"No. It took me half a year of doing everything short of stripping bare
for you to notice me. You don't stay in other cities long enough for a
woman to chip through your reserve. And you don't have to push away the
blankets. You may want to be cold, but I don't."
"Well. Maybe I'm just feeling old."
"A ripe thirty-three? Well, when you decide to stop running across the
world, I'd always be pleased to hire you on. We could stand another pair
of hands around the place. You could throw out the drunks and track down
the cheats that try to slip away without paying."
"You don't pay enough," Otah said. "I talk to Old Mani. I know what your
wages are.
"Perhaps you'd get extra for keeping me warm at nights."
"Shouldn't you offer that to Old Mani first? He's been here longer than
I have."
Kiyan slapped his chest smartly, and then nestled into him. He found
himself curling toward her, the warmth of her body drawing him like a
familiar scent. Her fingers traced the tattoo on his breast-the ink had
faded over time, blurring lines that had once been sharp and clear.
"Jokes aside," she said, and he could hear a weariness in her voice, "I
would take you on, if you wanted to stay. You could live here, with me.
Help me manage the house."
He caressed her hair, feeling the individual strands as they flowed
across his fingertips. There was a scattering of white among the black
that made her look older than she was. Otah knew that they had been
there since she was a girl, as if she'd been born old.
"That sounds like you're suggesting marriage," he said.
"Perhaps. You wouldn't have to, but ... it would be one way to arrange
things. That isn't a threat, you know. I don't need a husband. Only if
it would make you feel better, we could ..."
He kissed her gently. It had been weeks, and he was surprised to find
how much he'd missed the touch of her lips. Weeks of travel weariness
slipped away, the deep unease loosened its hold on his chest, and he
took comfort in her. He fell asleep with her arm over his body, her
breath already soft and deep with sleep.
In the morning, he woke before she did, slipped out of the bed, and
dressed quietly. The sun was not up, but the eastern sky had lightened
and the morning birds were singing madly as he took himself across an
ancient stone bridge into Udun.
A river city, Udun was laced with as many canals as roadways. Bridges
humped up high enough for barges to pass beneath them, and the green
water of the Qiit lapped at old stone steps that descended into the
river mud. Otah stopped at a stall on the broad central plaza and traded
two lengths of copper for a thick wedge of honey bread and a bowl of
black, smoky tea. Around him, the city slowly came awakethe streets and
canals filling with traders and merchants, beggars singing at the
corners or in small rafts tied at the water's edge, laborers hauling
wagons along the wide flagstoned streets, and birds bright as shafts of
sunlight-blue and red and yellow, green as grass, and pink as dawn. Udun
was a city of birds, and their chatter and shriek and song filled the
air as he ate.
The compound of House Siyanti was in the better part of the city, just
downstream from the palaces, where the water was not yet fouled by the
wastes of thirty thousand men and women and children. The red brick
buildings rose up three stories high, and a private canal was filled
with barges in the red and silver of the house. The stylized emblem of
the sun and stars had been worked into the brick archway that led to the
central courtyard, and Otah passed beneath it with a feeling like coming
home.
Amiit Foss, the overseer for the house couriers, was in his offices,
ordering around three apprentices with sharp words and insults, but no
blows. Otah stepped in and took a pose of greeting.
"Ah! The missing Itani. Did you know the word for half-wit in the tongue
of the Empire was itani-nah?"
"All respect, Amiit-cha, but no it wasn't."
The overseer grinned. One of the apprentices-a girl of perhaps thirteen
summers-whispered something angrily, and the boy next to her giggled.
"Fine," the overseer said. "You two. I need the ciphers rechecked on
last week's letters."
"But I wasn't the one . . . ," the girl protested. The overseer took a
pose that commanded her silence, and the pair, glowering at each other,
stalked away.
"I get them when they're just growing old enough to flirt," Amiit said,
sighing. "Come back to the meeting rooms. The journey took longer than
I'd expected."
"There were some delays," Otah said as he followed the older man hack.
"Chaburi-'Ian isn't as tightly run as it was last time I was out there."
"No?"
"There are refugees from the Westlands."
"There are always refugees from the Westlands."
"Not this many," Otah said. "There are rumors that the Khai ChaburiTan
is going to restrict the number of Westlanders allowed on the island."
Amiit paused, his hands on the carved wood door of the meeting rooms.
Otah could almost see the implications of this thought working
themselves out behind the overseer's eyes. A moment later, Amiit looked
up, raised his eyebrows in appreciation, and pushed the doors open.
Half the day was spent in the raw silk chairs of the meeting rooms while
Amiit took Otah's report and accepted the letters-sewn shut and written
in cipher-that Otah had carried with him.
It had taken Otah some time to understand all that being a courier
implied. When he had first arrived in Udun six years before, hungry,
lost and half-haunted by the memories he carried with him, he had still
believed that he would simply be carrying letters and small packages
from one place to another, perhaps waiting for a response, and then
taking those to where they were expected. It would have been as right to
say that a farmer throws some seeds in the earth and returns a few
months later to sec what's grown. He had been lucky. His ability to win
friends easily had served him, and he had been instructed in what the
couriers called the gentleman's trade: how to gather information that
might be of use to the house, how to read the activity of a street
corner or market, and how to know from that the mood of a city. How to
break ciphers and re-sew letters. How to appear to drink more wine than
you actually did, and question travelers on the road without seeming to.
He understood now that the gentleman's trade was one that asked a
lifetime to truly master, and though he was still a journeyman, he had