A Betrayal in Winter

There were four great roads that connected the cities of the Khaiem, one named for each of the cardinal directions. The North Road that linked Cetani, Machi, and Amnat-Ian was not the worst, in part because there was no traffic in the winter, when the snows let men make a road wherever desire took them. Also the stones were damaged more by the cycle of thaw and frost that troubled the north only in spring and autumn. In high summer, it rarely froze, and for a third of the year it did not thaw. The West Road-far from the sea and not so far south as to keep the winters warm-required the most repair.

"They'll have crews of indentured slaves and laborers out in shifts," the old man in the cart beside Otah said, raising a finger as if his oratory was on par with the High Emperor's, back when there had been an empire. "They start at one end, reset the stones until they reach the other, and begin again. It never ends."

Otah glanced across the cart at the young woman nursing her babe and rolled his eyes. She smiled and shrugged so slightly that their orator didn't notice the movement. The cart lurched down into and up from another wide hole where the stones had shattered and not yet been replaced.

"I have walked them all," the old man said, "though they've worn me more than I've worn them. Oh yes, much more than I've worn them."

He cackled, as he always seemed to when he made this observation. The little caravan-four carts hauled by old horses-was still six days from Cetani. Otah wondered whether his own legs were rested enough that he could start walking again.

He had bought an old laborer's robe of blue-gray wool from a rag shop, chopped his hair to change its shape, and let his thin beard start to grow in. Once his whiskers had been long enough to braid, but the east islanders he'd lived with had laughed at him and pretended to mistake him for a woman. After Cetani, it would take another twenty days to reach the docks outside Amnat-tan. And then, if he could find a fishing boat that would take him on, he would be among those men again, singing songs in a tongue he hadn't tried out in years, explaining again, either with the truth or outrageous stories, why his marriage mark was only half done.

He would die there-on the islands or on the sea-under whatever new name he chose for himself. Itani Noygu was gone. He had died in Machi. Another life was behind him, and the prospect of beginning again, alone in a foreign land, tired him more than the walking.

"Now, southern wood's too soft to really build with. The winters are too warm to really harden them. Up here there's trees that would blunt a dozen axes before they fell," the old man said.

"You know everything, don't you grandfather?" Otah said. If his annoyance was in his voice, the old man noticed nothing, because he cackled again.

"It's because I've been everywhere and done everything," the old man said. "I even helped hunt down the Khai Amnat-Tan's older brother when they had their last succession. "There were a dozen of us, and it was the dead of winter. Your piss would freeze before it touched ground. Oh, eh ..."

The old man took a pose of apology to the young woman and her babe, and Otah swung himself out of the cart. It wasn't a story he cared to hear. The road wound through a valley, high pine forest on either side, the air sharp and fragrant with the resin. It was beautiful, and he pictured it thick with snow, the image coming so clear that he wondered whether he might once have seen it that way. When the clatter of hooves came from the west, he forced himself again to relax his shoulders and look as curious and excited as the others. Twice before, couriers on fast horses had passed the 'van, laden with news, Otah knew, of the search for him.

It had taken an effort of will not to run as fast as he could after he had been discovered, but the search was for a false courier either plotting murder or fleeing like a rabbit. No one would pay attention to a plodding laborer off to stay with his sister's family in a low town outside Cetani. And yet, as the horses approached, tension grew in his breast. He prepared himself for the shock if one of the riders had a familiar face.

There were three this time-utkhaiem to judge by their robes and the quality of their mounts-and none of them men he knew. They didn't slow for the 'van, but the armsmen of the 'van, the drivers, the dozen hangers-on like himself all shouted at them for news. One of them turned in his saddle and yelled something, but Otah couldn't make it out and the rider didn't repeat it. Ten days on the road. Six more to Cetani. The only challenge was not to be where they were looking for him.

They reached a wayhouse with the sun still three and a half hands above the treetops. The building was of northern design: stone walls thick as the span of a man's arm and stables and goat pen on the ground floor where the heat of the animals would rise and help warm the place in the winter. While the merchants and armsmen argued over whether to stop now or go farther and sleep in the open, Otah ran his eyes over the windows and walked around to the back, looking for all the signs Kiyan had taught him to know whether the keeper was working with robbers or keeping an unsafe kitchen. The house met all of her best marks. It seemed safe.

By the time he'd returned to the carts, his companions had decided to stay. After Otah had helped stable the horses, they shifted the carts into a locked courtyard. The caravan's leader haggled with the keeper about the rooms and came to an agreement that Otah privately thought gave the keep the better half. Otah made his way up two flights of stairs to the room he was to share with five armsmen, two drivers, and the old man. He curled himself up in a corner on the floor. It was too small a room, and one of the drivers snored badly. A little sleep when things were quiet would only make the next day easier.

He woke in darkness to the sound of music-a drum throbbed and a flute sighed. A man's voice and a woman's moved in rough harmony. He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robe and went down to the main room. The members of his 'van were all there and half a dozen other men besides. The air smelled of hot wine and roast lamb, pine trees and smoke. Otah sat at a rough, worn table beside one of the drivers and watched.

The singer was the keep himself, a pot-bellied man with a nose that had been broken and badly set. He drew the deep heat from a skin and earthenware drum as he sang. His wife was shapely as a potato with an ugly face and a missing eye tooth, but their voices were well suited and their affection for each other forgave them much. Otah found himself tapping his fingertips against the table to match the drumbeats.

His mind went back to Kiyan, and the nights of music and stories and gossip he had spent in her wayhouse, far away to the south. He wondered what she was doing tonight, what music filled the warm air and competed with the murmur of the river.

