"I have seen many of the cities of the Khaiem, most high. I have been
horn into the highest of families, and I have been offered the greatest
of honors. And if I am here to meet my death at the hands of those who
should by all rights love me, at least hear me out. Our cities are not
well, father. Our traditions are not well. You stand there on that dais
now because you killed your own. You are celebrating the return of
Danat, who killed his brother, and at the same time preparing to condemn
me on the suspicion that I did the same. A tradition that calls men to
kill their brothers and discard their sons cannot be-"
"Enough!" the Khai roared, and his voice carried. The whisperers were
silent and unneeded. "I have not carried this city on my back for all
these years to be lectured now by a rebel and a traitor and a poisoner.
You are not my son! You lost that right! You squandered it! Tell me that
this ..." The Khai raised his hands in a gesture that seemed to encom
pass every man and woman of the court, the palaces, the city, the
valley, the mountains, the world. ". . . this is evil? Because our
traditions are what hold all this from chaos. We are the Khaiem! We rule
with the power of the andat, and we do not accept instruction from
couriers and laborers who ... who killed ..."
The Khai closed his eyes and seemed to sway for a moment. The woman to
whom C'chmai had been speaking leapt up, her hand on the old man's
elbow. Otah could see them murmuring to each other, but he had no idea
what they were saying. The woman walked with him back to the chair and
helped him to sit. His face seemed sunken in pain. The woman was
crying-streaks of kohl black on her cheeks-but her bearing was more
regal and sure than their father's had been. She stepped forward and spoke.
"The Khai is weary," she said, as if daring anyone present to say
anything else. "He has given his command. The audience is finished!"
The voices rose almost as high and ran almost as loud as they had at
anything that had gone before. A woman-even if she was his
daughter-taking the initiative to speak for the Khai? The court would be
scandalized. Otah already imagined them placing bets as to whether the
man would live the night, and if he died now, whether it would he this
woman's fault for shaming him so deeply when he was already weak. And
Otah could see that she knew this. The contempt in her expression was
eloquent as any oratory. He caught her eye and took a pose of approval.
She looked at him as if he were a stranger who had spoken her name, then
turned away to help their father walk back to his rooms.
The march up to his cage led through a spiral stone stair so small that
his shoulders touched each wall, and his head stayed bent. The chain
stayed on his neck, his hands now bound behind him. He watched the
armsman before him half walking, half climbing the steep blocks of
stone. When Otah slowed, the man behind him struck with the butt of a
spear and laughed. Otah, his hands bound, sprawled against the steps,
ripping the flesh of his knees and chin. After that, he made a point to
slow as little as possible.
His thighs burned with each step and the constant turning to the right
left him nauseated. He thought of stopping, of refusing to move. They
were taking him up to wait for death anyway. There was nothing to he
gained by collaborating with them. But he went on, cursing tinder his
breath.
When the stairs ended, he found himself in a wide hall. The sky doors in
the north wall were open, and a platform hung level with them and
shifting slightly in the breeze, the great chains taut. Another four
armsmen stood waiting.
"Relief?" the man who had pushed him asked.
The tallest of the new armsmen took a pose of affirmation and spoke.
"We'll take the second half. You four head up and we'll all go down
together." The new armsmen led Otah to a fresh stairway, and the ordeal
began again. He had begun almost to dream in his pain by the time they
stopped. Thick, powerful hands pushed him into a room, and the door
closed behind him with a sound like a capstone being shoved over an open
tomb. The armsman said something through a slit in the door, but Otah
couldn't make sense of it and didn't have the will to try. He lay on the
floor until he realized that his arms had been freed and the iron collar
taken from around his neck. The skin where it had rested was chafed raw.
The voices of men seeped through the door, and then the sound of a winch
creaking as it lowered the platform and its cargo of men. Then there
were only two voices speaking in light, conversational tones. He
couldn't make out a word they said.
He forced himself to sit up and take stock. The room was larger than
he'd expected, and bare. It could have been used as a storage room or
set with table and chairs for a small meeting. There was a bowl of water
in one corner, but no food, no candles, nothing but the stone to sleep
on. The light came from a barred window. His hip and knees ached as Otah
pulled himself up and stumbled over to it. He was facing south, and the
view was like he'd become a bird. He leaned out-the bars were not so
narrowly spaced that he couldn't climb out and fall to his death if he
chose. Below him, the carts in the streets were like ants shuffling
along in their lines. A crow launched itself from a crack or beam and
circled below him, the sun shining on its black back. Trembling, he
pulled himself back in. There were no shutters to close off the sky.
He tried the door's latch, but it had been barred from without, and the
hinges were leather and worked iron. Not the sort of thing a man could
take apart with teeth. Otah knelt by the bowl of water and drank from
his cupped hand. He washed out the worst of his wounds, and left a third
in the bowl. There was no knowing how long it might be before they saw
fit to give him more. He wondered if there were birds that came up this
high to rest, and whether he would be able to trap one. Not that he
would have the chance to cook it-there was nothing to burn here, and no
grate to burn it in. Otah ran his hands over his face, and despite
himself, laughed. It seemed unlikely they would allow him anything sharp
enough to shave with. He would die with this sad little beard.
Otah stretched out in a corner, his arm thrown over his eyes, and tried
to sleep, wondering as he did whether the sense of movement came from
his own abused and exhausted body, or if it were true that so far up
even stone swayed.
MAATI LOOKED AT THE FLOOR. HIS FACE WAS HARD WITH FRUSTRATION AND anger.
"If you want him dead, most high," he said, his voice measured and
careful, "you might at least have the courtesy to kill him."