The Price of Spring

4

The midday sun beat down on the lush green; gnats and flies filled the air. The river-not the Qiit proper but one of its tributariesthreaded its way south like a snake. Maati tied his mule under the wide leaves of a catalpa and squatted down on a likely-looking boulder. Pulling a pouch of raisins and seeds from his sleeve, he looked out over the summer. The wild trees, the rough wagon track he'd followed from the farmers' low town to the northwest, the cultivated fields to the south.

A cluster of small farms made a loose community here, raising goats and millet and, near the water, rice. The land between the cities was dotted with low communities like this one: the rural roots that fed the great, blossoming cities of the Khaiem. The accents were rougher here, the effete taint of a high court as foreign as another language. Men might be born, grow, love, marry, and die without ever traveling more than a day's walk, birthing bed and grave marker no more distant than a thrown pebble.

And one of those fields with its ripe green grasses had been plowed by the only other man in all the world who knew how to bind the andat. Maati took a mouthful of raisins and chewed slowly, thinking.

Leaving the warehouse outside Utani had proven harder than he had expected. For over a decade, he had been rootless, moving from one city or town to another, living in the shadows. One more journey-and this one heading south into the summer cities-hadn't seemed to signify anything more than a few weeks' time and, of course, the errand itself. But somewhere in the years since the Galtic invasion, Maati had grown accustomed to traveling with companions, and as he and his swaybacked pack mule had made their slow way down the tracks and low-town roads, he had felt their absence.

The world had changed in the years he had been walking through it. Having no one there to talk with forced his mind back in on itself, and the nature of the changes he saw were more disturbing than he'd thought they would be.

Many were things he had expected. The cities and towns had grown quieter, undisturbed by the laughter and games of children. The people were older, grayer. The streets felt too big, like the robes of a once-hale man who had grown thin with illness or age. And the scars of the war itself-the burned towns already half-reclaimed by foxes and saplings, the bright green swath from Utani all the way down to ruined Nantani on the southern coast where once an army had passed-had faded, but they had not disappeared.

The distrust of the foreign was driven deep into the flesh here. He had heard stories of Westlands women coming to marry among the low towns, thinking their wombs would make them of greater value here than in their own lands. Instead, they were recognized as a slower kind of invasion. Driven out with threats or stones. The men who had had the temerity to marry outside their own kind punished in ways to rival the prices paid by failed poets. Joints broken, drowned in night pots, necks snapped, and bodies thrown into creeks to drown in half a hand's depth of water.

And yet, the stories might only be stories. The more Maati traveled, the less certain he was.

Twice, great belching steam wagons had passed him on the trail. The men at the controls had been locals, but the machines themselves were Galtic, remnants of the war. Once he had seen plumes of smoke and steam rising from the river itself, a flat barge sitting low to the water and driven by the same chuffing, tarnished bulb as the wagons. Even the fields below him now were cultivated in a pattern he had never seen before the Galts came. Perhaps Otah's betrayal of the cities colored all of Maati's perceptions now, but it felt as if the Galts were invading again, only slowly this time, burrowing under the ground and changing all they touched in small, insidious ways.

Something tickled his arm. Maati plucked out the tick and cracked it between his thumbnails. He was wasting time. His feet ached from walking and his robe stuck to his back and legs, but the sooner this meeting happened, the sooner he would know where he stood. He emptied the last of the seeds into his hand, ate them, then put the pouch back in his sleeve and untied his mule.

Seven years before, he and Cehmai had parted for the last time at a wayhouse three days' walk northwest of the farms and the river and catalpa-shaded hill. It had not been an entirely friendly parting, but they had agreed to leave letters of their whereabouts at that house, should the need ever arise to find each other.

Maati had found the place easily. In the intervening years, the kitchens had burned, and the two huge trees in the courtyard. The boy who stabled the horses had grown to be a man. The bricks that had been brown and yellow had been painted white and blue. And the box they had paid the keeper to hold for them had a letter in it, sewn and sealed, with ciphered directions that would lead to the farmhouse Cehmai had taken under his new false name. Jadit Noygu.

Jadit Noygu, and his wife Sian.

Maati took the letter out again, consulting the deciphered text he'd marked in between the lines written in Cehmai's clean, clear hand. Forward down the track until he passed the ruin of an old mill, then the first east-turning pathway, and half a hand's walk to a low mud-and-straw farmhouse with a brick cistern in front. Maati clucked at the mule and resumed his walk.

He arrived in the heat of the afternoon; even the shade beneath the trees sweltered. Maati helped himself to a bowl of water from the cistern, and then another bowl for the mule. No one came out to greet him, but the shutters on the windows looked recently painted and the track that led around the side of the house was well-tended. There was no sense that the farm stood empty. Maati made his way toward the back.

A small herd of goats bleated at him from their pen, the disturbing, clever eyes considering him with as little joy as he had for them. The low sound of whistling came to him from a tall, narrow building set apart from both house and pen. A slaughterhouse.

