"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