorm. Everyone he spoke to seemed to have four or five

suggestions of what might have happened, and of those, each half

contradicted the other. By far, the most common assumption was that Otah

had been the essential villain in all of it.

Nlaati had diagrammed the relationships of Danat and Kaiin with each of

the high families-Kamau, Daikani, Radaani and a dozen more. Then with

the great trading houses, with mistresses and rumored mistresses and the

teahouses they liked best. At one point he'd even listed which horses

each preferred to ride. The sad truth was that despite all these facts,

all these words scribbled onto papers, referenced and checked, nothing

pointed to either man as the author of Biitrah's death, the attempt on

Maati's own life, or the slaughter of the assassin. He was either too

dimwitted to see the pattern before him, it was too well hidden, or he

was looking in the wrong place. Clearly neither man had been present in

the city to direct the last two attacks, and there seemed to be no

supporters in Machi who had managed the plans for them.

Nor was there any reason to attack him. Nlaati had been on the verge of

exposing Otah-kvo. That was in everyone's best interest, barring Otah's.

Maati closed his eyes, sighed, then opened them again, gathered up the

pages of his notes and laid them out again, as if seeing them in a

different pattern might spark something.

Drunken song burst from the side room to his left, and Baarath, li

brarian of Machi, stumbled in, grinning. His face was flushed, and he

smelled of wine and something stronger. He threw open his arms and

strode unevenly to Maati, embracing him like a brother.

"No one has ever loved these books as you and I have, Maati-kya,"

Baarath said. "The most glorious party of a generation. Wine flowing in

the gutters, and food and dancing, and I'll jump off a tower if we don't

see a crop of babes next spring that look nothing like their fathers.

And where do we go, you and I? Here."

Baarath turned and made a sweeping gesture that took in the books and

scrolls and codices, the shelves and alcoves and chests. He shook his

head and seemed for a moment on the verge of tears. Maati patted him on

the back and led him to a wooden bench at the side of the room. Baarath

sat back, his head against the stone, and smiled like a baby.

"I'm not as drunk as I look," Baarath said.

"I'm sure you aren't," Maati agreed.

Baarath pounded the board beside him and gestured for Maati to sit.

There was no graceful way to refuse, and at the moment, he could think

of no reason. Going back to stand, frustrated, over the table had no

appeal. He sat.

"What is bothering you, Maati-kya? You're still searching for some way

to keep the upstart alive?"

"Is that an option? I don't see Danat-cha letting him walk free. No, I

suppose I'm just hoping to see him killed for the right reasons. Except

... I don't know. I can't find anyone else with reason to do the things

that have been done."

"Perhaps there's more than one thing going on then?" Baarath suggested.

Maati took a pose of surrender.

"I can't comprehend one. The gods will have to lead me by the hand if

there's two. Can you think of any other reason to kill Biitrah? The man

seems to have moved through the world without making an enemy."

"He was the best of us," Baarath agreed and wiped his eyes with the end

of his sleeve. "He was a good man."

"So it had to be one of his brothers. Gods, I wish the assassin hadn't

been killed. He could have told us if there was a connection between

Biitrah and what happened to me. Then at least I'd know if I were

solving one puzzle or two."

"Doesn't have to," Baarath said.

Maati took a pose that asked for clarification. Baarath rolled his eyes

and took on an expression of superiority that Maati had seen beneath his

politeness for weeks now.

"It doesn't have to be one of his brothers," Baarath said. "You say it's

not the upstart. Fine, that's what you choose. But then you say you

can't find anything that I)anat or Kaiin's done that makes you think

they've done it. And why would they hide it, anyway? It's not shameful

for them to kill their brother."

"But no one else has a reason," Maati said.

"No one? Or only no one you've found?"

"If it isn't about the succession, I can't find any call to kill

Biitrah. If it isn't about my search for Otah, I can't think of any

reason to want me dead. The only killing that makes sense at all was

poking the assassin full of holes, and that only because he might have

answered my questions."

"Why couldn't it have been the succession?"

Maati snorted. It was difficult being friendly with Baarath when he was

sober. Now, with him half-maudlin, half-contemptuous, and reeking of

wine, it was worse. Maati's frustration peaked, and his voice, when he

spoke, was louder and angrier than he'd intended.

"Because Otah didn t, and Kaiin didn't, and Danat didn't, and there's no

one else who's looking to sit on the chair. Is there some fifth brother

I haven't been told about?"

Baarath raised his hands in a pose of a tutor posing an instructive

question to a pupil. The effect was undercut by the slight weaving of

his hands.

"What would happen if all three brothers died?"

"Otah would be Khai."

"Four. I meant four. What if they all die? What if none of them takes

the chair?"

"']'he utkhaiem would fight over it like very polite pit dogs, and

whichever one ended with the most blood on its muzzle would be elevated

as the new Khai."

"So someone else might benefit from this yet, you see? They would have

to hide it because having slaughtered the whole family of the previous

Khai wouldn't help their family prestige, seeing as all their heads

would be hanging from poles. But it would be about your precious

succession, and there would be someone besides the three ... four

brothers with reason to do the thing."

"Except that Danat's alive and about to be named Khai Machi, it's a

pretty story."

Baarath sneered and made a grand gesture at the world in general.

"What is there but pretty stories? What is history but the accumulation

of plausible speculation and successful lies? You're a scholar,

Maati-kya, you should enjoy them more."

Baarath chuckled drunkenly, and Maati rose to his feet. Outside,

something cracked with a report like a stone slab broken or a roof tile

dropped from a great height. A moment later, laughter followed it. Maati

leaned against the table, his arms folded and each hand tucked into the

opposite sleeve. Baarath shifted, lay back on the bench, and sighed.

"You don't think it's true," Maati said. "You don't think it's one of

the high families plotting to be Khai."

"Of course not," Baarath said. "It's an idiot plan. If you were to start

something like that, you'd need to be certain you'd win it, and that

would take more money and influence than any one family could gather.

Even the Radaani don't have that much gold, and they've got more than

the Khai."

"Then you think I'm chasing mist," Maati said.

"I think the upstart is behind all of it, and that you're too much in

awe of him to see it. Everyone knows he was your teacher when you were a

boy. You still think he's twice what you are. Who knows, maybe he is."

His anger gave Maati the illusion of calm, and a steadiness to his

voice. He took a pose of correction.

"That was rude, Baarath-cha. I'd thank you not to say it again."

"Oh, don't be ashamed of it," Baarath said. "There are any number of

boys who have those sorts of little infatuations with-"

Maati's body lifted itself, sliding with an elegance and grace he didn't

know he posessed. His palm moved out by its own accord and slapped

Baarath's jaw hard enough to snap the man's head to the side. He put a

hand on Baarath's chest, pinning him firmly to the bench. Baarath yelped

in surprise and Maati saw the shock and fear in his face. Maati kept his

voice calm.

"We aren't friends. Let's not be enemies. It would distract me, and you

may have perfect faith that it would destroy you. I am here on the

Dai-kvo's work, and no matter who becomes Khai Mach], he'll have need of

the poets. Standing beside that, one too-clever librarian can't count

for much."

Outrage shone in Baarath's eyes as he pushed Maati's hand away. Maati

stepped back, allowing him to rise. The librarian pulled his disarrayed

robes back into place, his features darkening. Maati's rage began to

falter, but he kept his chin held high.

"You're a bully, Maati-cha," Baarath said, then he took a pose of

farewell and marched proudly out of the library. His library. Maati

heard the door slam closed and felt himself deflate.

It galled him, but he knew he would have to apologize later. He should

never have struck the man. If he had borne the insults and insinuations,

he could have forced contrition from Baarath, but he hadn't.

He looked at his scattered notes. Perhaps he was a bully. Perhaps there

was nothing to be found in all this. After all, Otah would die

regardless. Danat would take his father's place, and Maati would go back

to the Dai-kvo. He would even be able to claim a measure of success.

Otah was starving to death in the high air above Machi thanks to him,

after all. And what was that if not victory? One small mystery left

unsolved could hardly matter in the end.

He pulled his papers together, stacking them, folding them, tucking the

packet away into his sleeve. "There was nothing to be done here. He was

tired and frustrated, ashamed of himself and in despair. There was a

city of wine and distraction that would welcome him with open arms and

delighted smiles.

He remembered Heshai-kvo-the poet of Saraykeht, the controller of

Removing-the-Part-That-Continues who they'd called Seedless. He

remembered his teacher's pilgrimages to the soft quarter with its drugs

and gambling, its wine and whores. Heshai had felt this, or something

like it; Maati knew he had.

He pulled the brown leather-bound book from his sleeve, where it always

waited. He opened it and read Heshai's careful, beautiful handwriting.

The chronicle and examination of his errors in binding the andat. He

recalled Seedless' last words. He's forgiven you.

Maati turned back, his limbs heavy with exhaustion and dread. He put the

hook back into his sleeve and pulled out his notes. He rearranged them

on the table. He began again, and the night stretched out endlessly

before him.

THE PALACES WERE DRUNKEN AND DIZZY AND LOST IN THE RELIEF THAT comes

when a people believe that the worst is over. It was a celebration of

fratricide, but of all the dancers, the drinkers, the declaimers of

small verse, only Idaan seemed to remember that fact. She played her

part, of course. She appeared in all the circles of which she had been

part back before she'd entered this darkness. She drank wine and tea,

she accepted the congratulations of the high families on her joining

with the house of Vaunyogi. She blushed at the ribald comments made

about her and Adrah, or else replied with lewder quips.

She played the part. The only sign was that she was more elaborate when

she painted her face. Even if people noticed, what would they think but

that the colors on her eyelids and the plum-dark rouge on her lips were

a part of her celebration. Only she knew how badly she needed the mask.

The night candle was just past its middle mark when they broke away, she

and Adrah with their arms around each other as if they were lovers. No

one they saw had any question what they were planning, and no one would

object. Half of the city had paired off already and slunk away to find

an empty bed. It was the night for it. They laughed and stumbled toward

the high palaces-her father's.

Once, when they were hidden behind a high row of hedges and it wasn't a

performance for anyone, Adrah kissed her. He smelled of wine and the

warm, musky scent of a young man's skin. Idaan kissed him back, and for

that moment-that long silent, sensual moment-she meant it. "Then he

pulled away and smiled, and she hated him again.

The celebrations in the halls and galleries of the Khai's palace were

the nearest to exhaustion-everyone from the highest family of the

utkhaiem to the lowest firekeeper had dressed in their finest robes and

set out to stain them with something. The days of revelry had taken

their toll, and with the night half-passed, the wildest celebrations

were over. Music and song still played, people still danced and talked,

drew one another away into alcoves and corners. Old men talked gravely

of who would benefit from Danat's survival and promotion. But the sense

was growing that the time was drawing near when the city would catch its

breath and rest a while.

She and Adrah made their way through to the private wings of the palace,

where only servants and slaves and the wives of the Khai moved freely.

They made no secret of their presence. There was no need. Idaan led the

way up a series of wide, sweeping staircases to apartments on the south

side of the palace. A servant-an old man with gray hair, a limp, and a

rosy smile-greeted them, and Idaan instructed him that they were not to

be disturbed for any reason. The old man took a solemn expression and a

pose of acknowledgment, but there was merriment in his eyes. Idaan let

him believe what she, after all, intended him to. Adrah opened the great

wooden doors, and he also closed them behind her.

"They aren't the best rooms, are they?" Adrah said.

"They'll do," Idaan said, and went to the windows. She pulled open the

shutters. The great tower, Otah Machi's prison, stood like a dark line

inked in the air. Adrah moved to stand beside her.

"One of us should have gone with them," she said. "If the upstart's

found safely in his cell come morning . . ."

"He won't be," Adrah said. "Father's mercenaries are competent men. He

wouldn't have hired them for this if he hadn't been sure of them."

"I don't like using hired men," Idaan said. "If we can buy them, so can

anyone.

"They're armsmen, not whores," Adrah said. "They've taken a contract,

and they'll see it through. It's how they survive."

There were five lanterns, from small glass candleboxes to an oil lamp

with a wick as wide as her thumb and heavy enough to require both of

them to move it. They pulled them all as near the open window as they

could, and Adrah lit them while Idaan pulled the thin silks from under

her robes. The richest dyes in the world had given these their colorone

blue, the other red. Idaan hung the blue over the window's frame, and

then peered out, squinting into the night for the signal. And there,

perhaps half a hand from the top of the tower, shone the answering

light. Idaan turned away.

With all the light gathered at the window, the rooms were cast into

darkness. Adrah had pulled a hooded cloak over his robes. Idaan

remembered again the feeling of hanging over the void, feeling the wind

tugging at her. This wasn't so different, except that the prospect of

her own death had seemed somehow cleaner.

"He would want it," Idaan said. "If he knew that we'd planned this, he

would allow it. You know that."

"Yes, Idaan-kya. I know."

"To live so weak. It disgraces him. It makes him seem less before the

court. It's not a fit ending for a Khai."

Adrah drew a thin, blackened blade. It looked no wider than a finger,

and not much longer. Adrah sighed and squared his shoulders. Idaan felt

her stomach rise to her throat.

"I want to go with you," she said.

"We discussed this, Idaan-kya. You stay in case someone comes. You have

to convince them that I'm still in here with you."

"They won't come. They've no reason to. And he's my father."

"More reason that you should stay."

Idaan moved to him, touching his arm like a beggar asking alms. She felt

herself shaking and loathed the weakness, but she could not stop it.

Adrah's eyes were as still and empty as pebbles. She remembered Danat,

how he had looked when he arrived from the south. She had thought he was

ill, but it had been this. He had become a killer, a murderer of the

people he had once respected and loved. That he still respected and

loved. Adrah had those eyes now, the look of near-nausea. He smiled, and

she saw the determination. There were no words that would stop him now.

The stone had been dropped, and not all the wishing in the world could

call it back into her hand.

"I love you, Idaan-kya," Adrah said, his voice as cool as a gravestone.

"I have always loved you. From the first time I kissed you. Even when

you have hurt me, and you have hurt me worse than anyone alive, I have

only ever loved you."

He was lying. He was saying it as she'd said that her father would

welcome death, because he needed it to be true. And she found that she

needed that as well. She stepped back and took a pose of gratitude.

Adrah walked to the door, turned, nodded to her, and was gone. Idaan sat

in the darkness and looked at nothing, her arms wrapped around herself.

The night seemed unreal: absurd and undeniable at the same time, a

terrible dream from which she might wake to find herself whole again.

The weight of it was like a hand pressing down on her head.

There was time. She could call for armsmen. She could call for Danat.

She could go and stop the blade with her own body. She sat silent,

trying not to breathe. She remembered the ceremony of her tenth summer,

the year after her mother's death. Her father had taken her to sit at

his side during all that day's ritual. She had hated it, bored by the

petitions and formality until tears ran down her cheeks. She re membered

a meal with a representative from some Westlands warden where her father

had forced her to sit on a hard wooden chair and swallow a cold bean

soup that made her gag rather than seem ungracious to the Westlander for

his food.

She fought to remember a smile, an embrace. She wanted a moment in the

long years of her childhood to which she could point and say here is how

I know he loved me. The blue silk stirred in the breeze. The lantern

flames flickered, dimmed, and rose again. It must have happened. For him

to be so desperate for her happiness now, there must have been some

sign, some indication.

She found herself rocking rapidly back and forth. When a sound came from

the door, she jumped up, panicked, looking around for some excuse to

explain Adrah's absence. When he himself came in, she could see in his

eyes that it was over.

Adrah pulled off the cloak, letting it pool around his ankles. His

bright robes seemed incongruous as a butterfly in a butcher's shop. His

face was stone.

"You've done it," Idaan said, and two full breaths later, he nodded.

Something as much release as despair sank into her. She could feel her

body made heavy by it.

She walked to him, pulled the blade and its soft black leather sheath

from his belt, and let them drop to the floor. Adrah didn't try to stop her.

"Nothing we ever do will be so bad as this," she said. "This now is the

worst it will ever be. Everything will be better than this."

"He never woke," Adrah said. "The drugs that let him sleep ... He never

woke."

"That's good."

A slow, mad grin bloomed on his face, stretching until the blood left

his lips. There was a hardness in his eyes and a heat. It looked like

fury or possession. He took her shoulders in his hands and pulled her

near him. Their kiss was a gentle violence. For a moment, she thought he

meant to open her robes, to drag her back to the bed in a sad parody of

what they were expected to be doing. She pressed a palm to his sex and

was surprised to find that he was not aroused. Slowly, with perfect

control and a grip that bruised her, Adrah brought her away from him.

"I did this thing for you," he said. "I did this for you. Do you

understand that?"

"I do."

"Never ask me for anything again," he said and released her, turning

away. "From now until you die, you are in debt to me, and I owe you

nothing."

"For the favor of killing my father?" she asked, unable to keep the edge

from her voice.