When the last note had faded to silence, the crowd applauded, yelped, and howled their appreciation. Otah made his way to the singer-he was shorter than Otah had thought-and took his hand. The keeper beamed and blushed when Otah told him how good the music had been.

"We've had a few years practice, and there's only so much to do when the days are short," the keep said. "The winter choirs in Machi make us sound like street beggars."

Otah smiled, regret pulling at him that he would never hear those songs, and a moment later he heard his name being spoken.

"Itani Noygu's what he was calling himself," one of the merchants said. "Played a courier for House Siyanti."

"I think I met him," a man said whom Otah had never met. "I knew there was something odd about the man."

"And the poet ... the one that had his belly opened for him? He's picking the other Siyanti men apart like they were baked fish. The upstart has to wish that job had been done right the first time."

"Sounds as if I've missed something," Otah said, putting on his most charming smile. "What's this about a poet's belly?"

The merchant frowned at the interruption until Otah motioned to the keep's wife and bought bowls of hot wine for the table. After that, the gossip flowed more freely.

Maati Vaupathai had been attacked, and the common wisdom held that Otah had arranged it. The most likely version was that the upstart had been passing as a courier, but others said that he had made his way into the palaces dressed as a servant or a meat seller. There was no question, though, that the Khai had sent out runners to all the winter cities asking for the couriers and overseers of House Siyanti to attend him at court. Amiit Foss, the man who'd been the upstart's overseer in tldun, was being summoned in particular. It wasn't clear yet whether Siyanti had knowingly backed the Otah Machi, but if they had, it would mean the end of their expansion into the north. Even if they hadn't, the house would suffer.

"And they're sure he was the one who had the poet killed?" Otah asked, using all the skill the gentleman's trade had taught him to hide his deepening despair and disgust.

"It seems they were in Saraykeht together, this poet and the upstart. That was just before Saraykeht fell."

The implications of that hung over the room. Perhaps Otah Machi had somehow been involved with the death of Heshai, the poet of Saraykeht. Who knew what depravity the sixth son of the Khai Machi might sink to? It was a ghost story for them; a tale to pass a night on the road; a sport to follow.

Otah remembered the old, frog-mouthed poet, remembered his kindness and his weakness and his strength. He remembered the regret and the respect and the horrible complicity he'd felt in killing him, all those years ago. It had been so complicated, then. Now, they said it so simply and spoke as if they understood.

"There's rumor of a woman, too. They say he had a lover in Udun."

"If he was a courier, he's likely got a woman in half the cities of the Khaiem. The gods know I would."

"No," the merchant said, shaking his head. He was more than half drunk. "No, they were very clear. All the Siyanti men say he had a lover in Udun and never took another. Loved her like the world, they said. But she left him for another man. I say it's that turned him evil. Love turns on you like ... like milk."

"Gentlemen," the keep's wife said, her voice powerful enough to cut through any conversation. "It's late, and I'm not sleeping until these rooms are cleaned, so get you all to bed. I'll have bread and honey for you at sunrise."

The guests slurped down the last of the wine, ate the last mouthfuls of dried cherries and fresh cheese, and made their various ways toward their various beds. Otah walked down the inner stairs to the stables and the goat yard, then out through a side door and into the darkness. His body felt like he'd just run a race, or else like he was about to.

Kiyan. Kiyan and the wayhouse her father had run. Old Mani. He had set the dogs on them, and that he hadn't intended to would count for nothing if his brothers found her. Whatever happened, whatever they did, it would be his fault.

He found a tall tree and sat with his back against it, looking out at the stars nearest the horizon. The air had the bite of cold in it. Winter never left this place. It made a little room for summer, but it never left. He thought of writing her a letter, of warning her. It would never reach her in time. It was ten days walk back to Machi, six days forward to Cetani, and his brothers' forces would already be on the road south. He could send to Amiit Foss, beg his old overseer to take Kiyan in, to protect her. But there too, word would reach him too late.

Despair settled into his belly, too deep for tears. He was destroying the woman he loved most in the world simply by being who he was, by doing what he'd done. He thought of the boy he had been, marching away from the school across the western snows. He remembered his fear and the warmth of his rage at the poets and his parents and all in the world that treated boys so unfairly. What a pompous little ass he'd been, young and certain and alone. He should have taken the Dal-kvo's offer and become a poet. He might have tried to bind an andat, and maybe failed and paid the price, dying in the attempt. And then Kiyan would never have met him. She would be safe.

There's still a price, he thought, as clear as a voice speaking in his head. You could still pay it.

Machi was ten days' walk, perhaps as little as four and a half days' ride. If he could turn all eyes back to Mach], Kiyan might have at least the chance to escape his idiocy. And what would she matter, if no one need search for him. He could take a horse from the stables now. After all, if he was an upstart and a poisoner and a man turned evil by love, it hardly mattered being a horse thief as well. He closed his eyes, an angry bark of a laugh forcing its way from his throat.

Everything you have won, you've won by leaving, he thought, remembering a woman whom he had known almost well enough to join his life with though he had never loved her, nor she him. Well, Maj, perhaps this time I'll lose.

THE NIGHT CANDLE WAS PAST ITS MIDDLE MARK; TFIK AIR WAS FILLEI) WITH the songs of crickets. Somewhere in the course of things, the pale mist of netting had been pulled from the bed, and the room looked exposed without it. Cehmai could feel Stone-Made-Soft in the back of his mind, but the effort of being truly aware of the andat was too much; his body was thick and heavy and content. Focus and rigor would have their place another time.

