Cehmai nodded.
‘I do that often,’ Maati said. ‘Only not usually aloud.’
6
T
here were four great roads that connected the cities of the Khaiem, one named for each of the cardinal directions. The North Road that linked Cetani, Machi, and Amnat-Tan was not the worst, in part because there was no traffic in the winter, when the snows let men make a road wherever desire took them. Also the stones were damaged more by the cycle of thaw and frost that troubled the north only in spring and autumn. In high summer, it rarely froze, and for a third of the year it did not thaw. The West Road - far from the sea and not so far south as to keep the winters warm - required the most repair.
‘They’ll have crews of indentured slaves and laborers out in shifts,’ the old man in the cart beside Otah said, raising a finger as if his oratory was on par with the High Emperor’s, back when there had been an empire. ‘They start at one end, reset the stones until they reach the other, and begin again. It never ends.’
Otah glanced across the cart at the young woman nursing her babe and rolled his eyes. She smiled and shrugged so slightly that their orator didn’t notice the movement. The cart lurched down into and up from another wide hole where the stones had shattered and not yet been replaced.
‘I have walked them all,’ the old man said, ‘though they’ve worn me more than I’ve worn them. Oh yes, much more than I’ve worn them.’
He cackled, as he always seemed to when he made this observation. The little caravan - four carts hauled by old horses - was still six days from Cetani. Otah wondered whether his own legs were rested enough that he could start walking again.
He had bought an old laborer’s robe of blue-gray wool from a rag shop, chopped his hair to change its shape, and let his thin beard start to grow in. Once his whiskers had been long enough to braid, but the east islanders he’d lived with had laughed at him and pretended to mistake him for a woman. After Cetani, it would take another twenty days to reach the docks outside Amnat-tan. And then, if he could find a fishing boat that would take him on, he would be among those men again, singing songs in a tongue he hadn’t tried out in years, explaining again, either with the truth or outrageous stories, why his marriage mark was only half done.
He would die there - on the islands or on the sea - under whatever new name he chose for himself. Itani Noygu was gone. He had died in Machi. Another life was behind him, and the prospect of beginning again, alone in a foreign land, tired him more than the walking.
‘Now, southern wood’s too soft to really build with. The winters are too warm to really harden them. Up here there’s trees that would blunt a dozen axes before they fell,’ the old man said.
‘You know everything, don’t you, grandfather?’ Otah said. If his annoyance was in his voice, the old man noticed nothing, because he cackled again.
‘It’s because I’ve been everywhere and done everything,’ the old man said. ‘I even helped hunt down the Khai Amnat-Tan’s older brother when they had their last succession. There were a dozen of us, and it was the dead of winter. Your piss would freeze before it touched ground. Oh, eh . . .’
The old man took a pose of apology to the young woman and her babe, and Otah swung himself out of the cart. It wasn’t a story he cared to hear. The road wound through a valley, high pine forest on either side, the air sharp and fragrant with the resin. It was beautiful, and he pictured it thick with snow, the image coming so clear that he wondered whether he might once have seen it that way. When the clatter of hooves came from the west, he forced himself again to relax his shoulders and look as curious and excited as the others. Twice before, couriers on fast horses had passed the ’van, laden with news, Otah knew, of the search for him.
It had taken an effort of will not to run as fast as he could after he had been discovered, but the search was for a false courier either plotting murder or fleeing like a rabbit. No one would pay attention to a plodding laborer off to stay with his sister’s family in a low town outside Cetani. And yet, as the horses approached, tension grew in his breast. He prepared himself for the shock if one of the riders had a familiar face.
There were three this time - utkhaiem to judge by their robes and the quality of their mounts - and none of them men he knew. They didn’t slow for the ’van, but the armsmen of the ’van, the drivers, the dozen hangers-on like himself all shouted at them for news. One of them turned in his saddle and yelled something, but Otah couldn’t make it out and the rider didn’t repeat it. Ten days on the road. Six more to Cetani. The only challenge was not to be where they were looking for him.
They reached a wayhouse with the sun still three and a half hands above the treetops. The building was of northern design: stone walls thick as the span of a man’s arm and stables and goat pen on the ground floor where the heat of the animals would rise and help warm the place in the winter. While the merchants and armsmen argued over whether to stop now or go farther and sleep in the open, Otah ran his eyes over the windows and walked around to the back, looking for all the signs Kiyan had taught him to know whether the keeper was working with robbers or keeping an unsafe kitchen. The house met all of her best marks. It seemed safe.
By the time he’d returned to the carts, his companions had decided to stay. After Otah had helped stable the horses, they shifted the carts into a locked courtyard. The caravan’s leader haggled with the keeper about the rooms and came to an agreement that Otah privately thought gave the keep the better half. Otah made his way up two flights of stairs to the room he was to share with five armsmen, two drivers, and the old man. He curled himself up in a corner on the floor. It was too small a room, and one of the drivers snored badly. A little sleep when things were quiet would only make the next day easier.
He woke in darkness to the sound of music - a drum throbbed and a flute sighed. A man’s voice and a woman’s moved in rough harmony. He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robe and went down to the main room. The members of his ’van were all there and half a dozen other men besides. The air smelled of hot wine and roast lamb, pine trees and smoke. Otah sat at a rough, worn table beside one of the drivers and watched.
The singer was the keep himself; a pot-bellied man with a nose that had been broken and badly set. He drew the deep beat from a skin and earthenware drum as he sang. His wife was shapely as a potato with an ugly face and a missing eye tooth, but their voices were well suited and their affection for each other forgave them much. Otah found himself tapping his fingertips against the table to match the drum-beats.
His mind went back to Kiyan, and the nights of music and stories and gossip he had spent in her wayhouse, far away to the south. He wondered what she was doing tonight, what music filled the warm air and competed with the murmur of the river.
