"You are merciful, most high."
The old man looked up at him, squinting. His lips were pressed thin, and
the lines in his face were black as charcoal. Maati stood waiting. At
length, the Dai-kvo turned away again with a sigh.
"Will you be able to do it?" he asked.
"I will do as the Dai-kvo commands," Maati said.
"Yes, I know you'll go there. But will you be able to tell me that he's
there? You know if he is behind this, they'll kill him before they go on
to each other. Are you able to bear that responsibility? Tell me now if
you aren't, and I'll find some other way. You don't have to fail again."
"I won't fail again, most high."
"Good. That's good," the Dai-kvo said and went silent. Maati waited so
long for the pose that would dismiss him that he wondered whether the
Dai-kvo had forgotten he was there, or had chosen to ignore him as an
insult. But the old man spoke, his voice low.
"How old is your son, Maati-cha?"
"Twelve, most high. But I haven't seen him in some years."
"You're angry with me for that." Maati began to take a pose of denial,
but checked himself and lowered his arms. This wasn't the time for court
politics. The Dai-kvo saw this and smiled. "You're getting wiser, my
boy. You were a fool when you were young. In itself, that's not such a
bad thing. Many men are. But you embraced your mistakes. You de fended
them against all correction. That was the wrong path, and don't think
I'm unaware of how you've paid for it."
"As you say, most high."
"I told you there was no place in a poet's life for a family. A lover
here or there, certainly. Most men are too weak to deny themselves that
much. But a wife? A child? No. There isn't room for both what they
require and what we do. And I told you that. You remember? I told you
that, and you ..
The Dai-kvo shook his head, frowning in remembered frustration. It was a
moment, Maati knew, when he could apologize. He could repent his pride
and say that the Dai-kvo had indeed known better all along. He remained
silent.
"I was right," the Dai-kvo said for him. "And now you've done half a job
as a poet and half a job as a man. Your studies are weak, and the woman
took your whelp and left. You've failed both, just as I knew you would.
I'm not condemning you for that, Maati. No man could have taken on what
you did and succeeded. But this opportunity in Machi is what will wipe
clean the slate. Do this well and it will be what you're remembered for."
"Certainly I will do my best."
"Fail at it, and there won't be a third chance. Few enough men have two."
Maati took a pose appropriate to a student receiving a lecture.
Considering him, the Dal-kvo responded with one that closed the lesson,
then raised his hand.
"Don't destroy this chance in order to spite me, Maati. Failing in this
will do me no harm, and it will destroy you. You're angry because I told
you the truth, and because what I said would happen, did. Consider while
you go north, whether that's really such a good reason to hate me."
THE OPEN WINDOW LET IN A COOT, BREEZE THAT SMELLED OF PINE AND RAIN.
Otah Mach], the sixth son of the Khai Machi, lay on the bed, listening
to the sounds of water-rain pattering on the flagstones of the
wayhouse's courtyard and the tiles of its roof, the constant hushing of
the river against its banks. A fire danced and spat in the grate, but
his bare skin was still stippled with cold. The night candle had gone
out, and he hadn't bothered to relight it. Morning would come when it came.
The door slid open and then shut. He didn't turn to look.
"You're brooding, Itani," Kiyan said, calling him by the false name he'd
chosen for himself, the only one he'd ever told her. Her voice was low
and rich and careful as a singer's. He shifted now, turning to his side.
She knelt by the grate-her skin smooth and brown, her robes the formal
cut of a woman of business, one strand of her hair fallen free. Her face
was thin-she reminded him of a fox sometimes, when a smile just touched
her mouth. She placed a fresh log on the fire as she spoke. "I half
expected you'd be asleep already."
He sighed and sketched a pose of contrition with one hand.
"Don't apologize to me," she said. "I'm as happy having you in my rooms
here as in the teahouse, but Old Mani wanted more news out of you. Or
maybe just to get you drunk enough to sing dirty songs with him. He's
missed you, you know."
"It's a hard thing, being so loved."
"Don't laugh at it. It's not a love to carry you through ages, but it's
more than some people ever manage. You'll grow into one of those pinched
old men who want free wine because they pity themselves."
"I'm sorry. I don't mean to make light of Old Mani. It's just ..."
He sighed. Kiyan closed the window and relit the night candle.
"It's just that you're brooding," she said. "And you're naked and not
under the blankets, so you're feeling that you've done something wrong
and deserve to suffer."