Idaan traced her fingertips across his chest, raising gooseflesh. He shivered, took her hand and folded it in his own. She sighed and lay against him. Her hair smelled of roses.

"Why do they call you poets?" she asked.

"It's an old Empire term," Clehmai said. "It's from the binding."

"The andat are poems?" she said. She had the darkest eyes. Like an animal's. He looked at her mouth. The lips were too full to be fashionable. With the paint worn off, he could see how she narrowed them. He raised his head and kissed them again, gently this time. His own mouth felt bruised from their coupling. And then his head grew too heavy, and he let it rest again.

"They're ... like that. Binding one is like describing something perfectly. Understanding it, and expanding it ... I'm not saying this well. Have you ever translated a letter? Taken something in the Khaiate tongues and tried to say the same thing in Westland or an east island tongue?"

"No," she said. "I had to take something from the Empire and rewrite it for a tutor once."

Cchmai closed his eyes. He could feel sleep pulling at him, but he fought against it a hit. He wasn't ready to let the moment pass.

"That's near enough. You had to make choices when you did that. Tiff', could mean take or it could mean give or it could mean exchangeit's yours to choose, depending on how it's used in the original document. And so a letter or a poem doesn't have a set translation. You could have any number of ways that you say the same thing. Binding the andat means describing them-what the thought of them is-so well that you can translate it perfectly into a form that includes will and volition. Like translating a Galtic contract so that all the nuances of the trade are preserved perfectly."

"But there's any number of ways to do that," she said.

"There are very few ways to do it perfectly. And if a binding goes wrong ... Existing isn't normal for them. If you leave an imprecision or an inaccuracy, they escape through it, and the poet pays a price for that. Usually it comes as some particularly gruesome death. And knowing what an andat is can be subtle. Stone-Made-Soft. What do you mean by stone? Iron comes from stone, so is it stone? Sand is made of tiny stones. Is it stone? Bones are like stone. But are they like enough to be called the same name? All those nuances have to be balanced or the binding fails. Happily, the Empire produced some formal grammars that were very precise."

"And you describe this thing...."

"And then you hold that in your mind until you die. Only it's the kind of thought that can think back, so it's wearing sometimes."

"Do you resent it?" Idaan asked, and something in her voice had changed. Cehmai opened his eyes. Idaan was looking past him. Her expression was unfathomable.

"I don't know what you mean," he said.

"You have to carry this thing all your life. Do you ever wish that you hadn't been called to do it?"

"No," he said. "Not really. It's work, but it's work that I like. And I get to meet the most interesting women."

Her gaze cooled, flickered over him, and then away.

"Lucky to be you," she said as she sat up. He watched her as she pulled her robes from the puddle of cloth on the floor. Cehmai sat up. "I have meetings in the morning. I'll need to be in my own rooms to be ready anyway. I might as well go now."

"I might say fewer things that angered you if you talked to me," Cehmai said, gently.

Idaan's head snapped around to him like a hunting cat's, but then her expression softened to chagrin, and she took an apologetic pose.

"I'm overtired," she said. "'T'here are things that I'm carrying, and I don't do it as gracefully as you. I don't mean to take them out on you."

"Why do you do this, Idaan-kya? Why do you come here? I don't think it's that you love me."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No," Cehmai said. "I don't. But if you choose to, that will be fine as well."

"'That's flattering," she said, sarcasm thick in her voice.

"Are you doing this to be flattered?"

He was awake again now. He could see something in her expression pain, anger, something else. She didn't answer him now, only knelt by the bed and felt beneath it for her hoots. He put his hand on her arm and drew her up. He could sense that she was close to speaking, that the words were already there, just below the surface.

"I don't mind only being your bed mate," he said. "I've known from the start that Adrah is the man you plan to be with, and that I couldn't be that for you even if you wanted it. I assume that's part of why you've chosen me. But I am fond of you, and I would like to be your friend."

"You'd be my friend?" she said. "That's nice to hear. You've bedded me and now you'll condescend to be a friend?"

"I think it's more accurate to say you bedded me," Cehmai said. "And it seems to me that people do what we've done quite often without caring about the other person. Or even while wishing them ill. I'll grant that we haven't followed the usual order-I understand people usually know each other first and then fall into bed afterwards-hut in a way that means you should take me more seriously."

She pulled hack and took a pose of query.

"You know I'm not just saying it to get your robes open," he said. "When I say I want to be someone you can speak with, it's truth. I've nothing to gain by it but the thing itself."

She sighed and sat on the bed. The light of the single candle painted her in shades of orange.

"Do you love me, Cehmai-kya?" she asked.

Cehmai took a deep breath and then slowly let it out. He had reached the gate. Her thoughts, her fears. Everything that had driven this girl into his bed was waiting to be loosed. All he would have to do was tell one, simple, banal lie. A lie thousands of men had told for less reason. He was badly tempted.

"Idaan-kya," he said, "I don't know you."

To his surprise, she smiled. She pulled on her hoots, not bothering to lace the bindings, leaned over and kissed him again. Her hand caressed his cheeks.

"Lucky to be you," she said softly.

Neither spoke as they walked down the corridor to the main rooms. The shutters were closed against the night, and the air felt stuffy and thick. He walked with her to the door, then through it, and sat on the steps, watching her vanish among the trees. The crickets still sang. The moon still hung overhead, bathing the night in blue. He heard the high squeak of bats as they skimmed the ponds and pools, the flutter of an owl's wings.

"You should be sleeping," the low, gravel voice said from behind him.

"Yes, I imagine so."