"For what I have sacrificed to you," he said without looking back. Idaan

felt her face flush, her hands ball into fists. She heard him groan from

the next room, heard his robes shushing against the stone floor. The bed

creaked.

A lifetime, married to him. There wouldn't be a moment in the years that

followed that would not be poisoned. He would never forgive her, and she

would never fail to hate him. They would go to their graves, each with

teeth sunk in the other's neck.

They were perfect for each other.

Idaan walked silently to the window, took down the blue silk and put up

the red.

THE ARMSMEN GAVE HIM ENOUGH WATER TO LIVE, THOUGH NOT SO MUCH AS to

slake his thirst. Almost enough food to live as well, though not quite.

He had no clothing but the rags he'd worn when he'd come back to Machi

and the cloak that Maati had brought. When dawn was coming near and the

previous day's heat had gone from the tower, he would be huddling in

that cloth. Through the day, sun heated the great tower, and that heat

rose. And as it rose, it grew. In his stone cage, Otah lay sweating as

if he'd been working at hard labor, his throat dry and his head pounding.

The towers of Machi, Otah had decided, were the stupidest buildings in

the world. Too cold in winter, too hot in summer, unpleasant to use,

exhausting to climb. They existed only to show that they could exist.

More and more of the time, his mind was in disarray; hunger and boredom,

the stifling heat and the growing presentiment of his own death

conspired to change the nature of time. Otah felt outside it all, apart

from the world and adrift. He had always been in this room; the memories

from before were like stories he'd heard told. He would always be in

this room unless he wriggled out the window and into the cool, open air.

Twice already he had dreamed that he'd leapt from the tower. Both times,

he woke in a panic. It was that as much as anything that kept him from

taking the one control left to him. When despair washed through him, he

remembered the dream of falling, with its shrill regret. He didn't want

to die. His ribs were showing, he was almost nauseated with thirst, his

mind would not slow down or be quiet. He was going to be put to death,

and he did not want to die.

The thought that his suffering saved Kiyan had ceased to comfort him.

Part of him was glad that he had not known how wretched his father's

treatment of him would be. He might have faltered. At least now he could

not run. He would lose-he had lost, and badly-but he could not run. Mai

sat on her chair-the tall, thin one with legs of woven cane that she'd

had in their island hut. When she spoke, it was in the soft liquid

sounds of her native language and too fast for Otah to follow. He

struggled, but when he croaked out that he couldn't understand her, his

own voice woke him until he drifted away again into nothing, troubled

only by the conviction that he could hear rats chewing through the stone.

The shriek woke him completely. He sat upright, his arms trembling. The

room was real again, unoccupied by visions. Outside the great door, he

heard someone shout, and then something heavy pounded once against the

door, shaking it visibly. Otah rose. There were voices-new ones. After

so many days, he knew the armsmen by their rhythms and the timbre of

their murmurs. The throats that made the sounds he heard now were

unfamiliar. He walked to the door and leaned against it, pressing his

ear to the hairline crack between the wood and its stone frame. One

voice rose above the others, its tone commanding. Otah made out the word

"chains."

The voices went away again for so long Otah began to suspect he'd

imagined it all. The scrape of the bar being lifted from the door

startled him. He stepped hack, fear and relief coming together in his

heart. This might be the end. He knew his brother had returned; this

could be his death come for him. But at least it was an end to his time

in this cell. He tried to hold himself with some dignity as the door

swung open. The torches were so bright that Otah could hardly see.

"Good evening, Otah-cha," a man's voice said. "I hope you're well enough

to move. I'm afraid we're in a bit of a hurry."

"Who are you?" Otah asked. His own voice sounded rough. Squinting, he

could make out perhaps ten men in black leather armor. They had blades

drawn. The armsmen lay in a pile against the far wall, stacked like

goods in a warehouse, a black pool of blood surrounding them. The smell

of them wasn't rotten, not yet, but it was disturbingcoppery and

intimate. They had only been dead for minutes. If all of them were dead.

"We're the men who've come to take you out of here," the commander said.

He was the one actually standing in the doorway. He had the long face of

a man of the winter cities, but a westlander's flowing hair. Otah moved

forward and took a pose of gratitude that seemed to amuse him.

"Can you walk?" he asked as Utah came out into the larger room. The

signs of struggle were everywhere-spilled wine, overturned chairs, blood

on the walls. The armsmen had been taken by surprise. Utah put a hand

against the wall to steady himself. The stone felt warm as flesh.

"I'll do what I have to," Otah said.

"That's admirable," the commander said, "but I'm more curious about what

you can do. I've suffered long confinement myself a time or two, and I

know what it does. We can't take the easy way down. We've got to walk.

If you can do this, that's all to the good. If you can't, we're prepared

to carry you, but I need to have you out of the city quickly."

"I don't understand. Did Maati send you?"

"There's better places to discuss this, Otah-cha. We can't go down by

the chains. Even if there weren't more armsmen waiting there, we've just

broken them. Can you walk down the tower?"

A memory of the endlessly turning stairs and the ghost of pain in his

knees and legs. Otah felt a stab of shame, but pulled himself up and

shook his head.

"I don't believe I can," he said. The commander nodded and two of his

men pulled lengths of wood from their backs and fitted them together in

a cripple's litter. There was a small seat for Otah, canted against the

slope of the stairway, and the poles were set one longer than the other

to fit the tight curve. It would have been useless in any other

situation, but for this task it was perfect. As one of the men helped

Otah take his place on it, he wondered if the device had been built for

this moment, or if things like it existed in service of these towers.

The largest of the men spat on his hands and gripped the carrying poles

that would start down the stairs and bear most of Otah's weight. One of

his fellows took the other end, and Otah lurched up.

They began their descent, Otah with his back to the center of the spiral

staircase. He watched the stone of the wall curl up from below. The men

grunted and cursed, but they moved quickly. The man on the higher poles

stumbled once, and the one below shouted angrily back at him.

The journey seemed to last forever-stone and darkness, the smell of

sweat and lantern oil. Otah's knees bumped against the wall before him,

his head against the wall behind. When they reached the halfway point,

another huge man was waiting to take over the worst of the carrying.

Otah felt his shame return. He tried to protest, but the commander put a

strong, hard hand on his shoulder and kept him in the chair.

"You chose right the first time," the commander said.

The second half of the journey down was less terrible. Otah's mind was

beginning to clear, and a savage hope was lifting him. He was being

saved. He couldn't think who or why, but he was delivered from his cell.

He thought of the armsmen new-slaughtered at the tower's height, and

recalled Kiyan's words. How do you expect to protect me and my house?

They could all be killed, his jailers and his rescuers alike. All in the

name of tradition.

He could tell when they reached the level of the street-the walls had

grown so thick there was almost no room for them to walk, but thin

windows showed glimmers of light, and drunken, disjointed music filled

the air. At the base of the stair, his carriers lowered Otah to the

ground and took his arms over their shoulders as if he were drunk or

sick. The commander squeezed to the front of the party. Despite his

frown, Otah sensed the man was enjoying himself immensely.

They moved quickly and quietly through mare-like passages and out at

last into an alley at the foot of the tower. A covered cart was waiting,

two horses whickering restlessly. The commander made a sign, and the two

bearers lifted Otah into the back of the cart. The commander and two of

the men climbed in after, and the driver started the horses. Shod hooves

rapped the stone, and the cart lurched and bumped. The commander pulled

the back cloth closed and tied it, but loose enough he could peer out

the seam. The lantern was extinguished, and the scent of its dying smoke

filled the cart for a moment and was gone.

"What's happening out there?" Otah asked.

"Nothing," the commander said. "And best we keep it that way. No talking."

In silence and darkness, they continued. Otah felt lightheaded. The cart

turned twice to the left and then again to the right. The driver was

hailed and replied, but they never stopped. A breeze fluttered the thick

cloth of the cover, and when it paused, Otah heard the sound of water;

they were on the bridge heading south. He was free. He grinned, and then

as the implications of his freedom unfolded themselves in his mind, his

relief faltered.

"Forgive me. I don't know your name. I'm sorry. I can't do this."

The commander shifted. It was nearly black in the cart, so Otah couldn't

see the man's face, but he imagined incredulity on the long features.

"I went to Machi to protect someone-a woman. If I vanish, they'll still

have reason to suspect her. My brother might kill her on the chance that

she's involved with this. I can't let that happen. I'm sorry, but we

have to turn hack."

"You love her that much?" the commander asked.

"This isn't her fault. It's mine."

"All this is your fault, eh? You have a lot to answer for." There was

amusement in the man's voice. Otah felt himself smile.

"Well, perhaps not all my fault. But I can't let her be hurt. This is

the price of it, and I'll pay it if I have to."

They were all silent for a long moment, then the commander sighed.

"You're an honorable man, Otah Machi. I want you to know I respect that.

Boys. Chain him and gag him. I don't want him calling out."

They were on him in an instant, pushing him hard onto the rough wood of

the cart. Someone's knee drove in between his shoulder blades; invisible

hands bent his arms backwards. When he opened his mouth to scream, a wad

of heavy cloth was shoved in so deeply he gagged. A leather strap

followed, keeping it in place. He didn't know when his legs were bound,

but in fewer than twenty breaths, he was immobile-his arms chained

painfully behind him at his wrists and elbows, his mouth stuffed until

it was hard to breathe. The knee moved to the small of his back, digging

into his spine with every shift of the cart. He tried once to move, and

the pressure from above increased. He tried again, and the man cursed

him and rapped his head with something hard.

"I said no talking," the commander murmured, and returned to peering out

the opening in the hack cloth. Otah shifted, snarling in impotent rage

that none of these men seemed to see or recognize. The cart moved off

through the night. He could feel it when they moved from the paving of

the main road to a dirt track; he could hear the high grass hushing

against the wheels. They were taking him nowhere, and he couldn't think why.

He guessed it was almost three hands before the first light started to

come. Dawn was still nothing more than a lighter kind of darkness, the

commander's feet-the only part of the man Otah could see without lifting

his head-were a dim form of shadow within shadow. It was something. Otah

heard the trill of a daymartin, and then a rough rattling and the sound

of water. A bridge over some small river. When the cart lurched back to

ground, the commander turned.

"Have him stop," he said, and then a moment later, "I said stop the

cart. Do it."

One of the other two-the one who wasn't kneeling on Otah- shifted and

spoke to the driver. The jouncing slowed and stopped.

"I thought I heard something out there. In the trees on the left. Baat.

Go check. If you see anything at all get back fast."

The pressure on Otah's back eased and one of the men clambered out. Otah

turned over and no one tried to stop him. There was more light now. He

could make out the grim set of the commander's features, the unease in

the one remaining armsman.

"Well, this is interesting," the commander said.

"What's out there," the other man asked, his blade drawn. The commander

looked out the slit of cloth and motioned for the armsman to pass over

his sword. He did, and the commander took it, holding it with the ease

of long familiarity.

"It may be nothing," he said. "Were you with me when I was working for

the Warden of Elleais?"

"I'd just signed on then," the armsman said.

"You've always been a good fighter, Lachmi. I want you to know I respect

that."

With the speed of a snake, the commander's wrist flickered, and the

armsman fell hack in the cart, blood flowing from his opened neck. Otah

tried to push himself away as the commander turned and drove the sword

into the armsman's chest. He dropped the blade then, letting it fall to

the cart's floor, and took a pose of regret to the dying man.

"But," the commander said, "you should never have cheated me at tiles.

That was stupid."

The commander stepped over the body and spoke to the driver. He spoke

clearly enough for Otah to hear.

"Is it done?"

The driver said something.

"Good," the commander replied, and came hack. He flipped Otah onto his

belly with casual disregard, and Otah felt his bonds begin to loosen.

"All apologies, Otah-cha," the commander said. "But there's a lesson you

can take from all this: just because someone's bought a mercenary

captain, it doesn't mean his commanders aren't still for sale. Now I

will need your robes, such as they are."

Otah pulled the leather strap from around his head and spat out the

cloth, retching as he did so. Before he could speak, the commander had

climbed out of the cart, and Otah was left to follow.

They had stopped at a clearing by a river, surrounded by white oaks. The

bridge was old wood and looked almost too decrepit to cross. Six men

with gray robes and hunting bows were walking toward them from the

trees, two of them dragging the arrow-riddled body of the armsman the

commander had sent out. Two others carried a litter with what was

clearly another dead man-thin and naked. The commander took a pose of

welcome, and the first archer returned it. Otah stumbled forward,

rubbing his wrists. The archers were all smiling, pleased with

themselves. When he came close enough, Otah saw the second corpse was on

its back, and a wide swath of intricate black ink stained its breast.

The first half of an east island marriage mark. A tattoo like his own.

"That's why we'll need your robes, Otah-cha," the commander said. "This

poor bastard will have been in the water for a while before he reaches

the main channel of the river. But the closer he seems to you, the less

people will bother looking at him. I'll see whether I can find something

for you to wear after, but you might consider sponging off in the brook

there first. No offense, but you've been a while without a bath."

"Who is he?" Otah asked.

The commander shrugged.

"Nobody, now."

He clapped Otah on the shoulder and turned back toward the cart. The

archers were pitching the corpses of the two armsmen into the water.

Otah saw arrows rising from the river like reeds. The driver was coming

forward now, his thumbs stuck in his belt. He was a hairy man, his full

heard streaked with gray. He smiled at Otah and took a pose of welcome.

"I don't understand," Otah said. "What's happening?"

"We don't understand either, Itani-cha. Not precisely. We're only sure

that it's something terrible," the carter said, and Otah's mouth dropped

open. He spoke with the voice of Amiit Foss, his overseer in House

Siyanti. Amiit grinned beneath his heard. "And we're sure that it isn't

happening to you."

The first few breaths after she woke were like rising new horn. She

didn't know who or where she was, she had no thought of the night before

or the day ahead. There was only sensation-the warmth of the body beside

her, the crisp softness of the bedclothes, the netting above the bed

glowing in the captured light of dawn, the scent of black tea brought in

by a servant with cat-quiet footsteps. She sat up, almost smiling until

memory rushed in on her like a flood of black water. Idaan rose and

pulled on her robes. Adrah stirred and moaned.

"You should go," she said, lifting the black iron teapot. "You're

expected to go on a hunt today."

Adrah sat up, scratching his back and yawning. His hair stuck out in all

directions. He looked older than he had the day before, or perhaps it

was only how she felt. She poured a howl of tea for him as well.

"Have they found him?" Adrah asked.

"I haven't heard the screams or lamentations yet, so I'd assume not."

She held out the porcelain bowl. It was thin enough to see through and

hot enough to burn her fingertips, but Idaan didn't try to reduce the

pain. When Adrah took it from her, he drank from it straight, though she

knew it must have scalded. Perhaps what they'd done had numbed them.

"And You, Idaan-kya?"

"I'm going to the baths. I'll join you after."

Adrah drank the last of the tea, grimaced as if it was distilled wine,

and took a pose of leave-taking which Idaan returned. When he was gone,

she took herself to the women's quarters and the baths. She hardly had

time to wash her hair before the cry went up. The Khai Nfachi was dead.

Killed horribly in his chambers. Idaan dried herself with a cloth and

strode out to meet her brother. She was halfway there before she

realized her face was bare; she hadn't put on her paints. She was

surprised that she felt no need for them now.

Danat was pacing the great hall. The high marble archways echoed with

the sound of his boots. There was blood on his sleeve, and his face was

empty. When Idaan caught sight of him, she raised her chin but took no

formal pose. Danat stopped. The room was silent.

"You've heard," he said. There was no question to it.

""Tell me anyway."

"Otah has killed our father," Danat said.

"'t'hen yes. I've heard."

Danat resumed his pacing. His hands worried each other, as if he were

trying to pluck honey off them. Idaan didn't move.

"I don't know how he did it, sister. There must be people backing him

within the palaces. The armsmen in the tower were slaughtered."

"How did he find our father?" Idaan asked, uninterested in the answer.

"He must have found a secret way into the palaces. Someone would have

seen him."

Danat shook his head. There was rage in him, and pain. She could see

them, could feel them resonate in her own breast. But more than that,

there was an almost superstitious fear in him. The upstart had slipped

his bonds, had struck in the very heart of the city, and her brother

feared him like Black Chaos.

"We have to secure the city," he said. "I've called for more guards. You

should stay here. We can't know how far he will take his vendetta."

"You're going to let him escape?" Idaan demanded. "You aren't going to

hunt him down?"

"He has resources I can't guess at. Look! Look what he's done. Until I

know what I'm walking towards, I don't dare follow."

The plan was failing. Danat was staying safe in his walls with his

armsmcn around him like a blanket. Idaan sighed. It was tip to her, of

course, to save it.

"Adrah Vaunyogi has a hunt prepared. It was to be for fresh meat for my

wedding feast. You stay here, Danat-kya. I'll bring you Otah's head."

