An Autumn War

Chapter Six

The poet's house was warm, the scent of trees thick in the air. The
  false dawn, prolonged by the mountains to the east, had just come, the sun making its way above the peaks to bathe the world in light. Through the opened door, N9aati could hear the songs of birds deep in the yearly quest to draw mates to their nests. The dances and parties of the utkhaiem were much the same-who had the loveliest plumage, the more enticing song. There were fewer differences between men and birds than men liked to confess.
He sat on a couch, watching Cehmai at one side of the small table and Stone-Made-Soft at the other. Between them was the game hoard with its worn lines and stones. The game had been central to the binding Manat [)oru had performed generations ago that first brought Stone-blade-Soft into existence, and as part of the legacy he bore, Cehmai had to play the game again-white stones moving forward against the black-as a reaffirmation of his control over the spirit. Fortunately, Nlanat Doru had also made Stone-Made-Soft a terrible player. Cehmai tapped his fingertips against the wood and shifted a black stone in the center of the hoard toward the left. Stone-Made-Soft frowned, its wide face twisted in concentration.
"No word yet," Cehmai said. "It's early days, though."
"What do you think he'll do?" Maati asked.
"I'm trying to think, please," the andat rumbled. "They ignored it. Cehmai leaned back in his seat. The years had treated him kindly. The fresh-faced, talented young man Maati had met when he first came to Machi was still there. If there was the first dusting of gray in the boy's hair, if the lines at the corners of his mouth were deeper now, and less prone to vanish when he relaxed, it did nothing to take away from the easy smile or the deep, grounded sense of self that Cehmai had always had. And even the respect he had for Maati-no longer a dread-touched awe, but still profound in its way-had never failed with familiarity.
"I'm afraid he'll do the thing," Cehmai said. "I suppose I'm also afraid that he won't. There's not a good solution."
"He could take a middle course," Maati said. "Demand that the Gaits hand back Riaan on the threat of taking action. If the Dai-kvo tells them that he knows, it might be enough."
The andat lifted a thick-fingered hand, gently touched a white stone, and slid it forward with a hiss. Cehmai glanced over, considered, and pushed the black stone he'd moved before back into the space it had come from. The andat coughed in frustration and set its head on balled fists, staring at the hoard.
"It's Odd," Cehmai said. "There was a time when I was at the school-before I'd even taken the black robes, so early on. There was a pigeon that had taken up residence in my cohort's rooms. Nasty thing. It would flap around through the air and drop feathers and shit on us all, and every time we waved it outside, it would come hack. Then one day, one of the boys got lucky. He threw a hoot at the poor thing and broke its wing. Well, we knew we were going to have to kill it. Even though it had been nothing but annoyance and filth, it was hard to break its neck."
"Were you the one that did it?" Maati asked.
Cehmai took a pose of acknowledgment.
"It felt like this," the younger poet said. "I won't enjoy this, if it's what we do."
The andat looked up from the board.
"Has it ever struck you people how arrogant you are?" it asked, huge hands taking an attitude of query that bordered on accusation. "You're talking of slaughtering a nation. Thousands of innocent people destroyed, lands made barren, mountains leveled and the sea pulled up over them like a blanket. And you're feeling sorry for yourself that you had to wring a bird's neck as a boy? How can anyone have feelings that delicate and that numbed both at the same time?"
"It's your move," Cehmai said.
Stone-Made-Soft sighed theatrically-it had no need for breath, so every sigh it made was a comment-and turned back toward the game. It was essentially over. The andat had lost again as it always did, but they played to the last move, finishing the ritual humiliation once again.
"We're off to the North," Cehmai said as he put the stones hack into their trays. ""There's a new vein the Radaani want to explore, but I'm not convinced it's possible. Their engineers are swearing that the structure won't collapse, but those mountains are getting near lacework."
"Eight generations is a long time," Maati agreed. "Even without help, the mines would have become a maze by now."
"I fear the day an earthquake comes," Cehmai said as he stood and stretched. "One shake, and half these mountains will fold up flat, I'd swear it."
`I'hen I suppose we'd have to spend months digging up the bodies," Maati said.
"Not really," the andat said. Its voice was placid again, now that the game was ended. "If we make it soft enough, the bodies will float up through it. If stone is water, almost anything floats. We could have a whole field of stone flat as a lake, with mine dogs and men popping up out of it like bubbles."