"First light, there's a meeting with the stone potters."

"Yes, there is."

Stone-Made-Soft stepped forward and lowered itself to sit on the step beside him. The familiar bulk of its body rose and fell in a sigh that could only be a comment.

"She's up to something," Cehmai said.

"She might only find herself drawn to two different men," the andat said. "It happens. And you're the one she couldn't build a life with. The other boy ..."

"No," Cehmai said, speaking slowly, letting the thoughts form as he gave them voice. "She isn't drawn to me. Not one."

"She could be flattered that you want her. I've heard that's endearing."

"She's drawn to you."

The andat shifted to look at him. Its wide mouth was smiling.

"That would be a first," it said. "I'd never thought of taking a lover. I don't think I'd know what to do with her."

"Not like that," Cehmai said. "She wants me because of you. Because I'm a poet. If I weren't, she wouldn't be here."

"Does that offend you?"

A gnat landed on the back of Cehmai's hand. The tiny wings tickled, but he looked at it carefully. A small gray insect unaware of its danger. With a puff of breath, he New it into the darkness. The andat waited silently for an answer.

"It should," Cehmai said at last.

"Perhaps you can work on that."

"Being offended?"

"If you think you should be."

The storm in the back of him mind shifted. The constant thought that was this thing at his side moved, kicking like a babe in the womb or a prisoner testing the walls of its cell. Cehmai chuckled.

"You aren't trying to help," he said.

"No," the andat agreed. "Not particularly."

"Did the others understand their lovers? The poets before me?"

"How can I say? They loved women, and were loved by them. They used women and were used by them. You may have found a way to put me on a leash, but you're only men."

THE IRONY WAS THAT, HIS WOUND NOT FULLY HEALED, MAATI SPENT MORE time in the library than he had when he had been playing at scholarship. Only now, instead of spending his mornings there, he found it a calm place to retire when the day's work had exhausted him; when the hunt had worn him thin. It had been fifteen days now since Itani Noygu had walked away from the palaces and vanished. Fourteen days since the assassin had put a dagger in Maati's own guts. Thirteen days since the fire in the cages.

He knew now as much as he was likely to know of Itani Noygu, the courier for House Siyanti, and almost nothing of Otah-kvo. Irani had worked in the gentleman's trade for nearly eight years. He had lived in the eastern islands; he was a charming man, decent at his craft if not expert. He'd had lovers in "Ian-Sadar and tltani, but had broken things off with both after he started keeping company with a wayhouse keeper in Udun. His fellows were frankly disbelieving that this could be the rogue Otah Machi, night-gaunt that haunted the dreams of Machi. But where he probed and demanded, where he dug and pried, pleaded and coddled and threatened, there was no sign of Otah-kvo. Where there should have been secrecy, there was nothing. Where there should have been meetings with high men in his house, or another house, or somebody, there was nothing. There should have been conspiracy against his father, his brothers, the city of his birth. There was nothing.

All of which went to confirm the conclusion that Maati had reached, bleeding on the paving stones. Otah was not scheming for his father's chair, had not killed Biitrah, had not hired the assassin to attack him.

And yet Otah was here, or had been. Maati had written to the Daikvo, outlining what he knew and guessed and only wondered, but he had received no word hack as yet and might not for several weeks. By which time, he suspected, the old Khai would be dead. That thought alone tired him, and it was the library that he turned to for distraction.

He sat back now on one of the thick chairs, slowly unfurling a scroll with his left hand and furling it again with his right. In the space between, ancient words stirred. The pale ink formed the letters of the Empire, and the scroll purported to be an essay by Jaiet Khai-a man named the Servant of Memory from the great years when the word Khai had still meant servant. The grammar was formal and antiquated, the tongue was nothing spoken now. It was unlikely than anyone but a poet would be able to make sense of it.

'T'here are two types of impossibility in the andat, the man long since dust had written. The first of these are those thoughts which cannot be understood. Time and Mind arc examples of this type; mysteries so profound that even the wise cannot do more than guess at their deepest structure. These bindings may someday become possible with greater understanding of the world and our place within it. For this reason they are of no interest to me. The second type is made up of those thoughts by their nature impossible to bind, and no greater knowledge shall ever permit them. Examples of this are Imprecision and Freedom-FromBondage. Holding Time or Mind would be like holding a mountain in your hands. Holding Imprecision would be like holding the backs of your hands in your palms. One of these images may inspire awe, it is true, but the other is interesting.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Maati-cha?" the librarian asked again.

`.. Thank You, Baarath-cha, but no. I'm quite well."

The librarian took a step forward all the same. His hands seemed to twitch towards the books and scrolls that Maati had gathered to look over. The man's smile was fixed, his eyes glassy. In his worst moments, Maati had considered pretending to catch one of the ancient scrolls on fire, if only to see whether Baarath's knees would buckle.

"Because, if there was anything ..."

"Nlaati-cha?" The familiar voice of the young poet rang from the front of the library. Maati turned to see Cehmai stride into the chamber with a casual pose of welcome to Baarath. He dropped into a chair across from Maati's own. The librarian was trapped for a moment between the careful formality he had with Maati and the easy companionship he appeared to enjoy with Cehmai. He hesitated for a moment, then, frowning, retreated.

"I'm sorry about him," Cehmai said. "He's an ass sometimes, but he is good at heart."

"If you say so. And what brings you? I thought there was another celebration of the Khai's daughter making a match."

"A messenger's come from the Dai-kvo," Cehmai said, lowering his voice so that Baarath, no doubt just behind the corner and listening, might not make out the words. "He says it's important."