She turned and walked away. She couldn't hesitate, couldn't invite him

to follow her. He would see it in her gait if she were anything less

than totally committed. For a moment, she even believed herself that she

was going out to find her father's killer and bring him down-riding with

her hunt into the low towns and the fields to track down the evil Otah

Machi, her fallen brother. Danat's voice stopped her.

"I forbid you, Idaan. You can't do this."

She paused and looked back at him. He was thicker than her father had

been. Already his jaw line ran toward jowls. She took a pose that disagreed.

"I'm actually quite good with a bow," she said. "I'll find him. And I

will see him dead."

"You're my child sister," Danat said. "You can't do this."

Something flared in her, dark and hot. She stepped back toward Danat,

feeling the rage lift her up like a leaf in the wind.

"Ah, and if I do this thing, you'll be shamed. Because I have breasts

and you've a prick, I'm supposed to muzzle myself and be glad. Is that

it? Well I won't. You hear me? I will not be controlled, I will not be

owned, and I will not step hack from anything to protect your petty

pride. It's gone too far for that, brother. If a woman shrinks meekly

back into the shadows, then you he the woman. See how it feels to you!"

By the end she was shrieking. Her fists were balled so tight they hurt.

Danat's expression was hard as stone and as gray.

"You shame me," he said.

"Live with it," she said and spat.

"Send my body servant," he said. "I'll want my own bow. And then go to

Adrah. The hunt won't leave without me."

She was on the edge of refusing, of telling him that this wasn't

courage. He was only more afraid of losing the respect of the utkhaiem

than of dying, and that made him not only a coward but a stupid one. She

was the one with courage. She was the one who had the will to act. What

was he after all but a mewling kitten lost in the world, while she ...

she was Otah Machi. She was the upstart who had earned the Khai's chair.

She had killed her father for it; it was more than Danat would have done.

But, of course, truth would destroy everything. That was its nature. So

she swallowed it down deep where it could go on destroying her and took

an acquiescing pose. She'd won. He'd know that soon enough.

Once Danat's body servant had been sent scampering for his bow, Idaan

returned to her apartments, shrugged out of her robes and put on the

wide, loose trousers and red leather shirt of a hunter. She paused by

her table of paints, her mirror. She sat for a moment and looked at her

bare face. Her eyes seemed small and flat without the kohl. Her lips

seemed pale and wide as a fish's, her cheeks pallid and low. She could

be a peasant girl, plowing fields outside some low town. Her beauty had

been in paint. Perhaps it would be again, someday. '['his was a poor day

for beauty.

The huntsmen were waiting impatiently outside the palaces of the

Vaunyogi, their mounts' hooves clattering against the dark stones of the

courtyard. Adrah took a pose of query when he saw her clothes. ldaan

didn't answer it, but went to one of the horsemen, ordered him down,

took his blade and his bow and mounted in his place. Adrah cantered over

to her side. His mount was the larger, and he looked down at her as if

he were standing on a step.

"My brother is coming," she said. "I'll ride with him."

"You think that wise?" he asked coolly.

"I have asked too much of you already, Adrah-kya."

His expression was cold, but he didn't object further. Danat Nlachi rode

in wearing pale robes of mourning and seated on a great hunting

stallion, the very picture of vigor and manly prowess. Five riders were

with him: his friends, members of the utkhaicm unfortunate enough to

have heard of this hunt and marry themselves to the effort. "They would

have to be dealt with. Adrah took a pose of obeisance before l)anat.

"We've had word that a cart left by the south gate last night," Adrah

said. "It was seen coming from an alley beside the tower."

"Then let its follow it," l)anat said. He turned and rode. ldaan

followed, the wind whipping her hair, the smell of the beast under her

rich and sweet. There was no keeping up the gallop, of course. But this

was theater-the last remaining sons of the Khai Machi, one the assassin

and servant of chaos slipping away in darkness, one the righteous

avenger riding forth in the name of justice. I)anat knew the part he was

to act, and Idaan gave him credit for playing it, now that she had

goaded him into action. Those who saw them in the streets would tell

others, and the word would spread. It was a sight songs were made from.

Once they had crossed the bridge over the "l'idat, they slowed, looking

for people who had heard or seen the cart go by. Idaan knew where it had

really gone-the ruins of an old stone wayhouse a half-hand's walk from

the nearest low town west of the city. The morning hadn't half passed

before the hunt had taken a wrong scent, turned north and headed into

the foothills. The false trail took them to a crossroad-a mining track

led cast and west, the thin road from the city winding north up the side

of a mountain. Danat looked frustrated and tired. When Adrah spoke-his

voice loud enough for everyone in the party to hear-Idaan's belly tightened.

"We should fan out, Danat-cha. Eight east, eight west, eight north, and

two to stay here. If one group finds sign of the upstart, they can send

back a runner, and the two waiting here will retrieve the rest."

Danat weighed the thought, then agreed. Danat claimed the north road for

himself, and the members of the utkhaiem, smelling the chance of glory,

divided themselves among the hands heading east and west.

Adrah took the cast, his eyes locked on hers as he turned to go. She saw

the meaning in his expression, daring her to do this thing. Idaan made

no reply to him at all. She, six huntsmen of the Vaunyogi loyal to their

house and master, and Danat rode into the mountains.

When the sun had reached the highest point in the day's arc, they

stopped at small lake. The huntsmen rode out in their wide-ranging

search as they had done at every pause before this. Danat dismounted,

stretched, and paced. His eyes were dark. Idaan waited until the others

disappeared into the trees, unslung her bow, and went to stand near her

brother. He looked at her, then away.

"He didn't come this way," Danat said. "Ile's tricked us again."

"Perhaps. But he won't survive. Even if he killed you, he could never

become Khai Machi. The utkhaiem and the poets wouldn't support him."

"It's hatred now," Danat said. "He's doing it from hatred."

"Perhaps," Idaan said. Out on the lake, a bird skimmed the shining

surface of the water, then shrieked and plunged in, rising moments later

with a flash of living silver in its claws. A quarter moon was in the

sky-white crescent showing through the blue. The lake smelled colder

than it was, and the wind tugged at her hair and the reeds alike. Danat

sighed.

"Was it hard killing Kaiin?" Idaan asked.

Danat looked at her, as if shocked that she had asked. She met his gaze,

her eyes fixed on his until he turned away.

"Yes," he said. "Yes it was. I loved him. I miss them both."

"But you did the thing anyway."

He nodded. Idaan stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. His

stubble tickled her lips, and she wiped her mouth with the back of her

hand as she walked away, trying to stop the sensation. At ten paces she

put an arrow to her bow, drew back the string. Uanat was still looking

out over the water. Passionlessly, she judged the wind, the distance.

The arrow struck the back of his head with a sound like an axe splitting

wood. Danat seemed at first not to notice, and then slowly sank to the

ground. Blood soaked the collar of his robes, the pale cloth looking

like cut meat by the time she walked back to him. She knelt by him, took

his hand in her own, and looked out over the lake.

She was singing before she knew she intended to sing. In her

imagination, she had screamed and shrieked, her cries calling the

hunters hack to her, but instead she sang. It was an old song, a

lamentation she'd heard in the darkness of the tunnels and the cold of

winter. The words were from the Empire, and she hardly knew what they

all meant. The rising and falling melody, aching and sorrowful, seemed

to fill her and the world.

Two hunters approached her at last, unsure of themselves. She had not

seen them emerge from the trees, and she didn't look at them now as she

spoke.

"My brother has been murdered by Otah or one of his agents," she said.

"While we were waiting for you."

The hunters looked at one another. For a long, sick moment, she thought

they might not believe her. She wondered if they would be loyal enough

to the Vaunyogi to overlook the crime. And then the elder of them spoke.

"We will find him, Idaan-cha," the man said, his voice trembling with

rage. "We'll send for the others and turn every stone on this mountain

until we find him."

"It won't bring back my father. Or Danat. There won't be anyone to stand

at my wedding."

She broke off, half surprised to find her sobs unfeigned. Gently, she

cradled the corpse of her brother to her, feeling the blood soak her robes.

"I'll gather his horse," another of the hunters said. "We can strap him

to it-"

"No," Idaan said. "You can give him to me. I'll carry him home."

"It's a long ride back to the city. Are you sure that-"

"I'll carry him home. He'd have done the same if our places were

reversed," she said. "It is the way of our family."

In the end, they draped him over her mount's haunches. The scent of the

blood made him skittish, but Idaan held control firmly, cooing in the

animal's ears, coaxing and demanding. When she could think of nothing

else, she sang to the beast, and the dirges possessed her. She felt no

sorrow, no regret. She felt no triumph. It was as if she was in the

moment of grace between the blow and the pain. In her mind were only the

sounds of the songs and of an arrow splitting bone.

THE FARMSTEAD WAS SET HACK A SHORT WALK FROM THE ROAD. A CREEK RAN

beside it, feeding, no doubt, into the river that was even now carrying

dead men down to the main channel. The walls were as thick as a man's

outstretched arm with a set of doors on both the inside and outside

faces. On the second story, snow doors had been opened, letting in the

summer air. Trees stood in close, making the house seem a part of the

landscape. The horses were kept in the stables on the ground floor,

hidden from casual observers.

Amiit led Otah up the stairs and into a bright, simple room with a

table, a few rough wooden chairs, an unlit lantern and a wide, low

cabinet. Roast chicken, fresh cheese, and apples just on the edge of

ripeness had been laid out for them. Sharpened by Otah's hunger and

relief and wonder, the smell of them was wonderful. Amiit gestured

toward the table, then opened the cabinet and took out two earthenware

mugs and flasks of wine and water. Otah took a leg from the chicken and

hit into it-the flesh tasted of tarragon and black pepper. He closed his

eyes and grinned. Nothing had ever in his life tasted so good.

Amiit chuckled.

"You've grown thinner, old friend," Amiit said as he poured himself wine

and Otah a mixture of wine and water. "You'd think accommodations in

Machi would he better."

"What's going on, Amiit-cha?" Otah asked, taking the proffered drink.

"Last I heard, I was going to be either executed as a criminal or

honorably killed in the succession. This ...... he gestured at the room

with his mug. "This wasn't suggested as an option."

"It wasn't approved by the Khaiem, that's truth," Amiit said. He sat

across from Otah and picked up one of the apples, turning it over slowly

as he spoke, inspecting it for worm holes. "The fact is, I only know

half of what's going on in Nlachi, if that. After our last talk-when you

were first coming up here-I thought it might be best to put some plans

in motion. In case an opportunity arose, you understand. It would be

very convenient for House Siyanti if one of their junior couriers became

the Khai Machi. It didn't seem likely at the time. But ..."

He shrugged and hit into the apple. Otah finished the chicken and took

one of the fruits himself. Even watered, the wine was nearly too strong

to drink.

"We put out men and women to listen," Amiit went on. "To gather what

information we could find. We weren't looking for anything in

particular, you understand. Just an opportunity."

"You were looking to sell information of me to the Khai in return for a

foothold in Machi," Otah said.

"Only as a last resort," Amiit agreed. "It's business. You understand."

"But they found me instead," Otah said. The apple was sweet and chalky

and just slightly bitter. Amiit pushed a platter of cheese toward him.

""That looked bleak. It's truth. And that you'd been in our pay seemed

to seal it. House Siyanti wasn't going to be welcome, whichever of your

brothers took the title."

"And taking me out of their tower was intended to win back their favor?"

Amiit's expression clouded. He shook his head.

"That wasn't our plan. Someone hired a mercenary company to take you

from the city to a low town and hold you there. We don't know who it

was; they only met with the captain, and he's not on our side. But I'm

fairly certain it wasn't your brother or your father."

"But you got word of it?"

"I had word of it. Mercenaries ... well, they aren't always the most

reliable of companions. Sinja-cha knew I was in the city, and would be

interested in your situation. He was ready to make a break with his old

cohort for other reasons, and offered me the opportunity to ... what?

Outbid his captain for his services in the matter?"

"Sinja-cha is the commander?"

"Yes. Or, was. He's in my employ now. With luck, his old captain thinks

him dead along with you and the other armsmen involved."

"And what will you do now? Ransom me back to the Khai?"

"No," Amiit said. "I've already made a bargain that won't allow that.

Besides, I really did enjoy working with you. And ... and you may yet be

in a position to help me more as an ally than a commodity, ne?"

"It's a bad bet," Otah said and smiled.

Amiit grinned again.

"Ah, but the stakes are high. Would you rather just have water? I wasn't

thinking."

"No, I'll keep this."

"Whatever you like. So. Yes, something's happening in Machi. I expect

they're out scouring the world for you even now. And in a day, perhaps

two, they'll find you floating down the river or caught on a sandbar."

"And then?"

"I don't know," Amiit said. "And then we'll know what's happened in the

meantime. Things are moving quickly, and there's more going on than I

can fathom. For instance, I don't know what the Galts have to do with it."

Otah put down his cup. Even under the blanket of whiskers, he could see

the half-smile twitch at Amiit's mouth. The overseer's eyes sparkled.

"But perhaps you do?" Amiit suggested.

"No, but ... no. I've dealt with something else once. Something

happened. The Galts were behind it. What are they doing here? How do

they figure in?"

"They're making contracts with half the houses in Machi. Large contracts

at disadvantageous terms. They've been running roughshod over the

Westlands so long they're sure to be good for it-they have almost as

much money as the Khaiem. It may just be they've a new man acting as the

overseer for the Machi contracts, and he's no good. But I doubt it. I

think they're buying influence."

"Influence to do what?"

"I haven't the first clue," Amiit said. "I was hoping you might know."

Otah shook his head. He took another piece of chicken, but his mind was

elsewhere. The Galts in Machi. He tried to make Biitrah's death, the

attack on Maati, and his own improbable freedom into some pattern, but

no two things seemed to fit. He drank his wine, feeling the warmth

spread through his throat and belly.

"I need your word on something, Amiit-cha. That if I tell you what I

know, you won't act on it lightly. There are lives at stake."

"Galtie lives?"

"Innocent ones."

Amiit considered silently. His face was closed. Otah poured more water

into his cup. Amiit silently took a pose that accepted the offered

terms. Otah looked at his hands, searching for the words he needed to say.

"Saraykeht. When Seedless acted against Heshai-kvo there, the Gaits were

involved. They were allied with the andat. I believe they hoped to find

the andat willing allies in their own freedom, only Seedless was ...

unreliable. They hurt Heshai badly, even though their plan failed. They

aren't the ones who murdered him, but Heshai-kvo let himself be killed

rather than expose them."

"Why would he do an idiot thing like that?"

"He knew what would happen. He knew what the Khai Saraykeht would do."

Otah felt himself on the edge of confession, but he stopped before

admitting that the poet had died at his hands. There was no need, and

that, at least, was one secret that he chose to keep to himself.

Instead, he looked up and met Amiit's gaze. When the overseer spoke, his

voice was calm, measured, careful.

"He would have slaughtered Galt," Amiit said.

"Innocent lives."

"And some guilty ones."

"A few."

Amiit leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled before his lips.

Otah could almost see the calculations taking place behind those calm,

dark eyes.

"So you think this is about the poets?"

"It was last time," Otah said. "Let me send a letter to Maati. Let me

warn him-"

"We can't. You're dead, and half the safety we can give you depends on

your staying dead until we know more than this. But ... but I can tell a

few well-placed people to be on alert. And give them some idea what to

be alert for. Another Saraykeht would be devastating." Amiit sighed

deeply. "And here I thought only the succession, your life, and my house

were in play. Poets now, too."

Amiit's smile was thoughtful.

"I'll give you this. You make the world more interesting, Itani-cha. Or...?"

He took a pose that asked for correction.

"Otah. Much as I've fought against it, my name is Otah Machi. We might

as well both get used to saying it."

"Otah-cha, then," Amiit said. He seemed pleased, as if he'd won some

small victory.

Voices came up through the window. The commander's was already familiar

even after so short a time. Otah couldn't make out the words, but he

sounded pleased. Another voice answered him that Otah didn't know, but

the woman's laughter that pealed out after it was familiar as water.

Otah felt the air go thin. He stood and walked slowly to the open

shutters. There in the yard behind the farmhouse Sinja and one of the

archers were standing beside a lovely woman in loose cotton robes the

blue of the sky at twilight. Her fox-thin face was smiling, one eyebrow

arched as she said something to the commander, who chuckled in his turn.

Her hair was dark and shot with individual strands of white that she had

had since birth.

He saw the change in Kiyan's stance when she noticed him-a release and

relaxation. She walked away from the two men and toward the open window.

Otah's heart beat fast as if he'd been running. She stopped and put out

her hands, palms up and open. It wasn't a formal pose, and seemed to

mean here I am and here you are and who would have guessed this all at once.

"She came to me not long after you left," Amiit said from where he sat.