"What a pleasant thought," Cehmai said, gently sarcastic. "And here I was wondering why we weren't invited to more dinners. And you, Maati-kvo? What's your day?"
"More work in the library," Maati said. "I want the place in order. If the Dai-kvo calls for me ..."
"He will," Cehmai said. "You can count on that."
"If he does, I want the place left in order. A sane order that someone else could make sense of. Baarath had the thing put together like a puzzle. 'look me three years just to make sense of it, and even then some of it I just went through book by book and made my own classifications."
"Well, he had a different opinion than yours," Cehmai said. "He wanted the library to be a place to bury secrets, not display them. It was how he made himself feel as if he mattered. I don't suppose I can blame him too much for that."
"I suppose not," Maati agreed.
The three of them walked along the wooded path that led to the palaces of the Khai. The stone towers of Machi rose high above the city, bright with the light of morning, and the smoke of the forges plumed up from the metalworkers' district in the south. Maati kept company with Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft as far as the compound of House Radaani, where a litter and donkeys were waiting. They took poses of farewell, even the andat, and Maati sat on the steps of the compound to watch them lumber away to the North.
In the days since he, Otah, and Liat had broken the news to Cehmai, Maati had found himself less and less able to do his work. The familiar stacks and shelves and galleries of the library were uncomforting. The songs of the singing slaves in the gardens seemed to pull at him when he caught a phrase of their melodies. He found himself seeking out food when he wasn't hungry, wine when he had no thirst. He walked the streets of the city and the paths of the palaces more than he had in living memory, and even when his knees ached, he found himself tinconsciously rising to pace the rooms of his apartments. Restless. He had become restless.
In part it was the knowledge that Liat and Nayiit were in the city, in the palaces even. At any time, he could seek them out, invite them to eat with him or talk with him. Nayiit, whom he had not known since the boy was shorter than little Danat was now. Liat, whose breath and body he had once said he would never he whole without. They were here at last.
In part it was the anticipation of a courier from the Dai-kvo, whether about his own work or Liat's case against the Galts. And of the two, he found the Galtic issue the lesser. Liat's argument was enough to convince him that they did have a rogue poet, but the chances that he would bind a new andat seemed remote. There in the middle of Galt without references, without the Dai-kvo or his fellow poets to work through the fine points of the binding, the most likely thing was that the man would try, fail, and die badly. It was a problem that would solve itself. And if the Dai-kvo took Liat's view and turned the andat loose against Galt, the chances of tragedy coming to the cities of the Khaiem was even less.
No, his unease came more from the prospect of his own success. He had lived so long as a failure that the prospect of success disturbed him. He knew that his heart should have been singing. He should have been drunk with pride.
And yet he found himself waking in the night, knotted with anger. In the darkness of his room, he would wake with the night candle over half burned, and stare at the netting above his bed as it shifted in barely felt drafts. The targets of his rage seemed to shift; one night he might wake with a list of the wrongs done him by Liat, the next with the conviction that he had suffered insult at the hands of Otah or the I)ai-kvo. With the coming of dawn, the fit would pass, insubstantial as a dream, the complaints that had haunted him in darkness thin as cheesecloth in the light.
And still, he was restless.
He made his way slowly through the palaces and out to the city itself. The black-cobbled streets were alive with people. Carts of vegetables and early berries wound from the low towns toward the markets in the center of the city. Lambs on rough hemp leads trotted in ignorance toward the butchers' stalls. And wherever he went, a path was made for him, people took poses of respect and welcome and he returned them by habit. He paused at a cart and bought a meal of hot peppered beef and sweet onions wrapped in waxed paper. The young man running the cart refused to accept his lengths of copper. Another small amenity granted to the other poet of Machi. Maati took a pose of thanks as best he could with one hand full of the food.
The towers of Machi seemed to touch the lowest clouds. It had been years since Maati had gone up one of the great towers. He remembered the platform swaying, its great arm-thick chains clanking against the stones as he rose. That far above the city, he had felt he was looking out from a mountain peak-the valley spread below so vast he'd imagined he could almost see the ocean. Not remotely truth, but what it felt like all the same. Looking at the towers now, he remembered what Cehmai had said. If there were an earthquake, the towers would certainly fall. For an instant, he imagined the stones pattering down in a deadly rain, the long, slumped piles of rubble that would lie where they fell. The corpses of giants.
