"Come by tomorrow, though," Baarath said as they left. "There's some old
imperial poetry I've translated that might interest you."
Outside, the night had grown colder, and few lanterns lit the paths and
streets. Cehmai pulled his arms in from their sleeves and held his
fingers against his sides for warmth. His breath plumed blue-white in
the faint moonlight, and even the distant scent of pine resin made the
air seem colder.
"He doesn't think much of our guest," Cehmai said. "I would have thought
he'd be pleased that Maati took little interest in the books, after all
the noise he made."
When Stone-Made-Soft spoke, its breath did not fog. "He's like a girl
bent on protecting her virginity until she finds no one wants it."
Cehmai laughed.
"That is entirely too apt," he said, and the andat took a pose accepting
the compliment.
"You're going to do something," it said.
"I'm going to pay attention," Cehmai said. "If something needs doing,
I'll try to be on hand."
They turned down the cobbled path that led to the poet's house. The
sculpted oaks that lined it rustled in the faint breeze, rubbing new
leaves together like a thousand tiny hands. Cehmai wished that he'd
thought to bring a candle from Baarath's. He imagined Maati Vaupathai
standing in the shadows with his appraising gaze and mysterious agenda.
"You're frightened of him," the andat said, but Cehmai didn't answer.
There was someone there among the trees-a shape shifting in the
darkness. He stopped and slid his arms back into their sleeves. The
andat stopped as well. They weren't far from the house-Cehmai could see
the glow of the lantern left out before his doorway. The story of a poet
slaughtered in a distant city raced in his mind until the figure came
out between him and his doorway, silhouetted in the dim light. Cehmai's
heart didn't slow, but it did change contents.
She still wore the half-mask she'd had at the gathering. Her black and
white robes shifted, the cloth so rich and soft, and he could hear it
even over the murmur of the trees. He stepped toward her, taking a pose
of welcome.
"Idaan," he said. "Is there something ... I didn't expect to find you
here. I mean ... I'm doing this rather badly, aren't l?"
"Start again," she said.
"Idaan."
"Cehmai."
She took a step toward him. He could see the flush in her cheek and
smell the faint, nutty traces of distilled wine on her breath. When she
spoke, her words were sharp and precise.
"I saw what you did to Adrah," she said. "He left a heel mark in the stone."
"Have I given offense?" he asked.
"Not to me. He didn't see it, and I didn't say."
In the back of his mind, or in some quarter of his flesh, Cehmai felt
Stone-Made-Soft receding as if in answer to his own wish. They were
alone on the dark path.
"It's difficult for you, isn't it?" she said. "Being a part of the court
and yet not. Being among the most honored men in the city, and yet not
of Machi."
"I bear it. You've been drinking."
"I have. But I know who I am and where I am. I know what I'm doing."
"What are you doing, Idaan-kya?"
"Poets can't take wives, can they?"
"We don't, no. There's not often room in our lives for a family."
"And lovers?"
Cehmai felt his breath coming faster and willed it to slow. An echo of
amusement in the back of his mind was not his own thought. He ignored it.
"Poets take lovers," he said.
She stepped nearer again, not touching, not speaking. There was no chill
to the air now. There was no darkness. Cehmai's senses were as fresh and
bright and clear as midday, his mind as focused as the first day he'd
controlled the andat. Idaan took his hand and slowly, deliberately, drew
it through the folds of her robes until it cupped her breast.
"You ... you have a lover, Idaan-kya. Adrah ..."
"Do you want me to sleep here tonight?"
"Yes, Idaan. I do."
"And I want that too."
He struggled to think, but his skin felt as though he was basking in
some hidden sun. There seemed to be some sound in his ears that he
couldn't place that drove away everything but his fingertips and the
cold-stippled flesh beneath them.
"I don't understand why you're doing this," he said.
Her lips parted, and she moved half an inch back. His hand pressed
against her skin, his eyes were locked on hers. Fear sang through him
that she would take another step back, that his fingers would only
remember this moment, that this chance would pass. She saw it in his
face, she must have, because she smiled, calm and knowing and sure of
herself, like something from a dream.
"Do you care?" she asked.
"No," he said, half-surprised at the answer. "No, I truly don't."