"I'm half-partner in her wayhouse down in Udun. We've been keeping it a

quiet arrangement, though. There's something to be said for having a

whole wayhouse of one's own without the couriers of other houses knowing

it's yours."

Otah wanted to look hack at the man, but his gaze seemed fastened on

Kiyan. He thought he caught a faint blush rising in her cheeks. She

shook her head as if clearing away some unwanted thought and walked in

toward the house and out of his view. She was smiling, though. Sinja had

also caught sight of Otah in the window and took a pose of congratulation.

"She's changed her mind, then. About me?"

"Apparently."

Otah turned back and leaned against the wall. Its coolness surprised

him. After so many days in the cell at the tower's height, he'd come to

think of stone as warm. Amiit poured himself another cup of wine. Otah

swallowed to loosen his throat. The question didn't want to be asked.

"Why? What changed it?"

"I have known Kiyan-cha well for almost a quarter of this year. Not even

that. You've been her lover for what? Three summers? And you want me to

explain her mind to you? You've become an optimist."

Otah sat because his knees felt too weak to hold him. Amiit chuckled

again and rose.

"You'll need rest for a few days. And some food and space enough to move

again. We'll have you strong enough to do whatever it is needs doing, I

hope. This place is better watched than it looks. We'll have warning if

anyone comes near. Don't let any of this trouble you for now; you can

trust us to watch over things."

"I want to see her," Otah said.

"I know," Amiit said, clapping him on the shoulder. "And she wants to

see you. It's why I'm leaving. Just remember you haven't eaten to speak

of in days, you're weak from the cell, you've hardly slept, and you were

abducted last night. Don't expect too much from yourself. There really

is no hurry."

Otah blushed now, and Amiit grabbed one last apple and made for the

door. Kiyan reached it just as he did, and he stepped back to let her

through. He closed the door gently behind him. Otah rose to his feet,

suddenly tongue-tied. Kiyan also didn't speak, but her gaze traveled

over him. He could see the distress in it even though she tried to keep

it hidden.

"'Tani," she said, "you ... you look terrible."

"It's the beard," Otah said. "I'll shave it."

She didn't take up the humor, only walked across the room and folded him

into her arms. The scent of her skin flooded him with a hundred jumbled

memories of her. He put his arm around her, embarrassed to notice that

his hand was unsteady.

"I didn't think I'd be seeing you again," he murmured. "I never meant to

put you at risk."

"What did they do to you? Gods, what have they done?"

"Not so much. They only didn't feed me well fora time and locked me

away. It wasn't so had."

She kissed his check and pulled back from him until each could see the

other's face. 't'here were tears in her eyes, but she was angry.

"They were going to kill you," she said.

"Well, yes. I mean, I thought that was assumed."

"I'll kill them all with my bare hands if you'd like," she said with a

smile that meant she was only half joking.

"That might be more than the situation calls for. But ... why are you

here? I thought ... I thought I was too much a risk to you."

"That didn't change. Other things ... other things did. Come. Sit with me."

Kiyan took a bite of the cheese and poured herself water. Her hands were

thin and strong and as lovely as a sculpture. Otah rubbed his temples

with the palms of his hands, hoping that this was all as real as it

seemed, that he wouldn't wake again in the cell above the city.

"Sinja-cha told me you wanted to turn hack. He said it was because of

me. That your being there kept them from searching me out."

"Knowing me shouldn't have that kind of price on it," Otah said. "It was

... it was what I could do. That's all."

"Thank you," she said, her voice solemn.

Kiyan looked out the window. There was a dread in the lines of her

mouth, a fear that confused him. He reached out, thinking to take her

hand in his own, but the movement brought her back and a smile flitted

over her and was gone.

"I don't know if you want to hear this. But I've been waiting to say it

for longer than I can stand, and so I'm going to be selfish. And I don't

know how to. Not well."

"Is it something I'll want to hear?"

"I don't know. I hope ... I ... Gods. Here. When you left, I missed you

worse than I'd expected. I was sick with it. Physically ill. I thought I

should be patient. I thought it would pass. And then I noticed that I

seemed to miss you most in the early mornings. You understand?"

She looked Otah deep in the eye, and he frowned, trying to find some

deeper significance in the words. And then he did, and he felt the world

drop away from tinder him. He took a pose of query, and she replied with

a confirmation.

"Ah," he said and then sat, utterly at a loss. After ten or twenty

breaths, Kiyan spoke again.

"The midwife thinks sometime around Candles Night. Maybe a lit tle

after. So you see, I knew there was no avoiding the issue, not as long

as I was carrying a baby with your blood in it. I went to Amiit-cha and

we ... he, really ... put things in motion."

"There are blood teas," Otah said.

"I know. The midwife offered them to me. Would you ... I mean, is that

what you would have wanted?"

"No! Only I ... I'd thought you wouldn't give up what you had. Your

father's wayhouse. I don't know that I have much of a life to give you.

I was a dead man until a little before dawn today. But if you want ..."

"I wouldn't have left the wayhouse for you, 'Tani. It's where I grew up.

It's my home, and I wouldn't give it up for a man. Not even a good man.

I made that decision the night you told me who your father was. But for

the both of you. Or really, even just for her. That's a harder question."

"Her?"

"Or him," Kiyan said. "Whichever. But I suppose that puts the decision

in your hands now. The last time I saw you, I turned you out of my

house. I won't use this as a means of forcing you into something you'd

rather not. I've made my choice, not yours."

Perhaps it was the fatigue or the wine, but it took Otah the space of

two or three breaths to understand what she was saying. lie felt the

grin draw hack the corners of his mouth until they nearly ached.

"I want you to be with me, Kiyan-kya. I want you to always be with me.

And the baby too. If I have to flee to the Westlands and herd sheep, I

want you both with me."

Kiyan breathed in deeply, and let the breath out with a rough stutter.

He hadn't seen how unsure she'd been until now, when the relief relaxed

her face. She took his hand and squeezed it until he thought both of

their bones were creaking.

"That's good. That's very good. I would have been . . ." laughter

entered her voice ". . . very disappointed."

A knock at the door startled them both. The commander opened the door

and then glanced from one of the laughing pair to the other. His face

took a stern expression.

"You told him," Sinja said. "You should at least let the man rest before

you tell him things like that. He's had a hard day."

"He's been up to the task," Kiyan said.

"Well, I've come to make things worse. We've just had a runner from the

city, Otah-cha. It appears you've murdered your father in his sleep.

Your brother Danat led a hunting party bent on bringing back your head

on a stick, but apparently you've killed him too. You're running out of

family, Otah-cha."

"Ah," Otah said, and then a moment later. "I think perhaps I should lie

down now."

They burned the Khai Machi and his son together in the yard outside the

temple. The head priest wore his hale robes, the hood pulled low over

his eyes in respect, and tended the flames. Thick, black smoke rose from

the pyre and vanished into the air high above the city. A~Iachi had

woken from its revels to find the world worse than when they'd begun,

and Cehmai saw it in every face he passed. A thousand of them at least

stood in the afternoon sun. Shock and sorrow, confusion and fear.

And excitement. In a few eyes among the utkhaicm, he saw the bright eyes

and sharp ears of men who smelled opportunity. Ile walked among them,

Stone-Made-Soft at his side, peering through the funereal throng for the

one familiar face. ldaan had to be there, but he could not find her.

The lower priests also passed through the crowds, singing dirges and

beating the dry notes of drums. Slaves in ceremonially torn robes passed

out tin cups of bittcrcd water. (,'China] ignored them. The burning

would go on through the night until the ashes of the men and the ashes

of the coal were indistinguishable. And then a week's mourning. And then

these men weeping or staring, grim or secretly pleased, would meet and

decide which of their number would have the honor of sitting on the dead

family's chair and leading the hunt for the man who had murdered his own

father. Cehmai found himself unable to care particularly who won or

lost, whether the upstart was caught or escaped. Somewhere among all

these mourners was the woman he'd come to love, in more pain than she

had ever been in since he'd known her. And he-he who could topple towers

at a whim and make mountains flow like floodwater-couldn't find her.

Instead, he found Maati in brown poet's robes standing on a raised

walkway that overlooked the mourning throng. 'T'hough they were on the

edge of the ceremony, Cehmai saw the pyre light reflecting in Maati's

fixed eyes. Cehmai almost didn't approach him, almost didn't speak.

'T'here was a darkness wrapped around the poet. But it was possible he

had been there from the ceremony's beginning. He might know where Idaan

was. Cehmai took a pose of greeting which Maati did not return.

"Maati-kvo?"

Maati looked over first at Cehmai, then Stone-Made-Soft, and then back

again at the fire. After a moment's pause, his face twisted in disgust.

"Not kvo. Never kvo. I haven't taught you anything, so don't address me

as a teacher. I was wrong. From the beginning, I was wrong."

"Otah was very convincing," Cehmai said. "No one thought he would-"

"Not about that. He didn't do this. Baarath ... Gods, why did it have to

be Baarath that saw it? Prancing, self-important, smug ..."

Maati fumbled with a sewn-leather wineskin and took a long deep, joyless

drink from it. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand, then held the

skin out in offering. Cehmai declined. Maati offered it to the andat,

but Stone-blade-Soft only smiled as if amused.

"I thought it was someone in the family. One of his brothers. It had to

be. Who else would benefit? I was stupid."

"Forgive me, N,laati-kvo. But no one did benefit."

"One of them did," he said, gesturing out at the mourners. "One of them

is going to he the new Khai. He'll tell you what to do, and you'll do

it. He'll live in the high palaces, and everyone else in the city will

lick his ass if he tells them to. That's what it's all about. Who has to

lick whose ass. And there's blood enough to fill a river answering

that." He took another long pull from the wineskin, then dropped it idly

to the ground at his feet. "I hate all of them."

"So do I," Stone-Made-Soft said, his tone light and conversational.

"You're drunk, Maati-kvo."

"Not half enough. Here, look at this. You know what this is?"

Cehmai glanced at the object Maati had pulled from his sleeve.

"A book."

"This is my teacher's masterwork. Heshai-kvo, poet of Saraykeht. The

Dai-kvo sent me to him when I was hardly younger than you are now. I was

going to study under him, take control of Seedless.

Removing-the-Part-ihat-Continues. We called him Seedless. This is

Heshai-kvo's examination of everything he'd done wrong. Every

improvement he could have made to his binding, if he'd had it to do over

again. It's brilliant."

"But it can't work, can it?" Cehmai said. "It would he too close...."

"Of course not, it's a refinement of his work, not how to bind Seedless

again. It's a record of his failure. I)o you understand what I'm saving?"

Cchmai grasped for a right answer to the question and ended with honesty.

"No," he said.

"Heshai-kvo was a drunkard. He was a failure. He was haunted his whole

life by the woman he loved and the child he lost, and every measure of

the hatred he had for himself was in his binding. I Ic imagined the

andat as the perfect man and implicit in that was the disdain he

imagined such a man would feel looking at him. But Heshai was strong

enough to look his mistake in the face. He was strong enough to sit with

it and catalog it and understand. And the I)ai-kvo sent me to him.

Because he thought we could he the same. tic thought I would understand

him well enough to stand in his place."

"Nlaati-kvo, I'm sorry. Have you seen Idaan?"

"Well," Maati said, ignoring the question as he swayed slightly and

frowned at the crowd. "I can face my stupidities just as well as he did.

The I)ai-kvo wants to know who killed Biitrah? I'll find out. He can

tell me it's too late and he can tell me to come home, but he can't make

me stop looking. Whoever gets that chair ... whoever gets it ..."

Maati frowned, confused for a moment, and a sudden racking sob shook

him. He leaned forward. Cehmai moved to him, certain for a moment that

Maati was about to pitch off the walkway and down to the distant ground,

but instead the older poet gathered himself and took a pose of apology.

"I'm ... making an ass of myself," he said. "You were saying something."

Cehmai was torn for a moment. He could see the red that lined Maati's

eyes, could smell the sick reek of distilled wine on his breath and

something deeper-some drug mixed with the wine. Someone needed to see

Maati back to his apartments, needed to see that he was cared for. On

another night, Cehmai would have done it.

"Idaan," he said. "She must have been here. They're burning her brother

and her father. She had to attend the ceremony."

"She did." Nlaati agreed. "I saw her."

"Where's she gone?"

"With her man, I think. He was there beside her," Maati said. "I don't

know where they went."

"Are you going to he all right, Maati-kvo?"

Nlaati seemed to think about this, then nodded once and turned hack to

watch the pyre burning. The brown leather hook had fallen to the ground

by the wineskin, and the andat retrieved it and put it back in Maati's

sleeve. As they walked away, Cehmai took a pose of query.

"I didn't think he'd want to lose it," the andat said.

"So that was a favor to him?" Cehmai said. Stone-Made-Soft didn't reply.

They walked toward the women's quarters and Idaan's apartments. If she

was not there, he would go to the Vaunyogi's palace. He would say he was

there to offer condolences to Idaan-cha. That it was his duty as poet

and representative of the Dai-kvo to offer condolences to Idaan Machi on

this most sorrowful of days. It was his duty. Gods. And the Vaunyogi

would be chewing their own livers out. They'd contracted to marry their

son to the Khai 1MIachi's sister. Now she was no one's family.

"Maybe they'll cancel the arrangement," Stone-Made-Soft said. "It isn't

as if anyone would blame them. She could come live with us."

"You can be quiet now," Cehmai said.

At Idaan's quarters, the servant boy reported that Idaan-cha had been

there, but had gone. Yes, Adrah-cha had been there as well, but he had

also gone. The unease in the boy's manner made Cehmai wonder. Part of

him hoped that they had been fighting, those two. It was despicable, but

it was there: the desire that he and not Adrah Vaunyogi be the one to

comfort her.

He stopped next at the palace of the Vaunyogi. A servant led him to a

waiting chamber that had been dressed in pale mourning cloth fragrant

from the cedar chests in which it had been stored. The chairs and

statuary, windows and floors were all swathed in white rags that

candlelight made gold. The andat stood at the window, peering out at the

courtyard while Cehmai sat on the front handspan of a seat. Every breath

he took here made him wonder if coming had been a mistake.

The door to the main hall swung open. Adrah Vaunyogi stepped in. His

shoulders rode high and tight, his lips thin as a line drawn on paper.

Cehmai stood and took a pose of greeting which Adrah mirrored before he

closed the door.

"I'm surprised to sec you, Cchmai-cha," Adrah said, walking forward

slowly, as if unsure what precisely he was approaching. Cehmai smiled to

keep his unease from showing. "My father is occupied. But perhaps I

might be able to help you?"

"You're most kind. I came to offer my sympathies to ldaan-cha. I had

heard she was with you, and so ..."

"No. She was, but she's left. Perhaps she went back to the ceremony."

Adrah's voice was distant, as if only half his attention was on the

conversation. His eyes, however, were fixed on Cehmai like a snake on a

mouse, only Cehmai wasn't sure which of them would be the mouse, which

the serpent.

"I will look there," Cehmai said. "I didn't mean to disturb you."

"We are always pleased by an audience with the poet of Machi. Wait.

Don't ... don't go. Sit with me a moment."

Stone-Made-Soft didn't shift, but Cehmai could feel its interest and

amusement in the back of his mind. Cehmai sat in it rag-covered chair.

Adrah pulled a stool near to him, nearer than custom required. It was as

if Adrah wanted to make him feel they were in a smaller room together.

Cehmai kept his face as placid as the andat's.

"The city is in terrible trouble, Cehmai-cha. You know how had these

things can get. When it's only the three sons of the Khai, it's bad

enough. But with all the utkhaicm scheming and fighting and betraying

one another, the damage to the city ...

"I'd thought about that," Cehmai said, though in truth he cared more

about Idaan than the political struggles that the coming weeks would

bring. "And there's still the problem of Otah. He has a claim ..."

"He's murdered his own father."

"Have we proven that?"

"You doubt that he did the thing?"

"No," Cehmai said after a moment's pause. "No, I don't." Rrit,lfaati- kt

o still does.

"It would be best to end this quickly. To name the new Khai before

things can get out of control. You are a man of tremendous power. I know

the Dai-kvo takes no sides in matters of succession. But if you were to

let it be known that you favored some particular house, without taking

any formal position, it would make things easier."

"Only if I backed a house that was prepared to win," Cehmai said. "If I

chose poorly, I'd throw some poor unprepared family in with the pit hounds."

"My family is ready. We are well respected, we have partners in all the

great trading houses, and the silversmiths and ironworkers are closer to

us than to any other family. Idaan is the only blood of the old Khai

remaining in the city. Her brothers will never be Khai Machi, but

someday, her son might."

Cehmai considered. Here was a man asking his help, asking for political

backing, unaware that Cehmai knew the shape and taste of his lover's

body as well as he did. It likely was in his power to elevate Adrah

Vaunyogi to the ranks of the Khaiem. He wondered if it was what Idaan

would want.