He shook himself, pushing the darkness away, and turned back toward the palaces. He wondered, as he trundled toward the library, where Nayiit was today. He had seen the boy-a man old enough to have a child of his own, and still in Maati's mind a boy-several times since his arrival. Dinners, dances, formal meetings. They had not yet had a conversation as father and son. Maati wondered whether he wanted them to, or if the reminder of what might have been would be too uncomfortable for them both. Perhaps he could track the boy down, show him through the city for a day. Or through the tunnels. There were a few teahouses still in business down in their winter quarters. That was the sort of thing only a local would know. Maybe the boy would be interested....
He paused as he rounded the slow curving path toward the library. Two forms were sitting on its wide stone steps, but neither of them was Nayiit. The older, rounder woman wore robes of seafoam green embroidered with yellow. Liat's hair was still as dark as when she'd been a girl sitting beside him on a cart leaving Saraykeht behind them. Her head still took the same just-off angle when she was speaking to someone to whom she was trying especially to he kind.
The younger looked thin and coltish beside her. Her robes were deep blue shot with white, and Eiah had her hair up, held in place with thick silvered pins that glittered even from here. She was the first to catch sight of him, and her thin arm rose, waving him nearer. He was too thick about the belly these days to trot or he would have.
"We've been waiting for you," Eiah said as he drew near. Her tone was accusing. Liat glanced up at him, amused.
"I was seeing Cehmai off on his journey," Maati said. "He's going to the Radaani mines in the North. A new vein, I think. But I did take the longer way hack. If I'd known you were waiting, I'd have been here sooner.
Eiah considered this, and then without word or gesture visibly accepted the apology.
"We've been talking about marriage," Liat said.
"I)id you know that Liat-cha never got married to anyone? Nayiit's her son. She had a baby, but she's never been wed?"
"Well, the two things aren't perfectly related, you know," Maati began, but Eiah rolled her eyes and took a pose that unasked the question.
"Eiah-cha and I were going to the high gardens. I've packed some bread and cheese. We thought you might care to join us?"
"You've already eaten," Eiah said, pointing to the waxed paper in his hand.
""Phis?" Maati said. "No, I was feeding this to the pigeons. Wait a moment, I'll get a jug of wine and some bowls...
"I'm old enough to drink wine," Eiah said.
"Three howls, then," Maati said. "Just give me a moment."
He walked back to his apartments, feeling something very much like relief. The afternoon trapped with old scrolls and codices, books and frail maps was banished. He was saved from it. He threw the waxed paper with the remaining onions into a corner where the servants would clean it, took a thick earthenware jug of wine off his shelves, and dropped three small wine bowls into his sleeve. On his way back out to the steps, where he was certain no one could see him, he trotted.
DANAT'S COUGH HAD RETURNED.
Otah had filled his day playing Khai Machi. He had reviewed the preparations for the Grand Audience he was already past due holding. There was an angry letter from the Khai "Ian-Sadar asking for an explanation of Otah's decision not to take his youngest daughter as one of his wives that he responded to with as much aplomb as he could muster. His Master of Stone-responsible for keeping the books of the cityhad discovered that two of the forms from which silver lengths were struck had been tampered with and reported the progress of his investigation into the matter. The widow of Adaiit Kamau demanded an audience, insisting again that her husband had been murdered and demanding justice in his name. The priests asked for money for the temple and the procession of the beasts. A young playwright, son of Oiad How of House How, had composed an epic in the honor to the Khai Machi, and asked permission to perform it. Permission and funding. The representative of the tinsmiths petitioned for a just distribution of coal, as the ironworkers had been taking more than their share. The ironworkers' explaining that they worked iron, not-sneering and smiling as if Otah would understand-tin. And on and on and on until Otah was more than half tempted to grab a passing servant, put him on the black lacquer chair, and let the city take its chances. And at the end, with all the weight of the city and the impending death of Galt besides, the thing that he could not face was that Danat's cough had returned.
The nursery glowed by the light of the candles. Kiyan sat on the raised bed, talking softly to their son. Great iron statues of strange, imagined beasts had been kept in the fire grates all day and pulled out when night fell, and as he quietly walked forward, Otah could feel the heat radiating from them. The physician's assistant-a young man with a serious expression-took a respectful pose and walked quietly from the room, leaving the family alone.
Otah stepped up to the bedside. Danat's eyes, half closed in drowse, shifted toward him and a smile touched Otah's mouth.
"I got sick again, Papa-kya," he said. His voice was rough and low; the familiar sign of a hard day.
