THE (tlpq-4) (13 page)

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.

6

Maati relived his conversation with Cehmai a thousand times in the weeks

that followed. He rose in the morning from whatever rough camp or

wayhouse bed he'd fallen into the night before, and he muttered his

arguments to Cehmai. He rode his weary mule along overgrown tracks thick

with heat and heavy with humidity, and he spoke aloud, gesturing. He ate

his evening meals with the late sunset of summer, and in his mind,

Cehmai sat across from him, dumbfounded and ashamed, persuaded at last

by the force of Maati's argument. And when Maati's imagination returned

him to the world as it was, his failure and shame poured in on him afresh.

Every low town he passed through, the mud streets empty of the sound of

children, was a rebuke. Every woman he met, an accusation. He had

failed. He had gone to the one man in the world who might have lightened

his burden, and he had been refused. The better part of the season was

lost to him now. It was time he should have spent with the girls,

preparing the grammar and writing his book. They were days he would

never win back. If he had stayed, perhaps they would have had a

breakthrough. Perhaps there would already be an andat in the world, and

Otah's plans ruined.

And what if by going after Cehmai, Maati had somehow lost that chance?

With every day, it seemed more likely. As the trees and deer of the

river valleys gave way to the high, dry plains between Pathai and ruined

Nantani, Maati became more and more sure that his error had been

catastrophic. Irretrievable. And so it was also another mark against

Otah Machi. Otah, the Emperor, to whom no rules applied.

Maati found the high road, and then the turning that would lead, given

half a day's ride, to the school. To his students. To Eiah. He camped at

the crossroads.

He was too old to be living on muleback. Lying in the thin folds of his

bedroll, he ached as if he'd been beaten. His back had been suffering

spasms for days; they had grown painful enough that he hadn't slept

deeply. And his exhaustion seemed to make his muscles worse. The high

plains grew cool at night, almost cold, and the air smelled of dust. He

heard the skittering of lizards or mice and the low call of owls. The

stars shone down on him, each point of light smeared by his aging eyes

until the whole sky seemed possessed by a single luminous cloud.

There had been a time he'd lain under stars and picked out

constellations. There was a time his body could have taken rest on

cobblestone, had the need arisen. There was a time Cehmai, poet of Machi

and master of Stone-Made-Soft, had looked up to him.

It was going to be hard to tell Eiah that he'd failed. The others as

well, but Eiah knew Cehmai. She had seen them work together. The others

might be disappointed, but Eiah alone would understand what he had lost.

His dread slowed him. At this, his last camp, he ate his breakfast and

watched the slow sunrise. He packed his mule slowly, then walked

westward, his shadow stretching out ahead and growing slowly smaller.

The shapes of the hills grew familiar, and the pauses he took grew

longer. Here was the dry streambed where he and the other black-robed

boys had sat in the evenings and told one another stories of the

families they had already half-forgotten. There, a grouping of stumps

showed where the stand of trees they had climbed had been felled by

Galtic axes and burned. A cave under an outcropping of rock where they'd

made the younger boys slither into the darkness to hunt snakes. The air

was as rich with memory as the scent of dust and wildflowers. His life

had been simpler then, or if not simpler, at least a thing that held

promise.

He managed to postpone his arrival at the school itself until the sun

was lowering before him. The grand stone buildings looked smaller than

he remembered them, but the great bronze door that had once been

reserved for the Dai-kvo was just as grand. The high, narrow windows

were marked black at the tops, the remnants of some long-dead fire. The

wall of one of the sleeping chambers had fallen, stones strewn on the

ground. The gardens were gone, marked only by low mounds where stones

had once formed their borders. Time and violence had changed the place,

but not yet beyond recognition. Another decade of rain washing mortar

from between the stones, another fire, and perhaps the roofs would

collapse. The ground would reclaim its own.

Maati tied his mule to a low, half-rotten post and made his way in. The

grand room where he and the other boys had stood in rows each morning

before marching off to their duties and classes. The wide corri dors

beyond it, lit only by the reddish rays of the evening sun. Where were

the bodies of the boys who had been here on the day the armies of Galt

arrived? Where had those bones been buried? And where, now, were Maati's

own students? Had something gone awry?

When he reached the inner courtyard, his concerns eased. The flagstone

paths were clear of dirt and dust, the weeds and grass had been pulled

from between the stones. And there, in the third window that had once

been the teachers' quarters, a lantern glowed already against the

falling night.

The door that opened to the wide central hall had been fitted with a new

leather hinge. The walls and floors, freshly washed, shone in the light

of a hundred candles. The scent of curry and the sound of women's voices