He stepped into the doorway, blocking the light. The air was thick with smoke to drive the flies away. The body of the sacrificed goat hung from a hook, buckets of blood and entrails at the butcher's feet. The butcher turned. Her hands were crimson, her leather apron sodden with blood. A hooked knife flashed in her hand.

She was not the only reason that Maati and Cehmai had parted company, but she would have been sufficient. Idaan Machi, outcast sister to the Emperor. As a girl no older than Vanjit was now, Idaan had plotted the slaughter of her own family in a bloody-minded attempt to win Machi for herself and her husband. Otah had come near to being executed for her crimes, Cehmai had been seduced and used by her, and Maati still had a thick scar on his belly where her assassin had tried to gut him. Otah, for reasons that passed beyond Maati's understanding, had spared the murderess. Even less comprehensible, Cehmai had found her, and in their shared exile, they had once again become lovers. Only Maati still saw her for what she was.

Age had thickened her. Her hair, tied back in a ferocious knot, was more gray than black. Her long, northern face showed curiosity, then surprise, then for less than a heartbeat something like contempt.

"You'll want to see him, then," said Otah's exiled sister: the woman who had once set an assassin to kill Maati. Who had blamed Otah for the murders she and her ambitious lover had committed.

She sank the gory knife into the dead animal's side, setting the corpse swinging, and walked forward.

"Follow me," she said.

"Tell me where to find him," Maati said. "I can just as well…"

"The dogs don't know you," Idaan said. "Follow me."

Once Maati saw the dogs-five wide-jawed beasts as big as ponies, lazing in the rich dirt at the back of the house-he was glad she was there to guide him. She walked with a strong gait, leading him past the house, past a low barn where chickens scattered and complained, to a wide, low field of grass, its black soil under half an inch of water. At the far side of the field, a thin figure stood. He wore the canvas trousers of a workman and a rag the color of old blood around his head. By the time the man's face had ceased to be a leather-colored blur, they were almost upon him. There were the bright, boyish eyes, the serious mouth. The sun had coarsened his skin and complicated the corners of his eyes. He smiled and took a pose of greeting appropriate for one master of their arcane trade to another. Idaan snorted, turned, and walked back toward the slaughterhouse, leaving them alone.

"It's a dry year," Cehmai said. "You wouldn't know it, but it's a dry year. The last two crops, I was afraid that they'd mold in the field. This one, I'm out here every other week, opening the ditch gates."

"I need your help, Cehmai-cha," Maati said.

The man nodded, squinted out over the field as if judging something Maati couldn't see, and sighed.

"Of course you do," Cehmai said. "Come on, then. Walk with me."

The fields were not the largest Maati had seen, and reminded him of the gardens he'd worked as a child in the school. The dark soil of the riverfed lowlands was unlike the dry, pale soil of the high plains outside Pathai, but the scent of wet earth, the buzzing of small insects, the warmth of the high sun, and the subtle cool rising from the water all echoed moments of his childhood. Not all those memories were harsh. For a moment, he imagined slipping off his sandals and sinking his toes into the mud.

As they walked, he told Cehmai all he'd been doing in the years since they'd met. The idea of a women's grammar was one they had discussed before, so it required little more than to remind him of it. He outlined the progress he had made, the insights that had taken the project far enough to begin the experimental bindings. They paused under the broad shade of a catalpa and Cehmai shared a light meal of dried cherries and dense honey bread while Maati recounted his losses.

He did not mention Eiah or the school. Not yet. Not until he knew better which way his old colleague's opinions fell.

Cehmai listened, nodding on occasion. He asked few questions, but those he did were to the point and well-considered. Maati felt himself falling into familiar habits of conversation. When, three hands later, Cehmai rose and led the way back to the river gate, it was almost as if the years had not passed. They were the only two people in the world who shared the knowledge of the andat and the Dai-kvo. They had suffered through the long, painful nights of the war, working to fashion a binding that might save them. They had lived through the long, bitter winter of their failure in the caves north of Machi. If it had not made them friends, they were at least intimates. Maati found himself outlining the binding of Returning-to-Natural-Equilibrium as Cehmai turned the rough iron mechanism that would slow the water.

"That won't work," Cehmai said with a grunt. "Logic's wrong."

"I don't know about that," Maati said. "The girl's trained as a physician. She says that healing flesh is mostly a matter of letting it go back into the shape it tends toward anyway. The body actually helps the process that way, and-"

"But the logic, Maati-kvo," Cehmai said, using the honorific for a teacher as if by reflex. "It's a paradox. The natural balance of the andat is not to exist, and she wants to bind something whose essence is the return to its natural state? It's the same problem as Freedom-FromBondage. She should reverse it."

"How do you mean?"

The river gates creaked as they closed. The flow thinned and then stopped. Cehmai squatted, elbows resting on his knees, and pointed toward the water with his chin.

