‘I see,’ Maati said, and there was something in his voice. A brightness. ‘Thank you, Otah-kvo.’
‘I missed you as well. I wish we had had more time. Or other circumstances. ’
‘As do I. But it isn’t ours to choose. Shall we do this thing?’
‘I don’t suppose I could shave first?’ Otah asked, touching his chin.
‘I don’t see how,’ Maati said, rising. ‘But perhaps we can get you some better robes.’
Otah didn’t mean to laugh; it simply came out of him. And then Maati was laughing as well, and the birds startled around them, lifting up into the sky. Otah rose and took a pose of respect appropriate to the closing of a meeting. Maati responded in kind, and they walked together to the door. Maati slid it open, and Otah looked to see whether there was a gap in the men, a chance to dodge them and sprint out to the streets. He might as well have looked for a stone cloud. The armsmen seemed to have doubled in number, and two already had bare blades at the ready. The young poet - the one Maati said wasn’t his student - was there among them, his expression serious and concerned. Maati spoke as if the bulky men and their weapons weren’t there.
‘Cehmai-cha,’ he said. ‘Good that you’re here. I would like to introduce you to my old friend, Otah, the sixth son of the Khai Machi. Otah-kvo, this is Cehmai Tyan and that small mountain in the back is the andat Stone-Made-Soft which he controls. Cehmai assumed you were an assassin come to finish me off.’
‘I’m not,’ Otah said with a levity that seemed at odds with his situation, but which felt perfectly natural. ‘But I understand the misconception. It’s the beard. I’m usually better shaved.’
Cehmai opened his mouth, closed it, and then took a formal pose of welcome. Maati turned to the armsmen.
‘Chain him,’ he said.
Even at the height of morning, the wives’ quarters of the high palace were filled with the small somber activity of a street market starting to close at twilight. In the course of his life, the Khai Machi had taken eleven women as wives. Some had become friends, lovers, companions. Others had been little more than permanent guests in his house, sent as a means of assuring favor as one might send a good hunting dog or a talented slave. Idaan had heard that there were several of them with whom he had never shared a bed. It had been Biitrah’s wife, Hiami, who’d told her that, trying to explain to a young girl that the Khaiem had a different relationship to their women than other men had, that it was traditional. It hadn’t worked. Even the words the older woman had used -
your father chooses not to
- had proven her point that this was a comfort house with high ceilings, grand halls, and only a single client.
But now that was changing, not in character, but in the particulars. The succession would have the same effect on the eight wives who remained, whoever took the seat. It would be time for them to leave - make the journey back to whatever city or family had sent them forth in the first place. The oldest of them, a sharp-tongued woman named Carai, would be returning to a high family in Yalakeht where the man who would choose her disposition had been a delighted toddler grinning and filling his pants the last time she’d seen him. Another woman - one of the recent ones hardly older than Idaan herself - had taken a lover in the court. She was being sent back to Chaburi-Tan, likely to be turned around and shipped off to another of the Khaiem or traded between the houses of the utkhaiem as a token of political alliance. Many of the wives had known each other for decades and would now scatter and lose the friends and companions they had known best. And on and on, every one of them a life shaped by a man’s will, constrained by tradition.
Idaan walked through the wide, bright corridors, listened to these women preparing to depart when the inevitable news came, anticipating the grief in a way that was as hard as the grief itself. Perhaps harder. She accepted their congratulations on her marriage. She would be able to remain in the city, and should her man die before her, her family would be there to support her. She, at least, would never be uprooted. Hiami had never understood why Idaan had objected to this way of living. Idaan had never understood why these women hadn’t set the palaces on fire.
Her own rooms were set in the back; small apartments with rich tapestries of white and gold on the walls. They might almost have been mistaken for the home of some merchant leader - the overseer of a great trading house, or a trade master who spoke with the voice of a city’s craftsmen. If only she had been born one of those. As she entered, one of her servants met her with an expression that suggested news. Idaan took a pose of query.