Maati sat up, his belly twingeing a bit. His messages couldn't have reached the Dai-kvo's village and returned so soon. This had to be something that had been sent before word of his injury had gone out, which meant the Dai-kvo had found something, or wished something done, or ... He noticed Cehmai's expression and paused.

"Is the seal not right?"

"There is no seal," Cehmai said. "There is no letter. The messenger says he was instructed to only speak the message to you, in private. It was too important, he said, to be written."

"That seems unlikely," Maati said.

"Doesn't it?"

"Where is he now?"

"They brought him to the poet's house when they heard who had sent him. I've had him put in a courtyard in the Fourth Palace. A walled one, with armsmen to keep him there. If this is a fresh assassin ..

"Then he'll answer more questions than the last one can," Maati said. ""Take me there."

As they left, Maati saw Baarath swoop down on the hooks and scrolls like a mother reunited with her babe. Maati knew that they would all he hidden in obscure drawers and shelves by the time he came hack. Some, he would likely never see again.

The sun was moving toward the mountain peaks in the west, early evening descending on the valley. They walked together down the white gravel path that led to the Fourth Palace, looking, Maati was sure, like nothing so much as a teacher and his student in their matching brown poet's robes. Except that Cehmai was the man who held the andat, and Maati was only a scholar. They didn't speak, but Maati felt a knot of excitement and apprehension tightening in him.

At the palace's great hall, a servant met them with a pose of formal welcome that couldn't hide the brightness in her eyes. At a gesture, she led them down a wide corridor and then up a flight of stairs to a gallery that looked down into the courtyard. Maati forced himself to breathe deeply as he stepped to the edge and looked down, Cehmai at his side.

The space was modest, but lush. Thin vines rose along one wall and part of another. Two small, sculpted maple trees stood, one at either end of a long, low stone bench. It looked like a painting-the perfectly balanced garden, with the laborer in his ill-cut robes the only thing out of place. A breeze stirred the branches of the trees with a sound equal parts flowing water and dry pages turning. Maati stepped hack. His throat was tight, but his head felt perfectly clear. So this was how it would happen. Very well.

Cehmai was frowning down warily at Otah-kvo. Maati put his hand on the young man's shoulder.

"I have to speak with him," Maati said. "Alone."

"You don't think he's a threat?"

"It doesn't matter. I still need to speak with him."

"Maati-kvo, please take one of the armsmen. Even if you keep him at the far end of the yard, you can ..."

Maati took a pose that refused this, and saw something shift in the young man's eyes. Respect, Maati thought. He thinks I'm being brave. How odd that I was that young once.

"Take me there," Maati said.

OTAH SAT IN THE GARDEN, HIS BACK AND NECK TIGHT FROM RIDING AND from fear, and remembered being young in the summer cities. In one of the low towns outside Saraykeht, there had been a rock at the edge of a cliff that jutted out over the water so that, when the tide was just right, a boy of thirteen summers might step out to its edge and peer past his toes at the ocean below him and feel like a bird. There had been a hand of them-the homeless young scraping by on pity and small laborwho had dared each other to dive from that cliff. The first time he had made the leap himself, he had been sure the moment his feet left the rough, hot stone that he would die. That pause, divorced from earth and water, willing himself hack up, trying to force himself to fly and take hack that one irrevocable moment, had felt very much like sitting quiet and alone in this garden. The trees shifted like slow dancers, the flowers trembled, the stone glowed where the sun struck it and faded to gray where it did not. He rubbed his fingers against the gritty bench to remind himself where he was, and to keep the panic in his breast from possessing him.

He heard the door slide open with a whisper, and then shut again. He rose, forcing his body to move deliberately and took a pose of greeting even before he looked up. Maati Vaupathai. 'l'ime had thickened him, and there was a sorrow in the lines of his face that hadn't been there even in the weary days when he had stood between his master Heshaikvo and the death that had eventually come. Otah wondered whether that change had sprung from Heshai's murder, and whether Maati had ever guessed that Otah had been the one who drew the cord across the old poet's throat.

Maati took a pose of welcome appropriate for a student to a teacher.

"It wasn't me," Otah said. "My brother. You. I had nothing to do with any of it."

"I had guessed that." Maati said. He did not come nearer.

"Are you going to call the armsmen? There must be half a dozen out there. Your student could have been more subtle in calling them."

"'There's more than that, and he isn't my student. I don't have any students. I don't have anything." A strange smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. "I have been something of a disappointment to the Daikvo. Why are you here?"

"Because I need help," Otah said, "and I hoped we might not be enemies.

Maati seemed to weigh the words. He walked to the bench, sat, and leaned forward on clasped hands. Otah sat beside him, and they were silent. A sparrow landed on the ground before them, cocked its head, and fluttered madly away again.

"I came back because it was controlling me," Otah said. "This place. These people. I've spent a lifetime leaving them, and they keep coming back and destroying everything I build. I wanted to see it. I wanted to look at the city and my brothers and my father."

He looked at his hands.

"I don't know what I wanted," Otah said.

"Yes," Maati said, and then, awkwardly, "It was foolish, though. And there will be consequences."

"There have been already."

"There'll be more."

Again, the silence loomed. There was too much to say, and no order for it. Otah frowned hard, opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again.

"I have a son," Maati said. "Liat and I have a son. His name's Nayiit. He's probably just old enough now that he's started to notice that girls aren't always repulsive. I haven't seen them in years."

"I didn't know," Otah said.