"Water-Moving-Down didn't only make water move down. She also stopped it. She withdrew her influence, ne? So she could make rain fall or she could keep it in the sky. She could stop a river from flowing as easily as making it run fast. Your physician can't bind Returning-to-Balance or however she planned to phrase it. But if she bound something like Wounded or Scarred-by-Illness, she could withdraw that from someone. She negates the opposite, achieves the same effect, and has something that isn't so slippery to hold."

Maati considered, then nodded.

"That's good," he said. "That's very good. And it's why I need you."

Cehmai smiled out at the waving green field, then glanced at the house and looked down.

"You'll stay the night?" Cehmai said.

Maati took a pose that accepted the invitation. He kept his trepidation at the thought of sleeping under Idaan's roof out of his stance and expression. It would have been too much to hope for that Cehmai would drop everything in his life and take to the road at once. And still, Maati had hoped for it…

Inside the thick stone walls of the farmhouse, the air was cooler and rich with the scent of dog and old curry. The afternoon faded slowly, the sun lingering in the treetops to the west, its light thick and golden and softened by Maati's failing eyes. Cicadas set up a choir. He sat on a low stone porch, watching everything and nothing.

Maati had known quite well that Idaan and Cehmai had been lovers once, even while Idaan had been married to another man and arranging the deaths of her family. Cehmai's betrayal of her had been the key that brought her down, that lifted Otah into the role of Khai Machi, and from there to Emperor. Cehmai had, in his fashion, created the world as it was with the decision to expose his lover's crimes.

Maati had thought the man mad for still harboring feelings for the woman; she was a murderer and a traitor to her city and her family. He'd thought him mad twice over for wanting to find her again after the andat had vanished from the world and the poets had fallen from grace. She would, he had expected, kill Cehmai on sight.

And yet.

As a boy, Maati had taken another man's lover as his own, and Otah had forgiven it. In gratitude or something like it, Maati had devoted himself to proving Otah's innocence and helped to bring Idaan's crimes to light. Seedless, the first andat Maati had known, had betrayed both the poet Heshai who had bound him and the Galtic house that had backed the andat's cruel scheme. And the woman-what had her name been? whose child died. Seedless had betrayed everyone, but had asked only Maati to forgive him.

The accrued weight of decades pressed upon him as the sun caught in the western branches. Dead children, war, betrayal, loss. And here, in this small nameless farm days' travel from even a low town of notable size, two lovers who had become enemies were lovers again. It made him angry, and his anger made him sad.

As the first stars appeared, pale ghost lights in the deepening blue before sunset, Idaan emerged from the house. With her leather gear gone, she looked less like a thing from a monster tale. She was a woman, only a woman. And growing old. It was only when she met his gaze that he felt a chill. He had seen her eyes set in a younger face, and the darkness in them had shifted, but it had not been unmade.

"There's food," she said.

The table was small and somehow more frail than Maati had expected. Three bowls were set out, each with rice and strips of browned meat. Cehmai was also pouring out small measures of rice wine from a bone carafe. It was, Maati supposed, an acknowledgment of the occasion and likely as much extravagance as Cehmai's resources would allow. Maati took a pose that offered thanks and requested permission to join the table. Cehmai responded with one of acceptance and welcome, but his movements were slow. Maati couldn't tell if it was from exhaustion or thought. Idaan added neither word nor pose to the conversation; her expression was unreadable.

"I've been thinking," Cehmai said. "Your plan. I have a few questions about it."

"Anything," Maati said.

"Would your scheme to undo what Sterile did include restoring the Galts?"

Maati took a strip of the meat from his bowl. The flesh was pleasantly rich and well-salted. He chewed slowly to give himself time to think, but his hesitation was answer enough.

"I don't think I can join you," Cehmai said. "This battle I've… I've lost my taste for it."

Maati felt his own frown like an ache.

"Reconsider," he said, but Cehmai shook his head.

"I've given too much of my life to the world already. I'd like to keep the rest of my years for myself. No more great struggles, no more cities or nations or worlds resting on what I do or don't do. What I have here is enough."

Maati wiped his fingers on his sleeve and took a pose of query that bordered on accusation. Cehmai's eyes narrowed.

"Enough for what?" Maati demanded. "Enough for the pair of you? It'll be more than enough before many years have passed. It'll be too much. How much do you work in a day? Raising your own food, tending your crop and your animals, making food and washing your robes and gathering wood for your fires? Does it give you any time at all to think? To rest?"

"It isn't as easy as living in the courts, that's truth," Cehmai said. His smile was the same as ever, even set in this worn face. "There are nights it would be good to leave the washing to a servant."

"It won't get easier," Maati said. "You'll get older. Both of you. The work will stay just as difficult, and you'll get tired faster. When you take sick, you'll recover slowly. One or the other of you will strain something or break an old bone or catch fever, and your children won't be there to care for you. The next farm over? His children won't be there for you either. Or the next. Or the next."