"That may be wise," Cehmai said. "I would need to think about it, of

course, before I could act."

Adrah put his hand on Cehmai's knee, familiar as if they were brothers.

The andat moved first, ambling toward the door, and then Cehmai stood

and adopted a pose appropriate to parting. The amusement coming from

Stone-Made-Soft was like constant laughter that only Cehmai could hear.

When they had made their farewells, Cehmai started cast again, toward

the burning bodies and the priests. His mind was a jumbleconcern for

Idaan, frustration at not finding her, unease with Adrah's proposal, and

at the hack, stirring like something half asleep, a dread that seemed

wrapped tip with Maati Vaupathai staring drunk into the fire.

One of them, Maati had said, meaning the high families of the utkhaiem.

One of them would benefit. Unless Cehmai took a hand and put his own

lover's husband in the chair. That wasn't the sort of thing that could

have been planned for. No scheme for power could include the supposition

that Cehmai would fall in love with Idaan, or that her husband would ask

his aid, or that his guilt and affection would drive him to give it. It

was the kind of thing that could come from nowhere and upset the perfect

plan.

If it wasn't Otah Machi who had engineered all this bloodletting, then

some other viper was in the city, and the prospect of Adrah Vaun yogi

taking the prize away by marrying Idaan and wooing the poets would drive

the killer mad. And even if it was Otah Machi, he might still hope to

take his father's place. Adrah's rise would threaten that claim as well.

"You're thinking too hard," the andat said.

"Thinking never hurt anyone."

"So you've all said," the andat sighed.

She wasn't at the ceremony. She wasn't at her quarters. Cehmai and

Stone-Made-Soft walked together through the gardens and pavilions, the

courtyards and halls and passages. Mourning didn't fill the streets and

towers the way celebration had. The dry music of the funeral drums

wasn't taken up in the teahouses or gardens. Only the pillar of smoke

blotting out the stars stood testament to the ceremony. 'twice, Cehmai

took them past his own quarters, hoping that Idaan might be there

waiting for him, but without effect. She had vanished from the city like

a bird flying up into darkness.

His OLD NOTES WERE GONE, I?F'I' IN A PACKET IN HIS ROOMS. KAIIN AND

Danat were forgotten, and instead, Maati had fresh papers spread over

the library table. Lists of the houses of the utkhaicm that might

possible succeed in a bid to become the next Khai. Beside them, a fresh

ink brick, a pen with a new bronze nib, and a pot of tea that smelled

rich, fresh cut, and green. Summer tea in the winter cities. Maati

poured himself a bowl, then blew across the pale surface, his eyes going

over the names again.

According to Baarath, who had accepted his second apology with a grace

that had surprised him, the most likely was Kamau-a family that traced

its bloodline back to the Second Empire. They had the wealth and the

prestige. And, most important, an unmarried son in his twenties who was

well-respected and active in the court. "Then the Vaunani, less wealthy,

less prestigious, but more ruthless. Or possibly the Radaani, who had

spent generations putting their hands into the import and export trade

until almost every transaction in the city fed their coffers. They were

the richest of the utkhaiem, but apparently unable to father males.

There were seventeen daughters, and the only candidates for the Khai's

chair were the head of the house, his son presently overseeing a trading

venture in Yalakeht, and a six-year-old grandson.

And then there were the Vaunyogi. Adrah Vaunyogi was a decent candidate,

largely because he was young and virile, and about to be married to

Idaan Machi. But the rumors held that the family was underfunded and not

as well connected in court. Maati sipped his tea and considered whether

to leave them on his list. One of these housesmost likely one of these,

though there were certainly other possibilities-had engineered the

murder of the Khai Machi. They had placed the blame on Otah. They had

spirited him away, and once the mourning was finished with ...

Once the mourning was finished, the city would attend the wedding of

Adrah Vaunyogi to Idaan. No, no, lie would keep the Vaunyogi on his

list. It was such a convenient match, and the timing so apt.

Others, of course, put the crimes down to Otah-kvo. A dozen hunting

packs had gone out in the four days since the bloody morning that killed

the Khai and Danat both. The utkhaiem were searching the low towns for

Otah and those who had aided his escape, but so far no one had

succeeded. It was Maati's task now to solve the puzzle before they found

him. He wondered how many of them had guessed that he alone in the city

was working to destroy all their chances. If someone else had done these

things ... if he could show it ... Otah would still be able to take his

father's place. He would become Khai Machi.

And what, Maati wondered, would Liat think of that, once she heard of

it? He imagined her cursing her ill judgment in losing the ruler of a

city and gaining half a poet who hadn't proved worth keeping.

"Maati," Baarath said.

Maati jumped, startled, and spilled a few drops of tea over his papers.

Ink swirled into the pale green as he blotted them with a cloth. Baarath

clicked his teeth and hurried over to help.

"My fault," the librarian said. "I thought you had noticed me. You were

scowling, after all."

Maati didn't know whether to laugh at that, so he only took a pose of

gratitude as Baarath blew across the still damp pages. The damage was

minor. Even where the ink had smudged, he knew what he had meant.

Baarath fumbled in his sleeve and drew out a letter, its edges sewn in

green silk.

"It's just come for you," he said. "The I)ai-kvo, I think?"

Maati took it. The last he had reported, Otah had been found and turned

over to the Khai Machi. It was a faster response than he had ex peered.

He turned the letter over, looking at the familiar handwriting that

formed his name. Baarath sat across the table from him, smiling as if he

were, of course, welcome, and waiting to see what the message said. It

was one of the little rudenesses to which the librarian seemed to feel

himself entitled since Nlaati's apology. Maati had the uncomfortable

feeling Baarath thought they were becoming friends.

He tore the paper at the sewn scams, pulled the thread free, and

unfolded it. The chop was clearly the Dai-kvo's own. It began with the

traditional forms and etiquette. Only at the end of the first page did

the matter become specific to the situation at hand.

ihith Otah discovered and given over to the Khai, your work in Machi is

completed. Your suggestion that he be accepted again as a poet is, of

course, impossible but the sentiment is commendable. I am quite pleased

with you, and trust that this will mark a change in your work. %here are

many tasks that a man in your position might take on to the benefit of

all-we shall discuss these opportunities upon your return.

The critical issue now is that you withdraw, from Mllachi. Me have

performed our service to the Khai, and your continued presence would

only serve to draw attention to the fact that he and whichever of his

sons eventually takes his place were unable to discover the plot without

aid. It is dangerous for the poets to involve themselves with the

politics of the courts.

For this reason, I now recall you to my side. You are to announce that

you have found the citations in the library that I had desired, and must

now return them to me. I will expect you within five weeks....

It continued, though Maati did not. Baarath smiled and leaned forward in

obvious interest as Nlaati tucked the letter into his own sleeve. After

a moment's silence, Baarath frowned.

"Fine," he said. "If it's the sort of thing you have to keep to

yourself, I can certainly respect that."

"I knew you could, Baarath-cha. You're a man of great discretion."

"You needn't flatter me. I know my proper place. I only thought you

might want someone to speak with. In case there were questions that

someone with my knowledge of the court could answer for you."

"No," Maati said, taking a pose that offered thanks. "It's on another

matter entirely."

Maati sat with a pleasant, empty expression until Baarath huffed, stood,

took a pose of leave-taking, and walked deeper into the galleries of the

library. Maati turned hack to his notes, but his mind would not stay

focused on them. After half a hand of frustration and distress, he

packed them quietly into his sleeve and took himself away.

The sun shone bright and clear, but to the west, huge clouds rose white

and proud into the highest reaches of the sky. There would be storms

later-if not today, in the summer weeks to come. Maati imagined he could

smell the rain in the air. He walked toward his rooms, and then past

them and into a walled garden. The cherry trees had lost their flowers,

the fruits forming and swelling toward ripeness. Netting covered the

wide branches like a bed, keeping the birds from stealing the harvest.

Maati walked in the dappled shade. The pangs from his belly were fewer

now and farther between. The wounds were nearly healed.

It would be easiest, of course, to do as he was told. The Dai-kvo had

taken him back into his good graces, and the fact that things had gone

awry since his last report could in no way be considered his

responsibility. He had discovered Otah, and if it was through no skill

of his own, that didn't change the result. He had given Otah over to the

Khai. Everything past that was court politics; even the murder of the

Khai was nothing the [)ai-kvo would want to become involved with.

Maati could leave now with honor and let the utkhaiem follow his

investigations or ignore them. The worst that would happen was that Otah

would be found and slaughtered for something he had not done and an evil

man would become the Khai Machi. It wouldn't be the first time in the

world that an innocent had suffered or that murder had been rewarded.

The sun would still rise, winter would still become spring. And Maati

would be restored to something like his right place among the poets. He

might even be set over the school, set to teach boys like himself the

lessons that he and Otah-kvo and Heshai-kvo and Cehmai had all learned.

It would be something worth taking pride in.

So why was it, he wondered, that he would not do as he was told? Why was

the prospect of leaving and accepting the rewards he had dreamed of less

appealing than staying, risking the Dai-kvo's displeasure, and

discovering what had truly happened to the Khai Machi? It wasn't love of

justice. It was more personal than that.

Maati paused, closed his eyes, and considered the roiling anger in his

breast. It was a familiar feeling, like an old companion or an illness

so protracted it has become indistinguishable from health. He couldn't

say who he was angry with or why the banked rage demanded that he follow

his own judgment over anyone else's. He couldn't even say what he hoped

he would find.

He plucked the Dai-kvo's letter from his sleeve, read it again slowly

from start to finish, and began to mentally compose his reply.

Most high Dai-kvo, I hope you will forgive me, but the situation in

Machi is such that ...

Most high Dai-kvo, I am sure that, had you known the turns of event

since my last report ...

Most high, I must respectfully ...

Most high Dai-kvo, what have you ever done for me that I should do

anything you say? Why do I agree to be your creature when that agreement

has only ever caused inc pain and loss, and you still instruct me to

turn my hack on the people I care for most?

Most high Dai-kvo, I have fed your last letter to pigs....

"Maati-kvo!"

Maati opened his eyes and turned. Cehmai, who had been running toward

him, stopped short. Maati thought he saw fear in the boy's expression

and wondered for a moment what Cehmai had seen in his face to inspire

it. Maati took a pose that invited him to speak.

"Otah," Cehmai said. "'They've found him."

Too late, then, Maati thought. I've been too slow and come too late.

"Where?" he asked.

"In the river. There's a bend down near one of the low towns. They found

his body, and a man in leather armor. One of the men who helped him

escape, or that's what they've guessed. The Master of Tides is having

them brought to the Khai's physicians. I told him that you had seen Otah

most recently. You would be able to confirm it's really him."

Maati sighed and watched a sparrow try to land on the branch of a cherry

tree. The netting confused it, and the bird pecked at the lines that

barred it from the fruit just growing sweet. Nlaati smiled in sympathy.

"Let's go, then," he said.

There was a crowd in the courtyard outside the physician's apartments.

Armsmen wearing mourning robes barred most of the onlookers but parted

when Maati and Cehmai arrived. The physician's workroom was wide as a

kitchen, huge slate tables in the center of the room and thick incense

billowing from a copper brazier. The bodies were laid out naked on their

bellies-one thick and well-muscled with a heaped pile of black leather

on the table beside it, the other thinner with what might have been the

robes of a prisoner or cleaning rags clinging to its back. The Master of

Tides-a thin man named Saani Vaanga-and the Khai's chief physician were

talking passionately, but stopped when they saw the poets.

The Master of Tides took a pose that offered service.

"I have come on behalf of the Dai-kvo," Maati said. "I wished to confirm

the reports that Otah Machi is dead."

"Well, he isn't going dancing," the physician said, pointing to the

thinner corpse with his chin.

"We're pleased by the Dai-kvo's interest," the Master of Tides said,

ignoring the comment. "Cehmai-cha suggested that you might be able to

confirm for us that this is indeed the upstart."

Maati took a pose of compliance and stepped forward. The reek was

terrible-rotting flesh and something deeper, more disturbing. Cehmai

hung back as Maati circled the table.

Maati gestured at the body, his hand moving in a circle to suggest

turning it over that he might better see the dead man's face. The

physician sighed, came to Maati's side, and took a long iron hook. He

slid the hook under the body's shoulder and heaved. There was a wet

sound as it lifted and fell. The physician put away the hook and

arranged the limbs as Maati considered the bare flesh before him.

Clearly the body had spent its journey face down. The features were

bloated and fisheaten-it might have been Otah-kvo. It might have been

anyone.

On the pale, water-swollen flesh of the corpse's breast, the dark ink

was still visible. The tattoo. Maati had his hand halfway out to touch

it before he realized what he was doing and pulled his fingers back. The

ink was so dark, though, the line where the tattoo began and ended so

sharp. A stirring of the air brought the scent fully to his nose, and

Maati gagged, but didn't look away.

"Will this satisfy the Dai-kvo?" the Master of Tides asked.

Maati nodded and took a pose of thanks, then turned and gestured to

Cehmai that he should follow. The younger poet was stone-faced. Maati

wondered if he had seen many dead men before, much less smelled them.

Out in the fresh air again, they navigated the crowd, ignoring the

questions asked them. Cehmai was silent until they were well away from

any curious ear.

"I'm sorry, Maati-kvo. I know you and he were-"

"It's not him," Maati said.

Cehmai paused, his hands moved up into a pose that spoke of his

confusion. Maati stopped, looking around.

"It isn't him," Maati said. "It's close enough to be mistaken, but it

isn't him. Someone wants us to think him dead-someone willing to go to

elaborate lengths. But that's no more Otah Machi than I am."

"I don't understand," Cehmai said.

"Neither do I. But I can say this, someone wants the rumor of his death

but not the actual thing. They're buying time. Possibly time they can

use to find who's really done these things, then-"

"We have to go back! You have to tell the Master of Tides!"

Maati blinked. Cehmai's face had gone red and he was pointing back

toward the physician's apartments. The boy was outraged.

"If we do that," Maati said, "we spoil all the advantage. It can't get

out that-"

"Are you blind? Gods! It is him. All the time it's been him. This as

much as proves it! Otah Machi came here to slaughter his family. To

slaughter you. He has hackers who could free him from the tower, and he

has done everything that he's been accused of. Buying time? He's buying

safety! Once everyone thinks him dead, they'll stop looking. He'll be

free. You have to tell them the truth!"

"Otah didn't kill his father. Or his brothers. It's someone else."

Cehmai was breathing hard and fast as a runner at the race's end, but

his voice was lower now, more controlled.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

"I know Otah-kvo. I know what he would do, and-"

"Is he innocent because he's innocent, or because you love him?" Cehmai

demanded.

"This isn't the place to-"

""Tell me! Say you have proof and not just that you wish the sky was red

instead of blue, because otherwise you're blinded and you're letting him

escape because of it. There were times I more than half believed you,

Maati-kvo. But when I look at this I see nothing to suggest any

conspiracy but his."

Maati rubbed the point between his eyes with his thumb, pressing hard to

keep his annoyance at bay. He shouldn't have spoken to the boy, but now

that he had, there was nothing for it.

"Your anger-" he began, but Cehmai cut him off.

"You're risking people's lives, Maati-kvo. You're hanging them on the

thought that you can't be wrong about the upstart."

"Whose lives?"

"The lives of people he would kill."

"'There is no risk from Otah-kvo. You don't understand."

"'T'hen teach me." It was as much an insult as a challenge. Maati felt

the blood rising to his cheeks even as his mind dissected Cehmai's

reaction. There was something to it, some reason for the violence and

frustration of it, that didn't make sense. The boy was reacting to

something more than Nlaati knew. Maati swallowed his rage.

"I'll ask five days. Trust me for five days, and I will show you proof.

Will that do?"

He saw the struggle in Cehmai's face. The impulse to refuse, to fight,

to spread the news across the city that Otah Machi lived. And then the

respect for his elders that had been ground into him from his first day

in the school and for all the years since he'd taken the brown robes

they shared. Maati waited, forcing himself to patience. And in the end,

Cehmai nodded once, turned, and stalked away.

Five days, Maati thought, shaking his head. I wonder what I thought to

manage in that time. I should have asked for ten.

THE RAINS CAME IN THE EARLY EVENING: LIGHTNING AND THE BLUE-GRAY bellies

of cloudbank. The first few drops sounded like stones, and then the

clouds broke with a sudden pounding-thousands of small drums rolling.

Otah sat in the window and looked out at the courtyard as puddles

appeared and danced white and clear. The trees twisted and shifted under

gusts of wind and the weight of water. The little storms rarely lasted

more than a hand and a half, but in that time, they seemed like

doomsday, and they reminded Otah of being young, when everything had

been full and torrential and brief. He wished now that he had the skill

to draw this brief landscape before the clouds passed and it was gone.

There was something beautiful in it, something worth preserving.

"You're looking better."

