A Betrayal in Winter

utkhaiem meet. I expect it will take them a few days before the

assassinations start, but within the month it'll be decided who the new

Khai is to be."

"We'll have to act before that," Otah said.

"True enough, but that doesn't mean we'd be wise to act now," Amiit

said. "We know, or guess well enough, what power is behind all thisthe

Galts. But we don't know the mechanism. Who are they backing? Why? I

don't like the idea of moving forward without that in hand. And yet,

time's short."

Amiit held out his open hands, and Otah understood this choice was being

laid at his door. It was his life most at risk, and Amiit wasn't going

to demand anything of Otah that he wasn't prepared to do. Otah sat,

laced his fingers together, and frowned. It was Kiyan's voice that

interrupted his uncertainty.

"Either we stay here or we go to Machi. If we stay here, we're unlikely

to be discovered, but it takes half a day for us to get news, and half a

day at least to respond to it. Amiit-cha thinks the safety might be

worth it, but Lamara-cha," she gestured to the hook-nosed man, "has been

arguing that we'll want the speed we can only have by being present.

He's arranged a place for us to stay-in the tunnels below the palaces."

"I have an armsman of the Saya family in my employ," the hooknosed

Lamara said. His voice was a rough whisper, and Otah noticed for the

first time a long, deep, old scar across the man's throat. "The Saya are

a minor family, but they will be at the council. We can keep clear on

what's said and by whom."

"And if you're discovered, we'll all be killed," Sinja said. "As far as

the world's concerned, you've murdered a Khai. It's not a precedent

anyone wants set. Especially not the other Khaiem. Bad enough they have

to watch their brothers. If it's their sons, too...."

"I understand that," Otah said. Then, to Amiit, "Are we any closer to

knowing who the Galts are backing?"

"We don't know for certain that they're backing anyone," Amiit said.

"That's an assumption we've made. We can make some educated guesses, but

that's all. It may be that their schemes are about the poets, the way

you suggested, and not the succession at all."

"But you don't believe that," Otah said.

"And the poets don't either," the round-checked man said. "At least not

the new one."

"Shojen-cha is the man we set to follow Maati Vaupathai," Amiit said.

"He's been digging at all the major houses of the utkhaiem," Shojen

said, leaning forward, his rings glittering in the light. "In the last

week, he's had audiences with all the highest families and half the low

ones. And he's been asking questions about court politics and money and

power. He hasn't been looking to the Galts in particular, but it's clear

enough he thinks some family or families of the utkhaiem are involved in

the killings."

"What's he found out?" Otah asked,

"We don't know. I can't say what he's looking for or what he's found,

but there's no question he's conducting an investigation."

"He's the one who gave you over to the Khai in the first place, isn't

he, Otah-cha?" Lamara said in his ruined voice.

"He's also the one who took a knife in the gut," Sinja said.

"Can we say why he's looking?" Otah asked. "What would he do if he

discovered the truth? Report it to the utkhaiem? Or only the Daikvo?"

"I can't say," Shojen said. "I know what he's doing, not what he's

thinking."

"We can say this," Amiit said, his expression dour and serious. "As it

stands, there's no one in the city who'll think you innocent, Otah-cha.

If you're found in Machi, you'll be killed. And whoever sticks the first

knife in will use it as grounds that he should he Khai. The only

protection you'll have is obscurity."

"No armsmen?" Otah asked.

"Not enough," Amiit said. "First, they'd only draw attention to you, and

second, there aren't enough guards in the city to protect you if the

utkhaiem get your scent in their noses."

"But that's true wherever he is," Lamara said. "If they find out he's

alive on a desolate rock in the middle of the sea, they'll send men to

kill him. He's murdered the Khai!"

"Then best to keep him where he won't be found," Amiit said. There was

an impatience in his tone that told Otah this debate had been going on

long before he'd come in the room. Tempers were fraying, and even Amiit

Foss's deep patience was wearing thin. He felt Kiyan's eyes on him, and

looked up to meet her gaze. Her half-smile carried more meaning than

half a hand's debate. They will never agree and you may as we//practice

giving orders now-if itgoes well, you'll be doing it for the rest of

your life and I'm sorry, love.

Otah felt a warmth in his chest, felt the panic and distress relax like

a stiff muscle rubbed in hot oils. Lamara and Amiit were talking over

each other, each making points and suggestions it was clear they'd made

before. Otah coughed, but they paid him no attention. He looked from

one, flushed, grim face to the other, sighed, and slapped his palm on

the table hard enough to make the wine bowls rattle. The room went

silent, surprised eyes turning to him.

"I believe, gentlemen, that I understand the issues at hand," Utah said.

"I appreciate Amiit-cha's concern for my safety, but the time for

caution has passed."

"It's a vice," Sinja agreed, grinning.

"Next time, you can give me your advice without cracking my ribs," Utah

said. "Lamara-cha, I thank you for the offer of the tunnels to work

from, and I accept it. We'll leave tonight."

"Otah-cha, I don't think you've...," Amiit began, his hands held out in

an appeal, but Otah only shook his head. Amiit frowned deeply, and then,

to Otah's surprise, smiled and took a pose of acceptance.

"Shojen-cha," Utah said. "I need to know what Maati is thinking. What

he's found, what he intends, whether he's hoping to save me or destroy

me. Both arc possible, and everything we do will he different depending

on his stance."

"I appreciate that," Shojen said, "but I don't know how I'd discover it.

It isn't as though he confides in me. Or in anyone else that I can tell."

Utah rubbed his fingertips across the rough wood of the table,

considering that. He felt their eyes on him, pressing him for a

decision. This one, at least, was simple enough. He knew what had to be

done.

"Bring him to me," he said. "Once we've set ourselves up and we're sure

of the place, bring him there. I'll speak with him."

"That's a mistake," Sinja said.

"Then it's the mistake I'm making," Otah said. "How long before we can

be ready to leave?"

"We can have all the things we need on a cart by sundown," Amiit said.

"That would put us in Machi just after the half-candle. We could be in

the tunnels and tucked as safely away as we're likely to manage by dawn.

But there are going to be some people in the streets, even then."

"Get flowers. Decorate the cart as if we're preparing for the wedding,"

Otah said. "Then even if they think it odd to see us, they'll have a

story to tell themselves."

"I'll collect the poet whenever you like," Shojen said, his confident

voice undermined by the nervous way he fingered his rings.

"Also tomorrow. And Lamara-cha, I'll want reports from your man at the

council as soon as there's word to be had."

"As you say," Lamara said.

Otah moved his hands into a pose of thanks, then stood.

"Unless there's more to be said, I'm going to sleep now. I'm not sure

when I'll have the chance again. Any of you who aren't involved in

preparations for the move might consider doing the same."

They murmured their agreement, and the meeting ended, but when later

Otah lay in the cot, one arm thrown over his eyes to blot out the light,

he was certain he could no more sleep than fly. He was wrong. Sleep came

easily, and he didn't hear the old leather hinges creak when Kiyan

entered the room. It was her voice that pulled him into awareness.

"It's a mistake I'm making?'That's quite the way to lead men."

He stretched. His ribs still hurt, and worse, they'd stiffened.

"Was it too harsh, do you think?"

Kiyan pushed the netting aside and sat next to him, her hand seeking his.

"If Sinja-eha's that delicate, he's in the wrong line of work," she

said. "He may think you're wrong, but if you'd turned back because he

told you to, you'd have lost part of his respect. You did fine, love.

Better than fine. I think you've made Amiit a very happy man."

"How so?"

"You've become the Khai Machi. Oh, I know, it's not done yet, but out

there just then? You weren't speaking like a junior courier or an east

islands fisherman."

Otah sighed. Her face was calm and smooth. He brought her hand to his

lips and kissed her wrist.

"I suppose not," he said. "I didn't want this, you know. The wayhouse

would have been enough."

"I'm sure the gods will take that into consideration," she said.

"They're usually so good about giving us the lives we expect."

Otah chuckled. Kiyan let herself be pulled down slowly, until she lay

beside him, her body against his own. Otah's hand strayed to her belly,

caressing the tiny life growing inside her. Kiyan raised her eyebrows

and tilted her head.

"You look sad," she said. "Are you sad, "Tani?"

"No, love," Otah said. "Not sad. Only frightened."

"About going back to the city?"

"About being discovered," he said. And a moment later, "About what I'm

going to have to say to Maati."

Cehmai sat hack on a cushion, his hack aching and his mind askew.

Stone-Made-Soft sat beside him, its stillness unbroken even by breath.

At the front of the temple, on a dais where the witnesses could see her,

sat Idaan. Her eyes were cast down, her robe the vibrant rose and blue

of a new bride. The distance between them seemed longer than the space

within the walls, as if a year's journey had been fit into the empty air.

The crowd was not as great as the occasion deserved: women and the

second sons of the utkhaiem. Elsewhere, the council was meeting, and

those who had a place in it were there. Given the choice of spectacle,

many others would choose the men, their speeches and arguments, the

debates and politics and subtle drama, to the simple marrying off of an

orphan girl of the best lineage and the least influence to the son of a

good, solid family.

Cehmai stared at her, willing the kohl-dark eyes to look up, the painted

lips to smile at him. Cymbals chimed, and the priests dressed in gold

and silver robes with the symbols of order and chaos embroidered in

black began their chanting procession. "Their voices blended and rose

until the temple walls themselves seemed to ring with the melody. Cehmai

plucked at the cushion. He couldn't watch, and he couldn't look away.

One priest-an old man with a bare head and a thin white beard-stopped

behind Idaan in the place that her father or brother should have taken.

The high priest stood at the hack of the dais, lifted his hands slowly,

palms out to the temple, and, with an embracing gesture, seemed to

encompass them all. When he spoke, it was in the language of the Old

Empire, syllables known to no one on the cushions besides himself.

Eyan to nyot baa, don salaa khai dan rnnsalaa.

The will of the gods has always been that woman shall act as servant to man.

An old tongue for an old thought. Cehmai let the words that followed

it-the ancient ritual known more by its rhythm than its significancewash

over him. He closed his eyes and told himself he was not drowning. He

focused on his breath, smoothing its ragged edges until he regained the

appearance of calm. Ike watched the sorrow and the anger and the

jealousy writhe inside him as if they were afflicting someone else.

When he opened his eyes, the andat had shifted, its gaze on him and

expressionless. Cehmai felt the storm on the back of his mind shift, as

if taking stock of the confusion in his heart, testing him for weakness.

Cehmai waited, prepared for Stone-Made-Soft to press, for the struggle

to engulf him. He almost longed for it.

But the andat seemed to feel that anticipation, because it pulled back.

The pressure lessened, and Stone-Made-Soft smiled its idiot, empty

smile, and turned back to the ceremony. Adrah was standing now, a long

cord looped in his hand. The priest asked him the ritual questions, and

Adrah spoke the ritual answers. His face seemed drawn, his shoulders too

square, his movements too careful. Celunai thought he seemed exhausted.

The priest who stood behind ldaan spoke for her family in their absence,

and the end of the cord, cut and knotted, passed from Adrah to the

priest and then to Idaan's hand. The rituals would continue for some

time, Cehmai knew, but as soon as the cord was accepted, the binding was

done. Idaan Machi had entered the house of the Vaunyogi and only Adrah's

death would cast her back into the ghost arms of her dead family. Those

two were wed, and he had no right to the pain the thought caused him. He

had no right to it.

He rose and walked silently to the wide stone archway and out of the

temple. If Idaan looked up at his departure, he didn't notice.

The sun wasn't halfway through its arc, and a fresh wind from the north

was blowing the forge smoke away. I ligh, thin clouds scudded past,

giving the illusion that the great stone towers were slowly, endlessly

toppling. Cehmai walked the temple grounds, Stone-Made-Soft a pace

behind him. "There were few others there-a woman in rich robes sitting

alone by a fountain, her face a mask of grief; a round-faced man with

rings glittering on his fingers reading a scroll; an apprentice priest

raking the gravel paths smooth with a long metal rake. And at the edge

of the grounds, where temple became palace, a familiar shape in brown

poet's robes. Cchmai hesitated, then slowly walked to him, the andat

close by and trailing him like a shadow.

"I hadn't expected to see you here, Maati-kvo."

"No, but I expected you," the older poet said. "I've been at the council

all morning. I needed some time away. May I walk with you?"

"If you like. I don't know that I'm going anywhere in particular."

"Not marching with the wedding party? I thought it was traditional for

the celebrants to make an appearance in the city with the new couple.

Let the city look over the pair and see who's allied themselves with the

families. I assume that's what all the flowers and decorations out there

are for."

"There will he enough without me."

Cehmai turned north, the wind blowing gently into his face, drawing his

robes out behind him as if he were walking through water. A slave girl

was standing beside the path singing an old love song, her high, sweet

voice carrying like a flute's. Cehmai felt Maati-kvo's attention, but

wasn't sure what to make of it. He felt as examined as the corpse on the

physician's table. At length, he spoke to break the silence.

"How is it?"

"The council? Like a very long, very awkward dinner party. I imagine it

will deteriorate. The only interesting thing is that a number of houses

are calling for Vaunyogi to take the chair."

"Interesting," Cehmai said. "I knew Adrah-cha was thinking of it, but I

wouldn't have thought his father had the money to sway many people."

"I wouldn't have either. But there are powers besides money."

The comment seemed to hang in the air.

"I'm not sure what you mean, Maati-kvo."

"Symbols have weight. The wedding coming as it does might sway the

sentimental. Or perhaps Vaunyogi has advocates we aren't aware of."

"Such as?"

Maati stopped. They had reached a wide courtyard, rich with the scent of

cropped summer grass. The andat halted as well, its broad head tilted in

an attitude of polite interest. Cehmai felt a brief flare of hatred

toward it, and saw its lips twitch slightly toward a smile.

"If you've spoken for the Vaunyogi, I need to know it," Matti said.

"We're not to take sides in these things. Not without direction from the

Dai-kvo."

"I'm aware of that, and I don't mean to accuse you or pry into what's

not mine, but on this one thing, I have to know. They did ask you to

speak for them, didn't they?"

"I suppose," Cehmai said.

"And did you speak for them?"

"No. Why should I?"

"Because Idaan Machi is your lover," Maati said, his voice soft and full

of pity.

Cehmai felt the blood come into his face, his neck. The anger at

everything that he had seen and heard pressed at him, and he let himself

borrow certainty from the rage.

"Idaan Machi is Adrah's wife. No, I did not speak for Vaunyogi. Despite

your experience, not everyone falls in love with the man who's taken his

lover."

Maati leaned back. The words had struck home, and Cehmai pressed on,

following the one attack with another.

"And, forgive me, Maati-cha, but you seem in an odd position to take me

to task for following my private affairs where they don't have a place.

You are still doing all this without the l)ai-kvo's knowledge?"

"He might have a few of my letters," Nlaati-kvo said. "If not yet, then

soon."

"But since you're a man under those robes, on you go. I am doing as the

Dai-kvo set me to do. I am carrying this great bastard around; I am

keeping myself apart from the politics of the court; I'm not willing to

stand accused of lighting candles while you're busy burning the city down!"

"Calling me a bastard seems harsh," Stone-Made-Soft said. "I haven't

told you how to behave."

"Be quiet!"

"If Vol, think it will help," the andat said, its voice amused, and

Cehmai turned the fury inward, pressing at the space where he and

Stone-blade-Soft were one thing, pushing the storm into a smaller and

smaller thing. He felt his hands in fists, felt his teeth ache with the

pressure of his clenched jaw. And the andat, shifted, bent to his

fire-bright will, knelt and cast down its gaze. He forced its hands into

a pose of apology.

"Cehmai-cha."

He turned on Maati. The wind was picking up, whipping their robes. The

fluttering of cloth sounded like a sail.

"I'm sorry," Maati-kvo said. "I truly am very sorry. I know what it must

mean to have these things questioned, but I have to know."