"He's not wrong, love," Idaan said. Maati blinked. Of all the people in the world, Idaan was the last he'd expected support from.

"I know all that," Cehmai said. "It doesn't mean that I should go back to being a poet."

"What else would you do?" Maati said. "Sell the land rights? Who is there to buy them? Take up some new trade? Who will there be to teach you? Binding the andat is the thing you've trained for. Your mind is built for the work. These girls… you should see them. The dedication, the engagement, the drive. If this thing can be done, they will do it. We can remake the world."

"We've done that once already," Cehmai said. "It didn't go well."

"We didn't have time. The Galts were at our door. We did what we had to do. And now we can correct our errors."

"Does my brother know about this?" Idaan asked.

"He refused me," Maati said.

"Is that why you hate him?"

The air around the table seemed to clench. Maati stared at the woman. Idaan met his gaze with a level calm.

"He is selling us," Maati said. "He is turning away from a generation of women whose injuries are as much his fault as ours."

"And is that why you hate him?" Idaan asked again. "You can't tell me that you don't, Maati-cha. I know quite a lot about hatred."

He let my son die to save his, Maati thought but did not say. There were a thousand arguments against the statement: Otah hadn't been there when Nayiit died; it wasn't Danat's fault that his protector failed to fend off the soldiers; Nayiit wasn't truly his son. He knew them all, and that none of them mattered. Nayiit had died, Maati had been sent into the wilderness, and Otah had risen like a star in the sky.

"What I feel toward your brother doesn't change what needs to be done," Maati said, "or the help I'll need to do it."

"Who's backing you?" Idaan said.

Maati felt a flash of surprise and even fear. An image of Eiah flickered in his mind and was banished.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Someone's feeding you," she said. "Someone's hiding you and your students. If the word got out that you'd been found, half the world would send armsmen to cut you down for fear you'd do exactly what you're doing now. And half of the rest would kick you to death for petty vengeance. If it's not Otah protecting you, who is it? One of the high families of the utkhaiem? A trading house? Who?"

"I have strong backing," Maati said. "But I won't tell you more than that."

"Every danger you face, my husband faces too," Idaan said. "If you want him to take your risks, you have to tell him what protection you can offer."

"I have an ear in the palaces anytime I need it. Otah won't be able to mount any kind of action against me without warning finding me. You can trust to that."

"You have to tell us more," Idaan said.

"He doesn't," Cehmai said, sharply. "He doesn't have to offer me protection because I'm not going to do the work. I'm done, love. I'm finished. I want a few more years with you and a quiet death, and I'll be quite pleased with that."

"The world needs you," Maati said.

"It doesn't," Cehmai said. "You've come a long way, Maati-kvo, and I've disappointed you. I'm sorry for that, but you have my answer. I used to be a poet, but I'm not anymore. I can reconsider as long as we both keep breathing, and we'll come to the same place."

"We can't stay on here," Idaan said. Her voice was soft. "I've loved it here too. This place, these years… we've been lucky to have them. But Maati-cha's right. This season, and perhaps five or ten after it, we'll make do. But eventually the work will pass us. We're not getting younger, and we can't hire on hands to help us. There aren't any."

"Then we'll leave," Cehmai said. "We'll do something else, only not that."

"Why not?" Maati asked.

"Because I don't want to kill any more people," Cehmai said. "Not the girls you're encouraging to try this, not the foreigners who would try to stop us, not whatever army came in the next autumn's war."

"It doesn't have to be like that," Maati said.

"It does," Cehmai said. "We held the power of gods, and the world envied us and turned against us, and they always will again. I can't say I think much of where we stand now, but I remember what happened to bring us here, and I don't see how making poets of women instead of men will make a world any different or better than the one we had then."

"It may not," Maati said, "but it will be better than the one we have now. If you won't help me, then I'll do without you, but I'd thought better of you, Cehmai. I'd thought you had more spine."

"Rice is getting cold," Idaan said. Her voice was controlled rage. "Perhaps we should eat it before it goes bad."

They finished the meal alternating between artificially polite conversation and strained silence. After, Cehmai took the bowls away to clean and didn't return. Idaan led Maati to a small room near the back with a straw pallet and a night candle already burning. Maati slept poorly and found himself still upset when he woke. He left in the dark of the morning without speaking again to either of his hosts, one from disappointment and shame and the other, though he would never have said it, from fear.

Nantani was the nearest port to the lands of Galt, but the scars of war were too fresh there and too deep. Instead, the gods had conspired to return Otah to the city of his childhood: Saraykeht.

The fastest ships arrived several days before the great mass of the fleet. They stood out half a hand's travel from the seafront, and Otah took in the whole city. He could see the masts at the farthest end of the seafront, berthed in order to leave the greatest space for the incoming traffic. Bright cloth hung from every window Otah could see, starting with the dock master's offices nearest the water to the towers of the palaces, high and to the north where the vibrant colors were grayed by humidity.

