tempted to open them again, just for a moment. To see the land and sky
laid out before her.
"It's odd, you know," she said. "If I had been born a man, they would
have sent me away to the school. I would have become a poet or taken the
brand. But instead, they kept me here, and I became what they're afraid
of. Kaiin and Danat are hiding from the brother who has broken the
traditions and come back to kill them for the chair. And here I am. I am
Otah Machi. Only they can't see it."
"I love you, Idaan-kya."
She smiled because there was nothing else to do. He had heard the words,
but understood nothing. It would have meant as much to talk to a dog.
She took his hand in hers, laced her fingers with his.
"I love you too, Adrah-kya. And I will be happy once we've done all this
and taken the chair. You'll be the Khai Machi, and I will be your wife.
We'll rule the city together, just as we always planned, and everything
will be right again. It's been half a hand by now. We should go."
They parted in one of the night gardens, he to the east and his family
compound, and she to the south, to her own apartments, and past them and
west to tree-lined path that led to the poet's house. If the shutters
were closed, if no light shone but the night candle, she told herself
she wouldn't go in. But the lanterns were lit brightly, and the shutters
open. She paced quietly through the grounds, peering in through windows,
until she caught the sound of voices. Cehmai's soft and reasonable, and
then another. A man's, loud and full of a rich selfimportance. Baarath,
the librarian. Idaan found a tree with low branches and deep shadows and
sat, waiting with as much patience as she could muster, and silently
willing the man away. The full moon was halfway across the sky before
the two came to the door, silhouetted. Baarath swayed like a drunkard,
but Cehmai, though he laughed as loud and sang as poorly, didn't waver.
She watched as Baarath took a sloppy pose of farewell and stumbled off
along the path. Cehmai watched him go, then looked back into the house,
shaking his head.
Idaan rose and stepped out of the shadows.
She saw Cehmai catch sight of her, and she waited. He might have another
guest-he might wave her away, and she would have to go back through the
night to her own apartments, her own bed. The thought filled her with
black dread until the poet put one hand out to her, and with the other
motioned toward the light within his house.
Stone-Made-Soft brooded over a game of stones, its massive head cupped
in a hand twice the size of her own. The white stones, she noticed, had
lost badly. The andat looked up slowly and, its curiosity satisfied, it
turned back to the ended game. The scent of mulled wine filled the air.
Cehmai closed the door behind her, and then set about fastening the
shutters.
"I didn't expect to see you," the poet said.
"Do you want me to leave?"
'T'here were a hundred things he could have said. Graceful ways to say
yes, or graceless ways to deny it. He only turned to her with the
slightest smile and went back to his task. Idaan sat on a low couch and
steeled herself. She couldn't say why she was driven to do this, only
that the impulse was much like draping her legs out the sky doors, and
that it was what she had chosen to do.
"Daaya Vaunyogi is approaching the Khai tomorrow. He is going to
petition that Adrah and I be married."
Cehmai paused, sighed, turned to her. His expression was melancholy, but
not sorrowful. He was like an old man, she thought, amused by the world
and his own role in it. There was a strength in him, and an acceptance.
"I understand," he said.
"Do You?"
"No.'
"He is of a good house, their bloodlines-"
"And he's well off and likely to oversee his family's house when his
father passes. And he's a good enough man, for what he is. It isn't that
I can't imagine why he would choose to marry you, or you him. But, given
the context, there are other questions."
"I love him," Idaan said. "We have planned to do this for ... we have
been lovers for almost two years."
Cehmai sat beside a brazier, and looked at her with the patience of a
man studying a puzzle. The coals had burned down to a fine white ash.
"And you've come to be sure I never speak of what happened the other
night. To tell me that it can never happen again."
The sense of vertigo returned, her feet held over the abyss.
"No," she said.
"You've come to stay the night?"
"If you'll have me, yes."
The poet looked down, his hands laced together before him. A cricket
sang, and then another. The air seemed thin.
"Idaan-kya, I think it might be better if-"
"Then lend me a couch and a blanket. If you ... let me stay here as a
friend might. We are friends, at least? Only don't make me go back to my
rooms. I don't want to be there. I don't want to be with people and I
can't stand being alone. And I ... I like it here."
She took a pose of supplication. Cehmai rose and for a moment she was
sure he would refuse. She almost hoped he would. Scoot forward, no more
effort than sitting up, and then the sound of wind. But Cehmai took a
pose that accepted her. She swallowed, the tightness in her throat
lessening.
"I'll be hack. The shutters ... it might be awkward if someone were to
happen by and see you here."
"Thank you, Cehmai-kya."
He leaned forward and kissed her mouth, neither passionate nor chaste,
then sighed again and went to the back of the house. She heard the
rattle of wood as he closed the windows against the night. Idaan looked
at her hands, watching them tremble as she might watch a waterfall or a
rare bird. An effect of nature, outside herself. The andat shifted and
turned to look at her. She felt her brows rise, daring the thing to
speak. Its voice was the low rumble of a landslide.
"I have seen generations pass, girl. I've seen young men die of age. I
don't know what you are doing, but I know this. It will end in chaos.
For him, and for you."
Stone-Made-Soft went silent again, stiller than any real man, not even
the pulse of breath in it. She glared into the wide, placid face and
took a pose of challenge.