"Why? Why is my heart suddenly your business?"

"Let me ask this another way," Maati said. "If you aren't backing

Vaunyogi, who is?"

Cehmai blinked. His rage whirled, lost its coherence, and left him

feeling weaker and confused. On the ground beside them, StoneMade-Soft

sighed and rose to its feet. Shaking its great head, it gestured to the

green streaks on its robe.

"The launderers won't be pleased by that," it said.

"What do you mean?" Cehmai said, not to the andat, but to Maatikvo. And

yet, it was Stone-Made-Soft's deep rough voice that answered him.

"He's asking you how badly Adrah Vaunyogi wants that chair. And he's

suggesting that Idaan-cha may have just married her father's killer, all

unaware. It seems a simple enough proposition to me. They aren't going

to blame you for these stains, you know. They never do."

Maati stood silently, peering at him, waiting. Cehmai held his hands

together to stop their shaking.

"You think that?" he asked. "You think that Adrah might have arranged

the wedding because he knew what was going to happen? You think Adrich

killed them?"

"I think it worth considering," Maati said.

Cchmai looked down and pressed his lips together until they ached. If he

didn't-if he looked up, if he relaxed-he knew that he would smile. He

knew what that would say about himself and his small, petty soul, so he

swallowed and kept his head low until he could speak. Unbidden, he

imagined himself exposing Adrah's crime, rejoining Idaan with her sole

remaining family. He imagined her eyes looking into his as he told her

what Maati knew.

"Tell me how I can help," he said.

MAAI'I SAT IN THE FIRST GALLERY, LOOKING DOWN INTO THE GREAT HALL and

waiting for the council to go on. It was a rare event, all the houses of

the utkhaiem meeting without a Khai to whom they all answered, and they

seemed both uncertain what the proper rituals were and unwilling to let

the thing move quickly. It was nearly dark now, and candles were being

set out on the dozen long tables below him and the speaker's pulpit

beyond them. The small flames were reflected in the parquet floor and

the silvered glass on the walls below him. A second gallery rose above

him, where women and children of the lower families and representatives

of the trading houses could sit and observe. The architect had been

brilliant-a man standing as speaker need hardly raise his voice and the

stone walls would carry his words through the air without need of

whisperers. Even over the murmurs of the tables below and the galleries

above, the prepared, elaborate, ornate, deathly dull speeches of the

utkhaiem reached every ear. The morning session had been interesting at

least-the novelty of the situation had held his attention. But apart

from his conversation with Cehmai, Maati had filled the hours of his day

with little more than the voices of men practiced at saying little with

many words. Praise of the utkhaiem generally and of their own families

in particular, horror at the crimes and misfortunes that had brought

them here, and the best wishes of the speaker and his father or his son

or his cousin for the city as a whole, and on and on and on.

Maati had pictured the struggle for power as a thing of blood and fire,

betrayal and intrigue and danger. And, when he listened for the matter

beneath the droning words, yes, all that was there. That even this could

be made dull impressed him.

The talk with Cehmai had gone better than he had hoped. He felt guilty

using Idaan Machi against him that way, but perhaps the boy had been

ready to be used. And there was very little time.

I--Ic was relying now on the competence of his enemies. 'There would be

only a brief window between the time when it became clear who would take

the prize and the actual naming of the Khai Machi. In that moment, Maati

would know who had engineered all this, who had used Otah-kvo as a

cover, who had attempted his own slaughter. And if he were wise and

lucky and well-positioned, he might be able to take action. Enlisting

Cchmai in his service was only a way to improve the chances of setting a

lever in the right place.

"The concern our kind brother of Saya brings up is a wise one to

consider," a sallow-faced scion of the Daikani said. "The days arc

indeed growing shorter, and the time for preparation is well upon us.

There are roofs that must be made ready to hold their burden of snow.

There arc granaries to be filled and stocks to be prepared. There are

crops to be harvested, for men and beasts both."

"I didn't know the Khai did all that," a familiar voice whispered. "He

must have been a very busy man. I don't suppose there's anyone could

take up the slack for him?"

Baarath shifted down and sat beside Maati. He smelled of wine, his

cheeks were rosy, his eyes too bright. But he had an oilcloth cone

filled with strips of fried trout that he offered to Maati, and the

distraction was almost welcome. Maati took a bit of the fish.

"What have I missed?" Baarath said,

"The Vaunyogi appear to be a surprise contender," Maati said. "They've

been mentioned by four families, and praised in particular by two

others. I think the Vaunani and Kamau are feeling upset by it, but they

seem to hate each other too much to do anything about it."

"That's truth," Baraath said. "Ijan Vaunani came to blows with old

Kamau's grandson this afternoon at a teahouse in the jeweler's quarter.

Broke his nose for him, I heard."

"Really?"

Baarath nodded. The sallow man droned on half forgotten now as Baarath

spoke close to Maati's ear.

"There are rumors of reprisal, but old Kaman's made it clear that anyone

doing anything will he sent to tar ships in the Westlands. They say he

doesn't want people thinking ill of the house, but I think it's his last

effort to keep an alliance open against Adrah Vaunyogi. It's clear

enough that someone's bought little Adrah a great deal more influence

than just sleeping with a dead man's daughter would earn."

Baarath grinned, then coughed and looked concerned.

"Don't repeat that to anyone, though," he said. "Or if you do, don't say

it was me. It's terribly rude, and I'm rather drunk. I only came up here

to sober up a bit."

"Yes, well, I came up to keep an eye on the process, and I think it's

more likely to put your head on a pillow than clear it."

Baarath chuckled.

"You're an idiot if you came here to see what's happening. It's all out

in the piss troughs where a man can actually speak. Didn't you know

that? Honestly, Maati-kya, if you went to a comfort house, you'd spend

all your time watching the girls in the front dance and wondering when

the fucking was supposed to start."

Maati's jaw went tight. When Baarath offered the fish again, Maati

refused it. The sallow man finished, and an old, thick-faced man rose,

took the pulpit, announced himself to be Cielah Pahdri, and began

listing the various achievements of his house dating back to the fall of

the Empire. Maati listened to the recitation and Baraath's overloud

chewing with equal displeasure.

He was right before, Maati told himself. Baarath was the worst kind of

ass, but he wasn't wrong.

"I assume," Maati said, "that `piss troughs' is a euphemism."

"Only half. Most of the interesting news comes to a few teahouses at the

south edge of the palaces. They're near the moneylenders, and that

always leads to lively conversations. Going to try your luck there?"

"I thought I might," Maati said as he rose.

"Look for the places with too many rich people yelling at each other.

You'll be fine," Baarath said and went back to chewing his trout.

Maati took the steps two at a time, and slipped out the rear of the

gallery into a long, dark corridor. Lanterns were lit at each end, and

Maati strode through the darkness with the slow burning runout of

annoyance that the librarian always seemed to inspire. He didn't see the

woman at the hallway's end until he had almost reached her. She was

thin, fox-faced, and dressed in a simple green robe. She smiled when she

caught his eye and took a pose of greeting.

"Maati-cha?"

Maati hesitated, then answered her greeting.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I seem to have forgotten your name."

"We haven't met. My name is Kiyan. Itani's told me all about you."

It took the space of a breath for him to truly understand what she'd

said and all it meant. The woman nodded confirmation, and Maati stepped

close to her, looking back over his shoulder and then down the corridor

behind her to be sure they were alone.

"We were going to send you an escort," the woman said, "but no one could

think of how to approach you without seeming like we were assassins. I

thought an unarmed woman coming to you alone might suffice."

"You were right," he said, and then a moment later, "That's likely na7ve

of me, isn't it?"

"A hit."

"Please. Take me to him."

Twilight had soaked the sky in indigo. In the east, stars were peeking

over the mountain tops, and the towers rose up into the air as if they

led up to the clouds themselves. Maati and the woman walked quickly; she

didn't speak, and he didn't press her to. His mind was busy enough

already. They walked side by side along darkening paths. Kiyan smiled

and nodded to those who took notice of them. Maati wondered how many

people would be reporting that he had left the council with a woman. He

looked back often for pursuers. No one seemed to be tracking them, but

even at the edge of the palaces, there were enough people to prevent him

from being sure.

They reached a teahouse, its windows blazing with light and its air rich

with the scent of lemon candles to keep off the insects. The woman

strode up the wide steps and into the warmth and light. The keep seemed

to expect her, because they were led without a word into a back room

where red wine was waiting along with a plate of rich cheese, black

bread, and the first of the summer grapes. Kiyan sat at the table and

gestured to the bench across from her. Maati sat as she plucked two of

the small bright green grapes, bit into them and made a face.

"Too early?" he asked.

"Another week and they'll be decent. Here, pass me the cheese and bread."

Kiyan chewed these and Maati poured himself a howl of wine. It was

good-rich and deep and clean. He lifted the bottle but she shook her head.

"He'll be joining us, then?"

"No. We're just waiting a moment to be sure we're not leading anyone to

him."

"Very professional," he said.

"Actually I'm new to all this. But I take advice well."

She had a good smile. Maati felt sure that this was the woman Otah had

told him about that day in the gardens when Otah had left in chains. The

woman he loved and whom he'd asked Maati to help protect. He tried to

see Liat in her-the shape of her eyes, the curve of her cheek. There was

nothing. Or perhaps there was something the two women shared that was

simply beyond his ability to see.

As if feeling the weight of his attention, Kiyan took a querying pose.

Maati shook his head.

"Reflecting on ages past," he said. "That's all."

She seemed about to ask something when a soft knock came at the door and

the keep appeared, carrying a bundle of cloth. Kiyan stood, accepted the

bundle, and took a pose that expressed her gratitude only slightly

hampered by her burden. The keep left without speaking, and Kiyan pulled

the cloth apart-two thin gray hooded cloaks that would cover their robes

and hide their faces. She handed one to Maati and pulled the other on.

When they were both ready, Kiyan dug awkwardly in her doubled sleeve for

a moment before coming out with four lengths of silver that she left on

the table. Seeing Maati's surprise, she smiled.

"We didn't ask for the food and wine," she said. "It's rude to underpay."

"The grapes were sour," Maati said.

Kiyan considered this for a moment and scooped one silver length hack

into her sleeve. They didn't leave through the front door or out to the

alley, but descended a narrow stairway into the tunnels beneath the

city. Someone-the keep or one of Kiyan's conspirators-had left a lit

lantern for them. Kiyan took it in hand and strode into the black

tunnels as assured as a woman who had walked this maze her whole life.

Maati kept close to her, dread pricking at him for the first time.

The descent seemed as deep as the mines in the plain. The stairs were

worn smooth by generations of footsteps, the path they traveled

inhabited by the memory of men and women long dead. At length the stairs

gave way to a wide, tiled hallway shrouded in darkness. Kiyan's small

lantern lit only part way up the deep blue and worked gold of the walls,

the darkness above them more profound than a moonless sky.

The mouths of galleries and halls seemed to gape and close as they

passed. Nlaati could see the scorch marks rising up the walls where

torches had been set during some past winter, the smoke staining the

tiles. A breath seemed to move through the dim air, like the earth exhaling.

The tunnels seemed empty except for them. No glimmer of light came from

the doors and passages they passed, no voices however distant competed

with the rustle of their robes. At a branching of the great hallway,

Kiyan hesitated, then bore left. A pair of great brass gates opened onto

a space like a garden, the plants all designed from silk, the birds

perched on the branches dead and dust-covered.

"Unreal, isn't it?" Kiyan said as she picked her way across the sterile

terrain. "I think they must go a little mad in the winters down here.

All those months without seeing the sunlight."

"I suppose," Maati said.

After the garden, they went down a series of corridors so narrow that

Maati could place his palms on both walls without stretching. She came

to a high wooden doorway with brass fittings that was barred from

within. Kiyan passed the lantern to Maati and knocked a complex pattern.

A scraping sound spoke of the bar being lifted, and then the door swung

in. Three men with blades in their hands stood. The center one smiled,

stepped back and silently gestured them through.

Lanterns filled the stone-walled passage with warm, buttery light and

the scent of burnt oil. There was no door at the end, only an archway

that opened out into a wide, tall space that smelled of sweat and damp

wool and torch smoke. A storehouse, then, with the door frames stuffed

with rope to keep out even a glimmer of light.

Half a dozen men stopped their conversations as Kiyan led him across the

empty space to the overseer's office-a shack within the structure that

glowed from within.

Kiyan opened the office door and stood aside, smiling encouragement to

Maati as he stepped past her and into the small room. A desk. Four

chairs. A stand for scrolls. A map of the winter cities nailed to the

wall. Three lanterns. And Otah-kvo rising now from his seat.

He was still thin, but there was an energy about him-in the way he held

his shoulders and his hands. In the way he moved.

"You're looking well for a dead man," Maati said.

"Feeling better than expected, too," Otah said, and a smile spread

across his long, northern face. "Thank you for coming."

"How could I not?" Maati drew one of the chairs close to him and sat,

his fingers laced around one knee. "So you've chosen to take the city

after all?"

Otah hesitated a moment, then sat. He rubbed the desktop with his open

palm-a dry sound-and his brow furrowed.

"I don't see my option," he said at last. "That sounds convenient, I

know. But ... You said before that you'd realized I had nothing to do

with Biitrah's death and your assault. I didn't have a part in Danat's

murder either. Or my father's. Or even my own rescue from the tower,

come to that. It's all simply happened up to now. And I didn't know

whether you still believed me innocent."

Maati smiled ruefully. There was something in Otah's voice that sounded

like hope. Maati didn't know his own heart-the resentment, the anger,

the love of Otah-kvo and of Liat and the child she'd borne. He couldn't

say even what they all had to do with this man sitting across his

appropriated desk.

"I do," Maati said at last. "I've been looking into the matter, but I

suppose you know that if you've had me watched."

"Yes. That's one reason I wanted to speak to you."

"There are others?"

"I have a confession to make. I'd likely be wiser to keep quiet until

this whole round is finished, but ... I've lied to you, Maati. I told

you that I'd been with a woman in the east islands and failed to father

a child on her. She ... she wasn't real. That never happened."

Maati considered this, waiting for his heart to rise in anger or

shrivel, but it only beat in its customary rhythm. He wondered when it

had stopped mattering to him, the father of the boy he'd lost. Since the

last time he had spoken with Utah in the high stone cell, certainly, but

looking back, he couldn't put a moment to it. If the boy was his get or

Utah's, neither would bring him back. Neither would undo the years gone

by. And there were other things that he had that he might still lose, or

else save.

"I thought I was going to die," Otah said. "I thought it wouldn't matter

to me, and if it gave you some comfort, then ..."

"Let it go," Maati said. "If there's anything to be said about it, we

can say it later. There are other matters at hand."

"Have you found something, then?"

"I have a family name, I think. Certainly there's someone putting money

and influence behind the Vaunyogi."

"Likely the Galts," Otah said. "They've been making contracts bad enough

to look like bribes. We didn't know what influence they were buying."

"It could be this," Nlaati said. "Do you know why they'd do it?"

"No," Otah said. "But if you've proof that the Vaunyogi are behind the

murderers-"

"I don't," Maati said. "I have a suspicion, but nothing more than that.

Not yet. And if we don't uncover them quickly, they'll likely have Adrah

named Khai Machi and have the resources of the whole city to find you

and kill you for crimes that everyone outside this warehouse assumes you

guilty of."

They sat in silence for the space of three breaths.

"Well," Otah-kvo said, "it appears we have some work to do then. But at

least we've an idea where to look."

IN HER DREAM, II)AAN WAS AT A CELEBRATION. FIRE BURNED IN A RING ALL

around the pavilion, and she knew with the logic of dreams that the

flames were going to close, that the circle was growing smaller. They

were all going to burn. She tried to shout, tried to warn the dancers,

but she could only croak; no one heard her. 't'here was someone there

who could stop the thing from happening-a single man who was Cehmai and

Otah and her father all at once. She beat her way through the bodies,

trying to find him, but there were dogs in with the people. The flames

were too close already, and to keep themselves alive, the women were

throwing the animals into the fire. She woke to the screams and howls in

her mind and the silence in her chamber.

