‘That is true. I was a child, most high. And I was angry.’
‘And I hear that you have come to my city and killed my eldest child. Biitrah Machi is dead by your hand.’
‘That is not true, father,’ Otah said. ‘I won’t say that no man has ever died by my hand, but I didn’t kill Biitrah. I have no wish or intention to become the Khai Machi.’
‘Then why have you come here?’ the Khai shouted, rising to his feet. His face was twisted in rage, his fists trembled. In all his travels, Otah had never seen the Khai of any city look more like a man. Otah felt something like pity through his humiliation and rage, and it let him speak more softly when he spoke again.
‘I heard that my father was dying.’
It seemed that the murmur of the crowds would never end. It rolled like waves against the seashore. Otah knelt again; the awkward stooping hurt his neck and back, and there was no point trying to maintain dignity here. They waited, he and his father, staring at each other across the space. Otah tried to feel some bond, some kinship that would bridge this gap, but there was nothing. The Khai Machi was his father by an accident of birth, and nothing more.
He saw the old man’s eyes flicker, as if unsure of himself. He couldn’t have always been this way - the Khaiem were inhumanly studied in ritual and grace. It was the mark of their calling. Otah wondered what his father had been like when he was young and strong. He wondered what he would have been like as a man among his children.
The Khai raised a hand, and the crowd’s susurrus tapered down to silence. Otah did not move.
‘You have stepped outside tradition,’ he said. ‘Whether you took a hand against my son is a question that has already gathered an array of opinion. It is something I must think on.
‘I have had other news this day. Danat Machi has won the right of succession. He is returning to the city even now. I will consult with him on your fate. Until then, you shall be confined in the highest room in the great tower. I do not care to have your accomplices taking your death in their own hands this time. Danat and I - the Khai Machi and the Khai yet to come - shall decide together what kind of beast you are.’
Otah took a pose of supplication. That he was on his knees only made the gesture clearer. He was dead, whatever happened. He could see that now. If there had been a chance of mercy - and likely there hadn’t - having father and son converse would remove it. But in the black dread, there was this one chance to speak as himself - not as Itani Noygu or some other mask. And if it offended the court, there was little worse they could do to him than he faced now. His father hesitated, and Otah spoke.
‘I have seen many of the cities of the Khaiem, most high. I have been born into the highest of families, and I have been offered the greatest of honors. And if I am here to meet my death at the hands of those who should by all rights love me, at least hear me out. Our cities are not well, father. Our traditions are not well. You stand there on that dais now because you killed your own. You are celebrating the return of Danat, who killed his brother, and at the same time preparing to condemn me on the suspicion that I did the same. A tradition that calls men to kill their brothers and discard their sons cannot be—’
‘Enough!’ the Khai roared, and his voice carried. The whisperers were silent and unneeded. ‘I have not carried this city on my back for all these years to be lectured now by a rebel and a traitor and a poisoner. You are not my son! You lost that right! You squandered it! Tell me that this . . .’ the Khai raised his hands in a gesture that seemed to encompass every man and woman of the court, the palaces, the city, the valley, the mountains, the world ‘. . . this is evil? Because our traditions are what hold all this from chaos. We are the Khaiem! We rule with the power of the andat, and we do not accept instruction from couriers and laborers who . . . who killed . . .’
The Khai closed his eyes and seemed to sway for a moment. The woman to whom Cehmai had been speaking leapt up, her hand on the old man’s elbow. Otah could see them murmuring to each other, but he had no idea what they were saying. The woman walked with him back to the chair and helped him to sit. His face seemed sunken in pain. The woman was crying - streaks of kohl black on her cheeks - but her bearing was more regal and sure than their father’s had been. She stepped forward and spoke.
‘The Khai is weary,’ she said, as if daring anyone present to say anything else. ‘He has given his command. The audience is finished!’
The voices rose almost as high and ran almost as loud as they had at anything that had gone before. A woman - even if she was his daughter - taking the initiative to speak for the Khai? The court would be scandalized. Otah already imagined them placing bets as to whether the man would live the night, and if he died now, whether it would be this woman’s fault for shaming him so deeply when he was already weak. And Otah could see that she knew this. The contempt in her expression was eloquent as any oratory. He caught her eye and took a pose of approval. She looked at him as if he were a stranger who had spoken her name, then turned away to help their father walk back to his rooms.
The march up to his cage led through a spiral stone stair so small that his shoulders touched each wall, and his head stayed bent. The chain stayed on his neck, his hands now bound behind him. He watched the armsman before him half walking, half climbing the steep blocks of stone. When Otah slowed, the man behind him struck with the butt of a spear and laughed. Otah, his hands bound, sprawled against the steps, ripping the flesh of his knees and chin. After that, he made a point to slow as little as possible.
His thighs burned with each step and the constant turning to the right left him nauseated. He thought of stopping, of refusing to move. They were taking him up to wait for death anyway. There was nothing to be gained by collaborating with them. But he went on, cursing under his breath.