‘Adrah Vaunyogi is waiting to see you, Idaan-cha,’ the servant girl said. ‘It was approaching midday, so I’ve put him in the dining hall. There is food waiting. I hope I haven’t . . .’
‘No,’ Idaan said, ‘you did well. Please see that we’re left alone.’
He sat at the long, wooden table, and he did not look up when she came in. Idaan was willing to ignore him as well as to be ignored, so she gathered a bowl of food from the platters - early grapes from the south, sticky with their own blood; hard, crumbling cheese with a ripe scent that was both appetizing and not; twice-baked flatbread that cracked sharply when she broke off a piece - and retired to a couch. She forced herself to forget that he was here, to look forward at the bare fire grate. Anger buoyed her up, and she clung to it.
She heard it when he stood, heard his footsteps approaching. It was a little victory, but it pleased her. As he sat cross-legged on the floor before her, she raised an eyebrow and sketched a pose of welcome before choosing another grape.
‘I came last night,’ he said. ‘I was looking for you.’
‘I wasn’t here,’ she said.
The pause was meant to injure her.
Look how sad you’ve made me, Idaan.
It was a child’s tactic, and that it partially worked infuriated her.
‘I’ve had trouble sleeping,’ she said. ‘I walk. Otherwise, I’d spend the whole night staring at netting and watching the candle burn down. No call for that.’
Adrah sighed and nodded his head.
‘I’ve been troubled too,’ he said. ‘My father can’t reach the Galts. With Oshai . . . with what happened to him, he’s afraid they may withdraw their support.’
‘Your father is an old woman frightened there’s a snake in the night bucket,’ Idaan said, breaking a corner of her bread. ‘They may lie low now, but once it’s clear that you’re in position to become Khai, they’ll do what they promised. They’ve nothing to gain by not.’
‘Once I’m Khai, they’ll still own me,’ Adrah said. ‘They’ll know how I came there. They’ll be able to hold it over me. If they tell what they know, the gods only know what would happen.’
Idaan took a bite of grape and cheese both - the sweet and the salt mingling pleasantly. When she spoke, she spoke around it.
‘They won’t. They won’t dare, Adrah. Give the worst: we’re exposed by the Galts. We’re deposed and killed horribly in the streets. Fine. Lift your gaze up from your own corpse for a moment and tell me what happens next?’
‘There’s a struggle. Some other family takes the chair.’
‘Yes. And what will the new Khai do?’
‘He’ll slaughter my family,’ Adrah said, his voice hollow and ghostly. Idaan leaned forward and slapped him.
‘He’ll have Stone-Made-Soft level a few Galtic mountain ranges and sink some islands. Do you think there’s a Khai in any city that would sit still at the word of the Galtic Council arranging the death of one of their own? The Galts won’t own you because your exposure would mean the destruction of their nation and the wholesale slaughter of their people. So worry a little less. You’re supposed to be overwhelmed with the delight of marrying me.’
‘Shouldn’t you be delighted too, then?’
‘I’m busy mourning my father,’ she said dryly. ‘Do we have any wine?’
‘How is he? Your father?’
‘I don’t know,’ Idaan said. ‘I try not to see him these days. He makes me . . . feel weak. I can’t afford that just now.’
‘I heard he’s failing.’
‘Men can fail for a long time,’ she said, and stood. She left the bowl on the floor and walked back to her bedroom, holding her hands out before her, sticky with juice. Adrah followed along behind her and lay on her bed. She poured water into her stone basin and watched him as she washed her hands. He was a boy, lost in the world. Perhaps now was as good a time as any. She took a deep breath.
‘I’ve been thinking, Adrah-kya,’ she said. ‘About when you become Khai.’
He turned his head to look at her, but did not rise or speak.
‘It’s going to be important, especially at the first, to gather allies. Founding a line is a delicate thing. I know we agreed that it would always be only the two of us, but perhaps we were wrong in that. If you take other wives, you’ll have more the appearance of tradition and the support of the families who bind themselves to us.’