The night candle had failed. The chamber was dim, silvered by moonlight

beyond the dark web of the netting. The shutters along the wall were all

open, but no breath of air stirred. Idaan swallowed and shook her head,

willing the last wisps of nightmare into forgetfulness. She waited,

listening to her breath, until her mind was her own again. Even then she

was reluctant to sleep for fear of falling into the same dream. She

turned to Adrah, but the bed at her side was empty. He was gone.

"Adrah?"

"There was no answer.

Idaan wrapped herself with a thin blanket, pushed aside the netting and

stepped out of her bed-her new bed. Her marriage bed. The smooth stone

of the floor was cool against her bare feet. She walked through the

chambers of their apartments-hers and her husband'ssilently. She found

him sitting on a low couch, a bottle beside him. A thick earthenware

bowl on the floor stank of distilled wine. Or perhaps it was his breath.

"You aren't sleeping?" she asked.

"Neither arc you," he said. The slurred words were half accusation.

"I had a dream," she said. "It woke me."

Adrah lifted the bottle, drinking from its neck. She watched the

delicate shifting mechanism of his throat, the planes of his cheeks, his

eyes closed and as smooth as a man asleep. Her fingers twitched toward

him, moving to caress that familiar skin without consulting him on her

wishes. Coughing, he put down the wine, and the eyes opened. Whatever

beauty had been in him, however briefly, was gone now.

"You should go to him," Adrah said. Perversely, he sounded less drunk

now. Idaan took a pose of query. Adrah waved it away with the sloshing

bottle. "The poet boy. Cehmai. You should go to him. See if you can get

more information."

"You don't want me here?"

"No," Adrah said, pressing the bottle into her hand. As he rose and

staggered past her, Idaan felt the insult and the rejection and a

certain relief that she hadn't had to find an excuse to slip away.

The palaces were deserted, the empty paths dreamlike in their own way.

Idaan let herself imagine that she had woken into a new, different

world. As she slept, everyone had vanished, and she was walking now

alone through an empty city. Or she had died in her sleep and the gods

had put her here, into a world with nothing but herself and darkness. If

they had meant it for punishment, they had misjudged.

The bottle was below a quarter when she stepped under the canopy of

sculpted oaks. She had expected the poet's house to he dark as well, but

as she advanced, she caught glimpses of candle glow, more light than a

single night candle could account for. Something like hope surged in

her, and she slowly walked forward. The shutters and door were open, the

lanterns within all lit. But the wide, still figure on the steps wasn't

him. Idaan hesitated. The andat raised its hand in greeting and motioned

her closer.

"I was starting to think you wouldn't come," Stone-Made-Soft said in its

distant, rumbling voice.

"I hadn't intended to," Idaan said. "You had no call to expect me."

"If you say so," it agreed, amiably. "Come inside. He's been waiting to

see you for days."

Going up the steps felt like walking downhill, the pull to be there and

see him was more powerful than weight. The andat stood and followed her

in, closing the door behind her and then proceeding around the room,

fastening the shutters and snuffing the flames. Idaan looked around the

room, but there were only the two of them.

"It's late. He's in the back," the andat said and pinched out another

small light. "You should go to him."

"I don't want to disturb him."

"He'd want you to."

She didn't move. The spirit tilted its broad head and smiled.

"He said he loves me," Idaan said. "When I saw him last, he said that he

loved me."

"I know."

"Is it true?"

The smile broadened. Its teeth were white as marble and perfectly

regular. She noticed for the first time that it had no canines-every

tooth was even and square as the one beside it. For a moment, the

inhuman mouth disturbed her.

"Why are you asking me?"

"You know him," she said. "You are him."

"True on both counts," Stone-Made-Soft said. "But I'm not credited as

being the most honest source. I'm his creature, after all. And all dogs

hate the leash, however well they pretend otherwise."

"You've never lied to me."

The andat looked startled, then chuckled with a sound like a boulder

rolling downhill.

"No," it said. "I haven't, have I? And I won't start now. Yes, Cehmai-

kya has fallen in love with you. He's Young. His passions are still a

large part of what he is. In forty years, he won't burn so hot. It's the

way it's been with all of them."

"I don't want him hurt," she said.

"Then stay."

"I'm not sure that would save him pain. Not in the long term."

The andat went still a moment, then shrugged.

"Then go," it said. "But when he finds you've gone, he'll chew his own

guts out over it. There's been nothing he's wanted more than for you to

come here, to him. Coming this close, talking to me, and leaving? It'd

hardly make him feel better about things."

Idaan looked at her feet. The sandals weren't laced well. She'd done the

thing in darkness, and the wine had, perhaps, had more effect on her

than she'd thought. She shook her head as she had when shaking off the

dreams.

"He doesn't have to know I came."

"Late for that," the andat said and put out another candle. "He woke up

as soon as we started talking."

"Idaan-kya?" his voice came from behind her.

Cehmai stood in the corridor that led hack to his bedchamber. His hair

was tousled by sleep. His feet were bare. Idaan caught her breath,

seeing him here in the dim light of candles. He was beautiful. He was

innocent and powerful, and she loved him more than anyone in the world.

"Cehmai."

"Only Cehmai?" he asked, stepping into the room. He looked hurt and

hopeful both. She had no right to feel this young. She had no right to

feel afraid or thrilled.

"Cehmai-kya," she whispered. "I had to see you."

"I'm glad of it. But ... but you aren't, are you? Glad to see me, I mean.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," she said, and the sorrow rose up

in her like a flood. "It's my wedding night, Cehmai-kya. I was married

today, and I couldn't go a whole night in that bed."

Her voice broke. She closed her eyes against the tears, but they simply

came, rolling down her cheeks as fast as raindrops. She heard him move

toward her, and between wanting to step into his arms and wanting to

run, she stood Unmoving, feeling herself tremble.

He didn't speak. She was standing alone and apart, the sorrow and guilt

heating her like storm waves, and then his arms folded her into him. His

skin smelled dark and musky and male. He didn't kiss her, he didn't try

to open her robes. He only held her there as if he had never wanted

anything more. She put her arms around him and held on as though he was

a branch hanging over a precipice. She heard herself sob, and it sounded

like violence.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I want it back. I

want it all back. I'm so sorry."

"What, love? What do you want back?"

"All of it," she wailed, and the blackness and despair and rage and

sorrow rose tip, taking her in its teeth and shaking her. Cehmai held

her close, murmured soft words to her, stroked her hair and her face.

When she sank to the ground, he sank with her.

She couldn't say how long it was before the crying passed. She only knew

that the night around them was perfectly dark, that she was curled in on

herself with her head in his lap, and that her body was tired to the

bone. She felt as if she'd swum for a day. She found Cehmai's hand and

laced her fingers with his, wondering where dawn was. It seemed the

night had already lasted for years. Surely there would be light soon.

"You feel better?" he asked, and she nodded her reply, trusting him to

feel the movement against his flesh.

"Do you want to tell me what it is?" he asked.

Idaan felt her throat go tighter for a moment. He must have felt some

change in her body, because he raised her hand to his lips. His mouth

was so soft and so warm.

"I do," she said. "I want to. But I'm afraid."

"Of me?"

"Of what I would say."

There was something in his expression. Not a hardening, not a pulling

away, but a change. It was as if she'd confirmed something.

"There's nothing you can say that will hurt me," Cehmai said. "Not if

it's true. It's the Vaunyogi, isn't it? It's Adrah."

"I can't, love. Please don't talk about it."

But he only ran his free hand over her arm, the sound of skin against

skin loud in the night's silence. When he spoke again, Cehmai's voice

was gentle, but urgent.

"It's about your father and your brothers, isn't it?"

Idaan swallowed, trying to loosen her throat. She didn't answer, not

even with a movement, but Cehmai's soft, beautiful voice pressed on.

"Otah Machi didn't kill them, did he?"

The air went thin as a mountaintop's. Idaan couldn't catch her breath.

Cehmai's fingers pressed hers gently. He leaned forward and kissed her

temple.

"It's all right," he said. "Tell me."

"I can't," she said.

"I love you, Idaan-kya. And I will protect you, whatever happens."

Idaan closed her eyes, even in the darkness. Her heart seemed on the

edge of bursting she wanted it so badly to he true. She wanted so badly

to lay her sins before him and be forgiven. And he knew already. He knew

the truth or else guessed it, and he hadn't denounced her.

"I love you," he repeated, his voice softer than the sound of his hand

stroking her skin. "How did it start?"

"I don't know," she said. And then, a moment later, "When I was young, I

think."

Quietly, she told him everything, even the things she had never told

Adrah. Seeing her brothers sent to the school and being told that she

could not go herself because of her sex. Watching her mother brood and

suffer and know that one day she would be sent away or else die there,

in the women's quarters and be remembered only as something that had

borne a Khai's babies.

She told him about listening to songs about the sons of the Khaiem

battling for the succession and how, as a girl, she'd pretend to be one

of them and force her playmates to take on the roles of her rivals. And

the sense of injustice that her older brothers would pick their own

wives and command their own fates, while she would be sold at convenience.

At some point, Cchmai stopped stroking her, and only listened, but that

open, receptive silence was all she needed of him. She poured out

everything. The wild, impossible plans she'd woven with Adrah. The

intimation, one night when a Galtic dignitary had come to Nlaehi, that

the schemes might not be impossible after all. The bargain they had

struck-access to a library's depth of old books and scrolls traded for

power and freedom. And from there, the progression, inevitable as water

flowing toward the sea, that led Adrah to her father's sleeping chambers

and her to the still moment by the lake, the terrible sound of the arrow

striking home.

With every phrase, she felt the horror of it case. It lost none of the

sorrow, none of the regret, but the bleak, soul-eating despair began to

fade from black to merely the darkest gray. By the time she came to the

end of one sentence and found nothing following it, the birds outside

had begun to trill and sing. It would be light soon. Dawn would come

after all. She sighed.

"That was a longer answer than you hoped for, maybe," she said.

"It was enough," he said.

Idaan shifted and sat up, pulling her hair back from her face. Cehmai

didn't move.

"Hiami told me once," she said, "just before she left, that to become

Khai you had to forget how to love. I see why she believed that. But it

isn't what's happened. Not to me. "Thank You, Cchmai-kya."

"For what?"

"For loving me. For protecting me," she said. "I didn't guess how much I

needed to tell you all that. It was ... it was too much. You see that."

"I do," Cehmai said.

"Are you angry with me now?"

"Of course not," he said.

"Are you horrified by me?"

She heard him shift his weight. The pause stretched, her heart sickening

with every beat.

"I love you, Idaan," he said at last, and she felt the tears come again,

but this time with a very different pressure behind them. It wasn't joy,

but it was perhaps relief.

She shifted forward in the darkness, found his body there waiting, and

held him for a time. She was the one who kissed him this time. She was

the one who moved their conversation from the intimacy of confession to

the intimacy of sex. Cehmai seemed almost reluctant, as if afraid that

taking her body now would betray some deeper moment that they had

shared. But Idaan led him to his bed in the darkness, opened her own

robes and his, and coaxed his flesh until whatever objection he'd

fostered was forgotten. She found herself at ease, lighter, almost as if

she was half in dream.

Afterwards, she lay nestled in his arms, warm, safe, and calm as she had

never been in years. Sunlight pressed at the closed shutters as she

drifted down to sleep.

The tunnels beneath Machi were a city unto themselves. Otah found

himself drawn out into them more and more often as the days crept

forward. Sinja and Amiit had tried to keep him from leaving the

storehouse beneath the underground palaces of the Sava, but Otah had

overruled them. The risk of a few quiet hours walking abandoned

corridors was less, he judged, than the risk of going quietly mad

waiting in the same sunless room day after day. Sinja had convinced him

to take an armsman as guard when he went.

Otah had expected the darkness and the quiet-wide halls empty, water

troughs dry-hut the beauty he stumbled on took him by stirprise. Here a

wide square of stone smooth as beach sand, delicate pillars spiraling

tip from it like bolts of twisting silk made from stone. And down

another corridor, a bathhouse left dry for the winter but rich with the

scent of cedar and pine resin.

Even when lie returned to the storehouse and the voices and faces he

knew, lie found his mind lingering in the dark corridors and galleries,

unsure whether the images of the spaces lit with the white shadowless

light of a thousand candles were imagination or memory.

A sharp rapping brought him back to himself, and the door of his private

office swung open. Amiit and Sinja walked in, already half into a

conversation. Sinja's expression was mildly annoyed. Amiit, Otah

thought, seemed worried.

"It would only make things worse," Amiit said.

"We'd earn more time. And it isn't as if they'd accuse Otah-cha here of

it. They think he's dead."

"'T'hen they'll accuse him of it once they find he's alive," Amiit said

and turned to Otah. "Sinja wants to assassinate the head of a high

family in order to slow the work of the council."

"We won't do that," Otah said. "My hands aren't particularly bloodied

yet, and I'd like to keep it that way-"

"It isn't as though people are going to believe it," Sinja said. "If

you're going to carry the blame you may as well get the advantages from

doing the thing."

"It'll be easier to convince them of my innocence later if I'm actually

innocent of something," Otah said, "hut there may be other roads that

come to the same place. Is there something else that would slow the

council and doesn't involve putting holes in someone?"

Sinja frowned, his eyes shifting as if he were reading text written in

the air. He half-smiled.

"Perhaps. Let me look into that."

With a pose that ended his conversation, Sinja left. Amiit sighed and

lowered himself into one of the chairs.

"What news?" Amiit asked.

"Kamau and Vaunani are talking about merging their forces," Otah said.

"Most of the talks seem to involve someone hitting someone or throwing a

knife. The Loiya, Bentani, and (:oirah have all been quietly, and so far

as I can tell, independently, backing the Vaunyogi."

"And they all have contracts with Galt," Amiit said. "What about the

others?"

"Of the families we know? None have come out against them. And none for,

or at least not openly."

"There should be more fighting," Amiit said. "There should be struggles

and coalitions. Alliances should be forming and breaking by the moment.

It's too steady."

"Only if there was a real struggle going on. If the decision was already

made, it would look exactly like this."

"Yes. There are times I hate being right. Any word from the poet?"

Otah shook his head and sat, then stood again. Maati had gone from their

first meeting, and he'd seemed convinced. Otah had been sure at the time

that he wouldn't betray them. He was sure in his bones. He only wished

he'd had his thoughts more in order at the time. He'd been swept up in

the moment, more concerned with his lies about Liat's son than anything

else. He'd had time since to reflect, and the other worries had swarmed

out. Otah had sat up until the night candle was at its halfway mark,

listing the things he needed to consider. It hadn't lent him peace.

"It's hard, waiting," Amiit said. "You must feel like you're back up in

that tower."

"That was easier. Then at least I knew what was going to happen. I wish

I could go out. If I could be up there listening to the people

themselves ... If I spent half an evening in the right teahouse, I'd

know more than I'll learn skulking down here for days. Yes, I know.

You've the best minds of the house out watching for us. But listening to

reports isn't the same as putting my hands to something."

"I know it. More than half my work has been trying to guess the truth

out of a dozen different reports of a thing. There's a knack to it.

You'll have your practice with it."

"If this ends well," Otah said.

"Yes," Amiit agreed. "If that."

Otah filled a tin cup with water from a stone jar and sat back down. It

was warm, and a thin grit swam at the cup's bottom. He wished it were

wine and pushed the thought away. If there was any time in his life to

be sober as stone, this was it, but his unease shifted and tightened. He

looked up from his water to sec Amiit's gaze on him, his expression

quizzical.