Crowds filled the docks, and he heard a roar of voices and snatches of drum and flute carried by the breeze. The air itself smelled different: rank and green and familiar in a way he hadn't expected.

The Emperor of the Khaiem had been away from his cities for eight months, almost nine, and his return with the high families of Galt in tow was the kind of event seen once in history and never again. This was the day that every man and woman at the seafront or watching from the windows above the streets would recall until death's long fingers touched them. The day that the new empress, the Galtic empress, arrived for the first time.

There were stories Otah had read in books that had been ashes for almost as long as this new Empress had been alive, about an emperor's life mirroring the state of his empire. An emperor with many children meant rich, fertile land; one without heir spoke of poor crops and thin cattle. An emperor who drank himself to sleep meant an empire of libertines; one who studied and prayed, a somber land of great wisdom. He had halfbelieved the stories then. He had no faith in them now.

"You would think they would have made some allowance for our arrival," a man's peevish voice said from behind him. Otah looked back at Balasar Gice, dressed in formal brocade armor and shining with sweat. Otah took a pose of powerlessness before the gods.

"The wind does what the wind does," he said. "We'll be on land by nightfall."

"We will," Balasar said. "But the others will be docking and unloading all night."

It was true. Saraykeht would likely add something near a tenth of its population in the next day, Galts filling the guest quarters and wayhouses and likely half the beds in the soft quarter. It was the second time in Otah's life that a pale-skinned, round-eyed neighborhood without buildings had appeared in his city. Only now, it would happen without drawn blades and blood.

"They're sending tow galleys out for us," Otah said. "It will all be fine."

The galleys, with their flashing banks of white oars and ornamental ironwork rails, reached the great ship just after midday. With a great clamor of voices-protests, laughter, orders, counterorders-thick cables of hemp were made fast to the ship's deck. The sails were already down, and with the sound of a bell clanging like an alarm, Otah's ship lurched, shifted directly into the wind, and began the last, shortest leg of his journey home.

A welcoming platform had been erected especially for the occasion. The broad beams were white as snow, and a ceremonial guard waited by a litter while a somewhat less ceremonial one kept the press of the crowds at a distance. Balasar and six of the Galtic High Council had made their way to Otah's ship in order to disembark with him. The Avenger with Ana and her parents would likely come next, after which the roar of competing etiquette masters would likely drown out the ocean. Otah was more than willing to leave the fighting for position and status for the dock master to settle out.

The crowd's voice rose when the ship pulled in, and again when the walk bridged the shifting gap between ship and land. His servants preceded him in the proper array and sequence, and then Otah left the sea. The noise was something physical, a wind built of sound. The ceremonial guard adopted poses of obeisance, and Otah took his ritual reply. The first of the guard to stand, grinning, was Sinja.

"You've shaved your whiskers," Otah shouted.

"I was starting to look like an otter," Sinja agreed. His expression became opaque and he bowed to Otah's right. "Balasar-cha."

"Sinja," Balasar said.

The past intruded. Once Sinja had played the part of Balasar's man, expert on the cities of the Khaiem and mercenary leader of war. He had spied on the Galts, betrayed Balasar, and killed the man Balasar held dearest to his heart. It thickened the air between them, even now. Balasar's eyes shifted to the middle distance, a frown on his lips as if he were counting how many of his dead might have lived, had Sinja remained true. And then the moment was gone. Or if not gone, covered over for the sake of etiquette.

The others of the Galtic party lurched in from the ship, unsteady on planks that didn't move, and the assembled masses cheered each of them like a hero returned from war. Servants dressed in light cotton robes led each sweating Galt to a waiting litter, Otah's station of honor making him the last to leave.

"I suspect they'll be changing to local clothes before long," Sinja said. "They all look half-dead with the heat."

"I'm feeling it myself," Otah said.

"Should I interrupt protocol?" Sinja asked. "I could have you loaded and on your way up the hills in the time it takes to kill a chicken."

"No," Otah said with a sigh. "If we're doing this, let's do it well. But ride with me, eh? I want to hear what's going on."

"Yes," Sinja said. "Well. You've missed some dramatics, but I don't think there's anything particularly ominous waiting. Except the pirates. And the conspiracy. You did get the report about the conspiracy in Yalakeht? It's apparently got ties to Obar State."

"Well, that's just lovely," Otah said.

"No more plague than usual," Sinja offered gamely, and then it was time and servants stepped forward to escort Otah to his litter. The shifting gait of his bearers was similar to being aboard ship, but also wrong. Between that and the heat, Otah was beginning to feel nauseated, but the buildings that passed by his beaded window were comforting. Great blue and white walls topped with roof tiles of gray and red; banners hanging in the slow, thick air; men and women in poses of welcome or else waving small lengths of brightly colored cloth. If it had been autumn or winter, the old firekeepers' kilns would have been lit and strange flames would have accompanied him up the wide streets to the palaces.