THE CARAVAN LEFT THE LOW TOWN BEFORE DAWN, CARTWHEELS RATTLING on the
old stone paving, oxen snorting white in the cold, and the voices of
carters and merchants light with the anticipation of journey's end. The
weeks of travel were past. By midday, they would cross the bridge over
the Tidat and enter Machi. The companionship of the roadalready somewhat
strained by differences in political opinions and some unfortunate words
spoken by one of the carters early in the journeywould break apart, and
each of them would be about his own business again. Otah walked with his
hands in his sleeves and his heart divided between dread and
anticipation. Irani Noygu was going to Machi on the business of his
house-the satchel of letters at his side proved that. There was nothing
he carried with him that would suggest anything else. He had come away
from this city as a child so long ago he had only shreds of memory left
of it. A scent of musk, a stone corridor, bathing in a copper tub when
he was small enough to be lifted with a single hand, a view from the top
of one of the towers. Other things as fragmentary, as fleeting. He could
not say which memories were real and which only parts of dreams.
It was enough, he supposed, to be here now, walking in the darkness. He
would go and see it with a man's eyes. He would see this place that had
sent him forth and, despite all his struggles, still had the power to
poison the life he'd built for himself. Itani Noygu had made his way as
an indentured laborer at the seafronts of Saraykeht, as a translator and
fisherman and midwife's assistant in the east islands, as a sailor on a
merchant ship, and as a courier in House Siyanti and all through the
cities. He could write and speak in three tongues, play the flute badly,
tell jokes well, cook his own meals over a half-dead fire, and comport
himself well in any company from the ranks of the utkhaiem to the
denizens of the crudest dockhouse. This from a twelve-year-old boy who
had named himself, been his own father and mother, formed a life out of
little more than the will to do so. Irani Noygu was by any sane standard
a success.
It was Otah Machi who had lost Kiyan's love.
The sky in the east lightened
to indigo and then royal blue, and Otah
could see the road out farther ahead. Between one breath and the next,
the oxen came clearer. And the plains before them opened like a vast
scroll. Far to the north, mountains towered, looking flat as a painting
and blued by the distance. Smoke rose from low towns and mines on the
plain, the greener pathway of trees marked the river, and on the
horizon, small as fingers, rose the dark towers of Machi, unnatural in
the landscape.
Otah stopped as sunlight lit the distant peaks like a fire. The
brilliance crept down and then the distant towers blazed suddenly, and a
moment later, the plain flooded with light. Otah caught his breath.
This is where I started, he thought. I come from here.
He had to trot to catch hack up with the caravan, but the questioning
looks were all answered with a grin and a gesture. The enthusiastic
courier still nave enough to be amazed by a sunrise. There was nothing
more to it than that.
House Siyanti kept no quarters in Machi, but the gentleman's trade had
its provisions for this. Other Houses would extend courtesy even to
rivals so long as it was understood that the intrigues and prying were
kept to decorous levels. If a courier were to act against a rival House
or carried information that would too deeply tempt his hosts, it was
better form to pay for a room elsewhere. Nothing Otah carried was so
specific or so valuable, and once the caravan had made its trek across
the plain and passed over the wide, sinuous bridge into Machi, Otah made
his way to the compound of House Nan.
The structure itself was a gray block three stories high that faced a
wide square and shared walls with the buildings on either side. Otah
stopped by a street cart and bought a bowl of hot noodles in a smoky
black sauce for two lengths of copper and watched the people passing by
with a kind of doubled impression. He saw them as the subjects of his
training: people clumped at the firekeepers' kilns and streetcarts meant
a lively culture of gossip, women walking alone meant little fear of
violence, and so on in the manner that was his profession. He also saw
them as the inhabitants of his childhood. A statue of the first Khai
Machi stood in the square, his noble expression undermined by the pigeon
streaks. An old, rag-wrapped beggar sat on the street, a black lacquer
box before her, and chanted songs. The forges were only a few streets
away, and Otah could smell the sharp smoke; could even, he thought, hear
the faint sound of metal on metal. He sucked down the last of the
noodles and handed back the howl to a man easily twice his age.
"You're new to the north," the man said, not unkindly.
"Does it show?" Otah asked.
"Thick robes. It's spring, and this is warm. If you'd been here over
winter, your blood would be able to stand a little cold."
Otah laughed, but made note. If he were to fit in well, it would mean
suffering the cold. He would have to sit with that. He did want to
understand the place, to see it, if only for a time, through the eyes of
a native, but he didn't want to swim in ice water just because that was
the local custom.