"Don't talk, sweet," Kiyan said, smoothing I)anat's forehead with the tips of her fingers. "You'll start it again."
"Yes," Otah said, sitting across from his wife, taking his son's hand. "I heard. But you've been sick before, and you've gotten better. You'll get better again. It's good for boys to be a hit ill when they're young. It gets all the hardest parts out of the way early. Then they can be strong old men.
"Tell me a story?" Danat asked.
Utah took a breath, his mind grasping for a children's story. He tried to recall being in this room himself or one like it. He had been, when he'd been I)anat's age. Someone had held him when he'd been ill, had told him stories to distract him. But everything in his life before he'd been disowned and sent to the school existed in the blur of halfmemory and dream.
"Papa-kya's tired, sweet," Kiyan said. "Let Mama tell you about . .
"No!" Danat cried, his face pulling in-mouth tight, brows thunderously low. "I want Papa-kya-"
"It's all right," Otah said. "I'm not so tired I can't tell my own boy a story."
Kiyan smiled at him, her eyes amused and apologetic both. I tried to spare you.
"Once, hack before the Empire, when the world was very new," Otah said, then paused. "There, ah. There was a goat."
The goat-whose name was coincidentally also Danat-went on to meet a variety of magical creatures and have long, circuitous conversations to no apparent point or end until Utah saw his son's eyes shut and his breath grow deep and steady. Kiyan rose and silently snuffed all but the night candle. The room filled with the scent of spent wicks. Otah let go of his son's hand and quietly pulled the netting closed. In the near-darkness, Danat's eyelids seemed darker, smudged with kohl. His skin was smooth and brown as eggshell. Kiyan touched Otah's shoulder and motioned with her gaze to the door. He laced his fingers in hers and together they walked to the hallway.
The physician's assistant sat on a low stool, a howl of rice and fish in his hands.
"I will be here for the night, Most High," the assistant said as Otah paused before him. "My teacher expects that the boy will sleep soundly, but if he wakes, I will be here."
Otah took a pose expressing gratitude. It was a humbling thing for a Khai to do before a servant, even one as skilled as this. The physician's assistant bowed deeply in response. The walk to their own rooms was a short one-down one hallway, up a wide flight of stairs worked in marble and silver, and then the gauntlet of their own servants. The evening's meal was set out for them-quail glazed with pork fat and honey, pale bread with herbed butter, fresh trout, iced apples. More food than any two people could eat.
"It isn't in his chest," Kiyan said as she lifted the trout's pale flesh from delicate, translucent bones. "His color is always good. His lips never blue at all. The physician didn't hear any water when he breathes, and he can blow up a pig's bladder as well as I could."
"And all that's good?" Otah said. "He can't run across a room without coughing until his head aches."
"All that's better than the alternative," Kiyan said. "They don't know what it is. They give him teas that make him sleep, and hope that his body's wise enough to mend itself."
""Phis has been going on too long. It's been almost a year since he was really well."
"I know it," Kiyan said, and the weariness in her voice checked Otah's frustration. "Really, love, I'm quite clear."
"I'm sorry, Kiyan-kya," he said. "It's just ..."
He shook his head.
"Hard feeling powerless?" she said gently. Otah nodded. Kiyan sighed softly, a sympathy for his pain. Then, "Agoat?"
"It was what came to mind."
After the meal, after their hands had been washed for them in silver howls, after Otah had suffered yet another change of robes, Kiyan kissed him and retreated to her rooms. Otah stepped down from his palace, instructed the retinue of servants that he wished to be left alone, and made his way west, toward the library. The sun had long since slipped behind the mountains, but the sky remained a bright gray, the clouds touched with rose and gold. Spring would soon give way to summer, the long, bright days and brief nights. Still, it was not so early in the season that lanterns didn't glow from the windows that he passed. Stars glittered in the east as the night rose. The library itself was dark, but candles burned in Maati's apartments, and Otah made his way down the path.
Voices came to him, raised in laughter. A man's and a woman's, and both familiar as memory. They sat on chairs set close together. In the yellow candlelight, Maati's cheeks looked rosy. Liat's hair had escaped its bun, locks of it tumbling across her brow, down the curve of her neck. The air smelled of mulling spices and wine, and Eiah lay on a couch, one long, thin arm cast over her eyes. Liat's eyes went wide when she caught sight of him, and Maati turned toward the door to see what had startled her.
