THE (tlpq-4) (58 page)

Maati's cell was the most beautifully appointed prison in the cities,

possibly in the world. The armsmen led Otah into a chamber with vaulted

ceilings and carved cedar along the walls. Maati sat up, waving the

servant at his side to silence. The servant closed the book she'd been

reading but kept the place with her thumb.

"You're learning Galtic tales now?" Otah asked.

"You burned my library," Maati said. "Back in Machi, or don't you recall

that? The only histories your grandchild will read are written by them."

"Or by us," Otah said. "We can still write, you know."

Maati took a pose that accepted correction, but with a dismissive air

that verged on insult. So this was how it was, Otah thought. He motioned

to the armsmen to take the prisoner and follow him, then spun on his

heel. The feeble sounds of protest behind him didn't slow his pace.

The highest towers of Utani were nothing in comparison to those in

Machi; they could be scaled by stairways and corridors and didn't re

quire a rest halfway along. Under half the height, and Otah liked them

better. They were built with humanity in mind, and not the raw boasting

power of the andat.

At the pinnacle, a small platform stood high above the world. The

tallest place in the city. Wind whipped it, as cold as a bath of ice

water. Otah motioned for Maati to be led forward. The poet's eyes were

wild, his breath short. He raised his thick chin.

"What?" Maati spat. "Decided to throw me off, have you?"

"It's almost the half-candle," Otah said and went to stand at the edge.

Maati hesitated and then stepped to his side. The city spread out below

them, the streets marked by lanterns and torches. A fire blazed in a

courtyard down near the riverfront, taller than ten men with whole trees

for logs. Otah could cover it with his thumbnail.

The chime came, a deep ringing that seemed to shake the world. And then

a thousand thousand bells rang out in answer to mark the deepest part of

the longest night of the year.

"Here," Otah said. "Watch."

Below, light spread through the city. Every window, every balcony, ever

parapet glowed with newly lit candles. Within ten breaths, the center of

the Empire went from any large city in darkness to something woven from

light, the perfect city-the idea of a city-made for a moment real. Maati

shifted. When his voice came, it was little more than a whisper.

"It's beautiful."

"Isn't it?"

A moment later, Maati said, "Thank you."

"Of course," Otah replied.

They stood there for a long time, neither speaking nor arguing,

concerned with neither future nor past. Below them, Utani glowed and

rang, marking the moment of greatest darkness and celebrating the yearly

return of the light.

EPILOG

We say that the flowers return every spring, but that is a lie.

CALIN MACHI, ELDEST SON OF THE EMPEROR REGENT, KNELT BEFORE HIS father,

his gaze downcast. The delicate tilework of the floor was polished so

brightly that he could watch Danat's face and seem to be showing respect

at the same time. Granted, Danat was reversed-wide jaw above gray

temples-and it made the nuances of expression difficult to read. It was

enough, though, for him to judge approximately how much trouble he was in.

"I've spoken to the overseer of my father's apartments. Do you know what

he told me?"

"That I'd been caught hiding in Grandfather's private garden," Calin said.

"Is that true?"

"Yes, Father. I was hiding from Aniit and Gaber. It was a part of a game.

Danat sighed, and Calin risked looking up. When his father was deeply

upset, his face turned red. He was still flesh-colored. Calin looked

back down, relieved.

"You know you're forbidden from your grandfather's apartments."

"Yes, but that was what made them a good place to hide."

"You're sixteen summers old and you're acting twelve of them. Aniit and

Gaber look to you for how to behave. It's your duty to set an example,"

Danat said, his voice stern. And then he added, "Don't do it again."

Calin rose to his feet, trying to keep his rush of joy from being

obvious. The great punishment had not fallen. He was not barred from the

steam caravan's arrival. Life was still worth living. Danat took a pose

that excused his son and motioned to his Master of Tides. Before the

woman could glide over and lead his father back into the constant

business of negotiating with the High Council, Calin left the audience

chamber, followed only by his father's shouted admonition not to run.

Aniit and Gaber were waiting outside, their eyes wide.

"It's all right," Calin said, as if his father's lenience were somehow

proof of his own cleverness. Aniit took an exaggerated pose of

congratulations. Gaber clapped her hands. She was young, though. Only

fourteen summers old and barely marriageable.

"Come on, then," Calin said. "We can pick the best places for when the

caravan comes."

The roadway had been five years in the building, a shallow canal of

smooth worked iron that began at the seafront in Saraykeht and followed

the river up to Utani. The caravan was the first of its kind, and the

common wisdom in the streets and teahouses was evenly divided between

those who thought it would arrive even earlier than expected and those

who predicted they'd find splinters of blown boilers and nothing else.

Calin dismissed the skeptics. After all, his grandmother was arriving

from her plantations in Chaburi-Tan, and she would never put herself on

the caravan if it was going to explode.

The sweet days of early spring were short and cold. Frost still sent

white fingers up the stones of the palaces in the morning and snow

lingered in the deep shadows. A hundred times Calin and his friends had

gone through the elaborate ritual of how they would greet the caravan,

rehearsing it in their minds and conversations. The event, of course,

was nothing like what they'd planned.

