"Cows and hens. He'll be a whole farmyard soon," Cehmai said, but his mind was elsewhere. "What does he study when he is here?"
"Nothing in particular. He picks up whatever strikes him and spends a day with it, and then comes hack the next for something totally unrelated. I haven't told him about the Khai's private archives, and he hasn't bothered to ask. I was sure, you know, when he first came, that he was after something in the private archives. But now it's like the library itself might as well not exist."
"Perhaps there is some pattern in what he's looking at. A common thread that places them all together."
"You mean maybe poor old Baarath is too simple to see the picture when it's being painted for him? I doubt it. I know this place better than any man alive. I've even made my own shelving system. I have read more of these books and seen more of their relationships than anyone. When I tell you he's wandering about like tree fluff on a breezy day, it's because he is."
Cehmai tried to feel surprise, and failed. The library was only an excuse. The Dai-kvo had sent Maati Vaupathai to examine the death of Biitrah Machi. That was clear. Why he would choose to do so, was not. It wasn't the poets' business to take sides in the succession, only to work with-and sometimes cool the ambitions of-whichever son sur vived. The Khaiem administered the city, accepted the glory and tribute, passed judgment. The poets kept the cities from ever going to war one against the other, and fueled the industries that brought wealth from the Westlands and Galt, Bakta, and the east islands. But something had happened, or was happening, that had captured the Dai-kvo's interest.
And Maati Vaupathai was an odd poet. He held no post, trained under no one. He was old to attempt a new binding. By many standards, he was already a failure. The only thing Cehmai knew of him that stood out at all was that Maati had been in Saraykeht when that city's poet was murdered and the andat set free. He thought of the man's eyes, the darkness that they held, and a sense of unease troubled him.
"I don't know what the point of that sort of grammar would be," Baarath said. "Dalani Toygu's was better for one thing, and half the length."
Cehmai realized that the Baarath had been talking this whole time, that the subject had changed, and in fact they were in the middle of a debate on a matter he couldn't identify. All this without the need that he speak.
"I suppose you're right," Cehmai said. "I hadn't seen it from that angle."
Stone-Made-Soft's calm, constant near-smile widened slightly.
"You should have, though. That's my point. Grammars and translations and the subtleties of thought are your trade. That I know more about it than you and that Maati person is a bad sign for the world. Note this, Cehmai-kya, write down that I said it. It's that kind of ignorance that will destroy the Khaiem."
"I'll write down that you said it," Cehmai said. "In fact, I'll go back to my apartments right now and do that. And afterwards, I'll crawl into bed, I think."
"So soon?"
"The night candle's past its center mark," Cehmai said.
"Fine. Go. When I was your age, I would stay up nights in a row for the sake of a good conversation like this, but I suppose the generations weaken, don't they?"
Cehmai took a pose of farewell, and Baarath returned it.
"Come by tomorrow, though," Baarath said as they left. "There's some old imperial poetry I've translated that might interest you."
Outside, the night had grown colder, and few lanterns lit the paths and streets. Cehmai pulled his arms in from their sleeves and held his fingers against his sides for warmth. His breath plumed blue-white in the faint moonlight, and even the distant scent of pine resin made the air seem colder.
"He doesn't think much of our guest," Cehmai said. "I would have thought he'd be pleased that Maati took little interest in the books, after all the noise he made."
When Stone-Made-Soft spoke, its breath did not fog. "He's like a girl bent on protecting her virginity until she finds no one wants it."
Cehmai laughed.
"That is entirely too apt," he said, and the andat took a pose accepting the compliment.
"You're going to do something," it said.
"I'm going to pay attention," Cehmai said. "If something needs doing, I'll try to be on hand."
They turned down the cobbled path that led to the poet's house. The sculpted oaks that lined it rustled in the faint breeze, rubbing new leaves together like a thousand tiny hands. Cehmai wished that he'd thought to bring a candle from Baarath's. He imagined Maati Vaupathai standing in the shadows with his appraising gaze and mysterious agenda.
"You're frightened of him," the andat said, but Cehmai didn't answer.
There was someone there among the trees-a shape shifting in the darkness. He stopped and slid his arms back into their sleeves. The andat stopped as well. They weren't far from the house-Cehmai could see the glow of the lantern left out before his doorway. The story of a poet slaughtered in a distant city raced in his mind until the figure came out between him and his doorway, silhouetted in the dim light. Cehmai's heart didn't slow, but it did change contents.
She still wore the half-mask she'd had at the gathering. Her black and white robes shifted, the cloth so rich and soft, and he could hear it even over the murmur of the trees. He stepped toward her, taking a pose of welcome.
"Idaan," he said. "Is there something ... I didn't expect to find you here. I mean ... I'm doing this rather badly, aren't l?"
"Start again," she said.
"Idaan."
"Cehmai."
She took a step toward him. He could see the flush in her cheek and smell the faint, nutty traces of distilled wine on her breath. When she spoke, her words were sharp and precise.
"I saw what you did to Adrah," she said. "He left a heel mark in the stone."
"Have I given offense?" he asked.
"Not to me. He didn't see it, and I didn't say."
