"'There," Otah said and picked up his wine bowl. "There, I've said it."
"I'm sorry," Liat said, and Otah took a pose accepting her sympathy
without knowing quite why she was offering it. She looked down at her
hands. The silence between them was profound but not uncomfortable; he
felt no need to speak, to fill the void with words. Liat drank her wine,
Otah his. The wind muttered to itself and to the stones of the city.
"It's not a job I'd want," Liat said. "Khai NIachi."
"It's all power and no freedom," Otah said. "If Nayiit were to have it,
he'd likely curse my name. There are a thousand different things to
attend to, and every one of them as serious as bone to someone. You
can't do it all."
"I know how it feels," Liat said. "I only have a trading house to look
after, and there's days I wish that it would all go away. Granted, I
have men who work the books and the negotiations and appeals before the
low judges and the utkhaiem ..
"I have all the low judges and the utkhaiem appealing to me," Otah said.
"It's never enough."
""I'here's always the descent into decadence and self-absorption," Liat
said, smiling. It was only half a joke. "They say the Khai Chaburi- 'Ian
only gets sober long enough to bed his latest wife."
"Tcnipting," Otah said, "but somewhere between taking the chair to
protect Kiyan and tonight, it became my city. I came from here, and even
if I'm not much good at what I do, I'm what they have."
""That makes sense," Liat said.
"Does it? It doesn't to me."
Liat put down her bowl and rose. He thought her gaze spoke of
determination and melancholy, but perhaps the latter was only his own.
She stepped close and kissed him on the check, a firm peck like an aunt
greeting a favorite nephew.
"Amat Kyaan would have understood," she said. "I won't tell Nayiit about
this. If anyone asks, I'll deny it unless I hear differently from you."
""I'hank you, Liat-cha."
She stepped back. Otah felt a terrible weariness bearing him down, but
forced a charming smile. She shook her head.
""Thank you, Most High."
"I don't think I've done anything worth thanking me."
"You let my son live," Liat said. "That was one of the decisions you had
to make, wasn't it?"
She took his silence as an answer, smiled again, and left him alone.
Otah poured the last of the wine from carafe to howl, and then watched
the light die in the west as he finished it; watched the stars come out,
and the full moon rise. With every day, the light lasted longer. It
would not always. High summer would come, and even when the days were at
their warmest, when the trees and vines grew heavy with fruit, the
nights would already have started their slow expansion. He wondered
whether Danat would get to play outside in the autumn, whether the boy
would be able to spend a long afternoon lying in the sunlight before the
snows came and drove them all down to the tunnels. He was raising a
child to live in darkness and planning for his death.
There had been a time Otah had been young and sure enough of himself to
kill. He had taken the life of a good man because they both had known
the price that would have to be paid if he lived. He had been able to do
that.
But he had seen forty-eight summers now. There were likely fewer seasons
before him than there were behind. He'd fathered three children and
raised two. He could no longer hold himself apart from the world. It was
his to see that the city was a place that Danat and Eiah and children
like them could live safe and cared for until they too grew old and
uncertain.
He looked at the swirl of red at the bottom of his bowl. Too much wine,
and too much memory. It was making him maudlin. He stopped at his
private chambers and allowed the servants to switch his robes to
something less formal. Kiyan lay on a couch, her eyes closed, her breath
deep and regular. Otah didn't wake her, only slid one of the books from
his bedside table into the sleeve of his robe and kissed her temple as
he left.
The physician's assistant was seated outside Danat's door. The man took
a pose of greeting. Otah responded in kind and then nodded to the closed
door.
"Is he asleep?" he whispered.
"He's been waiting for you."
Otah slipped into the room. Candles flickered above two great iron
statues that flanked the bed-hunting cats with the wings of hawks. Soot
darkened their wings from a day spent in the fire grates, and they
radiated the warmth that kept the cool night breeze at bay. Danat sat up
in his bed, pulling aside the netting.
"Papa-kya!" he said. He didn't cough, didn't sound frail. It was a good
day, then. Otah felt a tightness he had not known he carried loosen its
grip on his heart. He pulled his robes up around his knees and sat on
his son's bed. "Did you bring it?" Danat asked.
Otah drew the book from his sleeve, and the boy's face lit so bright, he
might have almost read by him.
"Now, you lie back," Otah said. "I've come to help you sleep, not keep
you up all night."
I)anat plopped down onto his pillow, looking like the farthest thing
from sleep. Otah opened the book, turning through the ancient pages
until he found his place.
"In the sixteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Adani Bch, there came
to court a boy whose blood was half Bakta, his skin the color of soot,
and his mind as clever as any man who has ever lived...."
"THIS IS SPRING?" NAYIIT SAID AS THEY WALKED. THE WIND HAD BLOWN away
even the constant scent of forge smoke, and brought in a mild chill.
Mild, at least, to Maati. Nayiit wore woolen robes, thick enough that
they had hardly rippled. Maati's own were made for summer, and pressed
against him, leaving, he was sure, no doubt to the shape of his legs and
belly. He wished he'd thought to wear something heavier too.
"It's always like this," Maati said. "There's one last death throe, and
then the heat will come on. Still nothing like the summer cities, even
at its worst. I remember in Saraykeht, I had a trail of sweat down my
hack for weeks at a time."
"We call that pleasantly warm," Nayiit said, and Maati chuckled.
In truth, the chill, moonless night was hardly anything to him now. For
over a decade, he'd lived through the bone-cracking cold of Machi
winters. He'd seen snowdrifts so high that even the second-story doors
couldn't be opened. He'd been out on days so cold the men coated their
faces with thick-rendered fat to keep their skin from freezing. "There
was no way to describe those brief, bitter days to someone who had never
seen them. So instead, he told Nayiit of the life below ground, the
tunnels of Machi, the bathhouses hidden deep below the surface, the