The door servant at the gray House Nan left him waiting in the street
for a while, then returned to usher him to his quarters-a small,
windowless room with four stacked cots that suggested he would be
sharing the small iron brazier in the center of the room with seven
other men, though he was the only one present just then. He thanked the
servant, learned the protocols for entering and leaving the house, got
directions to the nearest bathhouse, and after placing the oiled leather
pouch that held his letters safely with the steward, went back out to
wash off the journey.
The bathhouse smelled of iron pipes and sandalwood, but the air was warm
and thick. A launderer had set tip shop at the front, and Otah gave over
his robes to be scrubbed and kiln-dried with the understanding that it
doomed him to be in the baths for at least the time it took the sun to
move the width of two hands. He walked naked to the public baths and
eased himself into the warm water with a sigh.
"Hai!" a voice called, and Otah opened his eyes. Two older men and a
young woman sat on the same submerged bench on which he rested. One of
the older men spoke.
"You've just come in with the `van?"
"Indeed," Otah said. "Though I hope you could tell by looking more than
smell."
"Where from?"
"Udun, most recently."
The trio moved closer. The woman introduced them all-overseers for a
metalworkers group. Silversmiths, mostly. Otah was gracious and ordered
tea for them all and set about learning what they knew and thought, felt
and feared and hoped for, and all of it with smiles and charm and just
slightly less wit displayed than their own. It was his craft, and they
knew it as well as he did, and would exchange their thoughts and
speculations for his gossip. It was the way of traders and merchants the
world over.
It was not long before the young woman mentioned the name of Otah Machi.
"If it is the upstart behind it all, it's a poor thing for Machi," the
older man said. "None of the trading houses would know him or trust him.
None of the families of the utkhaiem would have ties to him. Even if
he's simply never found, the new Khai will always he watching over his
shoulder. It isn't good to have an uncertain line in the Khai's chair.
The best thing that could happen for the city would be to find him and
put a knife through his belly. Him, and any children he's got meantime."
Otah smiled because it was what a courier of House Siyanti would do. The
younger man sniffed and sipped his bowl of tea. The woman shrugged, the
motion setting small waves across the water.
"It might do us well to have someone new running the city," she said.
"It's clear enough that nothing will change with either of the two
choices we have now. Biitrah. He at least was interested in mechanism.
The Galts have been doing more and more with their little devices, and
we'd be fools to ignore what they've managed."
"Children's toys," the older man said, waving the thought away.
"Toys that have made them the greatest threat Eddensea and the Westlands
have seen," the younger man said. "Their armies can move faster than
anyone else's. There isn't a warden who hasn't felt the bite of them. If
they haven't been invaded, they've had to offer tribute to the Lords
Convocate, and that's just as bad."
"The ward being sacked might disagree," Otah said, trying for a joke to
lighten the mood.
"The problem with the Galts," the woman said, "is they can't hold what
they take. Every year it's another raid, another sack, another fleet
carrying slaves and plunder back to Galt. But they never keep the land.
They'd have much more money if they stayed and ruled the Westlands. Or
Eymond. Or Eddensea."
"Then we'd have only them to trade with," the younger man said. "That'd
be ugly."
"The Galts don'
t have the andat," the older man said, and his tone
carried the rest: they don't have the andat, so they are not worth
considering.
"But if they did," Otah said, hoping to keep the subject away from
himself and his family. "Or if we did not-"
"If the sky dives into the sea, we'll be fishing for birds," the older
man said. "It's this Otah Machi who's uneasing things. I have it on good
authority that Danat and Kaiin have actually called a truce between them
until they can rout out the traitor."
"Traitor?" Otah asked. "I hadn't heard that of him."
"There are stories," the younger man said. "Nothing anyone has proved.
Six years ago, the Khai fell ill, and for a few days, they thought he
might die. Some people suspected poison."
"And hasn't he turned to poison again? Look at Biitrah's death," the
younger man said. "And I tell you the Khai Machi hasn't been himself
since then, not truly. Even if Otah were to claim the chair, it'd be
better to punish him for his crimes and raise up one of the high families."
"It could have been had fish," the woman said. "There was a lot of bad
fish that year."
"No one believes that," the older man said.
"Which of the others would be best for the city now that Biitrah is
gone?" Otah asked.
The older man named Kaiin, and the younger man and woman Danat, in the
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