In the back of his mind, or in some quarter of his flesh, Cehmai felt Stone-Made-Soft receding as if in answer to his own wish. They were alone on the dark path.
"It's difficult for you, isn't it?" she said. "Being a part of the court and yet not. Being among the most honored men in the city, and yet not of Machi."
"I bear it. You've been drinking."
"I have. But I know who I am and where I am. I know what I'm doing."
"What are you doing, Idaan-kya?"
"Poets can't take wives, can they?"
"We don't, no. There's not often room in our lives for a family."
"And lovers?"
Cehmai felt his breath coming faster and willed it to slow. An echo of amusement in the back of his mind was not his own thought. He ignored it.
"Poets take lovers," he said.
She stepped nearer again, not touching, not speaking. There was no chill to the air now. There was no darkness. Cehmai's senses were as fresh and bright and clear as midday, his mind as focused as the first day he'd controlled the andat. Idaan took his hand and slowly, deliberately, drew it through the folds of her robes until it cupped her breast.
"You ... you have a lover, Idaan-kya. Adrah ..."
"Do you want me to sleep here tonight?"
"Yes, Idaan. I do."
"And I want that too."
He struggled to think, but his skin felt as though he was basking in some hidden sun. There seemed to be some sound in his ears that he couldn't place that drove away everything but his fingertips and the cold-stippled flesh beneath them.
"I don't understand why you're doing this," he said.
Her lips parted, and she moved half an inch back. His hand pressed against her skin, his eyes were locked on hers. Fear sang through him that she would take another step back, that his fingers would only remember this moment, that this chance would pass. She saw it in his face, she must have, because she smiled, calm and knowing and sure of herself, like something from a dream.
"Do you care?" she asked.
"No," he said, half-surprised at the answer. "No, I truly don't."
/> THE CARAVAN LEFT THE LOW TOWN BEFORE DAWN, CARTWHEELS RATTLING on the old stone paving, oxen snorting white in the cold, and the voices of carters and merchants light with the anticipation of journey's end. The weeks of travel were past. By midday, they would cross the bridge over the Tidat and enter Machi. The companionship of the roadalready somewhat strained by differences in political opinions and some unfortunate words spoken by one of the carters early in the journeywould break apart, and each of them would be about his own business again. Otah walked with his hands in his sleeves and his heart divided between dread and anticipation. Irani Noygu was going to Machi on the business of his house-the satchel of letters at his side proved that. There was nothing he carried with him that would suggest anything else. He had come away from this city as a child so long ago he had only shreds of memory left of it. A scent of musk, a stone corridor, bathing in a copper tub when he was small enough to be lifted with a single hand, a view from the top of one of the towers. Other things as fragmentary, as fleeting. He could not say which memories were real and which only parts of dreams.
It was enough, he supposed, to be here now, walking in the darkness. He would go and see it with a man's eyes. He would see this place that had sent him forth and, despite all his struggles, still had the power to poison the life he'd built for himself. Itani Noygu had made his way as an indentured laborer at the seafronts of Saraykeht, as a translator and fisherman and midwife's assistant in the east islands, as a sailor on a merchant ship, and as a courier in House Siyanti and all through the cities. He could write and speak in three tongues, play the flute badly, tell jokes well, cook his own meals over a half-dead fire, and comport himself well in any company from the ranks of the utkhaiem to the denizens of the crudest dockhouse. This from a twelve-year-old boy who had named himself, been his own father and mother, formed a life out of little more than the will to do so. Irani Noygu was by any sane standard a success.
It was Otah Machi who had lost Kiyan's love.
The sky in the east lightened to indigo and then royal blue, and Otah could see the road out farther ahead. Between one breath and the next, the oxen came clearer. And the plains before them opened like a vast scroll. Far to the north, mountains towered, looking flat as a painting and blued by the distance. Smoke rose from low towns and mines on the plain, the greener pathway of trees marked the river, and on the horizon, small as fingers, rose the dark towers of Machi, unnatural in the landscape.
Otah stopped as sunlight lit the distant peaks like a fire. The brilliance crept down and then the distant towers blazed suddenly, and a moment later, the plain flooded with light. Otah caught his breath.
This is where I started, he thought. I come from here.
He had to trot to catch hack up with the caravan, but the questioning looks were all answered with a grin and a gesture. The enthusiastic courier still nave enough to be amazed by a sunrise. There was nothing more to it than that.
House Siyanti kept no quarters in Machi, but the gentleman's trade had its provisions for this. Other Houses would extend courtesy even to rivals so long as it was understood that the intrigues and prying were kept to decorous levels. If a courier were to act against a rival House or carried information that would too deeply tempt his hosts, it was better form to pay for a room elsewhere. Nothing Otah carried was so specific or so valuable, and once the caravan had made its trek across the plain and passed over the wide, sinuous bridge into Machi, Otah made his way to the compound of House Nan.