"Ah," Otah said. "Is that why I do this?"
"Yes," she said, untying her robes. "It is. You can't hide it from me,
Itani. You might as well come out with it."
Otah held the thought in his mind. I'm not who I've told you I am. Itani
Noygu is the name I picked for myself when I was a child. My father is
dying, and brothers I can hardly recall have started killing each other,
and I find it makes me sad. He wondered what Kiyan would say to that.
She prided herself on knowing him-on knowing people and how their minds
worked. And yet he didn't think this was something she'd already have
guessed.
Naked, she lay beside him, pulling thick blankets up over them both.
"Did you find another woman in Chaburi-Tan?" she asked, halfteasing. But
only half. "Some young dancing girl who stole your heart, or some other
hit of your flesh, and now you're stewing over how to tell me you're
leaving me?"
"I'm a courier," Otah said. "I have a woman in every city I visit. You
know that."
"You don't," she said. "Some couriers do, but you don't."
"No?"
"No. It took me half a year of doing everything short of stripping bare
for you to notice me. You don't stay in other cities long enough for a
woman to chip through your reserve. And you don't have to push away the
blankets. You may want to be cold, but I don't."
"Well. Maybe I'm just feeling old."
"A ripe thirty-three? Well, when you decide to stop running across the
world, I'd always be pleased to hire you on. We could stand another pair
of hands around the place. You could throw out the drunks and track down
the cheats that try to slip away without paying."
"You don't pay enough," Otah said. "I talk to Old Mani. I know what your
wages are.
"Perhaps you'd get extra for keeping me warm at nights."
"Shouldn't you offer that to Old Mani first? He's been here longer than
I have."
Kiyan slapped his chest smartly, and then nestled into him. He found
himself curling toward her, the warmth of he
r body drawing him like a
familiar scent. Her fingers traced the tattoo on his breast-the ink had
faded over time, blurring lines that had once been sharp and clear.
"Jokes aside," she said, and he could hear a weariness in her voice, "I
would take you on, if you wanted to stay. You could live here, with me.
Help me manage the house."
He caressed her hair, feeling the individual strands as they flowed
across his fingertips. There was a scattering of white among the black
that made her look older than she was. Otah knew that they had been
there since she was a girl, as if she'd been born old.
"That sounds like you're suggesting marriage," he said.
"Perhaps. You wouldn't have to, but ... it would be one way to arrange
things. That isn't a threat, you know. I don't need a husband. Only if
it would make you feel better, we could ..."
He kissed her gently. It had been weeks, and he was surprised to find
how much he'd missed the touch of her lips. Weeks of travel weariness
slipped away, the deep unease loosened its hold on his chest, and he
took comfort in her. He fell asleep with her arm over his body, her
breath already soft and deep with sleep.
In the morning, he woke before she did, slipped out of the bed, and
dressed quietly. The sun was not up, but the eastern sky had lightened
and the morning birds were singing madly as he took himself across an
ancient stone bridge into Udun.
A river city, Udun was laced with as many canals as roadways. Bridges
humped up high enough for barges to pass beneath them, and the green
water of the Qiit lapped at old stone steps that descended into the
river mud. Otah stopped at a stall on the broad central plaza and traded
two lengths of copper for a thick wedge of honey bread and a bowl of
black, smoky tea. Around him, the city slowly came awakethe streets and
canals filling with traders and merchants, beggars singing at the
corners or in small rafts tied at the water's edge, laborers hauling
wagons along the wide flagstoned streets, and birds bright as shafts of
sunlight-blue and red and yellow, green as grass, and pink as dawn. Udun
was a city of birds, and their chatter and shriek and song filled the
air as he ate.
The compound of House Siyanti was in the better part of the city, just
downstream from the palaces, where the water was not yet fouled by the
wastes of thirty thousand men and women and children. The red brick
buildings rose up three stories high, and a private canal was filled
with barges in the red and silver of the house. The stylized emblem of
the sun and stars had been worked into the brick archway that led to the
central courtyard, and Otah passed beneath it with a feeling like coming
home.
Amiit Foss, the overseer for the house couriers, was in his offices,
ordering around three apprentices with sharp words and insults, but no
blows. Otah stepped in and took a pose of greeting.
"Ah! The missing Itani. Did you know the word for half-wit in the tongue
of the Empire was itani-nah?"
"All respect, Amiit-cha, but no it wasn't."
