"Who told you that?" Eiah asked.
"Is it true?" Otah repeated, and his daughter looked down. When she frowned, the same small vertical line appeared between her brows that would sometimes show Kiyan's distress. Otah felt the passing urge to soothe her fears, but this wasn't the moment for comfort. Ile scowled until she looked up, then down again, and nodded. Kiyan sighed.
"Who told you?" Eiah asked again. "It was Shoyen, wasn't it? She's jealous because Talit and I were-"
"You told us, just now," Otah said. "That's all that matters."
Eiah's lips closed hard. Kiyan took a turn, telling Eiah that she'd done wrong, and they all knew it. Even she had to know that simply taking things wasn't right. They had paid her debt, but now she would have to make it good herself. 'T'hey had decided that she would work with the physicians for a week, and if she didn't go, the physicians had instructions to send for…
"I'm not going to," Eiah said. "It's not fair. "Ialit Radaani sneaks things out of her father's warehouse all the time and no one ever makes her do anything for it."
"I can see that changes," Otah said.
"Don't!" Eiah barked. The birds startled away; a flutter of wings that sounded like panic. "Don't you dare! 'Ialit will hate me forever if she thinks I'm making her… Papa-kya! Please, don't do that."
"It might be wise," Kiyan said. "All three girls were party to it."
"You can't! You can't do that to me!" Eiah's eyes were wild. She pushed back the chair as she stood. "I'll tell them Nayiit's your son! I'll tell!"
Otah felt the air go out of the room. Eiah's eyes went wide, aware that she had just done something worse than stealing a bauble, but unsure what it was. Only Kiyan seemed composed and calm. She smiled dangerously.
"Sit down, love," she said. "Please. Sit."
Eiah sat. Otah clasped his hands hard enough the knuckles ached, but there weren't words for the mix of guilt and shame and anger and sorrow. His heart was too many things at once. Kiyan didn't look at him when she spoke; her gaze was on Eiah.
"You will never repeat what you've just said to anyone. Nayiit-cha is Liat's son by M1aati. Because if he isn't, if he's the thing you just said, then he will have to kill Danat or Danat will have to kill him. And when that happens, the blood will he on your hands, because you could have prevented it and chose not to. Don't speak. I'm not finished. If any of the houses of the utkhaiem thought Danat was not the one and only man who could take his father's place, some of them would start thinking of killing him themselves in expectation of Nayiit-cha favoring them once he became Khai Nlachi. I can't protect him from everyone in this city, any more than I can protect him from air or his own body. You have done a wrong thing, stealing. And if you truly mean to hold your brother's life hostage to keep from being chastised for it, I would like to know that now."
Eiah wept silently, shocked by the cold fire in Kiyan's voice. Utah felt as if he'd been slapped as well. As if he ought somehow to have known, all those years ago, in that distant city, that the consequences of taking to his lover's bed would come back again to threaten everything he held dear. Ilis daughter took a pose that begged her mother's forgiveness.
"I won't, Mama-kya. I won't say anything. Not ever."
"You'll apologize to the man you stole from and you will go in the morning to the physician's house and do whatever they ask of you. I will decide what to do about 'l alit and Shoyen."
"Yes,: Mama-kya."
"You can leave now," Kiyan said and looked away. Eiah rose, silent except for the rough breath of tears, and left the room. The door closed behind her.
"I'm sorry-"
"Don't," Kiyan said. "Not now. I can't… I don't want to hear it just now.
Otah rose and walked to the window. The sun was high, but the towers cast shadows across the city all the same, like trees above children. Far to the west, clouds were gathering over the mountains, towering white thunderheads with bases dark as a bruise. "There would be a storm later. It would come. One of the sparrows returned, considered Otah once with each eye, and then flew away again.
"What would you ask me to do?" Otah said. His voice was placid. No one would have known from the words how much pain lay behind them. No one except Kiyan. "I can't unmake him. Should I have him killed?"
"How did Eiah know?" Kiyan asked.
"She saw. Or she guessed. She knew the way that you did."
"No one told her? Maati or Liat or Nayiit. None of them told her?"
"No.,,
"You're sure?"
"I am."
"Because if they did, if they're spreading it through the city that you have-"
"They aren't. I was there when she realized it. Only me. No one else."
Kiyan took a long, low, shuddering breath. If it had been otherwiseif someone had told Eiah as part of a plan to spread word of Nayiit's parentage-Kiyan would have asked him to have the boy killed. He wondered what he would have done. He wondered how he would have refused her.
"They'll leave the city as soon as we have word from the Dal-kvo," Otah said. "Either they'll go back to Saraykeht or they'll go to the I)aikvo's village. Either way, they'll be gone from here."
"And if they come back?"
"They won't. I'll see to it. They won't hurt Danat, love. He's safe."
"He's ill. He's still coughing," Kiyan said. That was it too, of course. Seasons had come and gone, and Danat was still haunted by illness. It was natural for them-Kiyan and himself both-to bend themselves double to protect him from the dangers that they could, especially since there were so many so close over which they were powerless.
It was part of why Otah had postponed for so long the conversation he was doomed to have with Liat Chokavi. But it was only part. Kiyan's chair scraped against the floor as she rose. Otah put his hand out to her, and she took it, stepping in close to him, her arms around him. He kissed her temple.
"Promise me this all ends well," she said. "Just tell me that."
"It will he fine," he said. "Nothing's going to hurt our boy."
They stood silently for a time, looking at each other, and then out at the city. The plumes of smoke rising from the forges, the black-cobbled streets and gray slanted roofs. The sun slipped behind the clouds or else the clouds rose to block the light. The knock that interrupted them was sharp and urgent.
"Most High?" a man's voice said. "Most High, forgive me, but the poets wish to speak with you. Maati-cha says the issue is urgent."
Kiyan walked with him, her hand in his, as they went to the Council chamber where Maati waited. His face was flushed, his mouth set in a deep scowl. A packet of paper fluttered in his hand, the edges rough where he'd ripped them rather than take the labor of unsewing the sheets. Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft were also there, the poet pacing restlessly, the andat smiling its placid, inhuman smile at each of them in turn.
"News from the Dai-kvo?" Otah asked.
"No, the couriers we sent west," Cehmai said.
Maati tossed the pages to the table as he spoke. "The Galts have fielded an army."
The third legion arrived on a bright morning, the sun shining on the polished metal and oiled leather of their armor as if they'd been expecting a victory parade instead of the start of a war. Balasar watched from the walls of the city as they arrived and made camp. The sight was so welcome, even the smell of a hundred and a half camp latrines couldn't undermine his pleasure.
They were later even than they'd expected, and with stories and excuses to explain the delay. Balasar, leaning against the map table, listened and kept his expression calm as the officers apprised him of the legion's state-the men, the food, the horses, the steam wagons, the armor, the arms. Mentally, he put the information into the vast map that was the campaign, but even as he did, he felt the wolfish grin coming to his lips. These were the last of his forces to come into place. The hour was almost upon him. The war was about to begin.