"Otah-kvo!" he said, waving him forward. "Come in. Come in. It's my fault. I've kept your daughter too long. I should have sent her home sooner. I wasn't thinking."
"Not at all," Otah said, stepping in. "I've come for your help actually."
Maati took a pose of query. His hands were not perfectly steady, and Liat stifled a giggle. Both of them were more than a little drunk. A howl of warmed wine sat on the edge of the brazier, a silver serving cup hooked to the rim. Otah glanced at it, and Maati waved him on. There were no bowls, so Otah drank from the serving cup.
"What can I do, Most High?" Maati asked with a grin that was for the most part friendly.
"I need a book. Something with children's stories in it. Fables, or light epics. History, if it's well enough written. Danat's asking me to tell stories, and I don't really know any."
Liat chuckled and shook her head, but Maati nodded in understanding. Otah sat beside his sleeping daughter while Maati considered. The wine was rich and deep, and the spices alone made Otah's head swim a little.
"What about the one from the Dancer's Court?" Liat said. "The one with the stories about the half-Bakta boy who intrigued for the Emperor.
Maati pursed his lips.
""They're a bit bloody, some of them," he said.
"Danat's a boy. He'll love them. Besides, you read them to Nayiit without any lasting damage," Liat said. "Those and the green hook. The one that was all political allegories where people turned into light or sank into the ground."
"The Silk Hunter's Dreams," Maati said. "That's a thought. I have a copy of that one too, where I can put my hand on it. Only, Otah-kvo, don't tell him the one with the crocodile. Nayiit-kya wouldn't sleep for days after I told him that one."
"I'll trust you," Otah said.
"Wait," Maati said, and with a grunt he pulled himself to standing. "You two stay here. I'll be back with it in three heartbeats."
An uncomfortable silence fell on Otah and Liat. Otah turned to consider Eiah's sleeping face. Liat shifted in her chair.
"She's a lovely girl," Liat said softly. "We spent the day together, the three of us, and I was sure she'd wear us thin by the end of it. Still, we're the ones that lasted longest, eh?"
"She doesn't have a head for wine yet," Otah said.
"We didn't give her wine," Liat said, then chuckled. "Well, not much anyway.
"If the worst she does is sneak away to drink with the pair of you, I'll be the luckiest man alive," Otah said. As if hearing him, Eiah sighed in her sleep and shifted away, pressing her face to the cushions.
"She looks like her mother," Liat said. "Her face is that same shape. The eyes are your color, though. She'll he stunning when she's older. She'll break hearts. But I suppose they all do. Ours if no one else's."
Otah looked up. Liat's expression had darkened, the shadows of lanternlight gathering on the curves of her face. It had been another lifetime, it seemed, when Otah had first known her. Only four years older than Eiah was now. And he'd been younger than Nayiit. Babies, it seemed. Too young to know what they were doing, or how precarious the world truly was. It hadn't seemed that way at the time, though. Otah remembered it all with a terrible clarity.
"You're thinking of Saraykcht," she said.
"Was it that obvious?"
"Yes," Liat said. "How much have you told them? About what happened?"
"Kiyan knows everything. A few others."
"They know how Seedless was freed? And Heshai-kvo, how he was killed?"
For a sick moment, Otah was back in the filthy room, in the stink of mud and raw sewage from the alley. He remembered the ache in his arms. He remembered the struggle as the old poet fought for air with the cord biting into his throat. It had seemed the right thing, then. Even to Heshai. The andat, Seedless, had come to Otah with the plan. Aid in Heshai-kvo's suicide-for in many ways that was what it had been-and Liat would be saved. Maati would be saved. A thousand Galtic babies would stay safely in their mother's wombs, the power of the andat never turned against them.
Otah wondered when things had changed. When he had stopped being someone who would kill a good man to protect the innocent, and become willing to let a nation die if it meant protecting his own. Likely it had been the moment he'd first seen Eiah squirming on Kiyan's breast.
"Do you know?" Otah asked. "How it happened, I mean."
"Only guesses," Liat said. "If you wanted to tell me ..."
"Thank you," Otah said with a sigh, "but maybe it's best to leave that buried. It's all finished now, and there's no undoing any of it."
"Perhaps you're right."
"We will need to talk about Nayiit," Otah said. "Not now. Not with ..." lie nodded to the sleeping girl.
