an old lover so casually would have been the subject of gossipeven a
member of the utkhaiem would have had answers to make-hut the Khai was
above that. She had gone as far as wondering, not for the first time,
what Kiyan-cha thought and felt on the matter, when Nayiit had scratched
at her door and let himself in.
She knew when she saw his face that something had happened. "There was a
light in his eyes brighter than candles, but his smile was the
too-charming one he always employed when he'd done something he feared
she'd fault him for. Her first thought was that he'd offered to marry
some local girl. She took a pose that asked the question even before he
could speak.
"Sit with me," he said and took her by the hand.
They sat on a low stone bench near the window. The shutters were opened,
and the evening breeze had smelled of forge smoke. He kept her hand in
his as he spoke.
"I've been to see the Khai," Nayiit said. "You know he believes what
Maati-cha ... what Father said. About the Gaits."
"Yes," Liat said. She still hadn't understood what she was seeing. His
next words came like a blow.
"He's taking men, all the men he can find. They're going overland to the
I)ai-kvo. I've asked to go with them, and he's accepted me. He's finding
me a sword and something like armor. He says we'll leave before the
week's out," he said, then paused. "I'm sorry."
She knew that her grip on his hand had gone hard because he winced, but
not because she felt it. This hadn't been their plan. This had never
been their plan.
"Why?" she managed, but she already knew.
He was young and he was trapped in a life he more than half regretted.
He was finding what it meant to him to be a man. Riding out to war was
an adventure, and a statement-oh, by all the gods-it was a statement
that he had faith in Maati's guess. It was a way to show that he
believed in his father. Nayiit only kissed her hand.
"I know the Dai-kvo's village," he said. "I can ride. I'm at least good
enough with a how to catch rabbits along the way. And someone has to go,
Mother. There's no reason that I shouldn't."
You have a wife, she didn't say. You have a child. You have a city to
defend, and it's Saraykeht. You'll be killed, and I cannot lose you. The
Gaits have terrorized every nation in the world that didn't have the
andat for protection, and Otah has a few armsmen barely competent to
chase down thieves and brawl in the alleys outside comfort houses.
"Are you sure?" she said.
She sat now, looking out over the wide, empty air as the mark grew
slowly smaller. As her son left her. Otah had managed more men than
she'd imagined he would. At the last moment, the utkhaiem had rallied to
him. Three thousand men, the first army fielded in the cities of the
Khaiem in generations. Untried, untested. Armed with whatever had come
to hand, armored with leather smith's aprons. And her little boy was
among them.
She wiped her eyes with the cloth of her sleeve.
"Hurry," she said, pressing the word out to the distant men. Get the
Dal-kvo, retrieve the poets and their books, and come back to me. Before
they find you, come back to me.
The sun had traveled the width of two hands together before she stepped
out onto the platform and signaled the men far below her to bring her
down. The chains clattered and the platform lurched, but Liat only held
the rail and waited for it to steady in its descent. She knew she would
not fall. That would have been too easy.
She had done a poor job of telling Maati. Perhaps she'd assumed Nayiit
would already have told him. Perhaps she'd been trying to punish Maati
for beginning it all. It had been the next night, and she had accepted
Maati's invitation to dinner in the high pavilion. Goose in honey
lacquer, almonds with cinnamon and raisin sauce, rice wine. Not far
away, a dance had begun-silk streamers and the glow of torches, the
trilling of pipes and the laughter of girls drunk with flirtation. She
remembered it all from the days after Saraykeht had fallen. There was
only so long that the shock of losing the andat could restrain the
festivals of youth.
The young are blind and stupid, she'd said, and their breasts don't sag.
It's the nearest thing they've got to a blessing.
Maati had chuckled and tried to take her hand, but she couldn't stand
the touch. She'd seen the surprise in his expression, and the hurt. That
was when she'd told him. She'd said it lightly, acidly, fueled by her
anger and her despair. She had been too wrapped up in herself to pay
attention to Nlaati's shock and horror. It was only later, when he'd
excused himself and she was walking alone in the dim paths at the edge
of the dance, that she understood she'd as much as accused him of
sending Nayiit to his death.
She had gone by Maati's apartments that night and again the next day,
but he had gone and no one seemed to know where. By the time she found
him, he had spoken with Otah and Nayiit. He accepted her apology, he
cradled her while they both confessed their fears, but the damage had
been done. He was as haunted as she was, and there was nothing to be
done about it.
Liat realized she'd almost reached the ground, startled to have come so
far so quickly. Her mind, she supposed, had been elsewhere.
Mach) in the height of summer might almost have been a Southern city.
The sun made its slow, stately way across the sky. The nights had grown
so short, she could fall asleep with a glow still bright over the
mountains to the west and wake in daylight, unrested. The streets were
full of vendors at their carts selling fresh honey bread almost too hot
to eat or sausages with blackened skins or bits of lamb over rice with a
red sauce spicy enough to burn her tongue. Merchants passed over the
black-cobbled streets, wagon wheels clattering. Beggars sang before
their lacquered boxes. Firekeepers tended their kilns and saw to the
small business of the tradesmen-accepting taxes, witnessing contracts,
and a hundred other small duties. Liat pulled her hands into her sleeves
and walked without knowing her destination.
It might only have been her imagination that there were fewer men in the
streets. Surely there were still laborers and warehouse guards and
smiths at their forges. The force marching to the west could account for
no more than one man in fifteen. The sense that Machi had become a city
of women and old men and boys could only be her mind playing tricks. And
still, there was something hollow about the city. A sense of loss and of
uncertainty. The city itself seemed to know that the world had changed,
and held its breath in dread anticipation, waiting to see whether this