The older man named Kaiin, and the younger man and woman Danat, in the same moment, the syllables grinding against each other in the warm, damp air, and they immediately fell to debate. Kaiin was a master negotiator; Danat was better thought of by the utkhaiem. Kaiin was prone to fits of temper, Danat to weeks of sloth. Each man, to hear it, was a paragon of virtue and little better than a street thug. Otah listened, interjected comments, asked questions crafted to keep the conversation alive and on its course. His mind was hardly there.
When at last he made his excuses, the three debaters hardly paused in their wrangle. Otah dried himself by a brazier and collected his robes-laundered now, smelling of cedar oil and warm from the kiln. The streets were fuller than when he had gone into the bathhouse. The sun would fall early, disappearing behind the peaks to the west long before the sky grew dark, but it still hovered two hands above the mountainous horizon.
Otah walked without knowing where he was walking to. The black cobbles and tall houses seemed familiar and exotic at the same time. The towers rose into the sky, glowing in the sunlight. At the intersection of three large streets, Otah found a courtyard with a great stone archway inlaid with wood and metal sigils of chaos and order. Harsh forge smoke from the east mixed with the greasy scent of a cart seller's roasting duck and, for a moment, Otah was possessed by the memory of being a child no more than four summers old. The smoke scent wove with the taste of honeybread nearly too hot to eat, the clear open view of the valley and mountains from the top of the towers, and a woman's skin-mother or sister or servant. There was no way to know.
It was a ghost memory, strong and certain as stone, but without a place in his life. Something had happened, once, that tied all these senses together, but it was gone and he would never have it. He was upstart and traitor. Poisoner and villain. None of it was true, but it made for an interesting story to tell in the teahouses and meeting rooms-a variation on the theme of fratricide that the Khaiem replayed in every generation. A deep fatigue pressed into him. He had been an innocent to think that he might be forgotten, that Otah Machi might escape the venomous speculation of the traders and merchants, high families and low townsmen. There was no use for truth when spectacle was at issue. And there was nothing in the city that could matter less than the halfrecalled memories of a courier's abandoned childhood. The life he'd built mattered less than ashes to these people. His death would be a relief to them.
He returned to House Nan just as the stars began to glimmer in the deep northern sky. There was fresh bread and pepper-baked lamb, distilled rice wine and cold water. The other men who were to share his room joined him at the table, and they laughed and joked, traded information and gossip from across the world. Otah slid back comfortably into Itani Noygu, and his smiles came more easily as the night wore on, though a cold core remained in his breast. It was only just before he went to crawl into his cot that he found the steward, recovered his pouch of letters, and prepared himself.
All the letters were, of course, still sewn shut, but Otah checked the knots. None had been undone so far as he could tell. It would have been a breach of the gentleman's trade to open letters held in trust, and it would have been foolishness to trust to honor. Had House Nan been willing to break trust, that would have been interesting to know as well. He laid them out on his cot, considering.
Letters to the merchant houses and lower families among the utkhaiem were the most common. He didn't carry a letter for the Khai himself-he would have balked at so high a risk-but his work would take him to the palaces. And there were audiences, no doubt, to which he could get an invitation. If he chose, he could go to the Master of Tides and claim business with members of the court. It wouldn't even require stretching the truth very far. He sat in silence, feeling as if there were two men within him.
One wanted nothing more than to embrace the fear and flee to some distant island and be pleased to live wondering whether his brothers would still be searching him out. The other was consumed by an anger that drove him forward, deeper into the city of his birth and the family that had first discarded him and then fashioned a murderer from his memory.
Fear and anger. He waited for the calm third voice of wisdom, but it didn't come. He was left with no better plan than to act as Irani Noygu would have, had he been nothing other than he appeared. When at last he repacked his charges and lay on his cot, he expected that sleep would not come, but it did, and he woke in the morning forgetful of where he was and surprised to find that Kiyan was not in the bed beside him.