"How would you? The Dal-kvo said that I was a fool to keep a family. I am a poet, and my duty is to the world. And when I wouldn't renounce them, I fell from favor. I was given duties that might as well have been done by an educated slave. And you know, there was an odd kind of pride about it for a while. I was given clothing, shelter, food for myself. Only for myself. I thought of leaving. Of folding my robes on the bed and running away as you did. I thought of you, the way you had chosen your own shape for your life instead of the shapes that were offered you. I thought I was doing the same. Gods, Otah-kvo, I wish you had been here. All these years, I wish I had been able to talk to you. To someone.

"I'm sorry...."

Maati raised a hand to stop him.

"My son," Maati said, then his voice thickened, and he coughed and began again. "Liat and I parted ways. My low status among the poets didn't have the air of romance for her that I saw in it. And ... there were other things. Raising my son called for money and time and I had little to spare of either. My son is thirteen summers. Thirteen. She was carrying him before we left Saraykeht."

Otah felt the words as if he'd been struck an unexpected blow-a sensation of shock without source or location, and then the flood. Maati glanced over at him and read his thoughts from his face, and he nodded.

"I know," Maati said. "She told me about bedding you that one time after you came back, before you left again. Before Heshai-kvo died and Seedless vanished. I suppose she was afraid that if I discovered it someday and she hadn't said anything it would make things worse. She told me the truth. And she swore that my son was mine. And I believe her."

"Do you?"

"Of course not. I mean, some days I did. When he was young and I could hold him in one arm, I was sure that he was mine. And then some nights I would wonder. And even in those times when I was sure that he was yours, I still loved him. That was the worst of it. The nights I lay awake in a village where women and children aren't allowed, in a tiny cell that stank of the disapproval of everyone I had ever hoped to please. I knew that I loved him, and that he wasn't mine. No, don't. Let me finish. I couldn't be a father to him. And if I hadn't fathered him either, what was there left but watching from a distance while this little creature grew up and away from me without even knowing my heart was tucked in his sleeve."

Maati wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand.

"Liat said she was tired of my always mourning, that the boy deserved some joy; that she did too. So after that I didn't have them, and I didn't have the respect of the people I saw and worked beside. I was eaten by guilt over losing them, and having taken her from you. I thought that she would have been happy with you. That you would have been happy with her. If only I hadn't broken faith with you, the world might have been right after all. And you might have stayed.

"And that has been my life until the day they called on me to hunt you.

"I see," Otah said.

"I have missed your company so badly, Otah-kya, and I have never hated anyone more. I have been waiting for years to say that. So. Now I have, what was it you wanted from me?"

Otah caught his breath.

"I wanted your help," he said. "There's a woman. She was my lover once. When I told her ... when I told her about my family, my past, she turned me out. She was afraid that knowing me would put her and the people she was responsible for in danger."

"She's wise, then," Maati said.

"I hoped you would help me protect her," Otah said. His heart was a lump of cold lead. "Perhaps that was optimistic."

Maati laughed. The sound was hollow.

"And how would I do that?" Maati asked. "Kill your brothers for you? Tell the Khai that the Dai-kvo had decreed that she was not to be harmed? I don't have that power. I don't have any power at all. This was my chance at redemption. They called upon me to hunt you because I knew your face, and I failed at that until you walked into the palaces and asked to speak with me."

"Go to my father with me. I refused the brand, but I won't now. I'll renounce my claim to the chair in front of anyone he wants, only don't let him kill me before I do it."

Maati looked across at him. The sparrow returned for a moment to perch between them.

"It won't work," he said. "Renunciation isn't a simple thing, and once you've stepped outside of form, stepping back in ..."

"But ..."

"They won't believe you. And even if they did, they'd still fear you enough to see you dead."

Otah took a deep breath, and then slowly let it out, letting his head sink into his hands. The air itself seemed to have grown heavier, thicker. It had been a mad hope, and even in its failure, at least Kiyan would be safe. It was past time, perhaps, that people stopped paying prices for knowing him.

He could feel himself shaking. When he sat, his hands were perfectly still, though he could still feel the trembling in them.

"So what are you going to do?" Otah asked.

"In a moment, I'm going to call in the armsmen that are waiting outside that door," Maati said, his voice deceptively calm. He was trembling as well. "I am going to bring you before the Khai, who will at some point decide either that you are a murderer who has killed his son Biitrah and put you to the sword, or else a legitimate child of Machi who should be set loose for one of your older brothers to kill. I will speak on your behalf, and any evidence I can find that suggests Biitrah's murder wasn't your work, I will present."

"Well, thank you for that, at least."

"Don't," Maati said. "I'm doing it because it's true. If I thought you'd arranged it, I'd have said that."

"Loyalty to the truth isn't something to throw out either."

Maati took a pose that accepted the gratitude, and then dropped his hands to his sides.

"There's something you should know," Otah said. "It might ... it seems to be your business. When I was in the islands, after Saraykeht, there was a woman. Not Maj. Another woman. I shared a bed with her for two, almost three years."

"Otah-kvo, I admire your conquests, but . .

"She wanted a child. From me. But it never took. Almost three years, and she bled with the moon the whole time. I heard that after I left, she took up with a fisherman from it tribe to the north and had a baby girl."

"I see," Maati said, and there was something in his voice. A brightness. "Thank you, Otah-kvo."

"I missed you as well. I wish we had had more time. Or other circumstances."

"As do I. But it isn't ours to choose. Shall we do this thing?"

"I don't suppose I could shave first?" Otah asked, touching his chin.

"I don't see how," Maati said, rising. "But perhaps we can get you some better robes."