Otah shifted, glancing back into the room. Sinja was there, his long

hair slicked down by the rain, his robes sodden. Otah took a welcoming

pose as the commander strode across the room toward him, dripping as he

came.

"Brighter about the eyes, blood in your skin again. One would think

you'd been eating, perhaps even walking around a bit."

"I feel better," Otah said. "That's truth."

"I didn't doubt you would. I've seen men far worse off than you pull

through just fine. They've found your corpse, by the way. Identified it

as you, just as we'd hoped. There are already half a hundred stories

about how that came to be, and none of them near the truth. Amiit-cha is

quite pleased, I think."

"I suppose it's worth being pleased over," Otah said.

"You don't seem overjoyed."

"Someone killed my father and my brothers and placed the blame on me. It

just seems an odd time to celebrate."

Sinja didn't answer this, and for a moment, the two men sat in silence

broken only by the rain. Then Otah spoke again. "Who was he? The man

with my tattoo? Where did you find him?"

"He wasn't the sort of man the world will miss," Sinja said. "Amiit

found him in a low town, and we arranged to purchase his indenture from

the low magistrate before they hung him."

"What had he done?"

"I don't know. Killed someone. Raped a puppy. Whatever soothes your

conscience, he did that."

"You really don't care."

"No," Sinja agreed. "And perhaps that makes me a bad person, but since I

don't care about that, either ..."

He took a pose of completion, as if he had finished a demonstration.

Otah nodded, then looked away.

"Too many people die over this," Otah said. "Too many lives wasted. It's

an idiot system."

"This is nothing. You should see a real war. There is no bigger waste

than that."

"You have? Seen war, I mean?"

"Yes. I fought in the Westlands. Sometimes when the Wardens took issue

with each other. Sometimes against the nomad bands when they got big

enough to pose a real threat. And then when the Galts decide to come

take another bite out of them. There's more than enough opportunity there."

A distant Hash of lightning lit the trees, and then a breath later, a

growl of thunder. Otah reached his hand out, letting the cool drops wet

his palm.

"What's it like?" he asked.

"War? Violent. Brutish, stupid. Unnecessary, as often as not. But I like

the part where we win."

Otah chuckled.

"You seem ... don't mind my prying at you, but for a man pulled from

certain death, you don't seem to be as happy as I'd expected," Sinja

said. "Something weighing on you?"

"Have you even been to Yalakeht?"

"No, too far east for me."

"They have tall gates on the mouths of their side streets that they

close and lock every night. And there's a tower in the harbor with a

permanent fire that guides ships in the darkness. In Chaburi-Tan, the

street children play a game I've never seen anywhere else. They get just

within shouting distance, strung out all through the streets, and then

one will start singing, and the next will call the song on to the next

after him, until it loops around to the first singer with all the

mistakes and misunderstandings that make it something new. They can go

on for hours. I stayed in a low town halfway between Lachi and

Shosheyn-Tan where they served a stew of smoked sausage and pepper rice

that was the best meal I've ever had. And the eastern islands.

"I was a fisherman out there for a few years. A very bad one, but ...

but I spent my time out on the water, listening to the waves against my

little boat. I saw the way the water changed color with the day and the

weather. The salt cracked my palms, and the woman I was with made me

sleep with greased cloth on my hands. I think I'll miss that the most."

"Cracked palms?"

"The sea. I think that will be the worst of it."

Sinja shifted. The rain intensified and then slackened as suddenly as it

had come. The trees stood straighter. The pools of water danced less.

"The sea hasn't gone anywhere," Sinja said.

"No, but I have. I've gone to the mountains. And I don't expect I'll

ever leave them again. I knew it was the danger when I became a courier.

I was warned. But I hadn't understood it until now. It's the problem in

seeing too much of the world. In loving too much of it. You can only

live in one place at a time. And eventually, you pick your spot, and the

memories of all the others just become ghosts."

Sinja nodded, taking a pose that expressed his understanding. Otah

smiled, and wondered what memories the commander carried with him. From

the distance in his eyes, it couldn't all have been blood and terror.

Something of it must have been worth keeping.

"You've decided, then," Sinja said. "Amiit-cha was thinking he'd need to

speak with you about the issue soon. Things will be moving in Mach] as

soon as the mourning's done."

"I know. And yes, I've decided."

"Would you mind if I asked why you chose to stay?"

Otah turned and let himself down into the room. He took two howls from

the cabinet and poured the deep red wine into both before he answered.

Sinja took the one he was offered and drank half at a swig. Utah sat on

the table, his feet on the scat of the bench and swirled the red of the

wine against the bone white of the bowl.

"Someone killed my father and nay brothers."

"You didn't know them," Sinja said. "Don't tell me this is love."

"They killed my old family. I)o you think they'd hesitate to kill my new

one?"

"Spoken like a man," Sinja said, raising his howl in salute. "The gods

all know it won't be easy. As long as the utkhaicm think you've done

everything you're accused of, they'll kill you first and crown you

after. You'll have to find who did the thing and feed them to the

crowds, and even then half of them will think you're guilty and clever.

But if you don't do the thing ... No, I think you're right. The options

are live in fear or take the world by the balls. You can be the Khai

Nlachi, or you can be the Khai Machi's victim. I don't see a third way."

"I'll take the first. And I'll be glad about it. It's only . .

"You mourn that other life, I know. It comes with leaving your boyhood

behind."

"I wouldn't have thought I was still just a boy."

"It doesn't matter what you've done or seen. Every man's a child until

he's a father. It's the way the world's made."

Otah raised his brows and took a pose of (Iuery only slightly hampered

by the bowl of wine.

"Oh yes, several," Sinja said. "So far the mothers haven't met one

another, so that's all for the best. But your woman? Kiyan-cha?"

Otah nodded.

"I traveled with her for a time," Sinja said. "I've never met another

like her, and I've known more than my share of women. You're lucky to

have her, even if it means freezing your prick off for half the year up

here in the north."

"Are you telling me you're in love with my lover?" Otah asked, half

joking, half serious.

"I'm saying she's worth giving up the sea for," Sinja said. He finished

the last of his wine, spun the bowl on the table, and then clapped

Otah's shoulder. Otah met his gaze for a moment before Sinja turned and

strode out. Otah looked into the wine bowl again, smelled the memory of

grapes hot from the sun, and drank it down. Outside, the sun broke

through, and the green of the trees and blue of the sky where it peeked

past the gray and white and yellow clouds showed vibrant as something

newly washed.

Their quarters were down a short corridor, and then through a thin

wooden door on leather hinges halfway to wearing through. Kiyan lay on

the cot, the netting pulled around her to keep the gnats and mosquitoes

off. Otah slipped through and lay gently beside her, watching her eyes

flutter and her lips take up a smile as she recognized him.

"I heard you talking," she said, sleep slurring the words.

"Sinja-cha came up."

"What was the matter?"

"Nothing," he said, and kissed her temple. "We were only talking about

the sea."

CEHMAI CLOSED THE DOOR OF THE POET'S HOUSE AGAIN AND STARTED PACing the

length of the room. The storm in the back of his mind was hardly a match

for the one at the front. Stone-Made-Soft, sitting at the empty, cold

brazier, looked up. Its face showed a mild interest.

"Trees still there?" the andat asked.

"Yes."

"And the sky?"

"And the sky."

"But still no girl."

Cehmai dropped onto the couch, his hands worrying each other, restless.

The andat sighed and went back to its contemplation of the ashes and

fire-black metal. Cehmai smelled smoke in the air. It was likely just

the forges, but his mind made the scent into Idaan's father and brother

burning. He stood tip again, walked to the door, turned back and sat

down again.

"You could go out and look for her," the andat said.

"And why should I find her now? The mourning week's almost done. You

think if she wanted me, there wouldn't have been word? I just ... I

don't understand it."

"She's a woman. You're a man."

"Your point being?"

The andat didn't reply. It might as well have been a statue. Cehmai

probed at the connection between them, at the part of him that was the

binding of the andat, but Stone-Made-Soft was in retreat. It had never

been so passive in all the years Cehmai had held it. The quiet was a

blessing, though he didn't understand it. He had enough to work through,

and he was glad not to have his burden made any heavier.

"I shouldn't have been angry with Nlaati-kvo," Cehmai said. "I shouldn't

have confronted him like that."

"No?"

"No. I should have gone hack to the Master of 'f'ides and told him what

Maati-kvo had said. Instead, I promised him five days, and now three of

them have passed and I can't do anything but chew at the grass.

"You can break promises," the andat said. "It's the definition, really.

A promise is something that can be broken. If it can't, it's something

else."

"You're singularly unhelpful," Cehmai said. The andat nodded as if

remembering something, and then was still again. Cehmai stood, went to

the shutters, and opened them. The trees were still lush with summer-the

green so deep and rich he could almost see the autumn starting to creep

in at the edge. In winter, he could see the towers rising up to the sky

through the bare branches. Now he only knew they were there. He turned

to look at the path that led hack to the palaces, then went to the door,

opened it, and looked down it, willing someone to be there. Willing

Idaan's dark eyes to greet his own.

"I don't know what to do about Adrah Vaunyogi. I don't know if I should

back him or not."

"For something you consider singularly unhelpful, I seem to receive more

than my share of your troubles."

"You aren't real," Cehmai said. "You're like talking to myself."

The andat seemed to weigh that for a moment, then took a pose that

conceded the point. Cehmai looked out again, then closed the door.

"I'm going to lose my mind if I stay here. I have to do something," he

said. Stone-Made-Soft didn't respond, so Cehmai tightened the straps of

his boots, stood, and pulled his robes into place. "Stay here."

"All right."

Cehmai paused at the door, one foot already outside, and turned hack.

"Does nothing bother you?" he asked the andat.

"Being," Stone-Made-Soft suggested.

The palaces were still draped with rags of mourning cloth, the dry,

steady beat of the funeral drum and the low wailing dirges still the

only music. Cehmai took poses of greeting to the utkhaiem whom he

passed. At the burning, they had all worn pale mourning cloth. Now, as

the week wore on, there were more colors in the robes-here a mix of pale

cloth and yellow or blue, there a delicate red robe with a wide sash of

mourning cloth. No one went without, but few followed the full custom.

It reminded Cehmai of a snow lily, green tinder the white and budding,

swelling, preparing to burst out into new life and growth, new conflict

and struggle. The sense of sorrow was slipping from Machi, and the sense

of opportunity was coming forth.

He found he could not say whether that reassured or disgusted him.

Perhaps both.

Idaan was, of course, not at her chambers. The servants assured him that

she had been by-she was in the city, she hadn't truly vanished. Cehmai

thanked them and continued on his way to the palace of the Vaunyogi. He

didn't allow himself to think too deeply about what he was going to do

or say. It would happen soon enough anyway.

A servant brought him to one of the inner courtyards to wait. An apple

tree stood open to the air, its fruits unpecked by birds. Still unripe.

Cehmai sat on a low stone bench and watched the branches bob as sparrows

landed and took wing. His mind was deeply unquiet. On the one hand, he

had to see Idaan, had to speak with her at least if not hold her against

him. On the other, he could not bring himself to love Adrah Vaunyogi

only because she loved him. And the secret he held twisted in his

breast. Otah Machi lived....

"Cehmai-cha."

Adrah was dressed in full mourning robes. His eyes were sunken and

bloodshot, his movements sluggish. He looked like a man haunted. Cehmai

wondered how much sleep Adrah had managed in these last days. He

wondered how many of those late hours had been spent comforting Idaan.

The image of Idaan, her body entwined with Adrah's, flashed in his mind

and was pressed away. Cehmai took a pose of grect- i ng.

"I'm pleased you've come," Adrah said. "You've considered what I said?"

"Yes, Adrah-cha. I have. But I'm concerned for Idaan-cha. I'm told she's

been by her apartments, but I haven't been able to find her. And now,

with the mourning week almost gone ..

"You've been looking for her, then?"

"I wished to offer my condolences. And then, after our conversation, I

thought it would he wise to consult her on the matter as well. If it

were not her will to go on living in the palaces after all that's

happened, I would feel uncomfortable lending my support to a cause that

would require it."

Adrah's eyes narrowed, and Cchmai felt a touch of heat in his checks. He

coughed, looked down, and then, composed once again, raised his eyes to

Adrah. He half expected to see rage there, but Adrah seemed pleased.

Perhaps he was not so obvious as he felt. Adrah sat on the bench beside

him, leaning in toward him as if they were intimate friends.

"But if you could satisfy yourself that this is what she would wish,

you're willing? You would back me for her sake?"

"It's what would be best for the city," Cehmai said, trying to make it

sound more like agreement than denial. "The sooner the question is

resolved, the better we all are. And Idaan-cha would provide a sense of

continuity, don't you think?"

"Yes," Adrah said. "I think she would."

They sat silent for a moment. The sense that Adrah knew or suspected

something crept into Cehmai's throat, drawing it tight. Ile tried to

calm himself; there was ultimately nothing Adrah could do to him. He was

the poet of Machi, and the city itself rode on his shoulders and on

Stone-Made-Soft. But Adrah was about to marry ldaan, and she loved him.

"There was quite a bit Adrah might yet do to hurt her.

"We're allies, then," Adrah said at last. "You and I. We've become allies."

"I suppose we have. Provided Idaan-cha ..

"She's here," Adrah said. "I'll take you to her. She's been here since

her brother died. We thought it would be best if she were able to grieve

in private. But if we need to break into her solitude now in order to

assure her future for the rest of her life, I don't think there's any

question what the right thing is to do."

"I don't ... I don't mean to intrude."

Adrah grinned and slapped him on the back. He rose as he spoke.

"Never concern yourself with that, Cehmai-kya. You've come to our aid on

an uncertain day. Think of us as your family now."

"That's very kind," Cehmai said, but Adrah was already striding away,

and he had to hurry to keep pace.

He had never been so far into the halls and chambers that belonged to

the Vaunyogi before. The dark stone passageways down which Cehmai was

led seemed simpler than he had expected. The halls, more sparely

furnished. Only the statuary-bronze likenesses of emperors and of the

heads of the Vaunyogi-spoke of the wealth of a high family of the

utkhaiem, and these were displayed in the halls and courtyards with such

pride that they seemed more to point out the relative spareness of their

surroundings than to distract from it. Diamonds set in brass.

Adrah spoke little, but when he did, his voice and demeanor were

pleasant enough. Cehmai felt himself watched, evaluated. There was some

reason that Adrah was showing him these signs of a struggling family-the

worn tapestry, the great ironwork candleholders filled with half a

hundred candles of tallow instead of wax, the empty incense burners, the

long stairway leading up to the higher floors that still showed the

marks where cloth runners had once softened the stone corners and no

longer did-but Cehmai couldn't quite fathom it. In another man, at

another time, it would have been a humbling thing to show a poet through

a compound like this, but Adrah seemed anything but humble. It might

have been a challenge or a play for Cehmai's sympathy. Or it might have

been a boast. My house has little, and still Idaan chose me.

They stopped at last at a wide door-dark wood inlaid with bone and black

stone. Adrah knocked, and when a servant girl opened the door a

fraction, he pressed his way in, gesturing Cehmai to follow. They were

summer quarters with wide arched windows, the shutters open to the air.

Silk banners with the yellow and gray of the Vaunyogi bellied and

fluttered in the breeze, as graceful as dancers. A desk stood at one

wall, a brick of ink and a metal pen sitting on it, ready should anyone

wish to use them. This room smelled of cedar and sandalwood. And sitting

in one of the sills, her feet out over the void, Idaan. Cehmai breathed

in deep, and let the air slide out slowly, taking with it a tension he'd

only half known he carried. She turned, looking at them over her

shoulder. Her face was unpainted, but she was just as lovely as she had

ever been. The bare, unadorned skin reminded Cehmai of the soft curve of

her mouth when she slept and the slow, languorous way she stretched when

she was on the verge of waking.

He took a pose of formal greeting. There was perhaps a moment's

surprise, and then she pulled her legs back into the room. Her

expression asked the question.

"Cehmai-kya wished to speak with you, love," Adrah said.

"I am always pleased to meet with the servant of the I)ai-kvo," Idaan

said. Her smile was formal and calm, and gave away nothing. Cehmai hoped

that he had not been wrong to come, but feared that her pleasant words

might cover anger.

"Forgive me," he said. "I hadn't meant to intrude. Only I had hoped to

find you at your own quarters, and these last few days ..."

Something in her demeanor softened slightly, as if she had heard the

deeper layer of his apology-I hurl to see yore, and there was no other

wayand accepted it. Idaan returned his formal greeting, then sauntered

to the desk and sat, her hands folded on her knees, her gaze cast down

in what would have been proper form for a girl of the utkhaiem before a

poet. From her, it was a bitter joke. Adrah coughed. Cehmai glanced at

him and realized the man thought she was being rude.