The palaces of the Khai were deep within the city, and the gardens around them made it seem more like a walk into some glorious low town than movement into the center of a great city. Trees arched over the walkways, branches bright with new leaves. Birds fluttered past him, reminding him of Udun and the wayhouse he had almost made his home. The greatest tower loomed overhead, dark stone rising up like twenty palaces, one above the other. Otah stopped in a courtyard before the lesser palace of the Master of Tides and squinted up at the great tower, wondering whether he had ever been to the top of it. Wondering whether being here, now, was valor, cowardice, foolishness, or wisdom; the product of anger or fear or the childish drive to show that he could defy them all if he chose.
He gave his name to the servants at the door and was led to an an techamber larger than his apartments back in Udun. A slave girl plucked a lap harp, filling the high air with a sweet, slow tune. He smiled at her and took a pose of appreciation. She returned his smile and nodded, but her fingers never left the strings. The servant, when he came, wore robes of deep red shot with yellow and a silver armband. He took a pose of greeting so brief it almost hadn't happened.
"Irani Noygu. You're Itani Noygu, then? Ah, good. I am Piyun See, the Master of Tides' assistant. He's too busy to see you himself. So House Siyanti has taken an interest in Machi, then?" he said. Otah smiled, though he meant it less this time.
"I couldn't say. I only go where they send me, Piyun-cha."
The assistant took a pose of agreement.
"I had hoped to know the court's schedule in the next week," Otah said. "I have business-"
"With the poet. Yes, I know. He left your name with us. He said we should keep a watch out for you. You're wise to come to us first. You wouldn't imagine the people who simply drift through on the breeze as if the poets weren't members of the court."
Otah smiled, his mouth tasting of fear, his heart suddenly racing. The poet of Machi-Cehmai 'Ivan, his name was-had no reason to know Itani Noygu or expect him. This was a mistake or a trap. If it was a trap, it was sloppy, and if a mistake, dangerous. The lie came to his lips as gracefully as a rehearsed speech.
"I'm honored to have been mentioned. I hadn't expected that he would remember me. But I'm afraid the business I've come on may not be what he had foreseen."
"I wouldn't know," the assistant said as he shifted. "Visiting dignitaries might confide in the Master of Tides, but I'm like you. I follow orders. Now. Let me see. I can send a runner to the library, and if he's there ..."
"Perhaps it would be best if I went to the poet's house," Otah said. "He can find me there when he isn't-"
"Oh, we haven't put him there. Gods! He has his own rooms."
"His own rooms?"
"Yes. We have a poet of our own, you know. We aren't going to put Cehmai-cha on a cot in the granary every time the Dai-kvo sends us a guest. Maati-cha has apartments near the library."
The air seemed to leave the room. A dull roar filled Otah's ears, and he had to put a hand to the wall to keep from swaying. Maati-cha. The name came like an unforeseen blow.
Maati Vaupathai. Maati whom Otah had known briefly at the school, and to whom he had taught the secrets he had learned before he turned his back on the poets and all they offered. Maati whom he had found again in Saraykeht, who had become his friend and who knew that Irani Noygu was the son of the Khai Machi.
The last night they had seen one another-thirteen, fourteen summers ago-Maati had stolen hi
s lover and Otah had killed Maati's master. He was here now, in Machi. And he was looking for Otah. He felt like a deer surprised by the hunter at its side.
The servant girl fumbled with her strings, the notes of the tune coming out a jangle, and Otah shifted his gaze to her as if she'd shouted. For a moment, their eyes met and he saw discomfort in her as she hurried back to her song. She might have seen something in his face, might have realized who was standing before her. Otah balled his fists at his sides, pressing them into his thighs to keep from shaking. The assistant had been speaking. Otah didn't know what he'd said.
"Forgive me, but before we do anything, would you be so kind . . . " Otah feigned an embarrassed simper. "I'm afraid I had one bowl of tea too many this morning, and waters that run in, run out...."
"Of course. I'll have a slave take you to-"
"No need," Otah said as he stepped to the door. No one shouted. No one stopped him. "I'll be back with you in a moment."
