The summons came to him when the sun - red and angry - was just preparing to slide behind the mountains to the west. Maati pulled on thick, warm boots of soft leather, added his brown poet’s robes over the warmer ones, and let himself be led to the Khai Machi’s private chambers. He passed through several rooms on his way - a hall of worked marble the color of honey with a fountain running through it like a creek, a meeting chamber large enough to hold two dozen at a single table, then a smaller corridor that led to chambers of a more human size. Ahead of him, a woman passed from one side of the corridor to the other leaving the impression of night-black hair, warm brown skin, and robes the yellow of sunrise. One of the wives, Maati knew, of a man who had several.
At last, the servant slid open a door of carved rosewood, and Maati stepped into a room hardly larger than his own bedroom. The old man sat on a couch, his feet toward the fire that burned in the grate. His robes were lush, the silks seeming to take up the firelight and dance with it. They seemed more alive than his flesh. Slowly, the Khai raised a clay pipe to his mouth and puffed on it thoughtfully. The smoke smelled rich and sweet as a cane field on fire.
Maati took a pose of greeting as formal as high court. The Khai Machi raised an ancient eyebrow and only smiled. With the stem of the pipe, he pointed to the couch opposite him and nodded to Maati that he should sit.
‘They make me smoke this,’ the Khai said. ‘Whenever my belly troubles me, they say. I tell them they might as well make it air, burn it by the bushel in all the firekeepers’ kilns, but they only laugh as if it were wit, and I play along.’
‘Yes, most high.’
There was a long pause as the Khai contemplated the flames. Maati waited, uncertain. He noticed the catch in the Khai Machi’s breath, as if it pained him. He had not noticed it before.
‘Your search for my outlaw son,’ the Khai said. ‘It is going well?’
‘It is early yet, most high. I have made myself visible. I have let it be known that I am looking into the death of your son.’
‘You still expect Otah to come to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And if he does not?’
‘Then it will take more time, most high. But I will find him.’
The old man nodded, then exhaled a plume of pale smoke. He took a pose of gratitude, his wasted hands holding the position with the grace of a lifetime’s practice.
‘His mother was a good woman. I miss her. Iyrah, her name was. She gave me Idaan too. She was glad to have a child of her own that she could keep.’
Maati thought he saw the old man’s eyes glisten for a moment, lost as he was in old memories of which Maati could only guess the substance. Then the Khai sighed.
‘Idaan,’ the Khai said. ‘She’s treated you gently?’
‘She’s been nothing but kind,’ Maati said, ‘and very generous with her time.’
The Khai shook his head, smiling more to himself than his audience.
‘That’s good. She was always unpredictable. Age has calmed her, I think. There was a time she would study outrages the way most girls study face paints and sandals. Always sneaking puppies into court or stealing dresses she fancied from her little friends. She relied on me to keep her safe, however far she flew,’ he said, smiling fondly. ‘A mischievous girl, my daughter, but good-hearted. I’m proud of her.’
Then he sobered.
‘I am proud of all my children. It’s why I am not of one mind on this,’ the Khai said. ‘You would think that I should be, but I am not. With every day that the search continues, the truce holds, and Kaiin and Danat still live. I’ve known since I was old enough to know anything that if I took this chair, my sons would kill each other. It wasn’t so hard before I knew them, when they were only the idea of sons. But then they were Biitrah and Kaiin and Danat. And I don’t want any of them to die.’
‘But tradition, most high. If they did not—’
‘I know why they must,’ the Khai said. ‘I was only wishing. It’s something dying men do, I’m told. Sit with their regrets. It’s likely that which kills us as much as the sickness. I sometimes wish that this had all happened years ago. That they had slaughtered each other in their childhood. Then I might have at least one of them by me now. I had not wanted to die alone.’
‘You are not alone, most high. The whole court . . .’
Maati broke off. The Khai Machi took a pose accepting correction, but the amusement in his eyes and the angle of his shoulders made a sarcasm of it. Maati nodded, accepting the old man’s point.
‘I can’t say which of them I would have wanted to live, though,’ the Khai said, puffing thoughtfully on his pipe. ‘I love them all. Very dearly. I cannot tell you how deeply I miss Biitrah.’
‘Had you known him, you would have loved Otah as well.’
‘You think so? Certainly you knew him better than I. I can’t think he would have thought well of me,’ the Khai said. Then, ‘Did you go back? After you took your robes? Did you go to see your parents?’
‘My father was very old when I went to the school,’ Maati said. ‘He died before I completed my training. We did not know each other.’
‘So you have never had a family.’
‘I have, most high,’ Maati said, fighting to keep the tightness in his chest from changing the tone of his voice. ‘A lover and a son. I had a family once.’
‘But no longer. They died?’
‘They live. Only not with me.’
The Khai considered him, bloodshot eyes blinking slowly. With his thin, wrinkled skin, he reminded Maati of a very old turtle or else a very young bird. The Khai’s gaze softened, his brows tilting in understanding and sorrow.
‘It is never easy for fathers,’ the Khai said. ‘Perhaps if the world had needed less from us.’
Maati waited a long moment until he trusted his voice.
‘Perhaps, most high.’
The Khai exhaled a breath of gray, his gaze trapped by the smoke.
‘It isn’t the world I knew when I was young,’ the old man said. ‘Everything changed when Saraykeht fell.’
‘The Khai Saraykeht has a poet,’ Maati said. ‘He has the power of the andat.’
‘It took the Dai-kvo eight years and six failed bindings,’ the Khai said. ‘And every time word came of another failure, I could see it in the faces of the court. The utkhaiem may put on proud faces, but I’ve seen the fear that swims under that ice. And you were there. You said so in the audience when I greeted you.’
‘Yes, most high.’
