even before. You were preparing. They say that you've traveled the world
when you were a boy, that you understand it better than any other Khai.
Some of them are calling you the new Emperor."
`T 'hey should stop that," Otah said.
"Most High, they're desperate and afraid, and they want a hero out of
the old epics. They need one."
"And you? What do you need?"
"I need Saya to stop walking for a day."
Otah closed his eyes. Perhaps the right thing was to send the
experienced men on ahead. They could clear spaces for the camps. Perhaps
missing a single day would not be too much. And there was little point
in running if it was only to be sure they came to the battle exhausted
and ready for slaughter. The I)ai-kvo would have gotten his warning by
now. The poets might even now be in flight toward Otah and his ragtag
army. IIe took in a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose.
Letting his body collapse with it.
"I'll consider what you've said, Nayiit-eha," Otah said. "It wasn't
where my mind had led me, but I can see there's some wisdom in it."
Nayiit took a pose of gratitude as formal as any at court. He looked
nearly as spent as Otah felt. Otah raised his hands in a querying pose.
"The utkhaicm didn't feel comfortable bringing these concerns to me," he
said. "Why did you?"
"I think, Most High, there's a certain ... reluctance in the higher
ranks to second-guess you again. And the footmen wouldn't think of
approaching you. I grew up with stories about you and Maati-cha, so I
suppose I can bring myself to think of you as one of my mother's
friends. That, and I'm desperately tired. If you had me sent back in
disgrace, I could at least get a day's rest."
Otah smiled, and saw his own expression reflected back at him. He had
never known this boy, had never lifted him over his head the way he had
Danat. He had had no part in teaching Nayiit wisdom or folly. Even now,
seeing himself in his eldest son's movements and expressions, he could
hardly think of him with the hone-deep protectiveness that shook him
when he thought of Eiah and Danat. And yet he was pleased that he had
accepted Nayiit's offer to join him in this halfdoomed campaign. Otah
leaned forward, his hand out. It was the ges ture of friendship that one
seafront laborer might offer another. Nayiit only looked shocked for a
moment, then clasped Otah's hand.
"Whenever they're too nervous to tell me what I'm doing wrong, you come
to me, Nayiit-cha. I haven't got many people I can trust to do that, and
I've left most of them hack in Mach 1.11
"If you'll promise not to have me whipped for impertinence," the boy said.
"I won't have you whipped, and I won't have you sent hack."
""I'hank you," Nayiit said, and again Otah was moved to see that the
gratitude was genuine. After Nayiit had gone, Otah was left with the
aches in his body and the unease that came with having a man with a wife
and child thank you for leading him toward the real chance of death. The
life of the Khai Machi, he thought, afforded very few opportunities to
he humbled, but this was one. When the attendant returned, Otah didn't
recognize the sound of his scratching until the man's voice came.
"Most High?"
"Yes, come in. And bring that ointment here. No, I can put it on myself.
But bring me the captains of the houses. I've decided to take a day to
rest and send the scouts ahead."
"Yes, Most High."
"And when you've done with that, there's a man named Saya. He's on foot.
A blacksmith from Machi, I think."
"Yes, Most High?"
"Ask him to join me for a howl of wine. I'd like to meet him."
MAA7'I WOKE TO FIND LIAT ALREADY GONE. HIS HAND TRACED THE INI)EN-
tation in the mattress at his side where she had slept. The world
outside his door was already bright and warm. The birds whose songs had
filled the air of spring were busy now teaching their hatchlings to fly.
The pale green of new leaves had deepened, the trees as rich with summer
as they would ever be. High summer had come. Maati rose from his bed
with a grunt and went about his morning ablutions.
The days since the ragged, improvised army of Machi began its march to
the east had been busy. The loss of Stone-Made-Soft would have sent the
court and the merchant houses scurrying like mice before a flood even if
nothing more had happened. Word of the other lost andat and of the
massed army of Galt made what in other days would have been a cataclysm
seem a side issue. For half a week, it seemed, the city had been
paralyzed. Not from fear, but from the simple and profound lack of any
ritual or ceremony that answered the situation. Then, first from the
merchant houses below and Kiyan-cha's women's ban- (lucts above and then
seemingly everywhere at once, the utkhaiem had flushed with action.
Often disorganized, often at crossed purpose, but determined and intent.
Nlaati's own efforts were no less than any others.
Still, he left it behind him now-the books stacked in distinct piles,
scrolls unfurled to particular passages as if waiting for the copyist's
attention-and walked instead through the wide, bright paths of the
palaces. "There were fewer singing slaves, more stretches where the
gravel of the path had scattered and not yet been raked back into place,
and the men and women of the utkhaiem who he passed seemed to carry
themselves with less than their full splendor. It was as if a terrible
wind had blown through a garden and disarrayed those blossoms it did not
destroy.
The path led into the shade of the false forest that separated the
poet's house from the palaces. "There were old trees among these, thick
trunks speaking of generations of human struggle and triumph and failure
since their first tentative seedling leaves had pushed away this soil.
Moss clothed the bark and scented the air with green. Birds fluttered
over Nlaati's head, and a squirrel scolded him as he passed. In winter,
with these oaks bare, you could see from the porch of the poet's house
out almost to the palaces. In summer, the house might have been in a
different city. The door of the poet's house was standing open, and
Maati didn't bother to scratch or knock.
Cehmai's quarters suffered the same marks as his own-books, scrolls,
codices, diagrams all laid out without respect to author or age or type
of binding. Cehmai, sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, held a
book open in his hand. With the brown robes of a poet loose around his
frame, he looked, Nlaati thought, like a young student puzzling over an
obscure translation. Cehmai looked up as Maati's shadow crossed him, and
smiled wearily.
"Have you eaten?" hlaati asked.
"Some bread. Some cheese," Cehmai said, gesturing to the back of the
house with his head. ""There's some left, if you'd like it."