THE (tlpq-4) (45 page)

"And what about Eiah?" Danat asked. "If she manages her bind„ ing-

"What if she does?" Otah said. "She's been against me from the start.

She's gone with Maati, and between them they've sunk the fleet, burned

Chaburi-Tan, blinded Galt, and killed Sinja. What would you have me say

to her?"

"You'll have to say something," Danat said, his voice harder than Otah

had expected. "And we'll be upon them soon enough. It's a thing you

should consider."

Otah looked over. Danat's head was bowed, his mouth tight.

"You'd like to suggest something?" Otah asked, his voice low and

careful. The anger in his breast shifted like a dog in sleep. Danat

either didn't hear the warning or chose to ignore it.

"We're trading revenge," Danat said. "The Galts came from anger at our

arrogance and fear of the andat. Maati and Vanjit have struck back now

for the deaths during their invasion. This can't go on."

"It isn't in my power to stop it," Otah said.

"It isn't in your power to stop them," Danat said, taking a pose of

correction. "Only promise me this. If you have the chance, you'll

forgive them."

"Forgive them?" Otah said, rising to his feet. "You want them forgiven

for this? You think it can all be put aside? It can't. If you ask

Anacha, I will wager anything you like that she can't look on the deaths

in Galt with calm in her heart. Would you have me forgive them for what

they've done to her as well? Gods, Danat. If what they've done isn't

going too far, nothing is!"

"He isn't worried for them," Idaan said from the shadows. Otah turned.

She was sitting alone at the back of the room, a lit pipe in her hand

and pale smoke rising from her lips as she spoke. "He's saying there are

crimes that can't be made right. Trying to make justice out of this will

only make it last longer."

"So we should let it go?" Otah demanded. "We should meekly accept what

they've done?"

"It was what you told Eiah to do," Danat said. "She wanted to find a way

to heal the damage from Sterile; you told her to let it go and accept

what had happened. Didn't you?"

Otah's clenched fists loosened. His mind clouded with rage and chagrin.

Idaan's low chuckle filled the room like a growl.

"Which of us is innocent now, eh?" she said, waving her pipe. "It's easy

to counsel forgiveness when you aren't the one swallowing poison. It's

harder to forgive them for having won."

"What would you have me do, then?" Otah snapped.

"In your place, I'd kill them all before they could do more damage,"

Idaan said. "Maati, Vanjit, Eiah. All of them. Even Ashti Beg."

"That isn't an option," Otah said. "I won't kill Eiah."

"So you won't end them and you won't forgive them," Idaan said. "You

want the world saved, but you don't know what that means any longer.

There isn't much time to clear your mind, brother. And you can't put

your thoughts in line when you're half-sunk in rage."

Danat took a pose of agreement.

"It's what I was trying to say," he said.

"Lift yourself above this," Idaan said. "See it as if you were someone

else. Someone less hurt by it."

Otah lifted his hands, palms out, refusing it all. His jaw ached, but

the heat in his chest and throat, the blood in his ears, washed him out

of the room. He heard Danat cry out behind him, and Idaan's softer

voice. He stalked out to the road. No one followed. His mind was a

cacophony of voices, all of them his own.

Alone on the dimming road, he excoriated Maati and Eiah, Danat and

Idaan, Balasar and Sinja and Issandra Dasin. He muttered all the venom

that rose to his lips, and, in time, he sat at the base of an ancient

tree, throwing stones at nothing. The rage faded and left him as empty

as an old skin. The sun was gone and the sky darkening blue to indigo

and indigo to starlit black.

Alone as he had not been in years, he wept. At first it was only the

loss of Sinja, but then of the fleet and Chaburi-Tan. Eiah and his

warring senses of guilt and betrayal. Galt, blind and dying. It ended

where he had known it would. All rivers led to the sea, and all his

sorrows to the death of Kiyan.

"Oh, love," he said to the empty air. "Oh, my love. Can this never go well?"

Nothing answered back.

The tears faded. The sorrow and rage, spent, left his heart and mind

clearer. The tree at his back scratched, its bark as rough as broken

stone. It offered no comfort, but he let himself rest against it. He

noticed the scent of fresh earth for the first time, and the hushing of

a breeze that stirred the treetops without descending to the path they

covered. A falling star lit the sky and was gone.

He must, Otah thought, have looked like he was on the edge of murder the

whole day for his son and his sister to face him down that way. He must

have seemed like a man gone mad. It was near enough to the truth.

The night air was cold and his robes insufficient. He went back to the

wayhouse more for warmth than the desire to continue any conversation.

There was an odd silence in his mind now that felt fragile and

comforting. He knew as he stepped into the yard that he wouldn't be able

to maintain it.

Voices raised in anger filled the yard. Danat and the captain of the

armsmen stood so close to each other their chests nearly touched, each

of them shouting at the other. Idaan stood at Danat's right, her arms

crossed, her expression deceptively calm. The captain had his armsmen

arrayed behind him, lit torches in their hands. Otah made out words like

protection and answerable from the captain and disrespect and mutiny

from Danat. Otah rubbed his hands together to fight off the numbness and

made his way toward the confrontation. The captain saw him first and

stopped talking, his face flushed red by blood and torchlight. Danat

took a moment longer, then glanced over his shoulder.

"I suppose this is to do with me," Otah said.

"We only wanted to see that you were safe, Most High," the captain said.

The words were strangled. Otah hesitated, then took a pose of apology.