"I understand," Liat said and brushed her hair back from her eyes. "I don't mean any harm, "Iani. I wouldn't hurt you or your family. I didn't come here ... I wouldn't have come here if I hadn't had to."
The door swung open, a gust of cool air coming from it, and Maati stood triumphantly in the frame. He held a small hook hound in blue silk as if it were a trophy of war.
"(;or the bastard!" he said, and walked over to Otah, presenting it over one arm like a sword. "For you, Most High, and your son."
Over Nlaati's shoulder, Otah could see Liat look away. Utah only took the hook, adopted a pose of thanks, and turned to gently shake Eiah's shoulder. She grunted, her brow furrowing.
"It's time to come home, Eiah-kya," Otah said. "Come along."
`M'wake," Eiah protested, but slowly. Rubbing her eyes with the hack of one hand, she rose.
They said their good nights, and Otah led his daughter out, closing the door to Maati's apartments behind them. The night had grown cool, and the stars had occupied the sky like a conquering army. Otah laid his arm across Eiah's shoulder, hers under it, around his ribs. She leaned into him as they walked. Night-blooming flowers scented the air, soft as rain. 't'hey were just coming in sight of the entrance of the First Palace when Eiah spoke, her voice still abstracted with sleep.
"Nayiit-cha's yours, isn't he, Papa-kya?"
LIA'r WOKE IN DIM MOONLIGII"1 ; THE NIGHT CANDLE IHAD GONE OUT OR ELSE they hadn't bothered to light it. She couldn't recall which. Beside her, Nlaati mumbled something in his sleep, as he always had. Liat smiled at the dim profile on the pillow beside her. He looked younger in sleep, the lines at his mouth softened, the storm at his brow calmed. She resisted the urge to caress his cheek, afraid to wake him. She had taken lovers in the years since she'd returned to Saraykeht. A half-dozen or so, each a man whose company she had enjoyed, and all of whom she could remember fondly.
She thought, sometimes, that she'd reversed the way women were intended to love. Butterfly flirtations, flitting from one man to another, taking none seriously, were best kept by the young. Had she taken her casual lovers as a girl, they would have been exciting and new, and she would have known too little to notice that they were empty. Instead, Liat had lost her heart twice before she'd seen twenty summers, and if those loves were gone-even this one, sleeping now at her side-the memory of them was there. Once, she had told herself the world was nothing if she didn't have a man who loved her. A man of importance and beauty, a man whom she might, through her gentle guidance, save.
She had been another woman, then. And who, she wondered, had she become now?
She rose quietly, parting the netting, and stepped out onto the cool floor. She found her outer robe and wrapped it around herself. Her inner robes and her sandals she could reclaim tomorrow. Now she wanted her own bed, and pillows less thick with memories.
She slipped out the door, pulling it closed behind her. So far North and without an ocean to hold the warmth of the day, Machi's nights were cold, even now with spring at its height. Gooseflesh rose on her legs and arms, her belly and breasts, as she trotted along the wide, darkened paths to the apartments that Irani or Otah or the Khai Machi had given to her and her son.
More than a week had passed since he had come to Maati's apartments, gathering up a children's hook and a daughter halfway to womanhood and leaving behind a lasting unease. Liat had not spoken with him since, but the dread of the coming conversation weighed heavy. As Nayiit had grown, she'd seen nothing in him but himself. Even when people swore that the boy had her eyes, her mouth, her way of sighing, she'd never seen it. Perhaps when there was no space between a mother and her child, the sameness becomes invisible. Perhaps it merely seemed normal. She would have admitted that her son looked something like his father. It was only in seeing them together, seeing the simple, powerful knowing in Otah's wife's expression, that Liat understood the depth of her error in letting Nayiit come.
And with that came her understanding of how it could not he undone. Her first impulse had been to send him away at once, to hide him again the way a child caught with a forbidden sweet might stuff it away into a sleeve as if unseen now might somehow mean never seen at all. Only the years of running her house had counseled her otherwise. The situation was what it was. Attempting any subterfuge would only make the Khai wary, and his unease might mean Nayiit's death. As long as her son lived, he posed a threat to Danat, and she knew enough to understand that a babe held from its first breath meant something that a man full-grown never could. If Utah were forced to choose, Liat had no illusions what that choice would be.
And so she prepared herself, prepared her arguments and her negotiating strategies, and told herself it would end well. They were all together, allies against the Galts. 'T'here would be no need. She told herself there would be no need.