"We have to make a plan for if we lose," Otah said. "If the Vaunyogi are

to blame and the council gives them power, they'll be able to wash away

any number of crimes. And all those families that supported them will be

invested in keeping things quiet. If it comes out that Daaya Vaunyogi

killed the Khai in order to raise up his son and half the families of

the utkhaiem took money to support it, they'll all share in the guilt.

Being in the right won't mean much then."

"There's time yet," Amiit said, but he was looking away when he said it.

"And what happens if we fail?"

"That all depends on how we fail. If we're discovered before we're ready

to move, we'll all be killed. If Adrah is named Khai, we'll at least

have a chance to slip away quietly."

"You'll take care of Kiyan?"

Amiit smiled. "I hope to see to it that you can perform that duty."

"But if not?"

"Then of course," Amiit said. "Provided I live."

The rapping came again, and the door opened on a young man. Otah

recognized him from the meetings in House Siyanti, but he couldn't

recall his name.

"The poet's come," the young man said.

Amiit rose, took a pose appropriate to the parting of friends, and left.

The young man went with him, and for a moment the door swung free, half

closing. Otah drank the last of his water, the grit rough in his throat.

Maati came in slowly, a diffidence in his body and his face, like a man

called in to hear news that might bring him good or ill or some

unimagined change that folded both inextricably together. Otah gestured

to the door, and Maati closed it.

"You sent for me?" Maati asked. "That's a dangerous habit, Otah-kvo."

"I know it, but ... Please. Sit. I've been thinking. About what we do if

things go poorly."

"If we fail?"

"I want to be ready for it, and when Kiyan and I were talking last

night, something occurred to me. Nayiit? That's his name, isn't it? The

child that you and Liat had?"

Maati's expression was cool and distant and misleading. Otah could see

the pain in it, however still the eyes.

"What of him?"

"He mustn't be my son. Whatever happens, he has to be yours."

"If you fail, you don't take your father's title-"

"If I don't take his title, and someone besides you decides he's mine,

they'll kill him to remove all doubt of the succession. And if I

succeed, Kiyan may have a son," Otah said. "And then they would someday

have to kill each other. Nayiit is your son. He has to be."

"I see," Maati said.

"I've written a letter. It looks like something I'd have sent Kiyan

before, when I was in Chaburi-Tan. It talks about the night I left

Saraykeht. It says that on the night I came back to the city, I found

the two of you together. That I walked into her cell, and you and she

were in her cot. It makes it clear that I didn't touch her, that I

couldn't have fathered a child on her. Kiyan's put it in her things. If

we have to flee, we'll take it with us and find a way for it to come to

light-we can hide it at her wayhouse, perhaps. If we're found and killed

here, it will be found with us. You have to back that story."

Maati steepled his fingers and leaned back in the chair.

"You've put it with Kiyan-cha's things to be found in case she's

slaughtered?" he asked.

"Yes," Otah said. "I don't think about it when I can help it, but I know

she could die here. There's no reason that your son should die with us."

Maati nodded slowly. He was struggling with something, Otah could see

that much, but whether it was sorrow or anger or joy, he had no way to

know. When the question came, though, it was the one he had been

dreading for years.

"What did happen?" Maati asked at last, his voice low and hushed. "The

night Heshai-kvo died. What happened? Did you just leave? Did you take

Mai with you? Did . . . did you kill him?"

Otah remembered the cord cutting into his hands, remembered the way Mai

had balked and he had taken the task himself. For years, those few

minutes had haunted him.

"He knew what was coming," Otah said. "He knew it was necessary. The

consequences if he had lived would have been worse. Heshai was right

when he warned you to let the thing drop. The Khai Saraykeht would have

turned the andat against Galt. There would have been thousands of

innocent lives ruined. And when it was over, you would still have been

yoked to Seedless. Trapped in the torture box just the way Heshai had

been all those years. Heshai knew that, and he waited for me to do the

thing."

"And you did it."

"I did."

Maati was silent. Otah sat. His knees seemed less solid than he would

have liked, but he didn't let the weakness stop him.

"It was the worst thing I have ever done," Otah said. "I never stopped

dreaming about it. Even now, I see it sometimes. Heshai was a good man,

but what he'd created in Seedless...."

"Seedless was only part of him. They all are. They couldn't be anything

else. Heshai-kvo hated himself, and Seedless was that."

"Everyone hates themselves sometimes. There isn't often a price in

blood," Otah said. "You know what would happen if that were proven.

Killing a Khai would pale beside murdering a poet."

Maati nodded slowly, and still nodding, spoke.

"I didn't ask on the Dai-kvo's behalf. I asked for myself. When

Heshai-kvo died, Seedless ... vanished. I was with him. I was there. He

was asking me whether I would have forgiven you. If you'd committed some

terrible crime, like what he had done to Maj, if I would forgive you.

And I told him I would. I would forgive you, and not him. Because ..."

They were silent. Maati's eyes were dark as coal.

"Because?" Otah asked.

"Because I loved you, and I didn't love him. He said it was a pity to

think that love and justice weren't the same. The last thing he said was

that you had forgiven me."

"Forgiven you?"

"For Liat. For taking your lover."

"I suppose it's true," Otah said. "I was angry with you. But there was a

part of me that was ... relieved, I suppose."

"Why?"

"Because I didn't love her. I thought I did. I wanted to, and I enjoyed

her company and her bed. I liked her and respected her. Sometimes, I

wanted her as badly as I've ever wanted anyone. And that was enough to

let me mistake it for love. But I don't remember it hurting that deeply

or for that long. Sometimes I was even glad. You had each other to take

care of, and so it wasn't mine to do."

"You said, that last time we spoke before you left ... before Heshaikvo

died, that you didn't trust me."

"That's true," Otah said. "I do remember that."

"But you've come to me now, and you've told me this. You've told me all

of it. Even after I gave you over to the Khai. You've brought me in

here, shown me where you've hidden. You know there are half a hundred

people I could say a word to, and you and all these other people would

be dead before the sun set. So it seems you trust me now."

"I do," Otah said without hesitating.

"Why?"

Otah sat with the question. His mind had been consumed for days with a

thousand different things that all nipped and shrieked and robbed him of

his rest. To reach out to Maati had seemed natural and obvious, and even

though when he looked at it coldly it was true that each had in some way

betrayed the other, his heart had never been in doubt. He could feel the

heaviness in the air, and he knew that I don't know wouldn't be answer

enough. He looked for words to give his feelings shape.

"Because," he said at last, "in all the time I knew you, you never once

did the wrong thing. Even when what you did hurt inc, it was never wrong."

To his surprise, there were tears on Maati's cheeks.

"Thank you, Otah-kvo," he said.

A shout went up in the tunnels outside the storehouse and the sound of

running feet. Maati wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robes, and

Otah stood, his heart beating fast. The murmur of voices grew, but there

were no sounds of blade against blade. It sounded like a busy corner

more than a battle. Otah walked to the door and, Maati close behind him,

stepped out into the main space. A knot of men were talking and

gesturing one to the other by the mouth of the stairs. Otah caught a

glimpse of Kiyan in their midst, frowning deeply and speaking fast.

Amiit detached himself from the throng and strode to Otah.

"What's happened?"

"Bad news, Otah-cha. Daaya Vaunyogi has called for a decision, and

enough of the families have hacked the call to push it through."

Otah felt his heart sink.

"They're hound to decide by morning," Amilt went on, "and if all the

houses that hacked him for the call side with him in the decision, Adrah

Vaunyogi will be the Khai Machi by the time the sun comes up."

"And then what?" NIaati asked.

"And then we run," Otah said, "as far and fast and quiet as we can, and

we hope he never finds us."

THE SUN HAD PASSED ITS HIGHEST POINT AND STARTED THE LONG, SLOW slide

toward darkness. Idaan had chosen robes the blue-gray of twilight and

bound her hair hack with clasps of silver and moonstone. Around her, the

gallery was nearly full, the air thick with heat and the mingled scents

of bodies and perfumes. She stood at the rail, looking down into the

press of bodies below her. The parquet of the floor was scuffed with the

marks of hoots. There were no empty places at the tables or against the

stone walls, no quiet negotiations going on in hallways or teahouses.

That time had passed, and in its wake, they were all brought here.

Voices washed together like the hushing of wind, and she could feel the

weight of the eyes upon her-the men below her sneaking glances up, the

representatives of the merchant houses at her side considering her, and

the lower orders in the gallery above staring down at her and the men

over whom she loomed. She was a woman, and not welcome to speak or sit

at the tables below. But still, she would make her presence felt.

"How is it that we accept the word of these men that they are the

wisest?" Ghiah Vaunani pounded the speaker's pulpit before him with each

word, a dry, shallow sound. Idaan almost thought she could see flecks of

foam at the corners of his mouth. "How is it that the houses of the

utkhaiem are so much like sheep that they would consent to be led by

this shepherd boy of Vaunyogi?"

It was meant, Idaan knew, to be a speech to sway the others from their

confidence, but all she heard in the words was the confusion and pain of

a boy whose plans have fallen through. He could pound and rail and

screech his questions as long as his voice held out. Idaan, standing

above the proceedings like a protective ghost, knew the answers to every

one, and she would never tell them to him.

Below her, Adrah Vaunyogi looked up, his expression calm and certain. It

had been late in the morning that she'd woken in the poet's house, later

still when she'd returned to the rooms she shared now with her husband.

He had been there, waiting for her. The night's excesses had weighed

heavy on him. They hadn't spoken-she had only called for a bath and

clean robes. When she'd cleaned herself and washed her hair, she sat at

her mirror and painted her face with all her old skill and delicacy. The

woman who looked out at her when she put down her brushes might have

been the loveliest in Machi.

Adrah had left without a word. It had been almost half a hand before she

learned that her new father, Daaya Vaunyogi, had called for the

decision, and that the houses had agreed. No one had told her to come

here, no one had asked her to lend the sight of her silent presence to

the cause. She had done it, perhaps, because Adrah had not demanded it

of her.

"We must not hurry! We must not allow sentiment to push us into a

decision that will change our city forever!"

Idaan allowed herself a smile. It would seem to most people that the

force of the story had won the day. The last daughter of the old line

would be the first mother of the new, and if a quiet structure of money

and obligation supported it, if she were really the lover of the poet a

hundred times more than the Khai, it hardly mattered. It was what the

city would see, and that was enough.

Ghiah's energy was beginning to flag. She heard his words lose their

crispness and the pounding on his table fall out of rhythm. The anger in

his voice became merely petulance, and the objections to Adrah in

particular and the Vaunyogi in general lost their force. It would have

been better, she thought, if he'd ended half a hand earlier. Still

insufficient, but less so.

The Master of "fides stood when Ghiah at last surrendered the floor. He

was an old man with a long, northern face and a deep, sonorous voice.

Idaan saw his eyes flicker up to her and then away.

"Adaut Kamau has also asked to address the council," he said, "before

the houses speak on the decision to accept Adrah Vaunyogi as the Khai

Machi......

A chorus of jeers rose from the galleries and even the council tables.

Idaan held herself still and quiet. Her feet were starting to ache, but

she didn't shift her weight. The effect she desired wouldn't be served

by showing her pleasure. Adaut Kamau rose, his face gray and pinched. He

opened his arms, but before he could speak, a bundle of rough cloth

arced from the highest gallery. A long tail of brown fluttered behind it

like a banner as it fell, and in the instant that it struck the floor,

the screaming began.

Idaan's composure broke, and she leaned forward. The men at the tables

nearest the thing waved their arms and fled, shrieking and pounding at

the air. Voices buzzed and a cloud of pale, moving smoke rose toward the

galleries.

No. The buzzing was not voices, the cloud was not smoke. These were

wasps. The bundle on the council floor had been a nest wrapped in cloth

and wax. The first of the insects buzzed past her, a glimpse of black

and yellow. She turned and ran.

Bodies filled the corridors, panic pressing them together until there

was no air, no space. People screamed and cursed-men, women, children.

"Their shrill voices mixed with the angry buzz. She was pushed from all

sides. An elbow dug into her back. The surge of the crowd pressed the

breath from her. She was suffocating, and insects filled the air above

her. Idaan felt something bite the flesh at the back of her neck like a

hot iron burning her. She screamed and tried to reach back to hat the

thing away, but there was no room to move her arm, no air. She lashed

out at whoever, whatever was near. The crowd was a single, huge, biting

beast and Idaan flailed and shrieked, her mind lost to fear and pain and

confusion.

Stepping into the open air of the street was like waking from a

nightmare. The bodies around her thinned, becoming only themselves

again. The fierce buzz of tiny wings was gone, the cries of pain and

terror replaced by the groans of the stung. People were still streaming

out of the palace, arms flapping, but others were sitting on benches or

else the ground. Servants and slaves were rushing about, tending to the

hurt and the humiliated. Idaan felt the back of her neck-three angry

humps were already forming.

"It's a poor omen," a man in the red robes of the needle wrights said.

"Something more's going on than meets the eye if someone's willing to

attack the council to keep old Kamau from talking."

"What could he have said?" the man's companion asked.

"I don't know, but you can be sure whatever it was, he'll be saying

something else tomorrow. Someone wanted him stopped. Unless this is

about Adrah Vaunyogi. It could be that someone wants him closed down."

"Then why loose the things when his critics were about to speak?"

"Good point. Perhaps ..."

Idaan moved on down the street. It was like the aftermath of some

gentle, bloodless battle. People bound bruised limbs. Slaves brought

plasters to suck out the wasps' venom. But already, all down the wide

street, the talk had turned back to the business of the council.

Her neck was burning now, but she pushed the pain aside. There would he

no decision made today. That was clear. Kaman or Vaunani had disrupted

the proceedings to get more time. It had to be that. It couldn't he

more, except that of course it could. The fear was different now, deeper

and more complex. Almost like nausea.

Adrah was leaning against the wall at the mouth of an alleyway. His

father was sitting beside him, a serving girl dabbing white paste on the

angry welts that covered his arms and face. Idaan went to her husband.

His eyes were hard and shallow as stones.

"May I speak with you, Adrah-kya?" she said softly.

Adrah looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, then at his fa

ther. He nodded toward the shadows of the alley behind him, and Idaan

followed him until the noises of the street were vague and distant.

"It was Otah," she said. "He did this. Iie knows."

"Are you about to tell me that he's planned it all from the start again?

It was a cheap, desperate trick. It won't matter, except that anyone who

doesn't like us will say we did it, and anyone who has a grudge against

our enemies will put it to them. Nothing changes."

"Who would do it?"

Adrah shook his head, impatient, and turned to walk back out into the

street and noise and light. "Anyone might have. There's no point trying

to solve every puzzle in the world."

"Don't be stupid, Adrah. Someone's acted against-"

The violence and suddenness of his movement was shocking. He was walking

away, his hack to her, and then a heartbeat later, there was no more

room between them than the width of a leaf His face was twisted,

flushed, possessed by anger.

"Don't be stupid? Is that what you said?"

Idaan took a step hack, her feet unsteady beneath her.

"How do you mean, stupid, Idaan? Stupid like calling out my lover's name

in a crowd?"

"What?"

"Cehmai. The poet boy. When you were running, you called his name.

"I did?"

"Everyone heard it," Adrah said. "Everybody knows. At least you could

keep it between us and not parade it all over the city!"

"I didn't mean to," she said. "I swear it, Adrah. I didn't know I had."

He stepped hack and spat, the spittle striking the wall beside him and

dripping down toward the ground. His gaze locked on her, daring her to

push him, to meet his anger with defiance or submission. Either would be

devastating. Idaan felt herself go hard. It wasn't unlike the feeling of

seeing her father dying breath by breath, his belly rotting out and

taking him with it.

"It won't get better, will it?" she asked. "It will go on. It will

change. But it will never get better than it is right now."

The dread in Adrah's eyes told her she'd struck home. When he turned and

stalked away, she didn't try to stop him.