Otah didn't mean to laugh; it simply came out of him. And then Maati was laughing as well, and the birds startled around them, lifting up into the sky. Otah rose and took a pose of respect appropriate to the closing of a meeting. Maati responded in kind, and they walked together to the door. Maati slid it open, and Otah looked to see whether there was a gap in the men, a chance to dodge them and sprint out to the streets. He might as well have looked for a stone cloud. The armsmen seemed to have doubled in number, and two already had hare blades at the ready. The young poet-the one Maati said wasn't his student-was there among them, his expression serious and concerned. Maati spoke as if the bulky men and their weapons weren't there.

"Cehmai-cha," he said. "Good that you're here. I would like to introduce you to my old friend, Otah, the sixth son of the Khai Machi. Otahkvo, this is Cchmai Tyan and that small mountain in the back is the andat Stone-Made-Soft which he controls. Cehmai assumed you were an assassin come to finish me off."

"I'm not," Otah said with a levity that seemed at odds with his situation, but which felt perfectly natural. "But I understand the misconception. It's the heard. I'm usually better shaved."

Cehmai opened his mouth, closed it, and then took a formal pose of welcome. Maati turned to the armsmen.

"Chain him," he said.

EVEN AT THE HEIGHT OF MORNING, THE WIVES' QUARTERS OF THE HIGH palace were filled with the small somber activity of a street market starting to close at twilight. In the course of his life, the Khai Machi had taken eleven women as wives. Some had become friends, lovers, companions. Others had been little more than permanent guests in his house, sent as a means of assuring favor as one might send a good hunting dog or a talented slave. Idaan had heard that there were several of them with whom he had never shared a bed. It had been Biitrah's wife, Hiami, who'd told her that, trying to explain to a young girl that the Khaiem had a different relationship to their women than other men had, that it was traditional. It hadn't worked. Even the words the older woman had used-your father chooser not to-had proven her point that this was a comfort house with high ceilings, grand halls, and only a single client.

But now that was changing, not in character, but in the particulars. The succession would have the same effect on the eight wives who remained, whoever took the seat. It would be time for them to leavemake the journey back to whatever city or family had sent them forth in the first place. The oldest of them, a sharp-tongued woman named Carai, would be returning to a high family in Yalakeht where the man who would choose her disposition had been a delighted toddler grinning and filling his pants the last time she'd seen him. Another woman-one of the recent ones hardly older than Idaan herself-had taken a lover in the court. She was being sent hack to Chaburi-"[an, likely to be turned around and shipped off to another of the Khaicm or traded between the houses of the utkhaiem as a token of political alliance. Many of the wives had known each other for decades and would now scatter and lose the friends and companions they had known best. And on and on, every one of them a life shaped by a man's will, constrained by tradition.

Idaan walked through the wide, bright corridors, listened to these women preparing to depart when the inevitable news came, anticipating the grief in a way that was as hard as the grief itself. Perhaps harder. She accepted their congratulations on her marriage. She would be able to remain in the city, and should her man die before her, her family would be there to support her. She, at least, would never he uprooted. Hiami had never understood why Idaan had objected to this way of living. Idaan had never understood why these women hadn't set the palaces on fire.

Her own rooms were set in the back; small apartments with rich tapestries of white and gold on the walls. They might almost have been mistaken for the home of some merchant leader-the overseer of a great trading house, or a trade master who spoke with the voice of a city's craftsmen. If only she had been born one of those. As she entered, one of her servants met her with an expression that suggested news. Idaan took a pose of query.

"Adrah Vaunyogi is waiting to see you, Idaan-cha," the servant girl said. "It was approaching midday, so I've put him in the dining hall. There is food waiting. I hope I haven't ..."

"No," Idaan said, "you did well. Please see that we're left alone."

He sat at the long, wooden table, and he did not look up when she came in. Idaan was willing to ignore him as well as to be ignored, so she gathered a bowl of food from the platters-early grapes from the south, sticky with their own blood; hard, crumbling cheese with a ripe scent that was both appetizing and not; twice-baked flatbread that cracked sharply when she broke off a piece-and retired to a couch. She forced herself to forget that he was here, to look forward at the bare fire grate. Anger buoyed her up, and she clung to it.

She heard it when he stood, heard his footsteps approaching. It was a little victory, but it pleased her. As he sat cross-legged on the floor before her, she raised an eyebrow and sketched a pose of welcome before choosing another grape.

"I came last night," he said. "I was looking for you."

"I wasn't here," she said.

The pause was meant to injure her. Look how sad youu've made me, Idaan. It was a child's tactic, and that it partially worked infuriated her.

"I've had trouble sleeping," she said. "I walk. Otherwise, I'd spend the whole night staring at netting and watching the candle burn down. No call for that."

Adrah sighed and nodded his head.

"I've been troubled too," he said. "My father can't reach the Galts. With Oshai ... with what happened to him, he's afraid they may withdraw their support."

"Your father is an old woman frightened there's a snake in the night bucket," Idaan said, breaking a corner of her bread. "They may lie low now, but once it's clear that you're in position to become Khai, they'll do what they promised. They've nothing to gain by not."

"Once I'm Khai, they'll still own me," Adrah said. "They'll know how I came there. They'll be able to hold it over me. If they tell what they know, the gods only know what would happen."

Idaan took a bite of grape and cheese both-the sweet and the salt mingling pleasantly. When she spoke, she spoke around it.

"They won't. They won't dare, Adrah. Give the worst: we're exposed by the Galts. We're deposed and killed horribly in the streets. Fine. Lift your gaze up from your own corpse for a moment and tell me what happens next?"