At her apartments, no candles were lit, but a fire burned in the grate: old pine, rich with sap that popped and hissed and filled the air with its scent. When she entered, her son looked up from the flames and took a pose of welcome, gesturing to a divan beside him. Liat hesitated, surprised by a sudden embarrassment, then gathered her sense of humor and sat beside him. He smelled of wine and smoke, and his robes hung as loose on him as her own did on her.
"You've been to the teahouses," Liat said, trying to keep any note of disapproval from her voice.
"You've been with my father," he replied.
"I've been with Maati," Liat said as if it were an agreement and not a correction.
Nayiit leaned forward and took up a length of iron, prodding the burning logs. Sparks rose and vanished like fireflies.
"I haven't been able to see him," Nayiit said. " WN'e've been here weeks now, and he hasn't come to speak with me. And every time I go to the library he's gone or he's with you. I think you're trying to keep us from each other."
Liat raised her eyebrows and ran her tongue across the inside of her teeth, weighing the coppery taste that sprang to her mouth, thinking what it meant. She coughed.
"You aren't wrong," she said at last. "I'm not ready for it. Maati's not who he was back then."
"So instead of letting us face each other and see what it is we see, you've decided to start up an affair with him and take all his time and attention?" "There was no rancor in his voice, only sadness and amusement. "It doesn't seem the path of wisdom, Mother."
"Well, not when you say it that way," Liat said. "I was thinking of it as coming to know him again before the conflict began. I did love him, you know."
"And now?"
"And still. I still love him, in my fashion," Liat said, her voice rueful. "I know I'm not what he wants. I'm not the person he wants me to be, and I doubt I ever have been, truly. But we enjoy each other. "There are things we can say to each other that no one else would understand. They weren't there, and we were. And he's such a little boy. He's carried so much and been so disappointed, and there's still the possibility in him of this ... JOY. I can't explain it."
"If I ask you as a favor, will you let me know him as well? We may not actually fight like pit dogs if you let us in the same room together. And if there's conflict at all, it's between us. Not you."
Liat opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head. She sighed.
"Of course," she said. "Of course, I'm sorry. I've been an old hen, and I'm sorry for it, but ... I know it's not a trade. We aren't negotiating, not really. But Nayiit-kya, you can't say you haven't been with a woman since we've cone here. You didn't choose to go south, even when I asked you to. Sweet, is it so had at home?"
"Bad?" he said, speaking slowly. As if tasting the word. "I don't know. No. Not bad. Only not good. And yes, I know I haven't been keeping to my own bed. Do you think my darling wife has been keeping to hers?"
Liat's mind turned, searching for words, making sense as best she could of what he had asked and what he had meant by it. It was true enough that Tai had come into the world at an odd time, but he was a first child, and wombs weren't made to he certain. She rushed through her memory, looking for signs she might have missed, suggestions back in their lives in Saraykeht that would have pointed at some venomous question, and slowly she began, if not to understand, then at least to guess.
"You think he isn't yours," she said. "You think Tai is another man's child."
"Nothing like that," Nayiit said. "It's only that you can make a child from love or from anger. Or inattention. Or only from not knowing what better to do. A baby isn't proof of anything between the father and mother beyond a few moments' pressure."
"It isn't the child's fault."
"No, I suppose not," Nayiit said.
"'t'his is why you came, then? To Nantani, and then up here? To he away from them?"
"I came because I wanted to. Because it was the world, and when was I going to see it again? Because you wanted someone to carry your bags and wave off dogs. It was only partly that I couldn't stay. And then when you were going to see him, NIaati-cha ... How could I not come along for that too? The chance to see my father again. I remember him, you know? I do, from when I was small, I remember a day we were all in a small but. 'T'here was an iron stove, and it was raining, and you were singing while he bathed me. I don't know when that was, I can't put a time on it. But I remember his face."
"You would have known him, if you'd seen him in passing. You'd have known who he was."
Nayiit took a pose of affirmation. He pursed his lips and chuckled ruefully.
"I don't know what it is to be a father. I'm only working from-"
"Nayiit-kya?" came a voice from the shadows behind them. A soft, feminine voice. "Is everything well?"
She stepped toward the light. A young woman, twenty summers, perhaps as many as twenty-two. She wore bedding tied around her waist, her breasts bare, her hair still wild from the pillows.
"Jaaya-cha, this is my mother. Mother, Jaaya Biavu."