"I had hoped to offer my sympathies before this, Idaan-cha," Cehmai said.

"Your congratulations, too, I hope," Idaan said. "I am to be married

once the mourning week has passed."

Cehmai felt his heart go tighter, but only smiled and nodded.

"Congratulations as well," he said.

"Cehmai-kya and I have been talking," Adrah said. "About the city and

the succession."

Idaan seemed almost to wake at the words. Her body didn't move, but her

attention sharpened. When she spoke, her voice had lost a slowness

Cehmai had hardly known was there.

"Is that so? And what conclusions have you fine gentlemen reached?"

"Cehmai-kya agrees with me that the longer the struggle among the

utkhaiem, the worse for the city. It would be better if it were done

quickly. That's the most important thing."

"I see," Idaan said. I let gaze, dark as skies at midnight, shifted to

Cehmai. She moved to brush her hair back from her brow, though Cehmai

saw no stray lock there. "Then I suppose he would be wise to back

whichever house has the strongest claim. If he has decided to back

anyone. The I)ai-kvo has been scrupulous about removing himself from

these things."

"A man may voice an opinion," Adrah said, an edge in his voice, "without

shouting on street corners."

"And what opinion would you voice, Cehmai-cha?"

Cehmai stood silent, his breath deep and fast. With every impotent

thread of his will, he wished Adrah away. His hands were drawn toward

Idaan, and he felt himself lean toward her like a reed in the wind. And

yet her lover's eyes were on him, holding him back as effectively as chains.

"Whatever opinion you should choose," he said.

Idaan smiled, but there was more in her face than pleasure. Her jaw

shifted forward, her eyes brightened. There was rage beneath her calm,

and Cehmai felt it in his belly like an illness. The silence stretched

out for three long breaths, four, five....

"Love," Adrah said in a voice without affection. "I know our good

fortune at this unexpected ally is overwhelming, but-"

"I didn't want to take any action until I spoke to you," Cehmai said.

"That's why I had Adrah-cha bring me here. I hope I haven't given offense."

"Of course not, Cehmai-cha," she said. "But if you can't take my

husband's word for my mind, whose could you trust? Who could know me

better than he?"

"I would still prefer to discuss it with you," Cehmai said, packing as

much meaning into the words as he could without sounding forced. "It

will have some influence over the shape your life takes, and I wouldn't

wish to guess wrong."

A spark of amusement flashed in her eyes, and she took a pose of

gratitude before turning to Adrah.

"Leave us, then."

"Leave you ..."

"Certainly he can't expect a woman to speak her mind openly with her

husband floating above her like a hunting hawk. If Cehmai-cha is to

trust what I say, he must see that I'm free to do my own will, ne?"

"It might be best," Cchmai agreed, trying to make his voice

conciliatory. "If it wouldn't disturb you, Adrah-kya?"

Adrah smiled without even the echo of pleasure.

"Of course," he said. "I've arrangements to see to. The wedding is

almost upon us, you know. There's so much to do, and with the mourning

week ... I do regret that the Khai did not live long enough to see this

day come."

Adrah shook his head, then took a pose of farewell and retreated,

closing the door behind him. When they were alone, Idaan's face shifted,

naked venom in her stare.

"I'm sorry," Cehmai began, but Idaan cut him off.

"Not here. Gods only know how many servants he's set to listening. Come

with me."

Idaan took him by the arm and led him through the door Adrah had used,

then down a long corridor, and up a flight of winding stairs. Cehmai

felt the warmth of her hand on his arm, and it felt like relief. She was

here, she was well, she was with him. The world could be falling to

pieces, and her presence would make it bearable.

She led him through a high hall and out to an open garden that looked

down over the city. There were six or seven floors between them and the

streets below. Idaan Leaned against the rail and looked down, then back

at him.

"So he's gotten to you, has he?" she asked, her voice gray as ashes.

"No one's gotten to me. If Adrah had wanted me to bray like a mule and

paint my face like a whore's before he'd take me to you, I'd have been a

stranger sight than this."

And, almost as if it was against her will, Idaan laughed. Not long, and

not deep, hardly more than a faint smile and a fast exhalation, but it

was there. Cehmai stepped in and pulled her body to his. He felt her

start to push him back, hesitate, and then her cheek was pressed to his,

her hair filling his breath with its scent. He couldn't say if the tears

between them were hers or his or both.

"Why?" he whispered. "Why did you go? Why didn't you come to me?"

"I couldn't," she said. "There was ... there's too much."

"I love you, Idaan. I didn't say it before because it wasn't true, but

it is now. I love you. Please let me help."

Now she did push him away, holding one arm out before her to keep him at

a distance and wiping her eyes with the sleeve of the other.

"Don't," she said. "Don't say that. You ... you don't love me, Cehmai.

You don't love me, and I do not love you."

"Then why are we weeping?" he asked, not moving to dry his own cheek.

"Because we're young and stupid," she said, her voice catching. "Because

we think we can forget what happens to things that I care for."

"And what's that?"

"I kill them," she said, her voice soft and choking. "I cut them or I

poison them or I turn them into something wrong. I won't do that to you.

You can't be part of this, because I won't do that to you."

Cehmai didn't step toward her. Instead, he pulled back, walked to the

edge of the garden and looked out over the city. The scent of flowers

and forge-smoke mixed. "You're right, Idaan-kya. You won't do that. Not

to me. You couldn't if you tried."

"Please," she said, and her voice was near him. She had followed. "You

have to forget me. Forget what happened. It was ..."

"Wrong?"

For a breath, he waited.

"No," she said. "Not wrong. But it was dangerous. I'm being married in a

few days time. Because I choose to be. And it won't be you on the other

end of the cord."

"Do you want me to support Adrah for the Khai's chair?"

"No. I want you to have nothing to do with any of this. Go home. Find

someone else. Find someone better."

"I can love you from whatever distance you wish-"

"Oh shut up," Idaan snapped. "Just stop. Stop being the noble little boy

who's going to suffer in silence. Stop pretending that your love of me

started in anything more gallant than opening my robes. I don't need

you. And if I want you ... well, there are a hundred other things I want

and I can't have them either. So just go."

He turned, surprised, but her face was stony, the tears and tenderness

gone as if they'd never been.

"What are you trying to protect me from?" he asked.

"The answer to that question, among other things," she said. "I want you

away from me, Cehmai. I want you elsewhere. If you love me as much as

you claim, you'll respect that."

"But-"

"You'll respect it."

Cehmai had to think, had to pick the words as if they were stuck in mud.

The confusion and distress rang in his mind, but he could see what any

protests would bring. He had walked away from her, and she had followed.

Perhaps she would again. That was the only comfort here.

"I'll leave you," he said. "If it's what you want."

"It is. And remember this: Adrah Vaunyogi isn't your friend. Whatever he

says, whatever he does, you watch him. He will destroy you if he can."

"He can't," Cehmai said. "I'm the poet of Machi. The worst he can do to

me is take you, and that's already done."

That seemed to stop her. She softened again, but didn't move to him, or

away.

"Just be careful, Cehmai-kya. And go."

Cehmai's leaden hands took a pose of acceptance, but he did not move.

Idaan crossed her arms.

"You also have to be careful. Especially if Adrah wants to become Khai

Machi," Cehmai said. "It's the other thing I came for. The body they

found was false. Your brother Otah is alive."

He might have told her that the plague had come. Her face went pale and

empty. It was a moment before she seemed able to draw a breath.

"What ... ?" she said, then coughed and began again. "How do you know that?"

"If I tell you, will you still send inc away?"

Something washed through Idaan's expression-disappointment or depair or

sorrow. She took a pose that accepted a contract.

"Tell me everything," Idaan said.

Cehmai did.

Idaan walked through the halls, her hands clenched in fists. Her body

felt as if a storm were running through it, as if flood waters were

washing out her veins. She trembled with the need to do something, but

there was nothing to be done. She remembered seeing the superstitious

dread with which others had treated the name Otah Machi. She had found

it amusing, but she no longer knew why.

She had made Cehmai repeat himself until she was certain that she'd

understood what he was saying. It had taken all the pain and sorrow of

seeing him again and put it aside. Cehmai had meant to save her by it.

Adrah was in the kitchens, talking with his father's house master. She

took a pose of apology and extracted him, leading him to a private

chamber, pulling closed the shutters, and sliding home the door before

she spoke. Adrah sat in a low chair of pale wood and red velvet as she

paced. The words spilled out of her, one upon another as she repeated

the story Cehmai had told her. Even she could hear the tones of panic in

her voice.

"Fell me," she said as the news came to its end. ""Fell me it's not

true. Nell me you're sure he's dead."

"He's dead. It's a mistake. It has to be. No one knew when he'd he

leaving the city. No one could have rescued him."

"'Tell me that you know!"

Adrah scowled.

"How would I do that? We hired men to free him, take him away, and kill

him. They took him away, and his body floated hack down the river. But I

wasn't there, I didn't strangle him myself. I can't keep these men from

knowing who's paid their fee and also be there to hold their hands,

Idaan. You know that."

Idaan put her hands to her mouth. Her fingers were shaking. It was a

dream. It was a sick dream, and she would wake from it. She would wake

up, and none of it would have been true.

"He's used us," she said. "Otah's used us to do his work."

"What?"

"Look at it! We've done everything for him. We've killed them all. Even

... even my father. We've done everything he would have needed to do. He

knew. He knew from the start. He's planned for everything we've done."

Adrah made an impatient sound at the back of his throat.

"You're imagining things," he said. "He can't have known what we were

doing, or how we would do it. He isn't a god, and he isn't a ghost."

"You're sure of that, are you? We've fallen into his trap, Adrah! It's a

trap!"

"It is a rumor started by Cehmai'Iyan. Or maybe it's Maati Vaupathai

who's set you a trap. He could suspect us and say these things to make

us panic. Or Cehmai could."

"He wouldn't do that," Idaan said. "(:ehmai wouldn't do that toto us."

"TO you, you mean," Adrah said, pulling the words out slow and bitter.

Idaan stopped her pacing and took a pose of query, her gaze locked on

Adrah's. As much challenge as question. Adrah leaned hack in his chair,

the wood creaking tinder his weight.

"He's your lover, isn't he?" Adrah said. "This limp story about wanting

to offer condolences and being willing to back my claim only if he could

see you, could speak with you. And you sending me away like I was a

puppy you'd finished playing with. Do you think I'm dim, Idaan?"

Her throat closed, and she coughed to loosen it, only the cough didn't

end. It became laughter, and it shook her the way a dog might shake a

rat. It was nothing about mirth, everything about violence. Adrah's face

went red, and then white.

"This?" Idaan finally managed to stammer. "This is what we're going to

argue about?"

"Is there something else you'd prefer?"

"You're about to live a life filled with women who aren't me. You and

your father must have a list drawn up of allies we can make by taking

their daughters for wives. You have no right to accuse me of anything."

"That was your choice," he said. "We agreed when we started this ...

this landslide. It would he the two of us, together, no matter if we won

this or lost."

"And how long would that have lasted after you took my father's place?"

she asked. "Who would I appeal to when you broke your word?"

Adrah rose to his feet, stepping toward her. His hand open flat, pointed

toward her like a knife.

"That isn't fair to me. You never gave me the chance to fail you. You

assumed it and went on to punish me as though it had happened."

"I'm not wrong, Adrah. You know I'm not wrong."

"There's a price for doing what you say, do you know that? I loved you

more than I loved anything. My father, my mother, my sisters, anything

or anyone. I did all of this because it was what you wanted."

"And not for any gain of your own? How selfless. Becoming Khai Machi

must be such a chore for you."

"You wouldn't have had me if my ambition didn't match yours," Adrah

said. "What I've become, I've become for you."

"That isn't fair," Idaan said.

Adrah whooped and turned in a wide circle, like a child playing before

an invisible audience.

"Fair! When did this become about fair? When someone finally asked you

to take some responsibility? You made the plans, love. This is yours,

Idaan! All of it's yours, and VOL] won't blame me that you've got to

live with it!"

He was breathing fast now, as if he'd been running, but she could see in

his shoulders and the corners of his mouth that the rage was failing. He

dropped his arms and looked at her. His breath slowed. His face relaxed.

They stood in silence, considering each other for what felt like half a

hand. There was no anger now and no sorrow. He only looked tired and

lost, very young and very old at once. He looked the way she felt. It

was as if the air they both breathed had changed. He was the one to look

away and break the silence.

"You know, love, you never said Cehmai wasn't your lover."

"He is," Idaan said, then shrugged. The battle was over. They were both

too thin now for any more damage to matter. "He has been for a few weeks."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Because he wasn't part of all this. Because he was clean."

"Because he is power, and you're drawn to that more than anything?"

Idaan hit back her first response and let the accusation sit. "Then she

nodded.

"Perhaps a bit of that, yes," she said.

Adrah sighed and leaned against the wall. Slowly, he slid down until he

was sitting on the floor, his arms resting on his knees.

"There is a list of houses and their women," he said. ""There was before

you and Cehmai took tip with each other. I argued against it, but my

father said it was just as an exercise. Just in case it was needed

later. Only tell me ... today, when he came ... you didn't ... the two

of you didn't ..."

Idaan laughed again, but this was a lower sound, gentler.

"No, I haven't lain down for another man in your house, Adrah-kya. I

can't say why I think that would be worse than what I have done, but I do."

Adrah nodded. She could see another question in the way he shifted his

eyes, the way he moved his hands. They had been lovers and conspirators

for years. She knew him as if he were her family, or a distant part of

herself. It didn't make her love him, but she remembered when she had.

"The first time I kissed you, you looked so frightened," she said. "Do

you remember that? It was the middle of winter, and we'd all gone

skating. "There must have been twenty of us. We all raced, and you won."

"And you kissed me for the prize," he said. "Noichi Vausadar was chewing

his own tongue, he was so jealous of me."

"Poor Noichi. I half did it to annoy him, you know."

"And the other half?"

"Because I wanted to," she said. "And then it was weeks before you came

hack for another."

"I was afraid you'd laugh at me. I went to sleep every night thinking

about you, and woke up every morning just as possessed. Can you imagine

only being afraid that someone would laugh at you?"

"Now? No."

"Do you remember the night we both went to the inn. With the little dog

out front?"

"The one that danced when the keep played flute? Yes."

Idaan smiled. It had been a tiny animal with gray hair and soft, dark

eyes. It had seemed so delighted, rearing up on its hind legs and

capering, small paws waving for balance. It had seemed happy. She wiped

away the tear before it could mar her kohl, then remembered that her

eyes were only her eyes now. In her mind, the tiny dog leapt and looked

at her. It had been so happy and so innocent. She pushed her own heart

out toward that memory, pleading with the cold world that the pup was

somewhere out there, still safe and well, trusting and loved as it had

been that day. She didn't bother wiping the tears away now.

"We were other people then," she said.

They were silent again. After a moment, Idaan went to sit on the floor

beside Adrah. I Ic put his arm across her shoulder, and she leaned into

him, weeping silently for too many things for one mind to hold. He

didn't speak until the worst of the tears had passed.

"Do they bother you?" he asked at last, his voice low and hoarse.

"Who?"

"'I'hem," he said, and she knew. She heard the sound of the arrow again,

and shivered.

"Yes," she said.

"Do you know what's funny? It isn't your father who haunts me. It should

be, I know. He was helpless, and I went there knowing what I was going

to do. But he isn't the one."

Idaan frowned, trying to think who else there had been. Adrah saw her

confusion and smiled, as if confirming something for himself. Perhaps

only that she hadn't known some part of him, that his life was something

different from her own.

"When we went in for the assassin, Oshal. There was a guard. I hit him.

With a blade. It split his jaw. I can still see it. Have you ever swung

a thin bar of iron into hard snow? It felt just like that. A hard, fast

arc and then something that both gave way and didn't. I remember how it

sounded. And afterward, you wouldn't touch me."

"Adrah ..."

He raised his hands, stopping anything that might have been sympathy.

Idaan swallowed it. She had no right to pardon him.

"Men do this," Adrah said. "All over the world, in every land, men do

this. They slaughter each other over money or sex or power. The Khaiem

do it to their own families. I never wondered how. Even now, I can't

imagine it. I can't imagine doing the things I've done, even after I've

done them. Can you?"

"There's a price they pay," Idaan said. "The soldiers and the armsmen.

Even the thugs and drunkards who carve each other up outside comfort

houses. They pay a price, and we're paying it too. That's all."

She felt him sigh.

"I suppose you're right," he said.

"So what do we do from here? What about Otah?"

Adrah shrugged, as if the answer were obvious.

"If Maati Vaupathai's set himself to be Otah's champion, Otah will

eventually come to him. And Cehmai's already shown that there's one

person in the world he'll break his silence for."

"I want Cehmai kept out of this."

"It's too late for that," Adrah said. His voice should have been cold or

angry or cruel, and perhaps those were in him. Mostly, he sounded

exhausted. "He's the only one who can lead us to Otah Machi. And you're

the only one he'll tell."