He walked out of the hall, forcing himself not to run though he could feel his heartbeat in his neck, and his ribs seemed too small for his breath. He waited for the warning yell to come-armsmen with drawn blades or the short, simple pain of an arrow in his breast. Generations of his uncles had spilled their blood, spat their last breaths perhaps here, under these arches. He was not immune. Irani Noygu would not protect him. He controlled himself as best he could, and when he reached the gardens, boughs shielding him from the eyes of the palaces, he bolted.
IDAAN SAT AT THE OPEN SKY DOORS, HER LEGS HANGING OUT OVER THE VOID, and let her gaze wander the moonlit valley. The glimmers of the low towns to the south. The Daikani mine where her brother had gone to die. The Poinyat mines to the west and southeast. And below the soles of her bare feet, Machi itself: the smoke rising from the forges, the torches and lanterns glimmering in the streets and windows smaller and dimmer than fireflies. The winches and pulleys hung in the darkness above her, long lengths of iron chain in guides and hooks set in the stone, ready to be freed should there be call to haul something tip to the high reaches of the tower or lower something down. Chains that clanked and rattled, uneasy in the night breeze.
She leaned forward, forcing herself to feel the vertigo twist her stomach and tighten her throat. Savoring it. Scoot forward a few inches, no more effort really than standing from a chair, and then the sound of wind would fill her ears. She waited as long as she could stand and then drew hack, gasping and nauseated and trembling. But she did not pull her legs back in. That would have been weakness.
It was an irony that the symbols of Machi's greatness were so little used. In the winter, there was no heating them-all the traffic of the city went in the streets, or over the snows, or through the networks of tunnels. And even in summer, the endless spiraling stairways and the need to haul up any wine or food or musical instruments made the gardens and halls nearer the ground more inviting. The towers were symbols of power, existing to show that they could exist and little enough more. A boast in stone and iron used for storage and exotic parties to impress visitors from the other courts of the Khaiem. And still, they made Idaan think that perhaps she could imagine what it would he to fly. In her way she loved them, and she loved very few things these days.
It was odd, perhaps that she had two lovers and still felt alone. Adrah had been with her for longer, it felt, than she had been herself. And so it had surprised her that she was so ready to betray him in another man's bed. Perhaps she'd thought that by being a new man's lover, she would strip off that old skin and become innocent again.
Or perhaps it was only that Cehmai had a sweet face and wanted her. She was young, she thought, to have given tip flirtation and courtship. She'd been angry with Adrah for embarrassing Cchmai at the dance. She'd promised herself never to be owned by a man. And also, killing Biitrah had left a hunger in her-a need that nothing yet had sated.
She liked Cehmai. She longed for him. She needed him in a way she couldn't quite fathom, except to say that she hated herself less when she was with him.
"Idaan!" a voice whispered from the darkness behind her. "Conic away from there! You'll he seen!"
"Only if you're fool enough to bring a torch," she said, but she pulled her feet hack in from the abyss and hauled the great bronze-bound oaken sky doors shut. For a moment, there was nothing-black darker than closing her eyes-and then the scrape of a lantern's hood and the flame of a single candle. Crates and boxes threw deep shadows on the stone walls and carved cabinets. Adrah looked pale, even in the dim light. Idaan found herself amused and annoyed-pulled between wanting to comfort him and the desire to point out that it wasn't his family they were killing. She wondered if he knew yet that she had taken the poet to bed and whether he would care. And whether she did. He smiled nervously and glanced around at the shadows.
"He hasn't come," Idaan said.
"He will. Don't worry," Adrah said, and then a moment later: "My father has drafted a letter. Proposing our union. He's sending it to the Khai tomorrow."
"Good," Idaan said. "We'll want that in place before everyone finishes dying."
"Don't."
"If we can't speak of it to each other, Adrah-kya, when will we ever? It isn't as if I can go to our friends or the priest." Idaan took a pose of query to some imagined confidant. "Adrah's going to take me as his wife, but it's important that we do it now, so that when I've finished slaughtering my brothers, he can use me to press his suit to become the new Khai without it seeming so clearly that I'm being traded at market. And don't you love this new robe? It's Westlands silk."