When word came, Calin was with his tutor, an ancient man from Acton,

working complex sums. They were seated in the sunlight of the spring

garden. Almond blossoms turned the tree branches white even before the

first leaves had ventured out. Calin frowned at the wax tablet on his

knees, trying not to count on his fingers. Hesitating, he lifted his

stylus and marked his answer. His tutor made a noncommittal sound in the

back of his throat and Gaber appeared at the end of the arcade, running

full out.

"It's here!" she screamed. "It's here!"

Before any adult could object, Calin joined her flight. Tablet, stylus,

and sums were forgotten in an instant. They ran past the pavilions that

marked palaces from merchants' compounds, the squares and open markets

that showed where the great compound gave way to the haunts of common

labor. The streets were thick with humanity, and Calin threaded his way

through the press of bodies aided by his youth, the quality of his

robes, and the boyish instinct that saw all obstacles as ephemeral.

He reached the Emperor's platform just before the caravan arrived. Wide

plumes of smoke and steam stained the southern sky, and the air smelled

of coal. Danat and Ana were already there, seated in chairs of carved

stone with silk cushions. Otah Machi-the Emperor himselfsat on a raised

dais, his hands resting like fragile claws on the arms of a black

lacquer chair. Calin's grandfather looked over as he arrived and smiled.

Danat's expression was distracted in a way that reminded Calin of doing

sums. His mother was craning her neck and trying not to seem that she was.

It hardly mattered. The crowd that pressed and seethed around the yard

at the caravan road's end had eyes only for the great carts speeding

toward them, faster than horses at full gallop. Calin sat at his

mother's feet, his intended perch nearest his friends forgotten. The

first of the carts came near enough to make out the raised dais, twin of

his grandfather's, and the stiff-backed white-haired woman sitting atop

it. Calin's mother left all decorum, and stood, waving and calling to

her mother.

Calin felt his father's hand on his shoulder and turned.

"Watch this," Danat said. "Pay attention. That caravan reached us in

half the time even a boat could have. What you're seeing right now is

going to change everything."

Calin nodded solemnly as if he understood.

It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal

comes at a price.

CEHMAI TYAN SAT ACROSS THE MEETING TABLE FROM THE HIGH COUNCIL'S special

envoy. The man was nondescript, his clothing of Galtic cut and

unremarkable quality. Cehmai didn't like the envoy, but he respected

him. He'd known too many dangerous men in his life not to.

The envoy read the letters-ciphered and sent between a fictional

merchant in Obar State and Cehmai himself here in Utani. They outlined

the latest advance in the poetmaster's rebuilding of the lost libraries

of Machi, which also had not happened. Cehmai sipped tea from an iron

bowl and looked out the window. He couldn't see the steam caravan from

here, but he had a good view of the river. It was at the point he liked

it most, the water freed by the thaw, the banks not yet overgrown by

green. No matter how many years passed, he still felt a personal

affinity with earth and stone.

The envoy finished reading, his mouth in a smile that would have seemed

pleasant and perhaps a bit simple on someone else.

"Is any of this true?" the envoy asked.

"Danat-cha did send a dozen men into the foothills north of Machi,"

Cehmai said, "and Maati-kvo and I did spend a winter there. Past that,

nothing. But it should keep Eddensea's attention on sneaking through to

search for it themselves. And we're in the process of forging books that

we can then `recover' in a year or so."

The envoy tucked the letters into a leather pouch at his belt. He didn't

look up as he spoke.

"That brings a question," the man said. "I know we've talked about this

before, but I'm not sure you've fully grasped the advantages that could

come from leaning a little nearer the truth. Nothing that would be

effective. We all understand that. But our enemies all have scholars

working at these problems. If they were able to come close enough that

the bindings cost them, if they paid the andat's price-"

Cehmai took a pose of query. "Wouldn't that be doing your work for you?"

he asked.

"My job is to see they don't succeed," the envoy said. "A few

mysterious, grotesque deaths would help me find the people involved."

"It would give away too much," Cehmai said. "Bringing them near enough

to be hurt by the effort would also bring them near to succeed„ ing.

The envoy looked at him silently. His placid eyes conveyed only a mild

distrust.

"If you have a threat to make, feel free," Cehmai said. "It won't do you

any good."

"Of course there's no threat, Cehmai-cha," the envoy said. "We're all on

the same side here."

"Yes," the poetmaster said, rising from his chair with a pose that

called the meeting to its close. "Try to keep it in mind."

His apartments were across the palaces. He made his way along the

pathways of white and black sand, past the singing slaves and the

fountain in the shape of the Galtic Tree that marked the wing devoted to

the High Council. The men and women he passed nodded to him with

deference, but few took any formal pose. A decade of joint rule had led

to a thousand small changes in etiquette. Cehmai supposed it was

smallminded of him to regret them.

Idaan was sitting on the porch of their entranceway, tugging at a length

of string while a gray tomcat worried the other end. He paused, watching

her. Unlike her brother, she'd grown thicker with time, more solid, more

real. He must have made some small sound, because she looked up and

smiled at him.

"How was the assassin's conference?" she asked.

The tomcat forgot his string and trotted up to Cehmai, already purring

audibly. He stopped to scratch its fight-ragged ears.

"I wish you wouldn't call it that," he said.

"Well, I wish my hair were still dark. It is what it is, love. Politics

in action."

"Cynic," he said as he reached the porch.

"Idealist," she replied, pulling him down to kiss him.