"It that a threat?" she asked.
The andat shook its head once-left, and then right, and then still as if
it had never moved in all the time since the world was young. When it
spoke again, Idaan was almost startled at the sound.
"It's a blessing," it said.
"WHAT DID HE LOOK LIKE?" MAA'I'I ASKED.
Piyun See, chief assistant to the Master of 'rides, frowned and glanced
out the window. The man sensed that he had done something wrong, even if
he could not say what it had been. It made him reluctant. Maati sipped
tea from a white stone bowl and let the silence stretch.
"A courier. He wore decent robes. He stood half a head taller than you,
and had a good face. Long as a north man's."
"Well, that will help me," Maati said. He couldn't keep his impatience
entirely to himself.
Piyun took a pose of apology formal enough to be utterly insincere.
"He had two eyes and two feet and one nose, Maati-cha. I thought he was
your acquaintance. Shouldn't you know better than I what he looks like?"
"If it is the man."
"He didn't seem pleased to hear you'd been asking after him. He made an
excuse and lit out almost as soon as he heard of you. It isn't as if 1
knew that he wasn't to be told of you. I didn't have orders to hold back
your name."
"Did you have orders to volunteer me to him?" Maati asked.
"No, but ..."
Maati waved the objection away.
"House Siyanti. You're sure of that?"
"Of course I am."
"How do I reach their compound?"
"They don't have one. House Siyanti doesn't trade in the winter cities.
He would be staying at a wayhouse. Or sometimes the houses here will let
couriers take rooms."
"So other than the fact that he came, you can tell me nothing," Maati said.
This time the pose of apology was more sincere. Frustration clamped
Maati's jaw until his teeth hurt, but he forced himself into a pose that
thanked the assistant and ended the interview. Piyun See left the small
meeting room silently, closing the door behind him.
Otah was here, then. He had come back to Machi, using the same name he
had had in Saraykeht. And that meant ... Maati pressed his fingertips to
his eyes. That meant nothing certain. That he was here suggested that
Biitrah's death was his work, but as yet it was only a sug gestion. He
doubted that the Dai-kvo or the Khai Machi would see it that way. His
presence was as much as proof to them, and there was no way to keep it
secret. Piyun See was no doubt spreading the gossip across the palaces
even now-the visiting poet and his mysterious courier. He had to find
Otah himself, and he had to do it now.
He straightened his robes and stalked out to the gardens, and then the
path that would lead him to the heart of the city. He would begin with
the teahouses nearest the forges. It was the sort of place couriers
might go to drink and gossip. There might be someone there who would
know of House Siyanti and its partners. He could discover whether Irani
Noygu had truly been working for Siyanti. That would bring him one step
nearer, at least. And there was nothing more he could think of to do now.
The streets were busy with children playing street games with rope and
sticks, with beggars and slaves and water carts and firekeepers' kilns,
with farmers' carts loaded high with spring produce or lambs and pigs on
their way to the fresh butcher. Voices jabbered and shouted and sang,
the smells of forge smoke and grilling meat and livestock pressed like a
fever. The city seemed busy as an anthill, and Maati's mind churned as
he navigated his way through it all. Otah had come to the winter cities.
Was he killing his brothers? Had he chosen to become the Khai Machi?
And if he had, would Maati have the strength to stop him?
He told himself that he could. He was so focused and among so many
distractions that he almost didn't notice his follower. Only when he
found what looked like a promising alley-hardly more than a shoulderwide
crack between two long, tall buildings-did he escape the crowds long
enough to notice. The sound of the street faded in the dim twilight that
the band of sky above him allowed. A rat, surprised by him, scuttled
through an iron grating and away. The thin alley branched, and Maati
paused, looked down the two new paths, and then glanced back. The path
behind him was blocked. A dark cloak, a raised hood, and shoulders so
broad they touched both walls. Maati hesitated, and the man behind him
didn't move. Maati felt the skin at the back of his neck tighten. He
picked one turning of the alleyway and walked down it briskly until the
dark figure reached the intersection as well and turned after him. Then
Maati ran. The alley spilled out into another street, this less
populous. The smoke of the forges made the air acrid and hazy. Maati
raced toward them. There would be men there-smiths and tradesmen, but
also firekeepers and armsmen.
When he reached the mouth where the street spilled out onto a major
throughway, he looked back. The street behind him was empty. His steps
slowed, and he stopped, scanning the doorways, the rooftops. There was
nothing. His pursuer-if that was what he had been-had vanished. Maati
waited there until he'd caught his breath, then let himself laugh. No
one was coming. No one had followed. It was easy to see how a man could
be eaten by his fears. He turned to the metalworkers' quarter.
The streets widened here, with shops and stalls facing out, filled with
the tools of the metal trades as much as their products. The forges and
smith's houses were marked by the greened copper roofs, the pillars of
smoke, the sounds of yelling voices and hammers striking anvils. The
businesses around them-sellers of hammers and tongs, suppliers of ore
and wax blocks and slaked lime-all did their work loudly and
expansively, waving hands in mock fury and shouting even when there was
no call to. Maati made his way to a teahouse near the center of the
district where sellers and workers mixed. He asked after House Siyanti,
where their couriers might be found, what was known of them. The brown