"Any problems with the arrival?" he asked Sinja.

"A few. Angry women throwing stones, mostly. We've locked them away until the last ship comes in. Danat and I decided to put the girl and her family in the poet's house. It isn't the most impressive location, but it's comfortable, and it's far enough back from the other buildings that they might have some privacy. The gods all know they'll be gawked at like a three-headed calf the rest of the time."

"I think Ana has a lover," Otah said. "One of the sailors was built rather like a courtier."

"Ah," Sinja said. "I'll tell the guard to keep eyes out. I assume we'd rather he didn't come calling?"

"No, better that he not," Otah said.

"I don't suppose there's a chance the girl's still a virgin?"

Otah took a pose that dismissed the concern. Even if she weren'tand of course she wasn't-she wouldn't be bearing another man's child. Not if the boy he had glimpsed in the hold of the Avenger was a Galt. Otah felt a moment's unease.

"If the guard do find a boy sneaking in, have him held until I can speak with him. I'd rather that this whole situation not get more complex than it already is."

"Your word is law, Most High," Sinja said, his tone light. Otah chuckled.

He had missed the man's company. There were few people in the world who could see Otah beneath his titles, fewer still who dared mock him. It was a familiarity that had been forged by years. Together, they had acted against the plot which had first changed Otah from outcast to Khai Machi. They had loved the same woman and come near violence over it. Sinja had trained Otah's son in the arts of combat and strategy, had gotten drunk with the Emperor after Kiyan's funeral, had spoken his mind whether invited to or not. Otah had no other advisor or friend like him.

As they moved north, the crowd that lined the street changed its nature. Once they had passed out of the throng at the seafront, the robes and faces had been those of laborers and artisans. As they passed the compounds of the merchant houses, the robes and banners became more ornate. Rich and saturated colors were edged with embroidery of gold and worked in the symbols of the various houses. And then almost without a pause, the symbols and colors were not of merchants, but of the families of the utkhaiem, and the high walls and ornate shutters were not mercantile compounds, but palaces. Men and women in fine robes took poses of welcome and obeisance as servants and slaves fanned them. A hidden choir burst into song somewhere to his left, the voices in complex harmony. The litter stopped before the grand palace, the first palace, the Emperor's palace. Otah stepped out, sweeping his gaze over the ordered rows of servants and high officials until he saw the one man he'd longed for.

Danat was in his twentieth summer, his face a mixture of Otah's long, northern features and Kiyan's, thin and foxlike. The planes of his cheeks had sharpened since Otah had gone. He looked older, more handsome. He wore a robe of deep gray set off with a rich, red sash that suited him. And still, Otah could see all the boys that had made this man: the babe, the bumbling child new to his own feet, the long-ill boy kept in his bed, the awkward and sorrowful youth, and the young heir to the Empire. All of them stood before him, hands in a pose of formal welcome, a smile glittering in his eyes. Otah broke protocol, embracing his son. The boy's arms were strong.

"You've done well," Otah murmured.

"None of the cities actually burned down while you were gone," Danat replied softly. There was pride in his voice, pleasure at the compliment.

"But you sound too much like Sinja."

"You knew that was a risk."

Otah laughed and let the swarm of servants precede him to his chambers. There would be no end of ceremonies later. Welcomes would drag on for weeks, audiences, special pleadings, feasts, dances, negotiations, councils. It all lay before him like a life's work started late. But now, sitting in the cool breeze of his private apartments with Sinja across from him and Danat pouring chilled water into stone bowls, the world was perfect.

Except, of course, that it wasn't.

"Perhaps we can mend both breaks with the same nail," Sinja said. "A strong showing against the pirates protects Chaburi-Tan and warns Obar State to keep to its own house."

"And a weak showing against them?" Otah asked.

"Shows we're weak, after which things go poorly," Sinja said. "But if we're going to assume failure from the start, there's not going to be anything of use that I can offer."

Otah propped up his feet. The palaces still felt as if they were swaying: the ghost motion of weeks aboard ship. The feeling was oddly pleasant.

"On the other hand," he said, "if we plan to decimate the enemy with a flower and a pillow, it's not going to help us. How strong is our fleet? Do we have enough men to take the pirates in a fair fight?"

"If we don't have them now, we certainly won't next year when all the sailors are a year older," Sinja said. "Even if you magically transport every fertile girl in Galt straight to some poor bastard's bed, it will be ten years before they can deliver us anyone strong enough to coil rope, much less fight. If we're going to do anything, it has to be now. We're going to grow weaker before we're strong."

"If we manage to get strong," Otah said. "And I don't know that we can spare the ships. We have eleven cities and the gods alone know how many low towns. We're talking about moving half a million of our men to Galt and bringing back as many of their women."

"Well, yes, shipping out anyone we have of fighting age now won't help the matter," Sinja said.