She laughed bitterly. Adrah did not step back, quite, but he did pull away.
"What is it, Idaan-kya?" he said, and Idaan was surprised by the pain in his voice. It sounded genuine. "Have I done something to make you angry with me?"
For a moment, she saw herself through his eyes-cutting, ironic, cruel. It wasn't who she had been with him. Once, before they had made this bargain with Chaos, she had had the luxury of being soft and warm. She had always been angry, only not with him. How lost he must feel.
Idaan leaned close and kissed him. For one terrible moment, she meant it-the softness of his lips against hers stirring something within her that cried out to hold and be held, to weep and wail and take com fort. Her flesh also remembered the poet, the strange taste of another man's skin, the illusion of hope and of safety that she'd felt in her betrayal of the man who was destined to share her life.
"I'm not angry, sweet. Only tired. I'm very tired."
"This will pass, Idaan-kya. Remember that this part only lasts a while."
"And is what follows it better?"
He didn't answer.
The candle had hardly burned past another mark when the moonfaced assassin appeared, moving like darkness itself in his back cotton robe. He put down his lantern and took a pose of welcome before dusting a crate with his sleeve and sitting. His expression was pleasant as a fruit seller in a summer market. It only made Idaan like him less.
"So," Oshai said. "You called, I've come. What seems to be the problem?"
She had intended to begin with Maati Vaupathai, but the pretense of passive stupidity in Oshai's eyes annoyed her. Idaan raised her chin and her brows, considering him as she would a garden slave. Adrah looked back and forth between the two. The motion reminded her of a child watching his parents fighting. When she spoke, she had to try not to spit.
"I would know where our plans stand," she said. "My father's ill, and I hear more from Adrah and the palace slaves than from you."
"My apologies, great lady," Oshai said without a hint of irony. "It's only that meetings with you are a risk, and written reports are insupportable. Our mutual friends ..."
"The Galtic High Council," Idaan said, but Oshai continued as if she had not spoken.
". . . have placed agents and letters of intent with six houses. Contracts for iron, silver, steel, copper, and gold. The negotiations are under way, and I expect we will be able to draw them out for most of the summer, should we ne
ed to. When all three of your brothers die, you will have been wed to Adrah, and between the powerful position of his house, his connection with you, and the influence of six of the great houses whose contracts will suddenly ride on his promotion to Khai, you should be sleeping in your mother's bed by Candles Night."
"My mother never had a bed of her own. She was only a woman, remember. Traded to the Khai for convenience, like a gift."
"It's only an expression, great lady. And remember, you'll be sharing Adrah here with other wives in your turn."
"I won't take others," Adrah said. "It was part of our agreement."
"Of course you won't," Oshai said with a nod and an insincere smile. "My mistake."
Idaan felt herself flush, but kept her voice level and calm when she spoke.
"And my brothers? Danat and Kaiin?"
"They are being somewhat inconvenient, it's true. They've gone to ground. Frightened, I'm told, by your ghost brother Utah. We may have to wait until your father actually dies before they screw up the courage to stand against each other. But when they do, I will be ready. You know all this, Idaan-cha. It can't be the only reason you've asked me here?" The round, pale face seemed to harden without moving. "There had best be something more pressing than seeing whether I'll declaim when told."
"Maati Vaupathai," Idaan said. "The Dai-kvo's sent him to study in the library."
"Hardly a secret," Oshai said, but Idaan thought she read a moment's unease in his eyes.
"And it doesn't concern your owners that this new poet has come for the same prize they want? What's in those old scrolls that makes this worth the risk for you, anyway?"
"I don't know, great lady," the assassin said. "I'm trusted with work of this delicate nature because I don't particularly care about the points that aren't mine to know."
"And the Galts? Are they worried about this Maati Vaupathai poking through the library before them?"
"It's ... of interest," Oshai said, grudgingly.
"It was the one thing you insisted on," Idaan said, stepping toward the man. "When you came to Adrah and his father, you agreed to help us in return for access to that library. And now your price may be going away.
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