The girl blanched, then flushed. She took a pose of welcome, not bothering to cover herself, but her gaze was on Nayiit. It spoke of both humiliation and contempt. Nayiit didn't look at her. The woman turned and stalked away.
"That wasn't kind," Liat said.
"Very little of what she and I do involves kindness," he said. "I don't expect I'll see her again. By which I mean, I don't suppose she'll see me."
"Is she politically connected? If her family is utkhaiem ..."
"I don't think she is," Nayiit said, his face in his hands. It was hard to be sure in the firelight, but she thought the tips of his ears were blushing. "I suppose I should have asked."
He struggled for a moment, trying to speak and failing. his brow furrowed and Liat had to resist the urge to reach over and smooth it with her thumb, the way she had when he'd been a babe.
"I'm sorry," he said. "You know that I'm sorry."
"t~ or what?" she asked, her voice low and stern. As if there were any number of things for which he might he.
"For not being a better man," he said.
The fire popped, as if in comment. Liat took her son's hand, and for a long moment, they were silent. "Then:
"I don't care what you do with your marriage, Nayiit-kya. If you don't love her, end it. Or if you don't trust her. As you see fit. People come together and they part. It's what we do. But the boy. You can't leave the boy. That isn't fair."
"It's what Maati-cha did to us."
"No," Liat said, giving his hand the smallest pressure, and then releasing it. "We left him."
Nayiit turned to her slowly, his hands folding into a pose that asked confirmation. It was as if the words were too dangerous to speak.
"I left him," Liat said. "I took you when you were still a babe, and I was the one to leave him."
She saw a moment's shock in his expression, gone as fast as it had come. His face went grave, his hands as still as stones. As still as a man bending his will to keep them still.
"Why?" he asked. His voice was low and thready.
"Oh, love. It was so long ago. I was someone else, then," she said, and knew as she said it that it wasn't enough. "I did because he was only half there. And because I couldn't see to all of his needs and all of yours and have no one there to look after me."
"It was better without him?"
"I thought it would be. I thought I was cutting my losses. And then, later, when I wasn't so certain anymore, I convinced myself it had been the right thing, just so I could tell myself I hadn't been wrong."
lie was shaken, though he tried to cover it. She knew him too well to be fooled.
"tic wasn't there, Nayiit. But he never left you."
And part of me never left him, she thought. What would the world have been if I had chosen otherwise? Where would we all be now if that part of him and of me had been enough? Still in that little hut in the low town near the I)ai-kvo? Would they all have lived together in the library these past years as Nlaati had?
"Those other, ghostlike people made a pretty dream, but then there would have been no one to hear of the Galts and the missing poet, no one to travel to Nantani. And little Tai would not have been horn, and she would never have seen Amat Kyaan again. Someone else would have been with the old woman when she died-someone else or no one. And Liat would never have taken House Kyaan, would never have proven herself competent to the world and to her own satisfaction.
It was too much. The changes, the differences were too great to think of as good or as bad. The world they had now was too much itself, good and evil too tightly woven to wish for some other path. And still it would be wrong to say she found herself without regrets.
"Maati loves you," she said, softly. "You should see him. I won't interfere again. But first, VOL] should go tend to your guest. Smooth things over.
Nayiit nodded, and then a moment later, he smiled. It was the same charming smile she'd known when she was a girl and it had been on different lips. Nayiit would charm the girl, say something sweet and funny, and the pain would be forgotten for a time. He was his father's son. Son of the Khai Machi. Eldest son, and doomed to the fratricidal struggle of succession that stained every city in each generation. She wondered how far Utah would go to avoid that, to keep his boy safe from her schemes. 't'hat conversation had to come, and soon. Perhaps it would he best if she took it to the Khai herself, if she stopped waiting for him to find a right moment.
Nayiit took a querying pose, and Liat shook herself. She waved his concern away.
"I'm tired," she said. "I've come all this way back to have my own bed to myself, and I'm still not in it. I'm too old to sleep in a lover's arms. They twitch and snore and keep me awake all night."
"They do, don't they?" Nayiit said. "Does it get better, do you think? With enough time, would you he so accustomed to it, you'd sleep through?"
"I don't know," Liat said. "I've never made the attempt."
"Like mother, like son, I suppose," Nayiit said as he rose. He bent and kissed the crown of her head before he retreated back into the shadows.
Like mother, like son.
I,iat pulled her robe tighter and sat near the fire, as if touched by a sudden chill.