"Galt could do it," Danat said. "They have experience with sea wars. They have fighting ships and the veterans."

Otah saw the considering expression on Sinja's face. He let the silence stretch.

"I don't like it," Sinja said at last. "I don't know why I don't like it, but I don't."

"We're still thinking of our problems as our own," Danat said. "Asking Galt to fight our battles might seem odd, but they'd be protecting their own land too. In a generation, Chaburi-Tan is going to be as much their city as ours."

Otah felt an odd pressure in his chest. It was true, of course. It was what he had spent years working to accomplish. And still, when Danat put it in bare terms like that, it was hard for him to hear it.

"It's more than that," Sinja said.

"Is it Balasar?" Otah asked.

Sinja leaned forward, his fingers laced on his knee, his mouth set in a scowl. At length, he spoke.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, it is."

"He's forgiven me," Otah said. "Perhaps the two of you-"

"All respect, Otah-cha," Sinja said. "You were his enemy. That's a fair position. I broke my oath, lied to him, and killed his best captain. He's a man who loves loyalty, and I was one of his men. It's not the same."

"Perhaps it isn't," Otah agreed.

"Balasar-cha doesn't have to be the one to lead it," Danat said. "Or, all respect, Sinja-cha, for that."

"No, of course we don't," Sinja said. "It's not my head that's struggling with the thought. It's just… The boy's right, Otah-cha. A mixed fleet, their ships and ours, sinking the pirates would be the best solution. I don't know if we can negotiate the thing, but it's worth considering."

Otah scratched his leg.

"Farrer-cha," he said. "Danat's new father. He has experience with sea fighting. I think he hates all of us together and individually for Anacha's upcoming marriage, but he would still be the man to approach."

Danat took a long drink of water and grinned. It made him look younger.

"After the ceremony's done with," Sinja said. "We'll get the man drunk and happy and see if we can't make him sign something binding before he sobers up."

"If it were only so simple," Otah said. "With the High Council and the Low Council and the Conclave, every step they take is like putting cats in a straight line. Watching it in action, it's amazing they ever put together a war."

"You should talk to Balasar," Sinja said.

"I will," Otah replied.

They moved on to other topics. Some were more difficult: weavers and stonemasons on the coasts had started offering money to apprentices, so the nearby farms were losing hands; the taxes from Amnat-Tan had been lower than expected; the raids in the northern passes were getting worse. Others were innocuous: court fashions had shifted toward robes with a more Galtic drape; the shipping traffic on the rivers was faster now that they'd figured out how to harness boilers to do the rowing; and finally, Eiah had sent word that she was busy assisting a physician in Pathai and would not attend her brother's wedding.

Otah paused over this letter, rereading his daughter's neat, clear hand. The words were all simple, the grammar formal and appropriate. She made no accusations, leveled no arguments against him. It might have been better if she had. Anger was, at least, not distance.

He considered the implications of her absence. On one hand, it could hardly go unnoticed that the imperial family was not all in attendance. On the other, Eiah had broken with him years ago, when his present plan had still been only a rough sketch. If she was there, it might have served only to remind the women of the cities that they had in a sense been discarded. The next generation would have no Khaiate mothers, and the solace that neither would they have Galtic fathers would be cold comfort at best. He folded his daughter's letter and tucked it into his sleeve, his heart heavy with the thought that not having her near was likely for the best.

After, Otah retired to his rooms, sent his servants away, and lay on his bed, watching the pale netting shift in a barely felt breeze. It was strange being home, hearing his own language in the streets, smelling the air he'd breathed as a youth.

Ana and her parents would be settled in by now, sitting, perhaps, on the porch that looked out over the koi pond and its bridge. Perhaps putting back the hinged walls to let in the air. Otah had spent some little time at the poet's house of Saraykeht once, back when he'd been Danat's age and the drinking companion and friend of Maati Vaupathai. Back in some other life. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the rooms as they'd been when Seedless and the poet Heshai had still been in the world. The confusion of scrolls and books, the ashes piled up in the grate, the smell of incense and old wine. He didn't realize that he was falling asleep until Seedless smirked and turned away, and Otah knew he was in dreams.

A human voice woke him. The angle of the sun had shifted, the day almost passed. Otah sat up, struggling to focus his eyes. The servant spoke again.

"Most High, the welcoming ceremonies are due in a hand and a half. Shall I tell the Master of Tides to postpone them?"

"No," Otah said. His voice sounded groggy. He wondered how long the servant had been trying to rouse him. "No, not at all. Send me clean robes. Or… no, send them to the baths. I'll be there."

The servant fell into a pose that accepted the command as law. It seemed a little overstated to Otah, but he'd grown accustomed to other people taking his role more seriously than he did himself. He refreshed himself, met with the representatives of two high families and a trading house with connections in Obar State and Bakta, and allowed himself to be swept along to the grand celebration. They would welcome their onetime invaders with music and gifts and intrigue and, he suspected, the equivalent weight of the palaces in wine and food.

