followed his brothers' example last. He had two daughters, grown and now
themselves married. And so here he and his brothers were. None of them
had seen fewer than forty summers. None of them hated the other two.
None of them wanted what would come next. And still, it would come.
Better that the slaughter had happened when they were boys, stupid the
way boys are. Better that their deaths had come before they carried the
weight of so much life behind them. He was too old to become a killer.
Sleep came somewhere in these dark reflections, and he dreamed of things
more pleasant and less coherent. A dove with black-tipped wings flying
through the galleries of the Second Palace; Hiami sewing a child's dress
with red thread and a gold needle too soft to keep its point; the moon
trapped in a well and he himself called to design the pump that would
raise it. When he woke, troubled by some need his sleepsodden mind
couldn't quite place, it was still dark. He needed to drink water or to
pass it, but no, it was neither of these. He reached to unshutter the
candlebox, but his hands were too awkward.
"There now, most high," a voice said. "Bat it around like that, and
you'll have the whole place in flames."
Pale hands righted the box and pulled open the shutters, the candlelight
revealing the moon-faced keeper. He wore a dark robe under a gray woolen
traveler's cloak. His face, which had seemed so congenial before, filled
Biitrah with a sick dread. The smile, he saw, never reached the eyes.
"What's happened?" he demanded, or tried to. The words came out slurred
and awkward. Still, the man Oshai seemed to catch the sense of them.
"I've come to be sure you've died," he said with a pose that offered
this as a service. "Your men drank more than you. Those that are
breathing are beyond recall, but you ... Well, most high, if you see
morning the whole exercise will have been something of a waste."
Biitrah's breath suddenly hard as a runner's, he threw off the blankets,
but when he tried to stand, his knees were limp. He stumbled toward the
assassin, but there was no strength in the charge. Oshai, if that was
his name, put a palm to Biitrah's forehead and pushed gently back.
Biitrah fell to the floor, but he hardly felt it. It was like violence
being done to some other man, far away from where he was.
"It must be hard," Oshai said, squatting beside him, "to live your whole
life known only as another man's son. To die having never made a mark of
your own on the world. It seems unfair somehow."
Who, Biitrah tried to say. Which of my brothers would stoop to poison?
"Still, men die all the time," Oshai went on. "One more or less won't
keep the sun from rising. And how are you feeling, most high? Can you
get up? No? That's as well, then. I was half-worried I might have to
pour more of this down you. Undiluted, it tastes less of plums."
The assassin rose and walked to the bed. There was a hitch in his step,
as if his hip ached. He is old as my father, but Biitrah's mind was too
dim to see any humor in the repeated thought. Oshai sat on the bed and
pulled the blankets over his lap.
"No hurry, most high. I can wait quite comfortably here. Die at your
leisure."
Biitrah, trying to gather his strength for one last movement, one last
attack, closed his eyes but then found he lacked the will even to open
them again. The wooden floor beneath him seemed utterly comfortable; his
limbs were heavy and slack. There were worse poisons than this. He could
at least thank his brothers for that.
It was only Hiami he would miss. And the treadmill pumps. It would have
been good to finish his design work on them. He would have liked to have
finished more of his work. His last thought that held any real coherence
was that he wished he'd gotten to live just a little while more. He did
not know it when his killer snuffed the candle.
HIAMI HAD THE SEAT OF HONOR AT THE FUNERAL, ON THE DAIS WITH THE Khai
Machi. The temple was full, bodies pressed together on their cushions as
the priest intoned the rites of the dead and struck his silver chimes.
The high walls and distant wooden ceiling held the heat poorly; braziers
had been set in among the mourners. Hiami wore pale mourning robes and
looked at her hands. It was not her first funeral. She had been present
for her father's death, before her marriage into the highest family of
Machi. She had only been a girl then. And through the years, when a
member of the utkhaiem had passed on, she had sometimes sat and heard
these same words spoken over some other body, listened to the roar of
some other pyre.
This was the first time it had seemed meaningless. Her grief was real
and profound, and this flock of gawkers and gossips had no relation to
it. The Khai Machi's hand touched her own, and she glanced up into his
eyes. His hair, what was left of it, had gone white years before. He
smiled gently and took a pose that expressed his sympathy. He was
graceful as an actor-his poses inhumanly smooth and precise.
Biitrah would have been a terrible Khai Machi, she thought. He would
never have put in enough practice to hold himself that well.
And the tears she had suffered through the last days remembered her. Her
once-father's hand trembled as if uneased by the presence of genuine
feeling. He leaned hack into his black lacquer seat and motioned for a
servant to bring him a bowl of tea. At the front of the temple, the
priest chanted on.
When the last word was sung, the last chime struck, bearers came and
lifted her husband's body. The slow procession began, moving through the
streets to the pealing of hand bells and the wailing of flutes. In the
central square, the pyre was ready-great logs of pine stinking of oil
and within them a bed of hard, hot-burning coal from the mines. Biitrah
was lifted onto it and a shroud of tight metal links placed over him to
hide the sight when his skin peeled from his noble bones. It was her
place now to step forward and begin the conflagration. She moved slowly.
All eyes were on her, and she knew what they were thinking. Poor woman,
to have been left alone. Shallow sympathies that would have been
extended as readily to the wives of the Khai Machi's other sons, had
their men been under the metal blanket. And in those voices she heard
also the excitement, dread, and anticipation that these bloody paroxysms
carried. When the empty, insincere words of comfort were said, in the
same breath they would move on to speculations. Both of Biitrah's
brothers had vanished. Danat, it was said, had gone to the mountains
where he had a secret force at the ready, or to Lachi in the south to
gather allies, or to ruined Saraykeht to hire mercenaries, or to the
Dai-kvo to seek the aid of the poets and the andat. Or he was in the