"There's a struggle. Some other family takes the chair."

"Yes. And what will the new Khai do?"

"He'll slaughter my family," Adrah said, his voice hollow and ghostly. Idaan leaned forward and slapped him.

"He'll have Stone-Made-Soft level a few Galtic mountain ranges and sink some islands. Do you think there's a Khai in any city that would sit still at the word of the Galtic Council arranging the death of one of their own? The Galts won't own you because your exposure would mean the destruction of their nation and the wholesale slaughter of their people. So worry a little less. You're supposed to he overwhelmed with the delight of marrying me."

"Shouldn't you be delighted too, then?"

"I'm busy mourning my father," she said dryly. "Do we have any wine?"

"How is he? Your father?"

"I don't know," Idaan said. "I try not to see him these days. He makes me ... feel weak. I can't afford that just now."

"I heard he's failing."

"Men can fail for a long time," she said, and stood. She left the bowl on the floor and walked back to her bedroom, holding her hands out before her, sticky with juice. Adrah followed along behind her and lay on her bed. She poured water into her stone basin and watched him as she washed her hands. He was a boy, lost in the world. Perhaps now was as good a time as any. She took a deep breath.

"I've been thinking, Adrah-kya," she said. "About when you become Khai."

He turned his head to look at her, but did not rise or speak.

"It's going to he important, especially at the first, to gather allies. Founding a line is a delicate thing. I know we agreed that it would always be only the two of us, but perhaps we were wrong in that. If you take other wives, you'll have more the appearance of tradition and the support of the families who hind themselves to us."

"My father said the same," he said.

Oh did he? Idaan thought, but she held her face still and calm. She dried her hands on the basin cloth and came to sit on the bed beside him. To her surprise, he was weeping; small tears corning from the outer corners of his eyes, thin tracks shining on his skin. Without willing it, her hand went to his cheek, caressing him. He shifted to look at her.

"I love you, Idaan. I love you more than anything in the world. You are the only person I've ever felt this way about."

His lips trembled and she pressed a finger against them to quiet him. These weren't things she wanted to hear, but he would not be stopped.

"Let's end this," he said. "Let's just be together, here. I'll find another way to move ahead in the court, and your brother ... you'll still be his blood, and we'll still be well kept. Can't we ... can't we, please?"

"All this because you don't want to take another woman?" she said softly, teasing him. "I find that hard to believe."

He took her hand in his. He had soft hands. She remembered thinking that the first time they'd fallen into her bed together. Strong, soft, wide hands. She felt tears forming in her own eyes.

"My father said that I should take other wives," he said. "My mother said that, knowing you, you'd only agree to it if you could take lovers of your own too. And then you weren't here last night, and I waited until it was almost dawn. And you ... you want to ..."

"You think I've taken another man?" she asked.

His lips pressed thin and bloodless, and he nodded. His hand squeezed hers as if she might save his life, if only he held onto her. A hundred things came to her mind all at once. Yes, of course I have. How dare you accuse me? Cehmai is the only clean thing left in my world, and you cannot have him. She smiled as if Adrah were a boy being silly, as if he were wrong.

"That would be the stupidest thing I could possibly do just now," she said, neither lying nor speaking the truth of it. She leaned forward to kiss him, but before their mouths touched, a voice wild with excitement called out from the atrium.

"Idaan-cha! Idaan-cha! Come quickly!"

Idaan leapt up as if she'd been caught doing something she ought not, then gathered herself, straightened her robes. The mirror showed that the paint on her mouth and eyes was smudged from eating and weeping, but there wasn't time to reapply it. She pushed hack a stray lock of hair and stormed out.

The servant girl took a pose of apology as Idaan approached her. She wore the colors of her father's personal retinue, and Idaan's heart sank to her belly. He had died. It had happened. But the girl was smiling, her eyes bright.

"What's happened?" Idaan demanded.

"Everything," the girl said. "You're summoned to the court. The Khai is calling everyone."

"Why? What's happened?"

"I'm not to say, Idaan-cha," the girl said.

Idaan felt the rage-blood in her face as if she were standing near a fire. She didn't think, didn't plan. Her body seemed to move of its own accord as she slid forward and clapped her hand on the servant girl's throat and pressed her to the wall. There was shock in the girl's expression, and Idaan sneered at it. Adrah fluttered like a bird in the corner of her vision.

"Say," Idaan said. "Because I asked you twice, tell me what's happened. And do it now."

"The upstart," the girl said. ""They've caught him."

Idaan stepped back, dropping her hand. The girl's eyes were wide. The air of excitement and pleasure were gone. Adrah put a hand on Idaan's shoulder, and she pushed it away.

"He was here," the girl said. "In the palaces. The visiting poet caught him, and they're bringing him before the Khai."

Idaan licked her lips. Otah Machi was here. He had been here for the gods only knew how long. She looked at Adrah, but his expression spoke of an uncertainty and surprise as deep as her own. And a fear that wasn't entirely about their conspiracy.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Choya," the girl said.

Idaan took a pose of abject apology. It was more than a member of the utkhaiem would have normally presented to a servant, but Idaan felt her guilt welling up like blood from a cut.

"I am very sorry, Choya-cha. I was wrong to-"

"But that isn't all," the servant girl said. "A courier came this morning from 'Ian-Sadar. He'd been riding for three weeks. Kaiin Machi is dead. Your brother Danat killed him, and he's coming hack. The courier guessed he might be a week behind him. I)anat Machi's going to he the new Khai Machi. And Idaan-cha, he'll be back in the city in time for your wedding!"