"I needed solitude," he said. "I should have told you before I left. But

if I'd been clear-minded, I likely wouldn't have needed to leave. Please

accept my apology."

There was little enough the man could do. Moments later, the armsmen

were scattering back to the wayhouse or the stables. The smell of doused

torches filled the air like a forest on fire. Danat and Idaan stood side

by side.

"Should I apologize to you as well?" Otah asked with a half-smile.

"Isn't called for," Idaan said. "I was only keeping your boy near to

hand in case you reconsidered my death order."

"Next time, maybe," Otah said, and Idaan grinned. "Is there anything

warm to drink in this place?"

The young keeper brought them the best food the wayhouse had to

offer-river fish baked with red pepper and lemon, sweet rice, almond

milk with mint, hot plum wine, and cold water. They arrayed themselves

through the main room, all other guests being turned away by the paired

guards at every door. Ana and Ashti Beg were in a deep conversation

about the strategies they'd developed in their new sightlessness. Danat

sat nearer the fire, watching them with a naked longing in his

expression that would have made Ana blush, Otah thought, had she been

able to see it. Otah and Idaan sat together at a low table, passing the

chipped lacquer bowls back and forth. The armsmen who weren't on duty

had taken a back room, and their voices came in occasional outbursts of

hilarity and song.

It could have been the image of peace, of something approaching a family

passing a road-wearied night in warmth and companionship. And perhaps it

was. But it was other things as well.

"You look better," Idaan said, freshening the wine in his bowl. Fragrant

steam rose from it, astringent and rich with the scent of the fruit.

"I am for now," Otah said. "I'll be worse again later."

"Have you made up your mind, then?" she asked. He sighed. Ashti Beg

illustrated some point with a wide, vague gesture. Danat placed a new

length of pine on the fire.

"There isn't an answer," Otah said. "They have all the power. All I can

do is ask them to reconsider. So I suppose I'll do that and see what

happens next. I know that you think I should go in and kill them all-"

"I didn't say that," Idaan said. "I said it was what I would do. My

judgment on those matters is ... occasionally suspect."

Otah sipped his wine, then put the bowl down carefully.

"I think that's the nearest you've ever come to apologizing," he said.

"To you, perhaps," Idaan said. "I spent years talking to the dead about

it. They didn't have much to say back."

"Do you miss them?"

"Yes," Idaan said without hesitation. "I do."

They lapsed into silence again. Danat and Ashti Beg were in the middle

of a lively debate over the ethics of showfighting, Ana listening to

them both with a frown. Her hand pressed her belly as if the fish was

troubling her.

"If Maati were here tonight," Otah said, "and demanded that he be named

emperor, I think I'd give it to him."

"He'd hand it back in a week," Idaan said with a smile.

"Who's to say I'd take it?"

They left in the morning, the horses rested or changed for fresh, the

carts restocked with wood and coal and water. Ana looked worse, but kept

a brave face. Idaan stayed with her like a personal guard, to Danat's

visible annoyance. A cold wind haunted them, striking leaves from the trees.

News of the Emperor's party came close to overwhelming stories of the

mysterious baby at the wayhouse. No couriers came to trouble Otah with

word of fire or death. Twice, Otah dreamed that Sinja was riding at his

side, robes soaked with seawater and black as a bat's wing, and he woke

each time with an obscure feeling of peace. And with every stop, they

found the poets had passed before them more and more recently.

Three days ago. Then two.

When they reached the river Qiit, tea-dark with newly fallen leaves,

just the day before.

24

The cold caught up with them in the middle of the day, a wind from the

west that rattled the trees and sent tiny whitecaps across the river's

back. They had covered a great stretch of river in their day's travel,

but night meant landing. The boatman was adamant. The river, he said,

was a living thing; it changed from one journey to the next. Sandbars

shifted, rocks lurked where none had been before. The boat was shallow

enough to pass over many dangers, but a log invisible in the darkness

could break a hole in the deck. Better to run in the daylight than swim

in the dark. The way the boatman said it left no room for disagreement.

They camped at the riverside, and awakened with tents and robes soaked

heavy by dew. Morning light saw them on the water again, the boiler at

the stern muttering angrily to itself, the paddle wheel punishing the water.

Maati sat away from the noise, huddled in two wool robes, and watched

the trees march from the north to the south like an army bent on sacking

Saraykeht. Large Kae and Small Kae sat in the stern, making conversation

with the boatman and his second when the men would deign to speak.

Vanjit and Eiah turned around each other, one in the bow, the other in

the center of the craft, both maintaining a space between them, the

andat watching with rage and hunger in its black eyes. It was like

watching an alley-mouth knife fight drawn out over hours and days.

It was hard now to remember the days before they had been splintered.

The years he had spent in hiding had seemed like a punishment at the

time. Living in warehouses, giving the lectures he half-recalled from

his own youth and half-invented anew, trying to understand the ways in

which a woman's mind was not a man's and how that power could be

channeled into grammar. He had resented it. He recalled crawling onto a

cot, exhausted from the day's work. He could still picture the

expressions of hunger and determination on their faces. He had not seen

it then, but it had all of it been driven by hope. Even the sorrow and

mourning that came after a binding failed and they lost someone to the

andat's grim price had held a sense of community.

Now they had won, and the world seemed all cold wind and dark water.

Even the two Kaes seemed to have set themselves apart from Vanjit, from