The overseer grinned. One of the apprentices-a girl of perhaps thirteen
summers-whispered something angrily, and the boy next to her giggled.
"Fine," the overseer said. "You two. I need the ciphers rechecked on
last week's letters."
"But I wasn't the one . . . ," the girl protested. The overseer took a
pose that commanded her silence, and the pair, glowering at each other,
stalked away.
"I get them when they're just growing old enough to flirt," Amiit said,
sighing. "Come back to the meeting rooms. The journey took longer than
I'd expected."
"There were some delays," Otah said as he followed the older man hack.
"Chaburi-'Ian isn't as tightly run as it was last time I was out there."
"No?"
"There are refugees from the Westlands."
"There are always refugees from the Westlands."
"Not this many," Otah said. "There are rumors that the Khai ChaburiTan
is going to restrict the number of Westlanders allowed on the island."
Amiit paused, his hands on the carved wood door of the meeting rooms.
Otah could almost see the implications of this thought working
themselves out behind the overseer's eyes. A moment later, Amiit looked
up, raised his eyebrows in appreciation, and pushed the doors open.
Half the day was spent in the raw silk chairs of the meeting rooms while
Amiit took Otah's report and accepted the letters-sewn shut and written
in cipher-that Otah had carried with him.
It had taken Otah some time to understand all that being a courier
implied. When he had first arrived in Udun six years before, hungry,
lost and half-haunted by the memories he carried with him, he had still
believed that he would simply be carrying letters and small packages
from one place to another, perhaps waiting for a response, and then
taking those to where they were expected. It would have been as right to
say that a farmer throws some seeds in the earth and returns a few
months later to sec what's grown. He had been lucky. His ability to win
friends easily had served him, and he had been instructed in what the
couriers called the gentleman's trade: how to gather information that
might be of use to the house, how to read the activity of a street
corner or market, and how to know from that the mood of a city. How to
break ciphers and re-sew letters. How to appear to drink more wine than
you actually did, and question travelers on the road without seeming to.
He understood now that the gentleman's trade was one that asked a
lifetime to truly master, and though he was still a journeyman, he had
found a kind of joy in it. Amiit knew what his talents were, and chose
assignments for him in which he could do well. And in return for the
trust of the house and the esteem of his fellows, Otah did the best work
he could, brokering information, speculation, gossip, and intrigue. He
had traveled through the summer cities in the south, west to the plains
and the cities that traded directly with the Westlands, up the eastern
coasts where his knowledge of obscure east island tongues had served him
well. By design or happy coincidence, he had never gone farther north
than Yalakeht. He had not been called on to see the winter cities.
Until now.
"There's trouble in the north," Amiit said as he tucked the last of the
opened letters into his sleeve.
"I'd heard," Otah said. "The succession's started in Machi."
"Amnat-"Ian, Machi, Cetani. All of them have something brewing. You may
need to get some heavier robes."
"I didn't think House Siyanti had much trade there," Otah said, trying
to keep the unease out of his voice.
"We don't. That doesn't mean we never will. And take your time. There's
something I'm waiting for from the west. I won't be sending you out for
a month at least, so you can have some time to spend you money. Unless ..."
The overseer's eyes narrowed. His hands took a pose of query.
"I just dislike the cold," Otah said, making a joke to cover his une
ase.
"I grew up in Saraykeht. It seemed like water never froze there."
"It's a hard life," Amiit said. "I can try to give the commissions to
other men, if you'd prefer."
And have them wonder why it was that I wouldn't go, Otah thought. He
took a pose of thanks that also implied rejection.
"I'll take what there is," he said. "And heavy wool robes besides."
"It really isn't so bad up there in summer," Amiit said. "It's the
winters that break your stones."
"Then by all means, send someone else in the winter."
They exchanged a few final pleasantries, and Otah left the name of
Kiyan's wayhouse as the place to send for him, if he was needed. He
spent the afternoon in a teahouse at the edge of the warehouse district,
talking with old acquaintances and trading news. He kept an ear out for
word from Machi, but there was nothing fresh. The eldest son had been
poisoned, and his remaining brothers had gone to ground. No one knew
where they were nor which had begun the traditional struggle. There were
only a few murmurs of the near-forgotten sixth son, but every time he
heard his old name, it was like hearing a distant, threatening noise.
He returned to the wayhouse as darkness began to thicken the treetops
and the streets fell into twilight, brooding. It wasn't safe, of course,
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