When the last note had faded to silence, the crowd applauded, yelped, and howled their appreciation. Otah made his way to the singer - he was shorter than Otah had thought - and took his hand. The keeper beamed and blushed when Otah told him how good the music had been.
‘We’ve had a few years’ practice, and there’s only so much to do when the days are short,’ the keep said. ‘The winter choirs in Machi make us sound like street beggars.’
Otah smiled, regret pulling at him that he would never hear those songs, and a moment later he heard his name being spoken.
‘Itani Noygu’s what he was calling himself,’ one of the merchants said. ‘Played a courier for House Siyanti.’
‘I think I met him,’ a man said whom Otah had never met. ‘I knew there was something odd about the man.’
‘And the poet . . . the one that had his belly opened for him? He’s picking the other Siyanti men apart like they were baked fish. The upstart has to wish that job had been done right the first time.’
‘Sounds as if I’ve missed something,’ Otah said, putting on his most charming smile. ‘What’s this about a poet’s belly?’
The merchant frowned at the interruption until Otah motioned to the keep’s wife and bought bowls of hot wine for the table. After that, the gossip flowed more freely.
Maati Vaupathai had been attacked, and the common wisdom held that Otah had arranged it. The most likely version was that the upstart had been passing as a courier, but others said that he had made his way into the palaces dressed as a servant or a meat seller. There was no question, though, that the Khai had sent out runners to all the winter cities asking for the couriers and overseers of House Siyanti to attend him at court. Amiit Foss, the man who’d been the upstart’s overseer in Udun, was being summoned in particular. It wasn’t clear yet whether Siyanti had knowingly backed Otah Machi, but if they had, it would mean the end of their expansion into the north. Even if they hadn’t, the house would suffer.
‘And they’re sure he was the one who had the poet killed?’ Otah asked, using all the skill the gentleman’s trade had taught him to hide his deepening despair and disgust.
‘It seems they were in Saraykeht together, this poet and the upstart. That was just before Saraykeht fell.’
The implications of that hung over the room. Perhaps Otah Machi had somehow been involved with the death of Heshai, the poet of Saraykeht. Who knew what depravity the sixth son of the Khai Machi might sink to? It was a ghost story for them; a tale to pass a night on the road; a sport to follow.
Otah remembered the old, frog-mouthed poet, remembered his kindness and his weakness and his strength. He remembered the regret and the respect and the horrible complicity he’d felt in killing him, all those years ago. It had been so complicated, then. Now, they said it so simply and spoke as if they understood.
‘There’s rumor of a woman, too. They say he had a lover in Udun.’
‘If he was a courier, he’s likely got a woman in half the cities of the Khaiem. The gods know I would.’
‘No,’ the merchant said, shaking his head. He was more than half drunk. ‘No, they were very clear. All the Siyanti men say he had a lover in Udun and never took another. Loved her like the world, they said. But she left him for another man. I say it’s that turned him evil. Love turns on you like . . . like milk.’
‘Gentlemen,’ the keep’s wife said, her voice powerful enough to cut through any conversation. ‘It’s late, and I’m not sleeping until these rooms are cleaned, so get you all to bed. I’ll have bread and honey for you at sunrise.’
The guests slurped down the last of the wine, ate the last mouthfuls of dried cherries and fresh cheese, and made their various ways toward their various beds. Otah walked down the inner stairs to the stables and the goat yard, then out through a side door and into the darkness. His body felt like he’d just run a race, or else like he was about to.
Kiyan. Kiyan and the wayhouse her father had run. Old Mani. He had set the dogs on them, and that he hadn’t intended to would count for nothing if his brothers found her. Whatever happened, whatever they did, it would be his fault.
He found a tall tree and sat with his back against it, looking out at the stars nearest the horizon. The air had the bite of cold in it. Winter never left this place. It made a little room for summer, but it never left. He thought of writing her a letter, of warning her. It would never reach her in time. It was ten days’ walk back to Machi, six days’ forward to Cetani, and his brothers’ forces would already be on the road south. He could send to Amiit Foss, beg his old overseer to take Kiyan in, to protect her. But there too, word would reach him too late.
Despair settled into his belly, too deep for tears. He was destroying the woman he loved most in the world simply by being who he was, by doing what he’d done. He thought of the boy he had been, marching away from the school across the western snows. He remembered his fear and the warmth of his rage at the poets and his parents and all in the world that treated boys so unfairly. What a pompous little ass he’d been, young and certain and alone. He should have taken the Daikvo’s offer and become a poet. He might have tried to bind an andat, and maybe failed and paid the price, dying in the attempt. And then Kiyan would never have met him. She would be safe.
There’s still a price, he thought, as clear as a voice speaking in his head. You could still pay it.
Machi was ten days’ walk, perhaps as little as four and a half days’ ride. If he could turn all eyes back to Machi, Kiyan might have at least the chance to escape his idiocy. And what would she matter, if no one need search for him? He could take a horse from the stables now. After all, if he was an upstart and a poisoner and a man turned evil by love, it hardly mattered being a horse thief as well. He closed his eyes, an angry bark of a laugh forcing its way from his throat.
Everything you have won, you’ve won by leaving, he thought, remembering a woman whom he had known almost well enough to join his life with though he had never loved her, nor she him. Well, Maj, perhaps this time I’ll lose.
The night candle was past its middle mark; the air was filled with the songs of crickets. Somewhere in the course of things, the pale mist of netting had been pulled from the bed, and the room looked exposed without it. Cehmai could feel Stone-Made-Soft in the back of his mind, but the effort of being truly aware of the andat was too much; his body was thick and heavy and content. Focus and rigor would have their place another time.