THE (tlpq-4) (5 page)

square. Otah passed the dry fountain in its center before the thought

that had possessed him truly took form. He had to restrain himself from

laughing.

The chief scribe was so dead asleep that Otah had to shake the woman

twice. When consciousness did come into her eyes, her face went pale.

She took a pose of apology that Otah waved away.

"How many of your best calligraphers can work in Galtic?"

"All of them, Most High," the chief scribe said. "It's why I brought them."

"How many? How many can we put to work now, tonight?"

"Ten?" she said as if it were a question.

"Wake them. Get them to their desks. Then I'll need a translator in my

apartments. Or two. Best get two. An etiquette master and a trade

specialist. Now. Go, now! This won't wait for morning."

On the way back to his rooms, his heart was tripping over, but his mind

was clearing, the alcohol burning off in the heat of his plan. Balasar

was seated where Otah had left him, an expression of bleary concern on

his face.

"Is all well?"

"All's excellent," Otah said. "No, don't go. Stay here, Balasar-cha. I

have a letter to write, and I need you."

"What's happened?"

"I can't convince the men on the council. You've said as much. And if I

can't talk to the men who wield the power, I'll talk to the women who

wield the men. Tell me there's a councilman's wife out there who doesn't

want grandchildren. I defy you to."

"I don't understand," Balasar said.

"I need a list of the names of all the councilmen's wives. And the men

of the convocation. Theirs too. Perhaps their daughters if ... Well,

those can wait. I'm going to draft an appeal to the women of Galt. If

anyone can sway the vote, it's them."

"And you think that would work?" Balasar asked, incredulity in his

expression.

In the event, Otah's letter seemed for two full days to have no effect.

The letters went out, each sewn with silk thread and stamped with Otah's

imperial seal, and no word came back. He attended the ceremonies and

meals, the entertainments and committee meetings, his eyes straining for

some hint of change like a snow fox waiting for the thaw. It was only on

the morning of the third day, just as he was preparing to send a fresh

wave of appeals to the daughters of the families of power, that his

visitor was announced.

She was perhaps ten years younger than Otah, with hair the gray of dry

slate pulled back from an intimidating, well-painted face. The reddening

at her eyelids seemed more likely to be a constant feature than a sign

of recent weeping. Otah rose from the garden bench and took a pose of

welcome simple enough for anyone with even rudimentary training to

recognize. His guest replied appropriately and waited for him to invite

her to sit in the chair across from him.

"We haven't met," the woman said in her native language. "Not formally."

"But I know your husband," Otah said. He had met with all the members of

the High Council many times. Farrer Dasin was among the

longest-standing, though not by any means the most powerful. His wife

Issandra had been no more than a polite smile and another face among

hundreds until now. Otah considered her raised brows and downcast eyes,

the set of her mouth and her shoulders. There had been a time when he'd

lived by knowing how to interpret such small indications. Perhaps he

still did.

"I found your letter quite moving," she said. "Several of us did."

"I am gratified," Otah said, not certain it was quite the correct word.

"Fatter and I have talked about your treaty. The massive shipment of

Galtic women to your cities as bed servants to your men, and then

hauling back a crop of your excess male population for whatever girls

escaped. It isn't a popular scheme."

The brutality of her tone was a gambit, a test. Otah refused to rise to it.

"Those aren't the terms I put in the treaty," he said. "I believe I used

the term wife rather than bed servant, for example. I understand that

the men of Galt might find it difficult. It is, however, needed."

He spread his hands, as if in apology. She met his gaze with the bare

intellect of a master merchant.

"Yes, it is," she said. "Majesty, I am in a position to deliver a

decisive majority in both the High Council and the convocation. It will

cost me all the favors I'm owed, and I have been accruing them for

thirty years. It will likely take me another thirty to pay back the debt

I'm going into for you.

Otah smiled and waited. The cold blue eyes glittered for a moment.

"You might offer your thanks," she said.

"Forgive me," Otah said. "I didn't think you'd finished speaking. I

didn't want to interrupt."

The woman nodded, sat back a degree, and folded her hands in her lap. A

wasp hummed through the air to hover between them before it darted away

into the foliage. He watched her weigh strategies and decide at last on

the blunt and straightforward.

"You have a son, I understand?" Issandra Dasin said.

"I do," Otah said.

"Only one."

It was, of course, what he had expected. He had made no provision for

Danat's role in the text of the treaty itself, but alliances among the

Khaiem had always taken the form of marriages. His son's future had

always been a tile in this game, and now that tile was in play.

"Only one," he agreed.

"As it happens, I have a daughter. Ana was three years old when the doom

came. She's eighteen now, and ..."

She frowned. It was the most surprising thing she'd done since her

arrival. The stone face shifted; the eyes he could not imagine weeping

glistened with unspilled tears. Otah was shocked to have misjudged her

so badly.

"She's never held a baby, you know," the woman said. "Hardly ever seen

one. At her age, you couldn't pull me out of the nursery with a rope.

The way they chuckle when they're small. Ana's never heard that. The way

their hair smells ..."

She took a deep breath, steadying herself. Otah leaned forward, his hand

on the woman's wrist.

"I remember," he said softly, and she smiled.