‘But you didn’t say everything you knew,’ the Khai said. ‘Did you?’
The yellowed eyes fixed on Maati. The intelligence in them was unnerving. Maati felt himself squirming, and wondering what had happened to the melancholy dying man he’d been speaking with only moments before.
‘I . . . that is . . .’
‘There were rumors that the poet’s death was more than an angry east island girl’s revenge. The Galts were mentioned.’
‘And Eddensea,’ Maati said. ‘And Eymond. There was no end of accusation, most high. Some even believed what they charged. When the cotton trade collapsed, a great number of people lost a great amount of money. And prestige.’
‘They lost more than that,’ the Khai said, leaning forward and stabbing at the air with the stem of his pipe. ‘The money, the trade. The standing among the cities. They don’t signify. Saraykeht was the death of
certainty
. They lost the conviction that the Khaiem would hold the world at bay, that war would never come to Saraykeht. And we lost it here too.’
‘If you say so, most high.’
‘The priests say that something touched by chaos is never made whole,’ the Khai said, sinking back into his cushions. ‘Do you know what they mean by that, Maati-cha?’
‘I have some idea,’ Maati said, but the Khai went on.
‘It means that something unthinkable can only happen once. Because after that, it’s not unthinkable any longer. We’ve
seen
what happens when a city is touched by chaos. And now it’s in the back of every head in every court in all the cities of the Khaiem.’
Maati frowned and leaned forward.
‘You think Cehmai-cha is in some danger?’
‘What?’ the Khai said, then waved the thought away, stirring the smoky air. ‘No. Not that. I think my city is at risk. I think Otah . . . my upstart son . . .’
He’s forgiven you
, a voice murmured in the back of Maati’s mind. The voice of Seedless, the andat of Saraykeht. They were the words the andat had spoken to Maati in the instant before Heshai’s death had freed it.
It had been speaking of Otah.
‘I’ve called you here for a reason, Maati-cha,’ the Khai said, and Maati pulled his attention back to the present. ‘I didn’t care to speak of it around those who would use it to fuel gossip. Your inquiry into Biitrah’s death. You must move more quickly.’
‘Even with the truce?’
‘Yes, even at the price of my sons returning to their tradition. If I die without a successor chosen - especially if Danat and Kaiin are still gone to ground - there will be chaos. The families of the utkhaiem start thinking that perhaps they would sit more comfortably in my chair, and schemes begin. Your task isn’t only to find Otah. Your task is to protect my city.’
‘I understand, most high.’
‘You do not, Maati-cha. The spring roses are starting to bloom, and I will not see high summer. Neither of us has the luxury of time.’
The gathering was all that Cehmai had hoped for, and less. Spring breezes washed the pavilion with the scent of fresh flowers. Kilns set along the edges roared behind the music of reed organ, flute, and drum. Overhead, the stars shone like gems strewn on dark velvet. The long months of winter had given musicians time to compose and practice new songs, and the youth of the high families week after weary week to tire of the cold and dark and the terrible constriction that deep winter brought to those with no business to conduct on the snow.
Cehmai laughed and clapped time with the music and danced. Women and girls caught his eye, and he, theirs. The heat of youth did where heavier robes would otherwise have been called for, and the draw of body to body filled the air with something stronger than the perfume of flowers. Even the impending death of the Khai lent an air of license. Momentous things were happening, the world’s order was changing, and they were young enough to find the thought romantic.
And yet he could not enjoy it.
A young man in an eagle’s mask pressed a bowl of hot wine into his hand, and spun away into the dance. Cehmai grinned, sipped at it, and faded back to the edge of the pavilion. In the shadows behind the kilns, Stone-Made-Soft stood motionless. Cehmai sat beside it, put the bowl on the grass, and watched the revelry. Two young men had doffed their robes entirely and were sprinting around the wide grounds in nothing but their masks and long scarves trailing from their necks. The andat shifted like the first shudder of a landslide, then was still again. When it spoke, its voice was so soft that they would not be heard by the others.
‘It wouldn’t be the first time the Dai-kvo had lied.’
‘Or the first time I’d wondered why,’ Cehmai said. ‘It’s his to decide what to say and to whom.’
‘And yours?’
‘And mine to satisfy my curiosity. You heard what he said to the overseer in the mines. If he truly didn’t want me to know, he would have lied better. Maati-kvo is looking into more than the library, and that’s certain.’
The andat sighed. Stone-Made-Soft had no more need of breath than did a mountainside. The exhalation could only be a comment. Cehmai felt the subject of their conversation changing even before the andat spoke.
‘She’s come.’
And there, dressed black as rooks and pale as mourning, Idaan Machi moved among the dancers. Her mask hid only part of her face and not her identity. Wrapped as he was by the darkness, she did not see him. Cehmai felt a lightening in his breast as he watched her move through the crowd, greeting friends and looking, he thought, for something or perhaps someone among them. She was not beautiful - well painted, but any number of the girls and women were more nearly perfect. She was not the most graceful, or the best spoken, or any of the hundred things that Cehmai thought of when he tried to explain to himself why this girl should fascinate him. The closest he could come was that she was interesting, and none of the others were.
‘It won’t end well,’ the andat murmured.
‘It hasn’t begun,’ Cehmai said. ‘How can something end when it hasn’t even started?’
Stone-Made-Soft sighed again, and Cehmai rose, tugging at his robes to smooth their lines. The music had paused and someone in the crowd laughed long and high.
‘Come back when you’ve finished and we’ll carry on our conversation, ’ the andat said.
Cehmai ignored the patience in its voice and strode forward, back into the light. The reed organ struck a chord just as he reached Idaan’s side. He brushed her arm, and she turned - first annoyed and then surprised and then, he thought, pleased.