When the stairs ended, he found himself in a wide hall. The sky doors in the north wall were open, and a platform hung level with them and shifting slightly in the breeze, the great chains taut. Another four armsmen stood waiting.
‘Relief?’ the man who had pushed him asked.
The tallest of the new armsmen took a pose of affirmation and spoke. ‘We’ll take the second half. You four head up and we’ll all go down together.’ The new armsmen led Otah to a fresh stairway, and the ordeal began again. He had begun almost to dream in his pain by the time they stopped. Thick, powerful hands pushed him into a room, and the door closed behind him with a sound like a capstone being shoved over an open tomb. The armsman said something through a slit in the door, but Otah couldn’t make sense of it and didn’t have the will to try. He lay on the floor until he realized that his arms had been freed and the iron collar taken from around his neck. The skin where it had rested was chafed raw.
The voices of men seeped through the door, and then the sound of a winch creaking as it lowered the platform and its cargo of men. Then there were only two voices speaking in light, conversational tones. He couldn’t make out a word they said.
He forced himself to sit up and take stock. The room was larger than he’d expected, and bare. It could have been used as a storage room or set with table and chairs for a small meeting. There was a bowl of water in one corner, but no food, no candles, nothing but the stone to sleep on. The light came from a barred window. His hip and knees ached as Otah pulled himself up and stumbled over to it. He was facing south, and the view was like he’d become a bird. He leaned out - the bars were not so narrowly spaced that he couldn’t climb out and fall to his death if he chose. Below him, the carts in the streets were like ants shuffling along in their lines. A crow launched itself from a crack or beam and circled below him, the sun shining on its black back. Trembling, he pulled himself back in. There were no shutters to close off the sky.
He tried the door’s latch, but it had been barred from without, and the hinges were leather and worked iron. Not the sort of thing a man could take apart with teeth. Otah knelt by the bowl of water and drank from his cupped hand. He washed out the worst of his wounds,
and left a third in the bowl. There was no knowing how long it might be before they saw fit to give him more. He wondered if there were birds that came up this high to rest, and whether he would be able to trap one. Not that he would have the chance to cook it - there was nothing to burn here, and no grate to burn it in. Otah ran his hands over his face, and despite himself, laughed. It seemed unlikely they would allow him anything sharp enough to shave with. He would die with this sad little beard.
Otah stretched out in a corner, his arm thrown over his eyes, and tried to sleep, wondering as he did whether the sense of movement came from his own abused and exhausted body, or if it were true that so far up even stone swayed.
Maati looked at the floor. His face was hard with frustration and anger.
‘If you want him dead, most high,’ he said, his voice measured and careful, ‘you might at least have the courtesy to kill him.’
The Khai Machi raised the clay pipe to his lips. He seemed less to breathe the smoke in than to drink it. The sweet resin from it had turned every surface in the room slightly tacky to the touch. The servant in the blue and gold robes of a physician sat discreetly in a dim corner, pretending not to hear the business of the city. The rosewood door was closed behind them. Lanterns of sanded glass filled the room with soft light, rendering them all shadowless.
‘I’ve listened to you, Maati-cha. I didn’t end him there in the audience chamber. I am giving you the time you asked,’ the old man said. ‘Why do you keep pressing me?’
‘He has no blankets or fire. The guards have given him three meals in the last four days. And Danat will return before I’ve had word back from the Dai-kvo. If this is all you can offer, most high—’
‘You can state your case to Danat-cha as eloquently as you could to me,’ the Khai said.
‘There’ll be no point if Otah dies of cold or throws himself out the tower window before then,’ Maati said. ‘Let me take him food and a thick robe. Let me talk with him.’
‘It’s hopeless,’ the Khai said.
‘Then there’s nothing lost but my effort, and it will keep me from troubling you further.’
‘Your work here is complete, isn’t it? Why are you bothering me, Maati-cha? You were sent to find Otah. He’s found.’
‘I was sent to find if he was behind the death of Biitrah, and if he was not, to discover who was. I have not carried out that task. I won’t leave until I have.’
The Khai’s expression soured, and he shook his head. His skin had grown thinner, the veins at his temples showing dark. When he leaned forward, tapping the bowl of his pipe against the side of the iron brazier with a sound like pebbles falling on stone, his grace could not hide his discomfort.
‘I begin to wonder, Maati-cha, whether you have been entirely honest with me. You say that there is no great love between you and my upstart son. You bring him to me, and for that reason alone, I believe you. Everything else you have done suggests the other. You argue that it was not he who arranged Biitrah’s death, though you have no suggestion who else might have. You ask for indulgences for the prisoner, you appeal to the Dai-kvo in hopes . . .’
A sudden pain seemed to touch the old man’s features and one near-skeletal hand moved toward his belly.
