When they reached the light and fresh air, the servants had laid out a more satisfying meal - rice, fresh chickens killed here at the mine, roasted nuts with lemon, cheeses melted until they could be spread over their bread with a blade. Cehmai lowered himself into a chair of strung cloth and sighed with relief. To the south, they could see the smoke of the forges rising from Machi and blowing off to the east. A city perpetually afire.
‘When we get there,’ Cehmai said to the andat, ‘we’ll be playing several games of stones. You’ll be the one losing.’
The andat shrugged almost imperceptibly.
‘It’s what I am,’ it said. ‘You may as well blame water for being wet.’
‘And when it soaks my robes, I do,’ Cehmai said. The andat chuckled and then was silent. Its wide face turned to him with something like concern. Its brow was furrowed.
‘The girl,’ it said.
‘What about her?’
‘It seems to me the next time she asks if you love her, you could say yes.’
Cehmai felt his heart jump in his chest, startled as a bird. The andat’s expression didn’t change; it might have been carved from stone. Idaan wept in his memory, and she laughed, and she curled herself in his bedclothes and asked silently not to be sent away. Love, he discovered, could feel very much like sorrow.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said, and the andat smiled in what looked like sympathy.
Maati laid his notes out on the wide table at the back of the library’s main chamber. The distant throbbing of trumpet and drum wasn’t so distracting here as in his rooms. Three times on the walk here, his sleeves heavy with paper and books, he’d been grabbed by some masked reveler and kissed. Twice, bowls of sweet wine had been forced into his hand. The palaces were a riot of dancing and song, and despite his best intentions, the memory of those three kisses drew his attention. It would be sweet to go out, to lose himself in that crowd, to find some woman willing to dance with him, and to take comfort in her body and her breath. It had been years since he had let himself be so young as that.
He turned himself to his puzzle. Danat, the man destined to be Khai Machi, had seemed the most likely to have engineered the rumors of Otah’s return. Certainly he had gained the most. Kaiin Machi, whose death had already given Maati three kisses, was the other possibility. Until he dug in. He had asked the servants and the slaves of each household every question he could think of. No, none of them recalled any consultations with a man who matched the assassin’s description. No, neither man had sent word or instruction since Maati’s own arrival. He’d asked their social enemies what they knew or guessed or speculated on.
Kaiin Machi had been a weak-lunged man, pale of face and watery of eye. He’d had a penchant for sleeping with servant girls, but hadn’t ever gotten a child on one - likely because he was infertile. Danat was a bully and a sneak, a man whose oaths meant nothing to him - and the killing of noble, scholarly Kaiin showed that. Danat’s triumph was the best of all possible outcomes or else the worst.
Searching for conspiracy in court gossip was like looking for raindrops in a thunderstorm. Everyone he spoke to seemed to have four or five suggestions of what might have happened, and of those, each half contradicted the other. By far, the most common assumption was that Otah had been the essential villain in all of it.
Maati had diagrammed the relationships of Danat and Kaiin with each of the high families - Kamau, Daikani, Radaani and a dozen more. Then with the great trading houses, with mistresses and rumored mistresses and the teahouses they liked best. At one point he’d even listed which horses each preferred to ride. The sad truth was that despite all these facts, all these words scribbled onto papers, referenced and checked, nothing pointed to either man as the author of Biitrah’s death, the attempt on Maati’s own life, or the slaughter of the assassin. He was either too dimwitted to see the pattern before him, it was too well hidden, or he was looking in the wrong place. Clearly neither man had been present in the city to direct the last two attacks, and there seemed to be no supporters in Machi who had managed the plans for them.
Nor was there any reason to attack
him
. Maati had been on the verge of exposing Otah-kvo. That was in everyone’s best interest, barring Otah’s. Maati closed his eyes, sighed, then opened them again, gathered up the pages of his notes and laid them out again, as if seeing them in a different pattern might spark something.