FELL ME, HE'I) SAID.

I can't, she'd replied.

And now Cehmai sat on a chair, staring at the bare wall and wished that

he'd left it there. The hours since morning had been filled with a kind

of anguish he'd never known. He'd told her he loved her. He did love

her. But ... Gods! She'd murdered her own family. She'd engineered her

own father's death and as much as sold the Khai's library to the Galts.

And the only thing that had saved her was that she loved him and he'd

sworn he'd protect her. He'd sworn it.

"What did you expect?" Stone-Made-Soft asked.

"That it was Adrah. That I'd be protecting her from the Vaunyogi,"

Cehmai said.

"Well. Perhaps you should have been more specific."

The sun had passed behind the mountains, but the daylight hadn't yet

taken on the ruddy hues of sunset. This was not night but shadow. 'The

andat stood at the window, looking out. A servant had come from the

palaces earlier bearing a meal of roast chicken and rich, dark bread.

The smell of it filled the house, though the platter had been set

outside to be taken away. He hadn't been able to eat.

Cehmai could barely feel where the struggle in the back of his mind met

the confusion at the front. Idaan. It had been Idaan all along.

"You couldn't have known," the andat said, its tone conciliatory. "And

it isn't as if she asked you to be part of the thing."

"You think she was using me."

"Yes. But since I'm a creature of your mind, it seems to follow that

you'd think the same. She did extract a promise from you. You're sworn

to protect her."

"I love her."

"You'd better. If you don't, then she told you all that under a false

impression that you led her to believe. If she hadn't truly thought she

could trust you, she'd have kept her secrets to herself."

"I do love her."

"And that's good," Stone-Made-Soft said. "Since all that blood she

spilled is part yours now."

Cehmai leaned forward. His foot knocked over the thin porcelain bowl at

his feet. The last dregs of the wine spilled to the floor, but he didn't

bother with it. Stained carpet was beneath his notice now. His head was

stuffed with wool, and none of his thoughts seemed to connect. He

thought of Idaan's smile and the way she turned toward him, nestling

into him as she slept. Her voice had been so soft, so quiet. And then,

when she had asked him if he was horrified by her, there had been so

much fear in her.

He hadn't been able to say yes. It had been there, waiting in his

throat, and he'd swallowed it. He'd told her he loved her, and he hadn't

lied. But he hadn't slept either. The andat's wide hand turned the bowl

upright and pressed a cloth onto the spill. Cehmai watched the red wick

up into the white cloth.

"Thank you," he said.

Stone-Made-Soft took a brief, dismissive pose and lumbered away. Cehmai

heard it pouring water into a basin to rinse the cloth, and felt a pang

of shame. He was falling apart. The andat itself was taking care of him

now. He was pathetic. Cehmai rose and stalked to the window. He felt as

much as heard the andat come up behind him.

"So," the andat said. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think she's got her legs around him now? Just at the moment, I

mean," the andat said, its voice as calm and placid and distantly amused

as always. "He is her husband. He must get her knees apart now and

again. And she must enjoy him on some level. She did slaughter her

family to elevate Adrah. It's not something most girls would do."

"You're not helping," Cehmai said.

"It could he you're just a part of her plan. She did fall into your bed

awfully easily. Do you think they talk about it, the two of them? About

what she can do to you or for you to win your support? Having the poet's

oath protecting you would be a powerful thing. And if you protect her,

you protect them. You can't suggest anything evil of the Vaunyogi now

without drawing her into it."

"She isn't like that!"

Cehmai gathered his will, but before he could turn it on the andat,

before he pushed the rage and the anger and the hurt into a force that

would make the beast be quiet, Stone-Made-Soft smiled, leaned forward,

and gently kissed Cehmai's forehead. In all the years he'd held it,

Cehmai had never seen the andat do anything of the sort.

"No," it said. "She isn't. She's in terrible trouble, and she needs you

to save her if you can. If she can be saved. And she trusts you.

Standing with her is the only thing you could do and still he a decent man."

Cehmai glared at the wide face, the slow, calm eyes, searching for a

shred of sarcasm. 'T'here was none.

"Why are you trying to confuse me?" he asked.

The andat turned to look out the window and stood as still as a statue.

Cehmai waited, but it didn't shift, even to look at him. The rooms

darkened and Cehmai lit lemon candles to keep the insects away. His mind

was divided into a hundred different thoughts, each of them powerful and

convincing and no two fitting together.

When at last he went up to his bed, he couldn't sleep. The blankets

still smelled of her, of the two of them. Of love and sleep. Cehmai

wrapped the sheets around himself and willed his mind to quiet, but the

whirl of thoughts didn't allow rest. Idaan loved him. She had had her

own father killed. Maati had been right, all this time. It was his duty

to tell what he knew, but he couldn't. It was possible-she might have

tricked him all along. He felt as cracked as river ice when a stone had

been dropped through it, jagged fissures cut through him in all

directions. "Where was no center of peace within him.

And yet he must have drifted off, because the storm pulled him awake.

Cehmai stumbled out of bed, pulling down half his netting with a soft

ripping sound. He crawled to the corridor almost before he understood

that the pitching and moaning, the shrieking and the nausea were all in

the private space behind his eyes. It had never been so powerful.

He fell as he went to the front of the house, harking his knee against

the wall. The thick carpets were sickening to touch, the fibers seeming

to writhe tinder his fingers like dry worms. Stone-Made-Soft sat at the

gaming table. The white marble, the black basalt. A single white stone

was shifted out of its beginning line.

"Not now," Cehmai croaked.

"Now," the andat said, its voice loud and low and undeniable.

The room pitched and spun. Cehmai dragged himself to the table and tried

to focus on the pieces. The game was simple enough. He'd played it a

thousand times. He shifted a black stone forward. He felt he was still

half dreaming. The stone he'd moved was Idaan. Stone-MadeSoft's reply

moved a token that was both its fourth column and also Otah Machi.

Groggy with sleep and distress and annoyance and the an gry pressure of

the andat struggling against him, he didn't understand how far things

had gone until twelve moves later when he shifted a black stone one

place to the left, and Stone-Made-Soft smiled.

"Maybe she'll still love you afterwards," the andat said. "Do you think

she'll care as much about your love when you're just a man in a brown robe?"

Cehmai looked at the stones, the shifting line of them, flowing and

sinuous as a river, and he saw his mistake. Stone-Made-Soft pushed a

white stone forward and the storm in Cehmai's mind redoubled. He could

hear his own breath rattling. He was sticky with the rancid sweat of

effort and fear. He was losing. He couldn't make himself think,

controlling his own mind was like wrestling a beast-something large and

angry and stronger than he was. In his confusion, Idaan and Adrah and

the death of the Khai all seemed connected to the tokens glowing on the

board. Each was enmeshed with the others, and all of them were lost. He

could feel the andat pressing toward freedom and oblivion. All the

generations of carrying it, gone because of him.

"It's your move," the andat said.

"I can't," Cehmai said. His own voice sounded distant.

"I can wait as long as you care to," it said. "Just tell me when you

think it'll get easier."

"You knew this would happen," Cehmai said. "You knew."

"Chaos has a smell to it," the andat agreed. "Move."

Cchmai tried to study the board, but every line he could see led to

failure. He closed his eyes and rubbed them until ghosts bloomed in the

darkness, but when he reopened them, it was no better. The sickness grew

in his belly. He felt he was falling. The knock on the door behind him

was something of a different world, a memory from some other life, until

the voice came.

"I know you're in there! You won't believe what's happened. Half the

utkhaiem are spotty with welts. Open the door!"

"Baarath!"

Cehmai didn't know how loud he'd called-it might have been a whisper or

a scream. But it was enough. The librarian appeared beside him. The

stout man's eyes were wide, his lips thin.

"What's wrong?" Baarath asked. "Are you sick? Gods, Cehmai.... Stay

here. Don't move. I'll have a physician-"

"Paper. Bring me paper. And ink."

"It's your move!" the andat shouted, and Baarath seemed about to bolt.

"Hurry," Cehmai said.

It was a week, a month, a year of struggle before the paper and ink

brick appeared at his side. He could no longer tell whether the andat

was shouting to him in the real world or only within their shared mind.

The game pulled at him, sucking like a whirlpool. The stones shifted

with significance beyond their own, and confusion built on confusion in

waves so that Cehmai grasped his one thought until it was a certainty.

There was too much. There was more than he could survive. The only

choice was to simplify the panoply of conflicts warring within him;

there wasn't room for them all. He had to fix things, and if he couldn't

make them right, he could at least make them end.

He didn't let himself feel the sorrow or the horror or the guilt as he

scratched out a note-brief and clear as he could manage. The letters

were shaky, the grammar poor. Idaan and the Vaunyogi and the Galts.

Everything he knew written in short, unadorned phrases. He dropped the

pen to the floor and pressed the paper into Baarath's hand.

"Maati," Cehmai said. "'lake it to Maati. Now."

Baarath read the letter, and whatever blood had remained in his face

drained from it now.

"This ... this isn't ..."

"Run!" Cehmai screamed, and Baarath was off, faster than Cehmai could

have gone if he'd tried, Idaan's doom in his hands. Cehmai closed his

eyes. That was over, then. That was decided, and for good or ill, he was

committed. The stones now could he only stones.

He pulled himself back to the game board. Stone-Made-Soft had gone

silent again. The storm was as fierce as it had ever been, but Cehmai

found he also had some greater degree of strength against it. He forced

himself along every line he could imagine, shifting the stones in his

mind until at last he pushed one black token forward. Stone-Made-Soft

didn't pause. It shifted a white stone behind the black that had just

moved, trapping it. Cehmai took a long deep breath and shifted a black

stone on the far end of the board back one space.

The andat stretched out its wide fingers, then paused. The storm

shifted, lessened. Stone-Made-Soft smiled ruefully and pulled back its

hand. The wide brow furrowed.

"Good sacrifice," it said.

Cehmai leaned hack. His body was shuddering with exhaustion and effort

and perhaps something else more to do with l3aarath running through the

night. The andat moved a piece forward. It was the obvious move, but it

was doomed. They had to play it out, but the game was as good as

finished. Cchmai moved a black token.

"I think she does love you," the andat said. "And you did swear you'd

protect her."

"She killed two men and plotted her own father's slaughter," Cehmai said.

"You love her. I know you do."

"I know it too," Cehmai said, and then a long moment later. "It's your

move."

Rain came in from the south. By midmorning tall clouds of billowing

white and yellow and gray had filled the wide sky of the valley. When

the sun, had it been visible, would have reached the top of its arc, the

rain poured down on the city like an upended bucket. The black cobbled

streets were brooks, every slant roof a little waterfall. Maati sat in

the side room of the teahouse and watched. The water seemed lighter than

the sky or the stone-alive and hopeful. It chilled the air, making the

warmth of the earthenware bowl in his hands more present. Across the

smooth wooden table, Otah-kvo's chief armsman scratched at the angry red

weals on his wrists.

"If you keep doing that, they'll never heal," Maati said.

"Thank you, grandmother," Sinja said. "I had an arrow through my arm

once that hurt less than this."

"It's no worse than what half the people in that hall suffered," Maati said.

"It's a thousand times worse. Those stings are on them. These are on me.

I'd have thought the difference obvious."

Maati smiled. It had taken three days to get all the insects out of the

great hall, and the argument about whether to simply choose a new venue

or wait for the last nervous slave to find and crush the last dying wasp

would easily have gone on longer than the problem itself. The time had

been precious. Sinja scratched again, winced, and pressed his hands flat

against the table, as if he could pin them there and not rely on his own

will to control himself.

"I hear you've had another letter from the Dai-kvo," Sinja said.

Maati pursed his lips. The pages were in his sleeve even now. "They'd

arrived in the night by a special courier who was waiting in apartments

Maati had bullied out of the servants of the dead Khai. The message

included an order to respond at once and commit his reply to the

courier. He hadn't picked up a pen yet. He wasn't sure what he wanted to

say.

"He ordered you back?" Sinja asked.

"Among other things," Maati agreed. "Apparently he's been getting

information from someone in the city besides myself."

"The other one? The boy?"

"Cehmai you mean? No. One of the houses that the Galts bought, I'd

guess. But I don't know which. It doesn't matter. He'll know the truth

soon enough."

"If you say so."

A bolt of lightning flashed and a half breath later, thunder rolled

through the thick air. Maati raised the bowl to his lips. The tea was

smoky and sweet, and it did nothing to unknot his guts. Sinja leaned

toward the window, his eyes suddenly bright. Maati followed his gaze.

Three figures leaned into the slanting rain-one a thick man with a

slight limp, the others clearly servants holding a canopy over the first

in a vain attempt to keep their master from being soaked to the skin.

All wore cloaks with deep hoods that hid their faces.

"Is that him?" Sinja asked.

"I think so," Maati said. "Go. Get ready."

Sinja vanished and Maati refilled his bowl of tea. It was only moments

before the door to the private room opened again and Porsha Radaani came

into the room. His hair was plastered back against his skull, and his

rich, ornately embroidered robes were dark and heavy with water. Maati

rose and took a pose of welcome. Radaani ignored it, pulled out the

chair Sinja had only recently left, and sat in it with a grunt.

"I'm sorry for the foul weather," Maati said. "I'd thought you'd take

the tunnels."

Radaani made an impatient sound.

"They're half flooded. The city was designed with snow in mind, not

water. The first thaw's always like a little slice of hell in the

spring. But tell me you didn't bring me here to talk about rain,

Maati-cha. I'm a busy man. The council's just about pulled itself back

together, and I'd like to see an end to this nonsense."

"That's what I wanted to speak to you about, Porsha-cha. I'd like you to

call for the council to disband. You're well respected. If you were to

adopt the position, the lower families would take interest. And the

Vaunani and Kamau can both work with you without having to work with

each other."

"I'm a powerful enough man to do that," Radaani agreed, his tone

matter-of-fact. "But I can't think why I would."

"There's no reason for the council to be called."

"No reason? We're short a Khai, MIaati-cha."

"The last one left a son to take his place," Maati said. "No one in that

hall has a legitimate claim to the name Khai Machi."

Radaani laced his thick fingers over his belly and narrowed his eyes. A

smile touched his lips that might have meant anything.

"I think you have some things to tell me," he said.

Nlaati began not with his own investigation, but with the story as it

had unfolded. Idaan Machi and Adrah Vaunvogi, the backing of the Gaits,

the murder of Biitrah Machi. He told it like a tale, and found it was

easier than he'd expected. Radaani chuckled when he reached the night of

Otah's escape and grew somber when he drew the connection between the

murder of Danat Machi and the hunting party that had gone with him. It

was all true, but it was not all of the truth. In the long conversations

that had followed Baarath's delivery of Cehmai's letter, Otah and Maati,

Kiyan and Amiit had all agreed that the Gaits' interest in the library

was something that could be safely neglected. It added nothing to their

story, and knowing more than they seemed to might yet prove an

advantage. Watching Porsha Radaani's eyes, Maati thought it had been the

right decision.

He outlined what he wanted of the Radaani-the timing of the proposal to

disband, the manner in which it would he best approached, the support

they would need on the council. Radaani listened like a cat watching a

pigeon until the whole proposal was laid out before him. He coughed and

loosened the belt of his robe.

"It's a pretty story," Radaani said. "It'll play well to a crowd. But

you'll need more than this to convince the utkhaiem that your friend's

hem isn't red. We're all quite pleased to have a Khai who's walked

through his brothers' blood, but fathers are a different thing."

"I'm not the only one to tell it," Maati said. "I have one of the

hunting party who watched I)anat die to swear there was no sign of an

ambush. I have the commander who collected Otah from the tower to say

what he was bought to do and by whom. I have Cehmai Tyan and

Stone-Made-Soft. And I have them in the next room if you'd like to speak

with them."