The structure itself was a gray block three stories high that faced a wide square and shared walls with the buildings on either side. Otah stopped by a street cart and bought a bowl of hot noodles in a smoky black sauce for two lengths of copper and watched the people passing by with a kind of doubled impression. He saw them as the subjects of his training: people clumped at the firekeepers' kilns and streetcarts meant a lively culture of gossip, women walking alone meant little fear of violence, and so on in the manner that was his profession. He also saw them as the inhabitants of his childhood. A statue of the first Khai Machi stood in the square, his noble expression undermined by the pigeon streaks. An old, rag-wrapped beggar sat on the street, a black lacquer box before her, and chanted songs. The forges were only a few streets away, and Otah could smell the sharp smoke; could even, he thought, hear the faint sound of metal on metal. He sucked down the last of the noodles and handed back the howl to a man easily twice his age.
"You're new to the north," the man said, not unkindly.
"Does it show?" Otah asked.
"Thick robes. It's spring, and this is warm. If you'd been here over winter, your blood would be able to stand a little cold."
Otah laughed, but made note. If he were to fit in well, it would mean suffering the cold. He would have to sit with that. He did want to understand the place, to see it, if only for a time, through the eyes of a native, but he didn't want to swim in ice water just because that was the local custom.
The door servant at the gray House Nan left him waiting in the street for a while, then returned to usher him to his quarters-a small, windowless room with four stacked cots that suggested he would be sharing the small iron brazier in the center of the room with seven other men, though he was the only one present just then. He thanked the servant, learned the protocols for entering and leaving the house, got directions to the nearest bathhouse, and after placing the oiled leather pouch that held his letters safely with the steward, went back out to wash off the journey.
The bathhouse smelled of iron pipes and sandalwood, but the air was warm and thick. A launderer had set tip shop at the front, and Otah gave over his robes to be scrubbed and kiln-dried with the understanding that it doomed him to be in the baths for at least the time it took the sun to move the width of two hands. He walked naked to the public baths and eased himself into the warm water with a sigh.
"Hai!" a voice called, and Otah opened his eyes. Two older men and a young woman sat on the same submerged bench on which he rested. One of the older men spoke.
"You've just come in with the `van?"
"Indeed," Otah said. "Though I hope you could tell by looking more than smell."
"Where from?"
"Udun, most recently."
The trio moved closer. The woman introduced them all-overseers for a metalworkers group. Silversmiths, mostly. Otah was gracious and ordered tea for them all and set about learning what they knew and thought, felt and feared and hoped for, and all of it with smiles and charm and just slightly less wit displayed than their own. It was his craft, and they knew it as well as he did, and would exchange their thoughts and speculations for his gossip. It was the way of traders and merchants the world over.
It was not long before the young woman mentioned the name of Otah Machi.
"If it is the upstart behind it all, it's a poor thing for Machi," the older man said. "None of the trading houses would know him or trust him. None of the families of the utkhaiem would have ties to him. Even if he's simply never found, the new Khai will always he watching over his shoulder. It isn't good to have an uncertain line in the Khai's chair. The best thing that could happen for the city would be to find him and put a knife through his belly. Him, and any children he's got meantime."
Otah smiled because it was what a courier of House Siyanti would do. The younger man sniffed and sipped his bowl of tea. The woman shrugged, the motion setting small waves across the water.
"It might do us well to have someone new running the city," she said. "It's clear enough that nothing will change with either of the two choices we have now. Biitrah. He at least was interested in mechanism. The Galts have been doing more and more with their little devices, and we'd be fools to ignore what they've managed."
"Children's toys," the older man said, waving the thought away.
"Toys that have made them the greatest threat Eddensea and the Westlands have seen," the younger man said. "Their armies can move faster than anyone else's. There isn't a warden who hasn't felt the bite of
them. If they haven't been invaded, they've had to offer tribute to the Lords Convocate, and that's just as bad."
"The ward being sacked might disagree," Otah said, trying for a joke to lighten the mood.
"The problem with the Galts," the woman said, "is they can't hold what they take. Every year it's another raid, another sack, another fleet carrying slaves and plunder back to Galt. But they never keep the land. They'd have much more money if they stayed and ruled the Westlands. Or Eymond. Or Eddensea."
"Then we'd have only them to trade with," the younger man said. "That'd be ugly."
"The Galts don't have the andat," the older man said, and his tone carried the rest: they don't have the andat, so they are not worth considering.
"But if they did," Otah said, hoping to keep the subject away from himself and his family. "Or if we did not-"
"If the sky dives into the sea, we'll be fishing for birds," the older man said. "It's this Otah Machi who's uneasing things. I have it on good authority that Danat and Kaiin have actually called a truce between them until they can rout out the traitor."
"Traitor?" Otah asked. "I hadn't heard that of him."
"There are stories," the younger man said. "Nothing anyone has proved. Six years ago, the Khai fell ill, and for a few days, they thought he might die. Some people suspected poison."
"And hasn't he turned to poison again? Look at Biitrah's death," the younger man said. "And I tell you the Khai Machi hasn't been himself since then, not truly. Even if Otah were to claim the chair, it'd be better to punish him for his crimes and raise up one of the high families."
"It could have been had fish," the woman said. "There was a lot of bad fish that year."
"No one believes that," the older man said.
"Which of the others would be best for the city now that Biitrah is gone?" Otah asked.
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