Drunken song burst from the side room to his left, and Baarath, librarian of Machi, stumbled in, grinning. His face was flushed, and he smelled of wine and something stronger. He threw open his arms and strode unevenly to Maati, embracing him like a brother.
‘No one has ever loved these books as you and I have, Maati-kya,’ Baarath said. ‘The most glorious party of a generation. Wine flowing in the gutters, and food and dancing, and I’ll jump off a tower if we don’t see a crop of babes next spring that look nothing like their fathers. And where do we go, you and I? Here.’
Baarath turned and made a sweeping gesture that took in the books and scrolls and codices, the shelves and alcoves and chests. He shook his head and seemed for a moment on the verge of tears. Maati patted him on the back and led him to a wooden bench at the side of the room. Baarath sat back, his head against the stone, and smiled like a baby.
‘I’m not as drunk as I look,’ Baarath said.
‘I’m sure you aren’t,’ Maati agreed.
Baarath pounded the board beside him and gestured for Maati to sit. There was no graceful way to refuse, and at the moment, he could think of no reason. Going back to stand, frustrated, over the table had no appeal. He sat.
‘What is bothering you, Maati-kya? You’re still searching for some way to keep the upstart alive?’
‘Is that an option? I don’t see Danat-cha letting him walk free. No, I suppose I’m just hoping to see him killed for the right reasons. Except . . . I don’t know. I can’t find anyone else with reason to do the things that have been done.’
‘Perhaps there’s more than one thing going on then?’ Baarath suggested.
Maati took a pose of surrender.
‘I can’t comprehend one. The gods will have to lead me by the hand if there’s two. Can you think of any other reason to kill Biitrah? The man seems to have moved through the world without making an enemy.’
‘He was the best of us,’ Baarath agreed and wiped his eyes with the end of his sleeve. ‘He was a good man.’
‘So it had to be one of his brothers. Gods, I wish the assassin hadn’t been killed. He could have told us if there was a connection between Biitrah and what happened to me. Then at least I’d know if I were solving one puzzle or two.’
‘Doesn’t have to,’ Baarath said.
Maati took a pose that asked for clarification. Baarath rolled his eyes and took on an expression of superiority that Maati had seen beneath his politeness for weeks now.
‘It doesn’t
have
to be one of his brothers,’ Baarath said. ‘You say it’s not the upstart. Fine, that’s what you choose. But then you say you can’t find anything that Danat or Kaiin’s done that makes you think they’ve done it. And why would they hide it, anyway? It’s not shameful for them to kill their brother.’
‘But no one else has a reason,’ Maati said.
‘No one? Or only no one you’ve found?’
‘If it isn’t about the succession, I can’t find any call to kill Biitrah. If it isn’t about my search for Otah, I can’t think of any reason to want me dead. The only killing that makes sense at all was poking the assassin full of holes, and that only because he might have answered my questions.’
‘Why couldn’t it have been the succession?’
Maati snorted. It was difficult being friendly with Baarath when he was sober. Now, with him half-maudlin, half-contemptuous, and reeking of wine, it was worse. Maati’s frustration peaked, and his voice, when he spoke, was louder and angrier than he’d intended.
‘Because Otah
didn’t
, and Kaiin
didn’t
, and Danat
didn’t
, and there’s no one else who’s looking to sit on the chair. Is there some fifth brother I haven’t been told about?’
Baarath raised his hands in a pose of a tutor posing an instructive question to a pupil. The effect was undercut by the slight weaving of his hands.
‘What would happen if all three brothers died?’
‘Otah would be Khai.’
‘Four. I meant four. What if they all die? What if none of them takes the chair?’
‘The utkhaiem would fight over it like very polite pit dogs, and whichever one ended with the most blood on its muzzle would be elevated as the new Khai.’
‘So someone else might benefit from this yet, you see? They would have to hide it because having slaughtered the whole family of the previous Khai wouldn’t help their family prestige, seeing as all their heads would be hanging from poles. But it would be about your precious succession, and there would be someone besides the three . . . four brothers with reason to do the thing.’