"Really?" Radaani leaned forward. The chair groaned under his weight.

"And if it's needed, I have a list of all the houses and families who've

supported Vaunyogi. If it's a question what their relationships are with

Galt, all we have to do is open those contracts and judge the terms.

'T'hough there may be some of them who would rather that didn't happen.

So perhaps it won't be necessary."

Radaani chuckled again, a deep, wet sound. He rubbed his fingers against

his thumbs, pinching the air.

"You've been busy since last we spoke," he said.

"It isn't hard finding confirmation once you know what the truth is.

Would you like to speak to the men? You can ask them whatever you like.

"They'll back what I've said."

"Is he here himself?"

"Otah thought it might be better not to attend. Until he knew whether

you intended to help him or have him killed."

"He's wise. Just the poet, then," Radaani said. "The others don't matter."

Maati nodded and left the room. The teahouse proper was a wide, low room

with fires burning low in two corners. Radaani's servants were drinking

something that Maati doubted was only tea and talking with one of the

couriers of House Sivanti. There would be more information from that, he

guessed, than from the more formal meeting. At the door to the back

room, Sinja leaned back in a chair looking bored but corn- manding a

view of every approach.

"Well?" Sinja asked.

"He'd like to speak with Cehmai-cha."

"But not the others?"

"Apparently not."

"He doesn't care if it's true, then. Just whether the poets are hacking

our man," Sinja let his chair down and stood, stretching. "The forms of

power arc fascinating stuff. Reminds me why I started fighting for a

living."

Maati opened the door. The back room was quieter, though the rush of

rain was everywhere. Cehmai and the andat were sitting by the fire. The

huntsman Sinja-cha had tracked down was at a small table, half drunk. It

was best, perhaps, that Radaani hadn't wanted him. And three armsmcn in

the colors of House Siyanti also lounged about. Cehmai looked up,

meeting Maati's gaze. Maati nodded.

Radaadni's expression when Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft entered the room

was profoundly satisfied. It was as if the young poet's presence

answered all the questions that were important to ask. Still, Maati

watched Cehmai take a pose of greeting and Radaani return it.

"You wished to speak with me," Cehmai asked. His voice was low and

tired. Maati could see how much this moment was costing him.

"Your fellow poet here's told me quite a tale," Radaani said. "He says

that Otah Machi's not dead, and that Idaan Machi's the one who arranged

her family's death."

"That's so," Cehmai agreed.

"I see. And you were the one who brought that to light?"

"That's so."

Radaani paused, his lips pursed, his fingers knotted around each other.

"Does the Dai-kvo back the upstart, then?"

"No," Maati said before Cehmai could speak. "We take no side in this. We

support the council's decision, but that doesn't mean we withhold the

truth from the utkhaiem."

"As Maati-kvo says," Cehmai agreed. "We are servants here."

"Servants with the world by its balls," Radaani said. "It's easy,

Cehmai-cha, to support a position in a side room with no one much around

to hear you. It's a harder thing to say the same words in front of the

gods and the court and the world in general. If I take this to the

council and you decide that perhaps it wasn't all quite what you've said

it was, it will go badly for me."

"I'll tell what I know," Cehmai said. "Whoever asks."

"Well," Radaani said, then more than half to himself, "Well well well."

In the pause that followed, another roll of thunder rattled the

shutters. But Porsha Radaani's smile had faded into something less

amused, more serious. We have him, Maati thought. Radaani clapped his

hands on his thighs and stood.

"I have some conversations I'll have to conduct, Maati-cha," he said.

"You understand that I'm taking a great personal risk doing this? Me and

my family both."

"And I know that Otah-kvo will appreciate that," Maati said. "In my

experience, he has always been good to his friends."

"TThat's best," Radaani said. "After this, I expect he'll have about two

of them. Just so long as he remembers what he owes me."

"He will. And so will the Kamau and the Vaunani. And I imagine a fair

number of your rival families will be getting less favorable terms from

the Galts in the future."

"Yes. That had occurred to me too."

Radaani smiled broadly and took a formal pose of leavetaking that

ineluded the room and all three of them in it-the two poets, the one

spirit. When he was gone, Maati went to the window again. Radaani was

walking fast down the street, his servants half-skipping to keep the

canopy over him. His limp was almost gone.

Maati closed the shutters.

"He's agreed?" Cehmai asked.

"As near as we can expect. He smells profit in it for himself and

disappointment for his rivals. That's the best we can offer, but I think

he's pleased enough to do the thing."

"That's good."

Maati sat in the chair Radaani had used, sighing. Cehmai leaned against

the table, his arms folded. His mouth was thin, his eyes dark. He looked

more than half ill. The andat pulled out the chair beside him and sat

with a mild, companionable expression.

"What did the Dai-kvo say?" Cehmai asked. "In the letter?"

"He said I was under no circumstances to take sides in the succession.

He repeated that I was to return to his village as soon as possible. He

seems to think that by involving myself in all this court intrigue, I

may he upsetting the utkhaiem. And then he went into a long commentary

about the andat being used in political struggle as the reason that the

Empire ate itself."

"He's not wrong," Cchmai said.

"Well, perhaps not. But it's late to undo it."

"You can blame me if you'd like," Cehmai said.

"I think not. I chose what I'd do, and I don't think I chose poorly. If

the Dai-kvo disagrees, we can have a conversation about it."

"He'll throw you out," Cchmai said.

Maati thought for a moment of his little cell at the village, of the

years spent in minor tasks at the will of the Dal-kvo and the poets se

nior to himself. Liat had asked him to leave it all a hundred times, and

he'd refused. The prospect of failure and disgrace faced him now, and he

heard her words, saw her face, and wondered why it had all seemed so

wrong when she'd said it and so clear now. Age perhaps. Experience. Some

tiny sliver of wisdom that told him that in the balance between the

world and a woman, either answer could be right.

"I'm sorry for all this, Cehmai. About Idaan. I know how hard this is

for you."

"She picked it. No one made her plot against her family."

"But you love her."

The young poet frowned now, then shrugged.

"Less now than I did two days ago," he said. "Ask again in a month. I'm

a poet, after all. There's only so much room in my life. Yes, I loved

her. I'll love someone else later. Likely someone that hasn't set

herself to kill off her relations."

"It's always like this," Stone-Made-Soft said. "Every one of them. The

first love always comes closest. I had hopes for this one. I really did."

"You'll live with the disappointment," Cehmai said.

"Yes," the andat said amiably. "There's always another first girl."

Maati laughed once, amused though it was also unbearably sad. The andat

shifted to look at him quizzically. Cehmai's hands took a pose of query.

Maati tried to find words to fit his thoughts, surprised by the sense of

peace that the prospect of his own failure brought him.

"You're who I was supposed to be, Cehmai-kvo, and you're much better at

it. I never did very well."

IDAAN LEANED FORWARD, HER HANDS ON THE RAIL. THE GALLERY BEHIND her was

full but restless, the air thick with the scent of their bodies and

perfumes. People shifted in their seats and spoke in low tones, prepared

for some new attack, and Idaan had noticed a great fashion for veils

that covered the heads and necks of men and women alike that tucked into

their robes like netting on a bed. The wasps had done their work, and

even if they were gone now, the feeling of uncertainty remained. She

took another deep breath and tried to play her role. She was the last

blood of her murdered father. She was the bride of Adrah Vaunyogi.

Looking down over the council, her part was to remind them of how

Adrah's marriage connected him to the old line of the Khaiem.

And yet she felt like nothing so much as an actor, put out to sing a

part on stage that she didn't have the range to voice. It had been so

recently that she'd stood here, inhabiting this space, owning the air

and the hall around her. Today, everything was the same-the families of

the utkhaiem arrayed at their tables, the leaves-in-wind whispering from

the galleries, the feeling of eyes turned toward her. But it wasn't

working. The air itself seemed different, and she couldn't begin to say why.

"The attack leveled against this council must not weaken us," Daaya, her

father now, half-shouted. His voice was hoarse and scratched. "We will

not be bullied! We will not be turned aside! When these vandals tried to

make mockery of the powers of the utkhaiem, we were preparing to

consider my son, the honorable Adrah Vaunyogi, as the proper man to take

the place of our lamented Khai. And to that matter we must return."

Applause filled the air, and Idaan smiled sweetly. She wondered how many

of the people now present had heard her cry out Cehmai's name in her

panic. Those that hadn't had no doubt heard it from other lips. She had

kept clear of the poet's house since then, but there hadn't been a

moment her heart hadn't longed toward it. He would understand, she told

herself. He would forgive her absence once this was all finished. All

would be well.

And yet, when Adrah looked up to her, when their gaze met, it was like

looking at a stranger. He was beautiful: his hair fresh cut, his robes

of jeweled silk. He was her husband, and she no longer knew him.

Daaya stepped down, glittering, and Adaut Kamau rose. If, as the

gossipmongers had told, the wasps had been meant to keep old Kamau

silent that day, this would be the moment when something more should

follow. The galleries became suddenly quiet as the old man stepped to

the stage. Even from across the hall, Idaan could see the red weal on

his face where the sting had marked him.

"I had intended," he said, "to speak in support of Ghiah Vaunani in his

urging of caution and against hasty decision. Since that time, however,

my position has changed, and I would like to invite my old, dear friend

Porsha Radaani to address the council."

With nothing more than that, old Kamau stepped down. Idaan leaned

forward, looking for the green and gray robes of the Radaani. And there,

moving between the tables, was the man striding toward the speaker's

dais. Adrah and his father were bent together, speaking swiftly and

softly. Idaan strained to hear something of what they said. She didn't

notice how tight she was holding the rail until her fingers started to

ache with it.

Radaani rose up in the speaker's pulpit, looking over the council and

the galleries for the space of a half-dozen breaths. His expression was

considering, like a man at a fish market judging the freshest catch.

Idaan felt her belly tighten. Below her and across the hall, Radaani

lifted his arms to the crowd.

"Brothers, we have come here in these solemn times to take the fate of

our city into our hands," he intoned, and his voice was rich as cream.

"We have suffered tragedy and in the spirit of our ancestors, we rise to

overcome it. No one can doubt the nobility of our intentions. And yet

the time has come to dissolve this council. There is no call to choose a

new Khai Machi when a man with legitimate claim to the chair still lives."

The noise was like a storm. Voices rose and feet stamped. On the council

floor, half the families were on their feet, the others sitting with

stunned expressions. And yet it was as if it were happening in some

other place. Idaan felt the unreality of the moment wash over her. It

was a dream. A nightmare.

"I have not stood down!" Radaani shouted. "I have not finished! Yes, an

heir lives! And he has the support of my family and my house! Who among

you will refuse the son of the Khai Machi his place? Who will side with

the traitors and killers that slaughtered his father?"

"Porsha-cha!" one of the men of the council said, loud enough to carry

over the clamor. "Explain yourself or step down! You've lost your mind!"

"I'll better that! Brothers, I give my place before you to the son of

the Khai and his one surviving heir!"

Had she thought the hall loud before? It was deafening. No one was left

seated. Bodies pressed at her hack, jostling her against the railing as

they craned and stretched for a glimpse of the man entering the chamber.

He stood tall and straight, his dark robes with their high collar

looking almost priestly. Otah Machi, the upstart, strode into the hall,

with the grace and calm of a man who owned it and every man and woman

who breathed air.

He's mad, she thought. He's gone mad to come here. They'll tear him

apart with their hands. And then she saw behind him the brown robes of a

poet-Maati Vaupathai, the envoy of the Dal-kvo. And behind him ...

Her mouth went dry and her body began to tremble. She shrieked, she

screamed, but no one could hear her over the crowd. She couldn't even

hear herself. And yet, walking at Maati's side, Cehmai looked tip. His

face was grim and calm and distant. The poets strode together behind the

upstart. And then the armsmen of Radaani and Vaunani, Kaman and Daikani

and Saya. Hardly a tenth of the families of the utkhaicm, but still a

show of power. The poets alone would have been enough.

She didn't think, couldn't recall pushing back the people around her,

she only knew her own intentions when she was over the rail and falling.

It wasn't so far to the ground-no more than the height of two men, and

yet in the roar and chaos, the drop seemed to last forever. When she

struck the floor at last, it jarred her to the hone. Her ankle bloomed

with pain. She put it aside and ran as best she could through the

stunned men of the utkhaiem. Men all about her, unable to act, unable to

move. They were like statues, frozen by their uncertainty and confusion.

She knew that she was screaming-shc could feel it in her throat, could

hear it in her cars. She sounded crazed, but that was unimportant. Her

attention was single, focused. The rage that possessed her, that lifted

her up and sped her steps by its power alone, was only for the upstart,

Otah Machi, who had taken her lover from her.

She saw Adrah and Daaya already on the floor, an armsman kneeling on

each back. "There was a blade still in Adrah's hand. And then there

before her like a fish rising to the surface of a pond was Otah Machi,

her brother. She launched herself at him, her hands reaching for him

like claws. She didn't see how the andat moved between them; perhaps it

had been waiting for her. Its wide, cold body appeared, and she collided

with it. Huge hands wrapped her own, and the wide, inhuman face bent

close to hers.

"Stop this," it said. "It won't help."

"'t'his isn't right!" she shouted, aware now that the pandemonium had

quieted, that her voice could be heard, but she could no more stop

herself now than learn to fly. "He swore he'd protect me. He swore it.

It's not right!"

"Nothing is," the andat agreed, as it pulled her aside, lifted her as if

she was still a child, and pressed her against the wall. She felt

herself sinking into it, the stone giving way to her like mud. She

fought, but the wide hands were implacable. She shrieked and kicked,

sure that the stone would close over her like water, and then she

stopped fighting. Let it kill her, let her die.

Let it end.

The hands went away, and Idaan found herself immobile, trapped in stone

that had found its solidity again. She could breathe, she could see, she

could hear. She opened her mouth to scream, to call for Cehmai. To beg.

Stone-Made-Soft put a single finger to her lips.

"It won't help," the andat said again, then turned and lumbered up

beside the speaker's pulpit where Cehmai stood waiting for it. She

didn't look at her brother as he took the pulpit, only Cehmai. He didn't

look back at her. When Utah spoke, his words cut through the air, clean

and strong as wine.

"I am Otah 1MIachi, sixth son of the Khai Machi. I have never renounced

my claim to this place; I have never killed or plotted to kill my

brothers or my father. But I know who has, and I have come here before

this council to show you what has been done, and by whom, and to claim

what is mine by right."

Idaan closed her eyes and wept, surprised to find her desolation

complicated by relief.

"I NOTICE YOU NEVER MENTIONED THE MALTS," AM1IIT SAID.

The waiting area to which the protocol servant had led them was open and

light, looking out over a garden of flowering vines. A silver howl with

water cooling fresh peaches sat on a low table. Amiit leaned against the

railing. He looked calm, but Otah could see the white at the corners of

his mouth and the small movements of his hands; Amiit's belly was as

much in knots as his own.

"There was no call," Utah said. "The families that were involved know

that they were being used, and if they only suspect that I know it,

that's almost as good as being sure. How long are we going to have to wait?"

"Until they've finished deciding whether to kill you as a murderer or

raise you up as the Khai Maehi," Amiit said. "It shouldn't take long.

You were very good out there."

"You could sound more sure of all this."

"We'll be fine," Amiit said. "We have hacking. We have the poets."

"And yet?"

Amiit forced a chuckle.

"This is why I don't play tiles. Just before the tiles man turns the

last chit, I convince myself that there's something I've overlooked."

"I hope you aren't right this time."

"If I am, I won't have to worry about next. They'll kill me as dead as you.

Otah picked up a peach and hit into it. The fuzz made his lips itch, but

the taste was sweet and rich and complex. He sighed and looked out.

Above the garden wall rose the towers, and beyond them the blue of the sky.

"If we win, you will have to have them killed, you know," Amiit said.