‘There is a shadow in your city,’ Maati said. ‘You’ve called it by Otah’s name, but none of it shows any connection with Otah: not Biitrah, not the attack on me, not the murder of the assassin. None of the other couriers of any house report anything that would suggest he was more than he appeared. By his own word, he’d fled the city before the attack on me, and didn’t return before the assassin was killed. How is it that he arranged all these things with no one seeing him? No one knowing his name? How is it that, now he’s trapped, no one has offered to sell him in trade for their own lives?’
‘Who then?’
‘I don’t . . .’
‘Who else gained from these things?’
‘Your son, Danat,’ Maati said. ‘He broke the pact. If all this talk of Otah was a ploy to distract Kaiin from the real danger, then it worked, most high. Danat will be the new Khai Machi.’
‘Ask him when he comes. He will be the Khai Machi, and if he has done as you said, then there’s no crime in it and no reason that he should hide it.’
‘A poet was attacked—’
‘And did you die? Are you dying? No? Then don’t ask sympathy from me. Go, Maati-cha. Take the prisoner anything you like. Take him a pony and let him ride it around his cell, if that pleases you. Only don’t return to me. Any business you have with me now, you have with my son.’
The Khai took a pose of command that ended the audience, and Maati stood, took a pose of gratitude that he barely felt, and withdrew from the meeting room. He stalked along the corridors of the palace seething.
Back in his apartments, he took stock. He had gathered together his bundle even before he’d gone to the audience. A good wool robe, a rough cloth bag filled with nut breads and dry cheeses, and a flask of fresh water. Everything that he thought the Khai’s men would permit. He folded it all together and tied it with twine.
At the base of the great tower, armsmen stood guard at the platform - a metalwork that ran on tracks set into the stone of the tower, large enough to carry twelve men. The chains that held it seemed entirely too thin. Maati identified himself, thinking his poet’s robe, reputation, and haughty demeanor might suffice to make the men do as he instructed. Instead, a runner was sent to the Khai’s palace to confirm that Maati was indeed permitted to see the prisoner and to give him the little gifts that he carried. Once word was brought back, Maati climbed on the platform, and the signalman on the ground blew a call on a great trumpet. The chains went taut, and the platform rose. Maati held onto the rail, his knuckles growing whiter as the ground receded. Wind plucked at his sleeves as the roofs of even the greatest palaces fell away below him. The only things so high as he was were the towers, the birds, and the mountains. It was beautiful and exhilarating, and all he could think the whole time was what would happen if a single link in any of the four chains gave way. When he reached the open sky doors at the top, the captain of the armsmen took him solidly by his arm and helped him step in.
‘First time, eh?’ the captain said, and his men chuckled, but not cruelly. It was a journey each of them risked, Maati realized, every day. These men were more likely to die for the vanity of Machi than he. He smiled and nodded, stepping away from the open space of the sky door.
‘I’ve come to see the prisoner,’ he said.
‘I know,’ the captain said. ‘The trumpet said as much, if you knew to listen for it. But understand, if he attacks you - if he tries to bargain your life for his freedom - I’ll send your body down. You make your choice when you go in there. I can’t be responsible for it.’
The captain’s expression was stern. Maati saw that he thought this possible, the danger real. Maati took a pose of thanks, hampered somewhat by the bundle under his arm. The captain only nodded and led him to a huge wooden door. Four of his men drew their blades as he unbarred it and let it swing in. Maati took a deep breath and stepped through.
Otah was huddled in a corner, his arms wrapped around his knees. He looked up and then back down. Maati heard the door close behind him, heard the bar slide home. All those men to protect him from this half-dead rag.
‘I’ve brought food,’ Maati said. ‘I considered wine, but it seemed too much like a celebration.’
Otah chuckled, a thick phlegmy sound.
‘It would have gone to my head too quickly anyway,’ he said, his voice weak. ‘I’m too old to go drinking without a good meal first.’
Maati knelt and unfolded the robe and arranged the food he’d brought. It seemed too little now, but when he broke off a corner of nut bread and held it out, Otah nodded his gratitude and took it. Maati opened the flask of water, put it beside Otah’s feet, and sat back.
‘What news?’ Otah asked. ‘I don’t hear much gossip up here.’
‘It’s
all as straightforward as a maze,’ Maati said. ‘House Siyanti is calling in every favor it has not to be banned from the city. Your old overseer has been going to each guild chapter house individually. There’s even rumor he’s been negotiating with hired armsmen.’
‘He must be frightened for his life,’ Otah said and shook his head wearily. ‘I’m sorry to have done that to him. But I suppose there’s little enough I can do about it now. There does always seem to be a price people pay for knowing me.’
Maati looked at his hands. For a moment he considered holding his tongue. It would be worse, he thought, holding out hope if there was none. But it was all that he had left to offer.
‘I’ve sent to the Dai-kvo. I may have a way that you can survive this,’ he said. ‘There’s no precedent for someone refusing the offer to become a poet. It’s possible that . . .’
Otah sipped the water and put down the flask. His brow was furrowed.
‘You’ve asked him to make me a poet?’ Otah asked.
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