‘Except that Danat’s alive and about to be named Khai Machi, it’s a pretty story.’
Baarath sneered and made a grand gesture at the world in general.
‘What is there but pretty stories? What is history but the accumulation of plausible speculation and successful lies? You’re a scholar, Maati-kya, you should enjoy them more.’
Baarath chuckled drunkenly, and Maati rose to his feet. Outside, something cracked with a report like a stone slab broken or a roof tile dropped from a great height. A moment later, laughter followed it. Maati leaned against the table, his arms folded and each hand tucked into the opposite sleeve. Baarath shifted, lay back on the bench, and sighed.
‘You don’t think it’s true,’ Maati said. ‘You don’t think it’s one of the high families plotting to be Khai.’
‘Of course not,’ Baarath said. ‘It’s an idiot plan. If you were to start something like that, you’d need to be certain you’d win it, and that would take more money and influence than any one family could gather. Even the Radaani don’t have that much gold, and they’ve got more than the Khai.’
‘Then you think I’m chasing mist,’ Maati said.
‘I think the upstart is behind all of it, and that you’re too much in awe of him to see it. Everyone knows he was your teacher when you were a boy. You still think he’s twice what you are. Who knows, maybe he is.’
His anger gave Maati the illusion of calm, and a steadiness to his voice. He took a pose of correction.
‘That was rude, Baarath-cha. I’d thank you not to say it again.’
‘Oh, don’t be ashamed of it,’ Baarath said. ‘There are any number of boys who have those sorts of little infatuations with—’
Maati’s body lifted itself, sliding with an elegance and grace he didn’t know he posessed. His palm moved out by its own accord and slapped Baarath’s jaw hard enough to snap the man’s head to the side. He put a hand on Baarath’s chest, pinning him firmly to the bench. Baarath yelped in surprise and Maati saw the shock and fear in his face. Maati kept his voice calm.
‘We aren’t friends. Let’s not be enemies. It would distract me, and you may have perfect faith that it would destroy you. I am here on the Dai-kvo’s work, and no matter who becomes Khai Machi, he’ll have need of the poets. Standing beside that, one too-clever librarian can’t count for much.’
Outrage shone in Baarath’s eyes as he pushed Maati’s hand away. Maati stepped back, allowing him to rise. The librarian pulled his disarrayed robes back into place, his features darkening. Maati’s rage began to falter, but he kept his chin held high.
‘You’re a bully, Maati-cha,’ Baarath said, then he took a pose of farewell and marched proudly out of the library. His library. Maati heard the door slam closed and felt himself deflate.
It galled him, but he knew he would have to apologize later. He should never have struck the man. If he had borne the insults and insinuations, he could have forced contrition from Baarath, but he hadn’t.
He looked at his scattered notes. Perhaps he was a bully. Perhaps there was nothing to be found in all this. After all, Otah would die regardless. Danat would take his father’s place, and Maati would go back to the Dai-kvo. He would even be able to claim a measure of success. Otah was starving to death in the high air above Machi thanks to him, after all. And what was that if not victory? One small mystery left unsolved could hardly matter in the end.
He pulled his papers together, stacking them, folding them, tucking the packet away into his sleeve. There was nothing to be done here. He was tired and frustrated, ashamed of himself and in despair. There was a city of wine and distraction that would welcome him with open arms and delighted smiles.
He remembered Heshai-kvo - the poet of Saraykeht, the controller of Removing-the-Part-That-Continues who they’d called Seedless. He remembered his teacher’s pilgrimages to the soft quarter with its drugs and gambling, its wine and whores. Heshai had felt this, or something like it; Maati knew he had.
He pulled the brown leatherbound book from his sleeve, where it always waited. He opened it and read Heshai’s careful, beautiful handwriting. The chronicle and examination of his errors in binding the andat. He recalled Seedless’ last words.
He’s forgiven you
.