"Adrah and his father. Your sister, Idaan."

"Not her."

"Otah-cha, this is going to be hard enough as it stands. The utkhaiem

are going to accept you because they have to. But you won't be hailed as

a savior. And Kiyan-cha's a common woman from no family. She kept a

wayhouse. Showing mercy to the girl who killed your father isn't going

to win you anyone's support."

"I am the Khai Machi," Otah said. "I'll make my way."

"You don't understand how complex this is likely to be."

Otah shrugged.

"I trust your advice, Amiit-cha," Otah said. "You'll have to trust my

judgment."

The overseer's expression soured for a moment, and then he laughed. They

lapsed into silence. It was true. It was early in his career to appear

weak, and the Vaunyogi had killed two of his brothers and his father,

and had tried to kill Maati as well. And behind them, the Galts. And the

library. There had been something in there, some book or scroll or codex

worth all those lives, all that money, and the risk. By the time the sun

fled behind the mountains in the west, he would know whether he'd have

the power to crush their nation, reduce their houses to slag, their

cities to ruins. A word to Cehmai would put it in motion. All it would

require of him would be to forget that they also had children and

lovers, that the people of Galt were as likely as anyone in the cities

of the Khaiem to love and betray, lie and dream. And he was having pangs

over executing his own father's killer. He took another bite of the peach.

"You've gone quiet," Amiit said softly.

"Thinking about how complex this is likely to be," Otah said.

He finished the last of the peach flesh and threw the stone out into the

garden before he washed his hands clean in the water howl it had come

from. A company of armsmen in ceremonial mail appeared at the door with

a grim-faced servant in simple black robes.

"Your presence is requested in the council chamber," the servant said.

"I'll see you once it's over," Amiit said.

Otah straightened his robes, took and released a deep breath, and

adopted a pose of thanks. The servant turned silently, and Otah followed

with armsmen on either side of him and behind. Their pace was solemn.

The halls with their high, arched ceilings and silvered glass,

adornments of gold and silver and iron, were empty except for the jingle

of mail and the tread of boots. Slowly the murmur of voices and the

smells of bodies and lamp oil filled the air. The black-robed servant

turned a corner, and a pair of double doors swung open to the council

hall. The Master of Tides stood on the speaker's pulpit.

The black lacquer chair reserved for the Khai Machi had been brought,

and stood empty on a dais of its own. Otah held himself straight and

tall. He strode into the chamber as if his mind were not racing, his

heart not conflicted.

He walked to the base of the pulpit and looked up. The Master of "hides

was a smaller man than he'd thought, but his voice was strong enough.

"Otah Machi. In recognition of your blood and claim, we of the high

families of Machi have chosen to dissolve our council, and cede to you

the chair that was your father's."

Otah took a pose of thanks that he realized as he took it was a thousand

times too casual for the moment, dropped it, and walked up the dais.

Someone in the second gallery high above him began to applaud, and

within moments, the air was thick with the sound. Otah sat on the black

and uncomfortable chair and looked out. There were thousands of faces,

all of them fixed upon him. Old men, young men, children. The highest

families of the city and the palace servants. Some were exultant, some

stunned. A few, he thought, were dark with anger. He picked out Maati

and Cehmai. Even the andat had joined in. The ta bles at which the Kamau

and Vaunani, Radaani and Saya and Daikani all sat were surrounded by

cheering men. The table of the Vaunyogi was empty.

They would never all truly believe him innocent. They would never all

give him their loyalty. He looked out into their faces and he saw years

of his life laid out before him, constrained by necessity and petty

expedience. He guessed at the mockery he would endure behind his hack

while he struggled to learn his new-acquired place. He tried to appear

gracious and grave at once, certain he was failing at both.

For this, he thought, I have given up the world.

And then, at the far back of the hall, he caught sight of Kiyan. She,

perhaps alone, wasn't applauding him. She only smiled as if amused and

perhaps pleased. He felt himself soften. Amid all the meaningless

celebration, all the empty delight, she was the single point of

stillness. Kiyan was safe, and she was his, and their child would he

born into safety and love.

If all the rest was the price for those few things, it was one he would pay.

It was winter when Maati Vaupathai returned to Mlachi. "I'he days were

brief and hitter, the sky often white with a scrim of cloud that faded

seamlessly into the horizon. Roads were forgotten; the snow covered road

and river and empty field. "I'hc sledge dogs ran on the thick glaze of

ice wherever the teamsman aimed them. Maati sat on the skidding waxed

wood, his arms pulled inside his clothes, the hood of his cloak pulled

low and tight to warm the air before he breathed it. He'd been told that

he must above all else be careful not to sweat. If his robes got wet,

they would freeze, and that would be little better than running naked

through the drifts. He had chosen not to make the experiment.

His guide seemed to stop at every wayhouse and low town. INlaati learned

that the towns had been planned by local farmers and merchants so that

no place was more than a day's fast travel from shelter, even on the

short days around Candles Night when the darkness was three times as

long as the light. When Maati walked up the shallow ramps and through

the snow doors, he appreciated their wisdom. A night in the open during

a northern winter might not kill someone who had been horn and bred

there. A northerner would know the secrets of carving snow into shelter

and warming the air without drenching himself. He, on the other hand,

would simply have died, and so he made certain that his guide and the

dogs were well housed and fed. Even so, when the time came to sleep in a

bed piled high with blankets and dogs, he often found himself as

exhausted from the cold as from a full day's work.

What in summer would have been the journey of weeks took him from just

before Candles Night almost halfway to the thaw. The days began to blend

together-blazing bright white and then warm, close darkness-until he

felt he was traveling through a dream and might wake at any moment.

When at last the dark stone towers of Machi appeared in the

distance-lines of ink on a pale parchment-it was difficult to believe.

He had lost track of the days. He felt as if he had been traveling

forever, or perhaps that he had only just begun. As they drew nearer, he

opened his hood despite the stinging air and watched the towers thicken

and take form.

He didn't know when they passed over the river. The bridge would have

been no more than a rise in the snow, indistinguishable from a random

drift. Still, they must have passed it, because they entered into the

city itself. The high snow made the houses seemed shorter. Other dog

teams yipped and called, pulled wide sledges filled with boxes or ore or

the goods of trade; even the teeth of winter would not stop Machi. Maati

even saw men with wide, leather-laced nets on their shoes and goods for

sale strapped to their backs tramping down worn paths that led from one

house to the next. He heard voices lifted in loud conversation and the

harking of dogs and the murmur of the platform chains that rose up with

the towers and shifted, scraping against the stone.

The city seemed to have nothing in common with the one he had known, and

still there was a beauty to it. It was stark and terrible, and the wide

sky forgave it nothing, but he could imagine how someone might boast

they lived here in the midst of the desolation and carved out a life

worth living. Only the verdigris domes over the forges were free from

snow, the fires never slackening enough to how before the winter.

On the way to the palace of the Khai Machi, his guide passed what had

once been the palaces of the Vaunyogi. The broken walls jutted from the

snow. He thought he could still make out scorch marks on the stones.

There were no bodies now. The Vaunyogi were broken, and those who were

not dead had scattered into the world where they would be wise never to

mention their true names again. The hones of their house made Maati

shiver in a way that had little to do with the biting air. Otah-kvo had

done this, or ordered it done. It had been necessary, or so Maati told

himself. He couldn't think of another path, and still the ruins

disturbed him.

He entered the offices of the Master of Tides through the snow door,

tramping up the slick painted wood of the ramp and into rooms he'd known

in summer. When he had taken off his outer cloaks and let himself be led

to the chamber where the servants of the Khai set schedules, Piyun See,

the assistant to the Master of Tides, fell at once into a pose of welcome.

"It's a pleasure to have you back," he said. "The Khai mentioned that we

should expect you. But he had thought you might be here earlier."

Though the air in the offices felt warm, the man's breath was still

visible. Maati's ideas of cold had changed during his journey.

"The way was slower than I'd hoped," Maati said.

"The most high is in meetings and cannot be disturbed, but he has left

us with instructions for your accommodation...."

Maati felt a pang of disappointment. It was naive of him to expect

Otah-kvo to be there to greet him, and yet he had to admit that he had

harbored hopes.

"Whatever is most convenient will, I'm sure, suffice," Maati said.

"Don't bother yourself Piyun-cha," a woman's voice said from behind

them. "I can see to this."

The changes of the previous months had left Kiyan untransformed. Her

hair-black with its lacing of white-was tied hack in a simple knot that

seemed out of place above the ornate robes of a Khai's wife. Her smile

didn't have the chill formal distance or false pleasure of a player at

court intrigue. When she embraced him, her hair smelled of lavender oil.

For all her position and the incarcerating power of being her husband's

wife she would, Maati thought, still look at home at a wayhouse watching

over guests or haggling with the farmers, bakers and butchers at the at

the market.

But perhaps that was only his own wish that things could change and

still be the same.

"You look tired," she said, leading him down a long flight of smnooth-

worn granite stairs. "How long have you been traveling?"

"I left the Dai-kvo before Candles Night," he said.

"You still dress like a poet," she said, gently. So she knew.

"The Dai-kvo agreed to Otah-kvo's proposal. I'm not formally removed so

long as I don't appear in public ceremony in my poet's robes. I'm not

permitted to live in a poet's house or present myself in any way as

carrying the authority of the Dal-kvo."

"And Cehmai?"

"Cehmai's had some admonishing letters, I think. But I took the worst of

it. It was easier that way, and I don't mind so much as I might have

when I was younger."

The doors at the stairway's end stood open. They had descended below the

level of the street, even under its burden of snow, and the candlelit

tunnel before them seemed almost hot. His breath had stopped ghosting.

"I'm sorry for that," Kiyan said, leading the way. "It seems wrong that

you should suffer for doing the right thing."

"I'm not suffering," Maati said. "Not as badly as I did when I was in

the Dai-kvo's good graces, at least. The more I see of the honors I was

offered, the better I feel about having lost them."

She chuckled.

The passageway glowed gold. A high, vaulted arch above them was covered

with tiles that reflected the light hack into the air where it hung like

pollen. An echo of song came from a great distance, the words blurred by

the tunnels. And then the melody was joined and the whispering voices of

the gods seemed to touch the air. Maati's steps faltered, and Kiyan

turned to look at him and then followed his gaze into the air.

"The winter choir," she said. Her voice was suddenly smaller, sharing

his awe. "There are a lot of idle hands in the colder seasons. Music

becomes more important, I think, when things are cold and dark."

"It's beautiful," Maati said. "I knew there were tunnels, but ..."

"It's another city," Kiyan said. "Think how I feel. I didn't know half

the depth of it until I was supposed to help rule it."

They began walking again, their words rising above the song.

"How is he?"

"Not idle," she said with both amusement and melancholy in her tone.

"He's been working until he's half exhausted every day and then getting

up early. There's a thousand critical things that he's called on to do,

and a thousand more that are nothing more than ceremony that only

swallow his time. It makes him cranky. He'll be angry that he wasn't

free to meet you, but it will help that I could. "That's the best I can

do these days. Make sure that the things most important to him are seen

to while he's off making sure the city doesn't fall into chaos."

"I'd think it would be able to grind on without him for a time just from

habit," Maati said.

"Politics takes all the time you can give it," Kiyan said with distaste.

They walked through a wide gate and into a great subterranean hall. A

thousand lanterns glowed, their white light filling the air. Men and

women and children passed on their various errands, the gabble of voices

like a brook over stones. A beggar sang, his lacquered begging box on

the stone floor before him. Maati saw a waterseller's cart, and another

vendor selling waxpaper cones of rice and fish. It was almost like a

street, almost like a wide pavilion with a canopy of stone.

"Your rooms?" Kiyan asked. "Or would you rather have something to eat

first? There's not much fresh this deep into winter, but I've found a

woman who makes a hot barley soup that's simply lovely."

"Actually ... could I meet the child?"

Kiyan's smile seemed to have a light of its own.

"Can you imagine a world where I said no?" she asked.

She nodded to a branching in the wide hall, and led him west, deeper

into the underground. The change was subtle, moving from the public

space of the street to the private tunnels beneath the palaces. There

were gates, it was true, but they were open. There were armsmen here and

there, but only a few of them. And yet soon all the people they passed

wore the robes of servants or slaves of the Khai, and they had entered

the Khai's private domain. Kiyan stopped at a thin oak door, pulled it

open and gestured him to follow her up the staircase it revealed.

The nursery was high above the tunnel-world. The air was kept warm by a

roaring fire in a stone grate, but the light was from the sun. The

nurse, a young girl, no more than sixteen summers, sat dozing in her

chair while the baby cooed and gurgled to itself. Maati stepped to the

edge of the crib, and the child quieted, staring up at him with

distrustful eyes, and then breaking into a wide toothless grin.

"She's only just started sleeping through the night," Kiyan said,

speaking softly to keep from waking her servant. "And there were two

weeks of colic that were close to hell. I don't know what we'd have done

with her if it hadn't been for the nurses. She's been doing better now.

We've named her Eiah."

She reached down, scooped up her daughter, and settled her in her arms.

It was a movement so natural as to seem inevitable. Maati remembered

having done it himself, many years ago, in a very different place. Kiyan

seemed almost to know his mind.

" "Iani-kya said that if things went as you'd expected with the Daikvo

you were thinking of seeking out your son. Nayiit?"

"Nayiit," Maati agreed. "I sent letters to the places I knew to send

them, but I haven't heard hack yet. I may not. But I'll be here, in one

place. If he and his mother want to find me, it won't be difficult."

"I'm sorry," Kiyan said. "Not that it will be easy for them, only that ..."

Maati only shook his head. In Kiyan's arms, the tiny girl with deep

brown eyes grasped at air and gurgled, unaware, he knew, of all the

blood and pain and betrayal that had gone into bringing her here.

"She's beautiful," he said.

"BE REASONABLE!"

Cehmai lay back in his bath. Beside him, Stone-Made-Soft had put its

feet into the warm water and was gazing placidly out into the thick

salt-scented steam that rose from the water and filled the bathhouse.

Against the far wall, a group of young women was rising from the pool

and walking back toward the dressing rooms, leaving a servant to fish

the floating trays with their teapots and bowls from the small, bobbing

waves. Baarath slapped the water impatiently.

"You can look at naked girls later," he said. "This is important. If

Maati-cha's come back to help me catalog the library ..."

"He might quibble on `help you,'" Cehmai said, and might as well have

kept silent.

"... then it's clearly of critical importance to the Dai-kvo. I've heard

the rumors. I know the Vaunyogi were looking to sell the library to some

Westlands warden. That's why Maati was sent here in the first place."

Cehmai closed his eyes. Rumors and speculation had run wild, and perhaps

it would have been a kindness to correct Baarath. But Otah had asked him

to keep silent, and the letters from the Dai-kvo had encouraged this

strategy. If it were known what the Galts had done, what they had

intended to do, it would mean the destruction of their nation: cities

drowned, innocent men and women and children starved when a quiet word

heavy with threat might suffice instead. There was always recourse to

destruction. So long as one poet held one andat, they could find a path

to ruin. So instead of slaughtering countless innocents, Cehmai put up

with the excited, inaccurate speculation of his old friend and waited

for the days to grow longer and warmer.

"If the collection is split," Baraath went on, his voice dropping to a

rough whisper, "we might overlook the very thing that made the library

so important. You have to move your collection over to the library, or

terrible things might happen."

"Terrible things like what?"

"I don't know," Baraath said, his whisper turning peevish. "That's what

Maati-cha and I are trying to find out."

"Well, once you've gone through your collection and found nothing, the

two of you can come to the poet's house and look through mine."

"That would take years!"

"I'll make sure they're well kept until then," Cehmai said. "Have you

spoken with the Khai about his private collection?"

"Who'd want that? It's all copies of contracts and agreements from five

generations ago. Unless it's the most obscure etiquette ever to see

sunlight. Anyone who wants that, let them have it. You've got all the

good books. The philosophy, the grammars, the studies of the andat."

