"Do we have to keep tip that pretense?"
"I think we do, Kiyan-cha."
"I suppose," she said. And then a moment later, "No. You're right.
You're quite right. I don't know what I was thinking."
Liat considered Otah's wife-thin face, black hair shot with threads of
white, so little paint on her cheeks that Liat could see where the lines
that came with age had been etched by pain and laughter. There was an
intelligence in her face and, Liat thought, a sorrow. Kiyan took a deep
breath and seemed to pull herself back from whatever place her mind had
gone. She smiled.
"Otah has left the city with a problem," she said. "With so many men
gone, the business of things is hound to suffer. "There are crops that
need bringing in and others that need planting. Roofs need the tiles
repaired before autumn comes. There are still parts of the winter
quarters that haven't been cleaned out since we've all resurfaced. And
the men who coordinate those things or else who oversee the men who do
are all off with ()tali playing at war."
"'T'hat is a problem," Liat agreed, unsure why Kiyan had brought her
here to tell her this.
"I'm calling a Council of wives," Kiyan said. "I think we're referring
to it as an afternoon banquet, but I mean it to be more than light
gossip and sweet breads. I'm going to take care of Machi until Otah
comes hack. I'll see to it that we have food and coal to see us through
the winter."
If, Kiyan didn't need to say, we all live that long. Liat looked at her
hands and pressed the dark thoughts away.
""That seems wise," she said.
"I want you to come to the Council, Liat-cha. I want your help."
Liat looked up. Kiyan's whole attention was on her. It made her feel
awkward, but also oddly flattered.
"I don't know what I could do-"
"You're a woman of business. You understand schedules and how to
coordinate different teams in different tasks so that the whole of a
thing comes together the way it should. I understand that too, but
frankly most of these women would be totally lost. They've bent their
minds to face paints and robes and trading gossip and bedroom tricks,"
Kiyan said, and then immediately took a pose that asked forgiveness. "I
don't mean to make them sound dim. They aren't. But they're the product
of a Khai's court, and the things that matter there aren't things that
matter, if you see what I mean?"
"Quite well," Liat said with a chuckle.
Kiyan leaned forward and scooped up Liat's hand as if it were the most
natural thing to do.
"You helped Otah when he asked it of you. Will you help me now?"
The assent came as far as Liat's lips and then died there. She saw the
distress in Kiyan's eyes, but she couldn't say it.
"Why?" Liat whispered. "Why me? Why, when we are what we are to each other."
"When we're what to each other?"
"Women who've loved the same man," Liat said. "Mothers of ... of our
sons. How can you put that aside, even only for a little while?"
Kiyan smiled. It was a hard expression. Determined. She did not let go
of Liat's hand, but neither did she hold it captive.
"I want you with me because we can't have other enemies now," she said.
"And because you and I aren't so different. And because I think perhaps
the distraction is something you need as badly as I do. There's war
enough coming. I want there to be peace between us."
"I have a price," Liat said.
Kiyan nodded that she continue.
"When Nayiit comes back, spend time with him. Talk with him. Find out
who he is. Know him."
"Because?"
"Because if you're going to have me fall in love with your boy, you owe
it to fall a little in love with mine."
Kiyan grinned, tears glistening in her eyes. Her hand squeezed Liat's.
Liat closed her grip, fierce as a drowning man holding to a rope. She
hadn't understood until this moment how deep her fear ran or the
loneliness that even Maati couldn't assuage. She couldn't say whether
she had pulled Kiyan to her or if she herself had been pulled, but she
found herself sobbing into the other woman's shoulder. Otah's wife
wrapped fierce arms around her, embracing her as if she would protect
Liat from the world.
"They would never understand this," Liat managed when her breath was her
own again.
""They're men," Kiyan said. ""They're simpler."
13
For years, Otah had been a traveler by profession. He had worked the
gentleman's trade, traveling as a courier for a merchant house with
business in half the cities of the Khaiem. He had spent days on
horseback or hunkered down in the backs of wagons or walking. He
remembered with fondness the feeling of resting at the end of a day, his
limbs warm and weary, sinking into the woolen blanket that only half
protected him from the ticks. He remembered looking up at the wide sky
with something like contentment. It seemed fourteen years sleeping in
the best bed in Machi had made a difference.
"Is there something I can bring you, Most I Iigh?" the servant boy asked
from the doorway of the tent. Utah pulled open the netting and turned
over in his cot, twisting his head to look at him. The boy was perhaps
eighteen summers old, long hair pulled back and bound by a length of
leather.
"Do I seem like I need something?"
The boy looked down, abashed.
"You were moaning again, Most High."
Otah let himself lie back on the cot. The stretched canvas creaked under
him like a ship in a storm. He closed his eyes and cataloged quietly all
his reasons for moaning. His hack ached like someone had kicked him. His
thighs were chafed half raw. They were hardly ten days out from Machi,
and it was becoming profoundly clear that he didn't know how to march a
military column across the rolling, forested hills that stretched from
Machi almost to the mountains North of the Daikvo. The great Galtic army
that had massed in the South was no doubt well advanced, and the Dal-kvo
was in deadly danger, if he hadn't been killed already. Otah closed his
eyes. Right now, the throbbing sting of his abused thighs bothered him most.
"Go ask the physicians to send some salve," he said.
"I'll call for the physician."
"No! Just ... just get some salve and bring it here. I'm not infirm. And
I wasn't moaning. It was the cot."
The boy took a pose of acceptance and backed out of the tent, shutting
the door behind him. Otah let the netting fall closed again. A tent with
a door. Gods.
The first few days hadn't been this had. The sense of release that came
from taking real action at last had almost outweighed the fears that