"It's beside the matter," she said.

"It's at the center of the matter," Otah said, falling reflexively into

a pose of disagreement. "And it's the part upon which we agree. Forgive

me if I am being forward, but you are offering your support for my

treaty in exchange for a marriage between our families? Your daughter

and my son."

"Yes," she said. "I am."

"There may be others who ask the same price. There is a tradition among

my people of the Khai taking several wives...."

"You didn't."

"No," Otah agreed. "I didn't."

The wasp returned, buzzing at Otah's ear. He didn't raise a hand, and

the insect landed on the brightly embroidered silk of his sleeve.

Issandra Dasin, mother of his son's future wife, leaned forward

gracefully and crushed it between her fingers.

"No other wives," she said.

"I would need assurances that the vote would be decisive," Otah said.

"You'll have them. I am a more influential woman than I seem."

Otah looked up. Above them, the sun burned behind a thin scrim of cloud.

The same light fell in Utani, spilling through the windows of Danat's

palace. If only there were some way to whisper to the sun and have it

relay the message to Danat: Are you certain you'll take this risk? A

life spent with a woman whom you've never met, whom you may never love?

His son had seen twenty summers and was by all rights a man. Before the

great diplomatic horde had left for Galt, they had discussed the

likelihood of a bargain of this sort. Danat hadn't hesitated. If it was

a price, he'd pay it. His face had been solemn when he'd said it. Solemn

and certain, and as ignorant as Otah himself had been at that age. There

was nothing else either of them could have said. And nothing different

that Otah could do now, except put off the moment for another few

breaths by staring up at the blinding sun.

"Very well," Otah said. Then again, "Very well."

"You also have a daughter," the woman said. "The elder child?"

"Yes," Otah said.

"Does she have a claim as heir?"

The image appeared in his mind unbidden: Eiah draped in golden robes and

gems woven into her hair as she dressed a patient's wounds. Otah

chuckled, then saw the beginnings of offense in his guest's expression.

He thought it might not be wise to appear amused at the idea of a woman

in power.

"She wouldn't take the job if you begged her," Otah said. "She's a

smart, strong-willed woman, but court politics give her a rash."

"But if she changed her mind. Twenty years from now, who can say that

her opinions won't have shifted?"

"It wouldn't matter," Otah said. "There is no tradition of empresses.

Nor, I think, of women on your own High Council."

She snorted derisively, but Otah saw he had scored his point. She

considered for a moment, then with a deep breath allowed herself to relax.

"Well then. It seems we have an agreement."

"Yes," Otah said.

She stood and adopted a pose that she had clearly practiced with a

specialist in etiquette. It was in essence a greeting, with nuances of a

contract being formed and the informality that came with close relations.

"Welcome to my family, Most High," she said in his language. Otah

replied with a pose that accepted the welcome, and if its precise

meaning was lost on her, the gist was clear enough.

After she had left, Otah strolled through the gardens, insulated by his

rank from everyone he met. The trees seemed straighter than he

remembered, the birdsong more delicate. A weariness he only half-knew

had been upon him had lifted, and he felt warm and energetic in a way he

hadn't in months. He made his way at length to his suite, his rooms, his

desk.

Kiyan-kya, it seems something may have gone right after all...

2

Ten years almost to the day before word of Otah's pact with the Galts

reached him, Maati Vaupathai had learned of his son's death at the hands

of Galtic soldiers. A fugitive only just abandoned by his only

companion, he had made his way to the south like a wounded horse finding

its way home. It had not been the city itself he had been looking for,

but a woman.

Liat Chokavi, owner and overseer of House Kyaan, had received him.

Twice, they had been lovers, once as children, and then again just

before the war. She had told him of Nayiit's stand, of how he had been

cut down protecting the Emperor's son, Danat, as the final assault on

Machi began. She spoke with the chalky tones of a woman still in pain.

If Maati had held hopes that his once-lover might take him in, they did

not survive that conversation. He left her house in agony. He had not

spoken to her since.

Two years after that, he took his first student, a woman named Halit.

Since then, his life had become a narrow, focused thing. He had remade

himself as a teacher, as an agent of hope, as the Dai-kvo of a new age.

It was less glamorous than it sounded.

All that morning he had lain in the small room that was presently his

home, squinting at the dirty light that made its way through the

oiledparchment window and thinking of the andat. Thinking of thoughts

made flesh, of ideas given human form and volition. Little gods, held

tight to existence by the poets who knew them best and, by knowing,

bound them. Removing-the-Part-That-Continues, called Seedless.

WaterMoving-Down, called Rain or Seaward. Stone-Made-Soft who had no

other name. And his own-Corrupting-the-Generative, called Sterile, whom

Maati had not quite bound, and who had remade the world.

The lessons he had learned as a boy, the conversations he had had as a

man and a poet, they all came back to him dimly. Fragments and moments,

insights but not all the steps that had led him there. A mosquito whined

in the gloom, and Maati waved it away.

Teaching his girls was like telling the story of his life and finding

there were holes in it. He knew things-structures of grammar and

metaphor, anecdotes of long-dead poets and the bindings they had made,

occult relationships between abstractions like shapes and numbers and

the concrete things of the world-without remembering how he'd learned