"It's a hard life you lead," Cehmai said. "So close and still, no."

"You are an arrogant prig," Baraath said. "Everyone knows it, but I'm

the only man in the city with the courage to say it to your face.

Arrogant and selfish and small-souled."

"Well, perhaps it's not too much to go over to the library. It isn't as

if it was that long a walk."

Baraath's face brightened for a moment, then, as the insincerity of the

comment came clear, squeezed as if he'd taken a bite of fresh lemon.

With a sound like an angry duck, he rose up and stalked from the baths

and into the fog.

"He's a terrible person," the andat said.

"I know. But he's a friend of mine."

"And terrible people need friends as much as good ones do," the andat

said, its tone an agreement. "More, perhaps."

"Which of us are you thinking of?"

Stone-Made-Soft didn't speak. Cehmai let the warmth of the water slip

into his flesh for a moment longer. Then he too rose, the water sluicing

from him, and walked to the dressing rooms. He dried himself with a

fresh cloth and found his robes, newly cleaned and dry. The other men in

the room spoke among themselves, joked, laughed. Cehmai was more aware

than usual of the formal poses with which they greeted him. In this

quiet season, there was little work for him, and the days were filled

with music and singing, gatherings organized by the young men and women

of the utkhaiem. But all the cakes tasted slightly of ashes, and the

brightest songs seemed tinny and false. Somewhere in the city, under her

brother's watchful eye, the woman he'd sworn to protect was locked away.

He adjusted his robes in the mirror, smiled as if trying the expression

like a party mask, and for the thousandth time noticed the weight of his

decision.

He left the bathhouse, following a broad, low tunnel to the east where

it would join a larger passage, one of the midwinter roads, which in

turn ran beneath the trees outside the poet's house before it broke into

a thousand maze-like corridors running under the old city. Along the

length of the passage, men and women stood or sat, some talking, some

singing. An old man, his dog lying at his feet, sold bread and sausages

from a hand cart. The girls he'd seen in the bathhouse had been joined

by young men, joking and posing in the timeless rituals of courtship.

Stone-Made-Soft was kneeling by the wall, looking out over all of it,

silently judging what it would take to bring the roof down and bury them

all. Cehmai reached out with his will and tugged at the andat. Still

smiling, Stone-Made-Soft rose and ambled over.

"I think the one on the far left was hoping to meet you," it said,

gesturing to the knot of young men and women as it drew near. "She was

watching you all the time we were in the baths."

"Perhaps it was Baraath she was looking at," Cehmai said.

"You think so?" the andat said. "I suppose he's a decent looking man.

And many women are overcome by the romance of the librarian. No doubt

you're right."

"Don't," Cehmai said. "I don't want to play that game again."

Something like real sympathy showed in the andat's wide face. The

struggle at the back of Cehmai's mind neither worsened nor diminished as

Stone-Made-Soft's broad hand reached out to rest on his shoulder.

"Enough," it said. "You did what you had to do, and whipping yourself

now won't help you or her. Let's go meet that girl. Talk to her. We can

find someone selling sweetcakes. Otherwise we'll only go back to the

rooms and sulk away another night."

Cehmai looked over, and indeed, the girl farthest to the left-her long,

dark hair unbound, her robes well cut and the green of jadecaught his

eyes, and blushing, looked away. He had seen her before, he realized.

She was beautiful, and he did not know her name.

"Perhaps another day," he said.

"There are only so many other days," the andat said, its voice low and

gentle. "I may go on for generations, but you little men rise and fall

with the seasons. Stop biting yourself. It's been months."

"One more day. I'll bite myself for one more day at least," Cehmai said.

"Come on."

The andat sighed and dropped its hand to its side. Cehmai turned east,

walking into the dim tunnels. He felt the temptation to look back, to

see whether the girl was watching his departure and if she was, what

expression she wore. He kept his eyes on the path before him and the

moment passed.

THE KHAI MACHI HAD NO OTHER NAME NOW THAT HE HAI) TAKEN HIS FAther's

office. It had been stripped from him in formal ceremony. He had

renounced it and sworn before the gods and the Emperor that he would be

nothing beyond this trust with which he had been charged. Otah had

forced his way through the ceremony, bristling at both the waste of time

and the institutional requirement that he lie in order to preserve

etiquette. Of Itani Noygu, Otah Machi, and the Khai Machi, the last was

the one least in his heart. But he was willing to pretend to have no

other self and the utkhaiem and the priests and the people of the city

were all willing to pretend to believe him. It was all like some

incredibly long, awkward, tedious game. And so when the rare occasion

arose when he could do something real, something with consequences, he

found himself enjoying it more perhaps than it deserved.

The emissary from Galt looked as if he were trying to convince himself

he'd misunderstood.

"Most high," he said, "I came here as soon as our ambassadors sent word

that they'd been expelled. It was a long journey, and winter travel's

difficult in the north. I had hoped that we could address your concerns

and ..."

Otah took a pose that commanded silence, then sat back on the black

lacquer chair that had grown no more comfortable in the months since

he'd first taken it. He switched from speaking in the Khaiate tongue to

Galtic. It seemed, if anything, to make the man more uncomfortable.

"I appreciate that the generals and lords of Gait are so interested in

... what? Addressing my concerns? And I thank you for coming so quickly,

even when I'd made it clear that you were not particularly welcome."

"I apologize, most high, if I've given offense."

"Not at all," Otah said, smiling. "Since you've come, you can do me the

favor of explaining again to the High Council how precarious their

position is with me. The Dai-kvo has been alerted to all I've learned,

and he shares my opinion and my policy."

"But I-"

"I know the role your people played in the succession. And more than

that, I know what happened in Saraykeht. Your nation survives now on my

sufferance. If word reaches me of one more intervention in the matters

of the cities of the Khaiem or the poets or the andat, I will wipe your

people from the memory of the world."

The emissary opened his mouth and closed it again, his eyes darting

about as if there was a word written somewhere on the walls that would

open the floodgates of his diplomacy. Otah let the silence press at him.

"I don't understand, most high," he managed at last.

"Then go home," Otah said, "and repeat what I've told you to your

overseer and then to his, and keep doing so until you find someone who

does. If you reach the High Council, you'll have gone far enough."

"I'm sure if you'll just tell me what's happened to upset you, most

high, there must be something I can do to make it right."

Otah pressed his steepled fingers to his lips. For a moment, he

remembered Saraykeht-the feel of the poet's death struggles tinder his

own hand. He remembered the fires that had consumed the compound of the

Vaunyogi and the screams and cries of his sister as her husband and his

father met their ends.

"You can't make this right," he said, letting his weariness show in his

voice. "I wish that you could."

"But the contracts ... I can't go back without some agreement made, most

high. If you want me to take your message back, you have to leave me

enough credibility that anyone will hear it."

"I can't help you," Otah said. "Take the letter I've given you and go

home. Now."

As he turned and left the room, the letter in his hand sewn shut and

sealed, the Galt moved like a man newly awakened. At Otah's gesture, the

servants followed the emissary and pulled the great bronze doors closed

behind them, leaving him alone in the audience chamber. The pale silk

banners shifted in the slight breath of air. The charcoal in the iron

braziers glowed, orange within white. He pressed his hands to his eyes.

He was tired, terribly tired. And there was so much more to be done.

He heard the scrape of the servant's door behind him, heard the soft,

careful footsteps and the faintest jingling of mail. He rose and turned,

his robes shifting with a sound like sand on stone. Sinja took a pose of

greeting.

"You sent for me, most high?"

"I've just sent the Galts packing again," Otah said.

"I heard the last of it. Do you think they'll keep sending men to bow

and scrape at your feet? I was thinking how gratifying it must be, being

able to bully a whole nation of people you've never met."

"Actually, it isn't. I imagine news of it will have spread through the

city by nightfall. More stories of the Mad Khai."

"You aren't called that. Upstart's still the most common. After the

wedding, there was a week or so of calling you the shopkeeper's wife,

but I think it was too long. An insult can only sustain a certain number

of syllables."

"Thank you," Otah said. "I feel much better now."

"You are going to have to start caring what they think, you know. These

are people you're going to be living with for the rest of your life.

Starting off by proving how disrespectful and independent you can be is

only going to make things harder. And the Galts carry quite a few

contracts," Sinja said. "Are you sure you want me away just now? It's

traditional to have a guard close at hand when you're cultivating new

enemies.

"Yes, I want you to go. If the utkhaiem are talking about the Galts,

they may talk less about Idaan."

"You know they won't forget her. It doesn't matter what other issues you

wave at them, they'll come back to her."

"I know. But it's the best I can do for now. Are you ready?"

"I have everything I need prepared. We can do it now if you'd like."

"I would."

THREE ROOMS HAI) BEEN HER WORLD. A NARROW BED, A CHEAP IRON BRAzier, a

night pot taken away every second day. The armsmen brought her bits of

candle-stubs left over from around the palaces. Once, someone had

slipped a book in with her meal-a cheap translation of Westland court

poems. Still, she'd read them all and even started com posing some of

her own. It galled her to be grateful for such small kindnesses,

especially when she knew they would not have been extended to her had

she been a man.

The only breaks came when she was taken out to walk down empty tunnels,

deep under the palaces. Armsmen paced behind her and before her, as if

she were dangerous. And her mind slowly folded in on itself, the days

passing into weeks, the ankle she'd cracked in her fall mending. Some

days she felt lost in dreams, struggling to wake only to wish herself

back asleep when her mind came clear. She sang to herself. She spoke to

Adrah as if he were still there, still alive. As if he still loved her.

She raged at Cehmai or bedded him or begged his forgiveness. All on her

narrow bed, by the light of candle stubs.

She woke to the sound of the bolt sliding open. She didn't think it was

time to be fed or walked, but time had become a strange thing lately.

When the door opened and the man in the black and silver robes of the

Khai stepped in she told herself she was dreaming, half fearing he had

come to kill her at last, and half hoping for it.

The Khai Machi looked around the cell. His smile seemed forced.

"You might not think it, but I've lived in worse," he said.

"Is that supposed to comfort me?"

"No," he said.

A second man entered the room, a thick bundle under his arm. A soldier,

by his stance and by the mail that he wore under his robes. Idaan sat

up, gathering herself, preparing for whatever came and desperate that

the men not turn and close the door again behind them. The Khai Machi

hitched up his robes and squatted, his hack against the stone wall as if

he was a laborer at rest between tasks. His long face was very much like

Biitrah's, she saw. It was in the corners of his eyes and the shape of

his jaw.

"Sister," he said.

"Most high," she replied.

He shook his head. The soldier shifted. She had the feeling that the two

movements were the continuation of some conversation they had had, a

subtle commentary to which she was not privileged.

"This is Sinja-cha," the Khai said. "You'll do as he says. If you fight

hire, he'll kill you. If you try to leave him before he gives you

permission, he'll kill you."

"Are you whoring me to your pet thug then?" she asked, fighting to keep

the quaver from her voice.

"What? No. Gods," Otah said. "No, I'm sending you into exile. He's to

take you as far as Cetani. He'll leave you there with a good robe and a

few lengths of silver. You can write. You have numbers. You'll be able

to find some work, I expect."

"I am a daughter of the Khaiem," she said bitterly. "I'm not permitted

to work."

"So lie," Otah said. "Pick a new name. Noygu always worked fairly well

for me. You could be Sian Noygu. Your mother and father were merchants

in ... well, call it Udun. You don't want people thinking about Machi if

you can help it. They died in a plague. Or a fire. Or bandits killed

them. It isn't as if you don't know how to lie. Invent something."

Idaan stood, something like hope in her heart. To leave this hole. To

leave this city and this life. To become someone else. She hadn't

understood how weary and exhausted she had become until this moment. She

had thought the cell was her prison.

The soldier looked at her with perfectly empty eyes. She might have been

a cow or a large stone he'd been set to move. Otah levered himself back

to standing.

"You can't mean this," Idaan said, her voice hardly a whisper. "I killed

Danat. I as much as killed our father,"

"I didn't know them," her brother said. "I certainly didn't love them."

"I did."

"All the worse for you, then."

She looked into his eyes for the first time. There was a pain in them

that she couldn't fathom.

"I tried to kill you."

"You won't do it again. I've killed and lived with it. I've been given

mercy I didn't deserve. Sometimes that I didn't want. So you see, we may

not be all that different, sister." He went silent for a moment, then,

"Of course if you come back, or I find you conspiring against me-"

"I wouldn't come back here if they begged me," she said. "°I'his city is

ashes to me."

Her brother smiled and nodded as much to himself as to her.

"Sinja?" he said.

The soldier tossed the bundle to her. It was a leather traveler's cloak

lined with wool and thick silk robes and leggings wrapped around heavy

boots. She was appalled at how heavy they were, at how weak she'd

become. Her brother ducked out of the room, leaving only the two of

them. The soldier nodded to the robes in her arms.

"Best change into those quickly, Idaan-cha," he said. "I've got a sledge

and team waiting, but it's an unpleasant winter out there, and I want to

make the first low town before dark."

"This is madness," she said.

The soldier took a pose of agreement.

"He's making quite a few had decisions," he said. "He's new at this,

though. He'll get better."

Idaan stripped under the soldier's impassive gaze and pulled on the

robes and the leggings, the cloak, the boots. She stepped out of her

cell with the feeling of having shed her skin. She didn't understand how

much those walls had become everything to her until she stepped out the

last door and into the blasting cold and limitless white. For a moment,

it was too much. The world was too huge and too open, and she was too

small to survive even the sight of it. She wasn't conscious of shrinking

back from it until the soldier touched her arm.

"The sledge is this way," he said.

Idaan stumbled, her hoots new and awkward, her legs unaccustomed to the

slick ice on the snow. But she followed.

THE CHAINS WERE FROZEN To THE TOWER, THE LIFTING MECHANISM BRITtle with

cold. The only way was to walk, but Otah found he was much stronger than

he had been when they'd marched him up the tower before, and the effort

of it kept him warm. The air was bitterly cold; there weren't enough

braziers in the city to keep the towers heated in winter. The floors he

passed were filled with crates of food, bins of grains and dried fruits,

smoked fish and meats. Supplies for the months until summer came again,

and the city could forget for a while what the winter had been.

Back in the palaces, Kiyan was waiting for him. And Nlaati. They were to

meet and talk over the strategies for searching the library. And other

things, he supposed. And there was a petition from the silversmiths to

reduce the tax paid to the city on work that was sold in the nearby low

towns. And the head of the Saya wanted to discuss a proper match for his

daughter, with the strong and awkward implication that the Khai Machi

might want to consider who his second wife might be. But for now, all

the voices were gone, even the ones he loved, and the solitude was sweet.

He stopped a little under two-thirds of the way to the top, his legs

aching but his face warm. He wrestled open the inner sky doors and then

unlatched and pushed open the outer. The city was splayed out beneath

him, dark stone peeking out from under the snow, plumes of smoke rising

as always from the forges. TO the south, a hundred crows rose from the

branches of dead trees, circled briefly, and took their perches again.

And beyond that, to the east, he saw the distant forms he'd come to see:

a sledge with a small team and two figures on it, speeding out across

the snowfields. He sat, letting his feet dangle out over the rooftops,

and watched until they were only a tiny black mark in the distance. And

then as they vanished into the white.

Daniel Abraham's first published novel, A Shadow" in Summer, is the

first volume of the Long Price Quartet. He has had stories published in

the Vanishing Acts, Bones of the World, and TheDart anthologies, and has

been included in Gardner Dozois's Years Best Science Fiction anthology

as well. His story "Flat Diane" won the International Horror Guild award

for mid-length fiction.

He is currently working on the Long Price Quartet, the third volume of

which, An Autumn War, will he published in 2008. He lives in New Mexico

with his wife and daughter.