PORSHA RADAANI GESTURED TOWARD MAA'I'I'S BOWL, AND A SERVANT BOY moved

forward, graceful as a dancer, to refill it. Maati took a pose of

gratitude toward the man. There were times and places that he would have

thanked the servant, but this was not one of them. Maati lifted the bowl

and blew across the surface. The pale green-yellow tea smelled richly of

rice and fresh, unsmoked leaves. Radaani laced thick fingers over his

wide belly and smiled. His eyes, sunk deep in their sockets and padded

by generous fat, glittered like wet stones in a brook.

"I confess, Maati-cha, that I hadn't expected a visit from the Daikvo's

envoy. I've had men from every major house in the city here to talk with

me these last few days, but the most high Dai-kvo usually keeps clear of

these messy little affairs."

Maati sipped his tea though it was still too hot. He had to be careful

how he answered this. It was a fine line between letting it be assumed

that he had the Dai-kvo's hacking and actually saying as much, but that

difference was critical. He had so far kept away from anything that

might reach hack to the Dal-kvo's village, but Radaani was an older man

than Ghiah Vaunani or Admit Kamati. And he seemed more at home with the

bullying attitude of wealth than the subtleties of court. Maati put down

his bowl.

"The Dai-kvo isn't taking a hand in it," Nlaati said, "but that hardly

means he should embrace ignorance. The better he knows the world, the

better he can direct the poets to everyone's benefit, nc?"

"Spoken like a man of the court," Radaani said, and despite the smile in

his voice, Maati didn't think it had been a compliment.

"I have heard that the Radaani might have designs on the Khai's chair,"

Maati said, dropping the oblique path he had intended. It would have

done no good here. "Is that the case?"

Radaani smiled and pointed for the servant boy to go. The boy dropped

into a formal pose and retreated, sliding the door closed behind him.

Maati sat, smiling pleasantly, but not filling the silence. It was a

small room, richly appointed-wood varnished until it seemed to glow and

ornaments of worked gold and carved stone. The windows were adorned with

shutters of carved cedar so fine that they let the breeze in and kept

the birds and insects out even as they scented the air. Radaani tilted

his head, distant eyes narrowing. Maati felt like a gem being valued by

a merchant.

"I have one son in Yalakeht, overseeing our business interests. I have a

grandson who has recently learned how to sing and jump sticks at the

same time. I can't see that either of them would be. well suited to the

Khai's chair. I would have to either abandon my family's business or put

a child in power over the city."

"Certainly there must be some financial advantages to being the Khai

Machi," Maati said. "I can't think it would hurt your family to exchange

your work in Yalakcht to join the Khaiem."

"Then you haven't spoken to my overseers," Radaani laughed. "We are

pulling in more gold from the ships in Yalakeht and Chaburi-Tan than the

Khai Machi can pull out of the ground, even with the andat. No. If I

want power, I can purchase it and not have to compromise anything.

Besides, I have six or eight daughters I'd be happy for the new Khai to

marry. He could have one for every day of the week."

"You could take the chair for yourself," Maati said. "You're not so old...."

"And I'm not so young as to be that stupid. Here, Vaupathai, let me lay

this out for you. I am old, gouty as often as not, and rich. I have what

I want from life, and being the Khai Maehi would mean that if I were

lucky, my grandsons would be slitting each other's throats. I don't want

that for them, and I don't want the trouble of running a city for

myself. Other men want it, and they can have it. None of them will cross

me, and I will support whoever takes the name."

"So you have no preference," Maati said.

"Now I didn't go so far as to say that, did I? Why does the Dai-kvo care

which of its becomes the Khai?"

"He doesn't. But that doesn't mean he's uninterested."

""Then let him wait two weeks, and he can have the name. It doesn't

figure. Dither he has a favorite or ... or is this about your belly

getting opened for you?" Radaani pursed his lips, his eyes darting back

and forth over Maati's face. "I'he upstart's dead, so it isn't that. You

think someone was working with Otah Machi? That one of the houses was

backing him?"

"I didn't go so far as to say that, did I? And even if they were, it's

no concern of the Dai-kvo's," Maati said.

""lrue, but no one tried to fish-gut the Dai-kvo. Could it be, Maaticha,

that you're here on your own interest?"

"You give me too much credit," Maati said. "I'm only a simple man trying

to make sense of complex times."

"Yes, aren't we all," Radaani said with an expression of distaste.

Mlaati kept the rest of the interview to empty niceties and social

forms, and left with the distinct feeling that he'd given out more

information than he'd gathered. Chewing absently at his inner lip, he

turned west, away from the palaces and out into the streets of the city.

The pale mourning cloth was coming down already, and the festival colors

were going back up for the marriage of Adrah Vaunyogi and Idaan Machi.

Maati watched as a young boy, skin brown as a nut, sat atop a lantern

pole with pale mourning rags in one hand and a garland of flowers in the

other. Maati wondered if a city had ever gone from celebration to sorrow

and back again so quickly.

Tomorrow ended the mourning week, marked the wedding of the dead Khai's

last daughter, and began the open struggle to find the city's new

master. The quiet struggle had, of course, been going on for the week.

Adaut Kamau had denied any interest in the Khai's chair, but had spent

enough time intimating that support from the Dai-kvo might sway his

opinion that Nlaati felt sure the Kamau hadn't abandoned their

ambitions. Ghiah Vaunani had been perfectly pleasant, friendly, open,

and had managed in the course of their conversation to say nothing at

all. Even now, Maati saw messengers moving through the streets and

alleyways. The grand conversation of power might put on the clothes of

sorrow, but the chatter only changed form.

Maati walked more often these days. The wound in his belly was still

pink, but the twinges of pain were few and widely spaced. While he

walked the streets, his robes marked him as a man of importance, and not

someone to interrupt. Ile was less likely to be disturbed here than in

the library or his own rooms. And moving seemed to help him think.

He had to speak to l)aaya Vaunyogi, the soon-to-be father of Idaan

Machi. He'd been putting off that moment, dreading the awkwardness of

condolence and congratulations mixed. Ile wasn't sure whether to be

long-faced and formal or jolly and pleasant, and he felt a deep

certainty that whatever he chose would be the wrong thing. But it had to

be done, and it wasn't the worst of the errands he'd set himself for the

day.

There wasn't a soft quarter set aside for the comfort houses in Machi as

there had been in Saraykeht. Here the whores and gambling, druglaced

wine and private rooms were distributed throughout the city. Maati was

sorry for that. For all its subterranean entertainments, the soft

quarter of Saraykeht had been safe-protected by an armed watch paid by

all the houses. Ile'd never heard of another place like it. In most

cities of the Khaiem, a particular house might guard the street outside

its own door, but little more than that. In low towns, it was often wise

to travel in groups or with a guard after dark.

Maati paused at a watcrseller's cart and paid a length of copper for a

cup of cool water with a hint of peach to it. As he drank, he looked up

at the sun. He'd spent almost a full hand's time reminiscing about

Saraykeht and avoiding any real consideration of the Vaunyogi. He should

have been thinking his way through the puzzles of who had killed the

Khai and his son, who had spirited Otah-kvo away, and then falsified his

death, and why.

The sad truth was, he didn't know and wasn't sure that anything he'd

done since he'd cone had brought him much closer. He understood more of

the court politics, he knew the names of the great houses and trivia

about them: Kaman was supported by the breeders who raised mine dogs and

the copper workers, the Vaunani by the goldsmiths, tanners and

leatherworkers, Vaunvogi had business tics to Eddensea, Galt and the

Westlands and little money to show for it when compared to the Radaani.

But none of that brought him close to understanding the simple facts as

he knew them. Someone had killed these men and meant the world to put

the blame on Otah-kvo. And Otah-kvo had not done the thing.

Still, there had to be someone backing Otah-kvo. Someone who had freed

him and staged his false death. He ran through his conversation with

Radaani again, seeing if perhaps the man's lack of ambition masked

support for Otah-kvo, but there was nothing.

He gave back the waterseller's cup and let his steps wander through the

streets, his hands tucked inside his sleeves, until his hip and knee

started to complain. The sun was shifting down toward the western

mountains. Winter days here would be brief and hitter, the swift winter

sun ducking behind stone before it even reached the horizon. It hardly

seemed fair.

By the time he regained the palaces, the prospect of walking all the way

to the Vaunyogi failed to appeal. They would be busy with preparations

for the wedding anyway. There was no point intruding now. Better to

speak to Daaya Vaunyogi afterwards, when things had calmed. Though, of

course, by then the utkhaiem would be in council, and the gods only knew

whether he'd be able to get through then, or if he'd be in time.

He might only find who'd done the thing by seeing who became the next Khai.

There was still the one other thing to do. He wasn't sure how he would

accomplish it either, but it had to be tried. And at least the poet's

house was nearer than the Vaunyogi. He angled down the path through the

oaks, the gravel of the pathway scraping under his weight. The mourning

cloth had already been taken from the tree branches and the lamp posts

and benches, but no bright banners or flowers had taken their places.

When he stepped out from the trees, he saw Stone-Made-Soft sitting on

the steps before the open doorway, its wide face considering him with a

calm half-smile. Maati had the impression that had he been a sparrow or

an assassin with a flaming sword, the andat's reaction would have been

the same. He saw the large form lean back, turning to face into the

house, and heard the deep, rough voice if not the words them selves.

Cehmai was at the door in an instant, his eyes wide and bright, and then

bleak with disappointment before becoming merely polite.

With an almost physical sensation, it fit together-Cehmai's rage at

holding back news of Otah's survival, the lack of wedding decoration,

and the disappointment that Maati was only himself and not some other,

more desired guest. The poor bastard was in love with Idaan Machi.

Well, that was one secret discovered. It wasn't much, but the gods all

knew he'd take anything these days. He took a pose of greeting and

Cehmai returned it.

"I was wondering if you had a moment," Maati said.

"Of course, Maati-kvo. Come in."

The house was in a neat sort of disarray. Tables hadn't been overturned

or scrolls set in the brazier, but things were out of place, and the air

seemed close and stifling. Memories rose in his mind. He recalled the

moments in his own life when a woman had left him. The scent was very

much the same. He suppressed the impulse to put his hand on the boy's

shoulder and say something comforting. Better to pretend he hadn't

guessed. At least he could spare Cehmai that indignity. He lowered

himself into a chair, groaning with relief as the weight left his legs

and feet.

"I've gotten old. When I was your age I could walk all day and never

feel it."

"Perhaps if you made it more a habit," Cehmai said. "I have some tea.

It's a little tepid now, but if you'd like ..

Maati raised a hand, refusing politely. Cehmai, seeming to notice the

state of the house now there were someone else's eyes on it, opened the

shutters wide before he came to sit at Nlaati's side.

"I've come to ask for more time," Maati said. "I can make excuses first

if you like, or tell you that as your elder and an envoy of the Daikvo

it's something you owe me. Any of that theater you'd like. But it comes

to this: I don't know yet what's happening, and it's important to me

that if something does go wrong for Otah-kvo it not have been my doing."

Cehmai seemed to weigh this.

"Baarath tells me you had a message from the Dai-kvo," Cehmai said.

"Yes. After he heard I'd turned Otah-kvo over to his father, he called

me back."

"And you're disobeying that call."

"I'm exercising my own judgment."

"Will the Dai-kvo make that distinction?"

"I don't know," Maati said. "If he agrees with me, I suppose he'll agree

with me. If not, then not. I can only guess what he would have said if

he'd known everything I know, and move from there."

"And you think he'd want Otah's secret kept?"

Maati laughed and rubbed his hands together. His legs were twitching

pleasantly, relaxing from their work. He stretched and his shoulder cracked.

"Probably not," he said. "He'd more likely say that it isn't our place

to take an active role in the succession. That he'd sent me here with

that story about rooting through the library so that it wouldn't be

clear to everyone over three summers old what I was really here for. He

might also mention that the questions I've been asking have been bad

enough without lying to the utkhaiem while I'm at it."

"You haven't lied," Cchmai said, and then a moment later. "Well,

actually, I suppose you have. You aren't really doing what you believe

the Dai-kvo would want."

"No."

"And you want my complicity?"

"Yes. Or, that is, I have to ask it of you. And I have to persuade you

if I can, though in truth I'd he as happy if you could talk me out of it."

"I don't understand. Why are you doing this? And don't only say that you

want to sleep well after you've seen another twenty summers. You've done

more than anyone could have asked of you. What is it about Otah Machi

that's driving you to this?"

Oh, Maati thought, you shouldn't have asked that question, my boy.

Because that one I know how to answer, and it'll sting you as much as me.

He steepled his fingers and spoke.

"He and I loved the same woman once, when we were younger men. If I do

him harm or let him come to harm that I could have avoided, I couldn't

look at her again and say it wasn't my anger that drove me. My anger at

her love for him. I haven't seen her in years, but I will someday. And

when I do, I need it to be with a clear conscience. The Dai-kvo may not

need it. The poets may not. But despite our reputations, we're men under

these robes, and as a man ... As a man to a man, it's something I would

ask of you. Another week. Just until we can see who's likely to be the

new Khai."

There was a shifting sound behind him. The andat had come in silently at

some point and was standing at the doorway with the same simple, placid

smile. Cehmai leaned forward and ran his hands through his hair three

times in fast succession, as if he were washing himself without water.

"Another week," Cehmai said. "I'll keep quiet another week."

Maati blinked. He had expected at least an appeal to the danger he was

putting Idaan in by keeping silent. Some form of at /east let me warn

her... Maati frowned, and then understood.

He'd already done it. Cehmai had already told Idaan Machi that Otah was

alive. Annoyance and anger flared brief as a firefly, and then faded,

replaced by something deeper and more humane. Amusement, pleasure, and

even a kind of pride in the young poet. We arc men beneath these robes,

he thought, and we do what we must.

SINJA SPUN, TIIE THICK WOODEN CUDGEL HISSING TIIROUGII THE AIR. OTAH

stepped inside the blow, striking at the man's wrist. He missed, his own

rough wooden stick hitting Sinja's with a clack and a shock that ran up

his arm. Sinja snarled, pushed him back, and then ruefully considered

his weapon.

"That was decent," Sinla said. "Amateur, granted, but not hopeless."

Otah set his stick down, then sat-head between his knees-as he fought to

get his breath back. His ribs felt as though he'd rolled down a rocky

hill, and his fingers were half numb from the shocks they'd absorbed.

And he felt good-exhausted, bruised, dirty, and profoundly hack in

control of his own body again, free in the open air. His eyes stung with

sweat, his spit tasted of blood, and when he looked up at Sinja, they

were both grinning. Otah held out his hand and Sinja hefted him to his feet.

"Again?" Sinja said.

"I wouldn't ... want to ... take advantage ... when you're ... so tired."

Sinja's face folded into a caricature of helplessness as he took a pose

of gratitude. They turned back toward the farmhouse. "l'he high summer

afternoon was thick with gnats and the scent of pine resin. The thick

gray walls of the farmhouse, the wide low trees around it, looked like a

painting of modest tranquility. Nothing about it suggested court

intrigue or violence or death. That, Otah supposed, was why Amur had

chosen it.

They had gone out after a late breakfast. Otah had felt well enough, he

thought, to spar a bit. And there was the chance that this would all

come to blades before it was over, whether he chose it or not. He'd

never been trained as a fighter, and Sinja was happy to offer a day's

instruction. There was an easy camaraderie that Otah had enjoyed on the

way out. The work itself reminded him that Sinja had slaughtered his

last comrades, and the walk back was somehow much longer than the one

out had been.

"A little practice, and you'd be a decent soldier," Sinja said as they

walked. "You're too cautious. You'll lose a good strike in order to

protect yourself, and that's a vice. You'll need to be careful of it."

"I'm actually hoping for a life that doesn't require much blade work of me."

"I wasn't only talking about fighting."

When they reached the farmhouse, the stables had four unfamiliar horses

in them, hot from the road. An armsman of House Siyanti-one Otah

recognized, but whose name he'd never learned-was caring for them. Sinja

traded a knowing look with the man, then strode up the stairs to the

main rooms. Otah followed, his aches half-forgotten in the mingled

curiosity and dread.

Amiit Foss and Kiyan were sitting at the main table with two other men.

One-an older man with heavy, beetled brows and a hooked nose-wore robes

embroidered with the sun and stars of House Siyanti. The other, a young

man with round cheeks and a generous belly, wore a simple blue robe of

inexpensive cloth, but enough rings on his fingers to pay for a small

house. Their conversation stopped as Otah and Sinja entered the room.

Amiit smiled and gestured toward the benches.

"Well timed," Amiit said. "We've just been discussing the next step in

our little dance."

"What's the issue?" Sinja asked.

"The mourning's ending. Tomorrow, the heads of all the houses of the