‘My father said the same,’ he said.
Oh did he? Idaan thought, but she held her face still and calm. She dried her hands on the basin cloth and came to sit on the bed beside him. To her surprise, he was weeping; small tears coming from the outer corners of his eyes, thin tracks shining on his skin. Without willing it, her hand went to his cheek, caressing him. He shifted to look at her.
‘I love you, Idaan. I love you more than anything in the world. You are the only person I’ve ever felt this way about.’
His lips trembled and she pressed a finger against them to quiet him. These weren’t things she wanted to hear, but he would not be stopped.
‘Let’s end this,’ he said. ‘Let’s just be together, here. I’ll find another way to move ahead in the court, and your brother . . . you’ll still be his blood, and we’ll still be well kept. Can’t we . . . can’t we, please?’
‘All this because you don’t want to take another woman?’ she said softly, teasing him. ‘I find that hard to believe.’
He took her hand in his. He had soft hands. She remembered thinking that the first time they’d fallen into her bed together. Strong, soft, wide hands. She felt tears forming in her own eyes.
‘My father said that I should take other wives,’ he said. ‘My mother said that, knowing you, you’d only agree to it if you could take lovers of your own too. And then you weren’t here last night, and I waited until it was almost dawn. And you . . . you want to . . .’
‘You think I’ve taken another man?’ she asked.
His lips pressed thin and bloodless, and he nodded. His hand squeezed hers as if she might save his life, if only he held onto her. A hundred things came to her mind all at once.
Yes, of course I have. How dare you accuse me? Cehmai is the only clean thing left in my world, and you cannot have him.
She smiled as if Adrah were a boy being silly, as if he were wrong.
‘That would be the stupidest thing I could possibly do just now,’ she said, neither lying nor speaking the truth of it. She leaned forward to kiss him, but before their mouths touched, a voice wild with excitement called out from the atrium.
‘Idaan-cha! Idaan-cha! Come quickly!’
Idaan leapt up as if she’d been caught doing something she ought not, then gathered herself, straightened her robes. The mirror showed that the paint on her mouth and eyes was smudged from eating and weeping, but there wasn’t time to reapply it. She pushed back a stray lock of hair and stormed out.
The servant girl took a pose of apology as Idaan approached her. She wore the colors of her father’s personal retinue, and Idaan’s heart sank to her belly. He had died. It had happened. But the girl was smiling, her eyes bright.
‘What’s happened?’ Idaan demanded.
‘Everything,’ the girl said. ‘You’re summoned to the court. The Khai is calling everyone.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘I’m not to say, Idaan-cha,’ the girl said.
Idaan felt the rage-blood in her face as if she were standing near a fire. She didn’t think, didn’t plan. Her body seemed to move of its own accord as she slid forward and clapped her hand on the servant girl’s throat and pressed her to the wall. There was shock in the girl’s expression, and Idaan sneered at it. Adrah fluttered like a bird in the corner of her vision.
‘Say,’ Idaan said. ‘Because I asked you twice, tell me what’s happened. And do it now.’
‘The upstart,’ the girl said. ‘They’ve caught him.’
Idaan stepped back, dropping her hand. The girl’s eyes were wide. The air of excitement and pleasure was gone. Adrah put a hand on Idaan’s shoulder, and she pushed it away.
‘He was here,’ the girl said. ‘In the palaces. The visiting poet caught him, and they’re bringing him before the Khai.’
Idaan licked her lips. Otah Machi was here. He had been here for the gods only knew how long. She looked at Adrah, but his expression spoke of an uncertainty and surprise as deep as her own. And a fear that wasn’t entirely about their conspiracy.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Choya,’ the girl said.
Idaan took a pose of abject apology. It was more than a member of the utkhaiem would have normally presented to a servant, but Idaan felt her guilt welling up like blood from a cut.