The grandest hall of his palaces stood open on a wide garden of nightblooming plants. A network of whisperers stood on platforms, ready to repeat the ceremonial greetings and ritual out to the farthest ear. Otah didn't doubt that runners were waiting at the edge of the gardens to carry reports of the event even farther. The press of bodies was intense, the sound of voices so riotous that the musicians and singers set to wander the garden in serenade had all been sent home.

Otah sat on the black lacquer chair of the Khai Saraykeht, his spine straight and his hands folded as gracefully as he could manage. Cushions for Danat and Sinja and all of Otah's highest officers were arrayed behind him, perhaps two-thirds filled. The others were, doubtless, in the throng of silk and gems. There was nowhere else to be tonight. Not in Saraykeht. Perhaps not in the world.

Danat brought him a bowl of cold wine, but it was too loud to have any conversation beyond the trading of thanks and welcome. Danat took his place on the cushion at Otah's side. Farrer Dasin, Otah saw, had been given not a chair but a rosewood bench. Issandra and Ana were on cushions at his feet. All three looked overwhelmed about the eyes. Otah caught Issandra's gaze and adopted a pose of welcome, which she returned admirably.

He turned his attention to her husband. Farrer Dasin, stern and gray. Otah found himself wondering how best to approach the man about this new proposal. Though he knew better, he could not help thinking of Galt and his own cities as separate, as two empires in alliance. Farrer Dasin- indeed, most of the High Council-were sure to be thinking in the same ways. They were all wrong, of course, Otah included. They were marrying two families together, but more than that they were binding two cultures, two governments, two histories. His own grandchildren would live and die in a world unrecognizably different from the one Otah had known; he would be as foreign to them as Galt had been to him.

And here, on this clear, crowded night, the cycle of ages was turning. He found himself irrationally certain that Farrer Dasin could be persuaded to lead, or at least to sponsor, a campaign against the pirates at Chaburi-Tan. They had done this. They could do anything.

The signal came: flutes and drums in fanfare as the cloth lanterns rose to the dais. Otah stood up and the crowd before him went silent. Only the sound of a thousand breaths competed with the songbirds and crickets.

Otah gave his address in the tones appropriate to his place, practiced over the course of years. He found himself changing the words he had practiced. Instead of speaking only of the future, he also wanted to honor the past. He wanted every person there to know that in addition to the world they were making, there was a world-in some ways good, in others evil-that they were leaving behind.

They listened to him as if he were a singer, their eyes fastened to him, the silence complete apart from his own words in the hundred throats of the whisperers echoing out into the summer night. When he took the pose that would end his recitation, he saw tears on more than one face, and on the faces of more than one nation. He made his way to Farrer Dasin and formally invited the man to speak. The Galt stood, bowed to Otah as a gesture between equals, and moved forward. Otah returned to his seat with only the lightest twinge of trepidation.

"Are you sure you should let him speak?" Sinja murmured.

"There's no avoiding it," Otah replied, still smiling. "It will be fine."

The councilman cleared his throat, stood in the odd, awkward style of Galtic orators-one foot before the other, one hand in the air, the other clasping his jacket and spoke. All of Otah's worst fears were put at once to rest. It was as if Issandra had written the words and spoke them now through her husband's mouth. The joy that was children, the dark years that the war had brought, the emptiness of a world without the laughter of babes. And now, the darkness ended.

Otah felt himself begin to weep slightly. He wished deeply that Kiyan had lived to see this night. He hoped that whatever gods were more than stories and metaphors took word of it to her. The old Galt bowed his head to the crowd. The applause was like an earthquake or a flood. Otah rose and held his hand out to Danat as Fatter Dasin did the same with his daughter. The Emperor-to-be and his Empress meeting here for the first time. There would be songs sung of this night, Otah knew.

Ana was beautiful. Someone had seen to it that the gown she wore flattered her. Her face was painted in perfect harmony with her hair and the gold of her necklace. Danat wore a black robe embroidered with gold and cut to please the Galtic eye. Farrer and Otah stepped back, leaving their children to the center of the dais. Danat tried a smile. The girl's eyes fluttered; her cheeks were flushed under the paint, her breath fast.

"Danat Machi?" she said.

"Ana Dasin," he replied.

The girl took a deep breath. Her pretty, rodentlike face shone. When she spoke, her voice was strong and certain.

"I will never consent to lay down with you, and if you rape me, I will see the world knows it. My lover is Hanchat Dor, and I will have no other."

Otah felt his face go white. In the corner of his eye, he saw Farrer Dasin rock back like a man struck by a stone and then raise a hand to his face. Danat's mouth opened and closed like a fish's. The whisperers paused, and then a heartbeat later, the words went out where they could never be called back. The voice of the crowd rose up like the waters of chaos come to drown them all.