like an extra limb moving without his willing it.
"Stop," Cehmai snapped.
The overseer and engineer hesitated for a moment before Cehmai
understood their confusion.
"Not you," he said and gestured to Stone-Made-Soft. "Him. He was judging
what it would take to start a landslide."
"Only as an exercise," the andat said, its low voice sounding both hurt
and insincere. "I wasn't going to do it."
The engineer looked up the slope with an expression that suggested
Cehmai might not hear any more false thanks. Cehmai felt a spark of
vindictive pleasure at the man's unease and saw Stone-Made-Soft's lips
thin so slightly that no other man alive would have recognized the smile.
Idaan had spent the first night of the festival with him, weeping and
laughing, taking comfort and coupling until they had both fallen asleep
in the middle of their pillow talk. The night candle had hardly burned
down a full quarter mark when the servant had come, tapping on his door
to wake him. He'd risen for the trek to the mines, and Idaan- alone in
his bed-had turned, wrapping his bedclothes about her naked body, and
watched him as if afraid he would tell her to leave. By the time he had
found fresh robes, her eyelids had closed again and her breath was deep
and slow. He'd paused for a moment, considering her sleeping face. With
the paint worn off and the calm of sleep, she looked younger. Her lips,
barely parted, looked too soft to bruise his own, and her skin glowed
like honey in sunlight.
But instead of slipping back into bed and sending out a servant for new
apples, old cheese, and sugared almonds, he'd strapped on his boots and
gone out to meet his obligations. His horse plodded along, flies buzzed
about his face, and the path turned away from the ore chute and looked
back toward the city.
There would be celebrations from now until Idaan's wedding to Adrah
Vaunyogi. Between those two joys-the finished succession and the
marriage of the high families-there would also be the preparations for
the Khai Machi's final ceremony. And, despite everything Maati-kvo had
done, likely the execution of Otah Machi in there as well. With as many
rituals and ceremonies as the city faced, they'd be lucky to get any
real work done before winter.
The yipping of the mine dogs brought him back to himself, and he
realized he'd been half-dozing for the last few switchbacks. He rubbed
his eyes with the heel of his palm. He would have to pull himself
together when they began working in earnest. It would help, he told
himself, to have some particular problem to set his mind to instead of
the tedium of travel. Thankfully, Stone-Made-Soft wasn't resisting him
today. The effort it would have taken to force the unwilling andat to do
as it was told could have pushed the day from merely unpleasant to awful.
They reached the mouth of the mine and were greeted by several workers
and minor functionaries. Cehmai dismounted and walked Unsteadily to the
wide table that had been set up for their consultations. His legs and
back and head ached. When the drawings and notes were laid out before
him, it took effort to turn his attention to them. His mind wandered off
to Idaan or his own discomfort or the mental windstorm that was the andat.
"We would like to join these two passages," the overseer was saying, his
fingers tracing lines on the maps. Cehmai had seen hundreds of sets of
plans like this, and his mind picked up the markings and translated them
into holes dug through the living rock of the mountain only slightly
less easily than usual. "The vein seems richest here and then here. Our
concern is-"
"My concern," the engineer broke in, "is not bringing half the mountain
down on us while we do it."
The structure of tunnels that honeycombed the mountain wasn't the most
complicated Cehmai had ever seen, but neither was it simple. The mines
around Machi were capable of a complexity difficult in the rest of the
world, mostly because he himself was not in the rest of the world, and
mines in the Westlands and Galt weren't interested in paying the Khai
Mach] for his services. The engineer made his casewhere the stone would
support the tunnels and where it would not. The overseer made his
counter-case-pointing out where the ores seemed richest. The decision
was left to him.
The servants gave them bowls of honeyed beef and sausages that tasted of
smoke and black pepper; a tart, sweet paste made from last year's
berries; and salted Hatbrcad. Cehmai ate and drank and looked at the
maps and drawings. Fie kept remembering the curve of Idaan's mouth, the
feeling of her hips against his own. He remembered her tears, her
reticence. He would have sacrificed a good deal to better understand her
sorrow.
It was more, he thought, than the struggle to face her father's mortal
ity. Perhaps he should talk to Maati about it. He was older and had
greater experience with women. Cehmai shook his head and forced himself
to concentrate. It was half a hand before he saw a path through the
stone that would yield a fair return and not collapse the works.
Stone-Made-Soft neither approved nor dissented. It never did.
The overseer took a pose of gratitude and approval, then folded tip the
maps. The engineer sucked his teeth, craning his neck as the diagrams
and notes vanished into the overseer's satchel, as if hoping to see one
last objection, but then he too took an approving pose. They lit the
lanterns and turned to the wide, black wound in the mountain's side.
The tunnels were cool, and darker than night. The smell of rock dust
made the air thick. As he'd guessed, there were few men working, and the
sounds of their songs and the barking of their dogs only made the
darkness seem more isolating. They talked very little as they wound
their way through the maze. Usually Cehmai made a practice of keeping a
mental map, tracking their progress through the dark passages. After the
second unexpected intersection, he gave up and was content to let the
overseer lead them.
Unlike the mines on the plain, even the deepest tunnels here were dry.
When they reached the point Cehmai had chosen, they took out the maps
one last time, consulting them in the narrow section of the passageway
that the lanterns lit. Above them, the mountain felt bigger than the sky.
"Don't make it too soft," the engineer said.
"It doesn't bear any load," the overseer said. "Gods! Who's been telling
you ghost stories? You're nervous as a puppy first time down the hole."
Cehmai ignored them, looked up, considering the stone above him as if he
could see through it. He wanted a path wide as two men walking with
their arms outstretched. And it would need to go forward from here and