expression equal parts disbelief and outrage on her pale face.
"He's an idiot," Kiyan said. "He's a self-aggrandizing, half-blind idiot
who can't think two thoughts in a straight line."
Liat took a pose that asked the question.
"My husband," Kiyan said, color coming at last to her cheeks. "He's sent
us another whole city."
Cctani, nearest neighbor of Machi, had emptied itself. The couriers had
arrived just before the fastest carts. The dust that Liat had mistaken
for an army was only the first wave of tens of thousands of men and
women-their stores of grains, their chickens and ducks and goats,
whatever small precious things they could not bring themselves to leave
behind. Otah's letter explained that they were in need of shelter, that
Machi should do its best for them. The tone of the words was apologetic,
but only for someone who knew the man well. Only to women like
themselves. Kiyan held Liat's arm as if for support as they walked
together to the bridge outside the city where they awaited her.
The man who stood at the middle point in the bridge wore an elegant
robe-black silk shot with yellow-that was only slightly disarrayed by
his travels. Servants and armsmen of Machi parted for Kiyan, allowing
her passage onto the bridge's western end. Liat tried to disengage, but
Kiyan's grip didn't lessen, and so they walked out together. On seeing
them, the man took a pose of greeting appropriate for a man of lower
rank to the wife of a more prestigious man. This was not the Khai
Cetani, then, but some member of the Cetani utkhaiem.
"I have been sent to speak to the first wife of the Khai Machi," he said.
"I am the Khai's only wife," Kiyan said.
tic took this odd information in stride, turning his attention wholly to
Kiyan. Liat felt awkward and out of place, and oddly quite protective of
the woman at her side.
"Kiyan-cha," the man said. "I am Kamath Vauamnat, voice of House
Vauamnat. The Khai Cetani has sent us here at your husband's invitation.
The army of Galt is still some days behind us, but it is coming. Our
city . . ."
Something changed in the courtier's face. It was unlike anything Liat
had seen before, except perhaps an actor who in the midst of declaiming
some epic has forgotten the words. The mask and distance of etiquette
failed, and the words he spoke became genuine.
"Our city's gone. We have what we're carrying. We need your help."
Only Liat was near enough to Kiyan to hear the tiny sigh that escaped
before she spoke.
"How could I refuse you?" she said. "I am utterly unprepared, but if you
will bring your people across the bridge and make them ready, I will
find them places here."
The man took a pose of gratitude, and Kiyan turned hack, Liat still at
her side, and walked back to the hank where her people waited.
"We'll need something like shelter for these people," Kiyan said, under
her breath. "Someplace we can keep them out of the rain until we can
find ... someplace."
""They won't all fit," Ifiat said. "We can put them in the tunnels, but
then there's no place for all of us to go when winter comes. "There's
too many of them, and they can't have carried enough food to see them
through until spring. And we're stretched thin as it is."
"We'll stretch thinner," Kiyan said.
The rest of the day was a single long emergency, events and needs and
decisions coming in waves and overlapping each other like the scales of
a snake. Liat found herself at the large and growing camp that was
forming as the refugees of Cetani reached the bridge. "Thankfully, the
bridge was only the width of eight men walking abreast, and it kept the
flow of humanity and cattle and carts to a speed that was almost
manageable. Liat only had to school herself not to look across the water
to the larger, shapeless mass of people still waiting to cross. Liat
motioned them to different places, the ones too frail or ill to survive
another night in the open, the ones robust enough that they might he put
to work. 'T'here were old men, children, babes hanging in their mothers'
exhausted arms.
Liat felt as if she were being asked to engineer a new city of tents and
cook fires. They came in the hundreds. In the thousands. Night had
fallen before the last man crossed, and Liat could see fires on the far
side, camps made by those who'd given tip hope of crossing today. Liat
sat on the smooth stone rail at the bridge's end and let the aches in
her feet and back and legs complain to her. It had been an excruciating
day, and the work was far from ended. But at least the refugees were in
tents sent out from Machi, safe from the cold. The food carts of Machi
had also come out from the city, making their way through the crowds
with garlic sausages and honeyed almonds and bowls of noodles and beef.
There were even songs. Over the constant frigid rushing of the water,
there was the sound of flutes and drums and voices. The temptation to
close her eyes was unbearable, and yet. And yet.
I want to be a good man, he'd said. And I'm not.
With a sigh she began the long trek back to the city, to the palaces, to
Kiyan and Maati and the bathhouses and her bed. The city, as she passed
through its streets, was alive. The refugees of Cetani had not all
waited in the camp. Or perhaps Kiyan had meant to start bringing them
into the city. Whatever the intention had been, they had come, and Machi
had poured itself out to make them welcome, to offer them food and wine
and comfort, to pull news and gossip from them. The sun was gone, and
the darkness was cold, and yet the city was full as a street fair. And
as chaotic.
She found Kiyan in the palaces looking as exhausted as she herself felt.
Otah's wife waved her near to the long, broad table. Wives of the
utkhaiem were consulting one another, writing figures on paper, issuing
orders to wide-eyed servants. It was like the middle of a trading
company at the height of the cotton harvest, and Liat found it strangely
comforting.
"It can be done," Kiyan said. "It won't be pleasant, but it can be done.
I've had word from the Poinyat that we can use their mines, and I'm
expecting the Daikani any time now."
"The mines?" Liat said. The exhaustion made her slow to understand.
"We'll have to put people in them. They're deep enough to stay warm.
It's like living in the tunnels under the city, only rougher. The ones
in the plain will even have their own water. There's food and sewage to
worry about, but I've sent Jaini Radaani to speak with the engineers,
and if she can't convince them to find a solution, I'll be quite surprised."