"I don't know," Danat said. "But it wasn't that he was trying to keep his bloodline pure. Really, there's a strong case that my lineage isn't par ticularly high. My mother didn't come from the utkhaiem, and for some people that's as much an insult as marrying a Westlander."
"Or a Galt," Ana said, tartly.
"Exactly," Danat said. "So, yes. Of course there are people in the court who want some kind of purity, but they've gotten used to disappointment over the last few decades."
"They would never accept me."
"You?" Danat said.
"Anyone like me."
"If they won't, then they won't accept anyone. So it hardly matters what they think, because they won't have any sons or daughters at court. The world's changed, and the families that can't change with it won't survive."
"I suppose," Ana said. They were silent for a moment. Otah debated whether he should scratch on her door or back quietly away, and then Ana spoke again. Her voice had changed. It was lower now, and dark as rain on stone. "It doesn't really matter, though, does it. There isn't going to be a Galt."
"That's not true," Danat said.
"Every day that we're like… like this, more of us are dying. It's harvest time. How are they going to harvest the grain if they can't see it? How do you raise sheep and cattle by sound?"
"I knew a blind man who worked leather in Lachi," Danat said. "His work was just as good as a man's with eyes."
"One man doesn't signify," Ana said. "He wasn't baking his own bread or catching his own fish. If he needed to know what a thing looked like, there was someone he could ask. If everyone's sightless, it's different. It's all falling apart."
"You can't know that," Danat said.
"I know how crippled I am," Ana said. "It gives me room to guess. I know how little I can do to stop it."
There was a soft sound, and Danat hushing her. Otah took a careful step back, away from the door. When Ana's voice came again, it was thick with tears.
"Tell me," she said. "Tell me one of those stories. The ones where a child with two races could still win out."
"In the sixteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Adani Beh," Danat said, his voice bright and soft, "there came to court a boy whose blood was half-Bakta, his skin the color of soot, and his mind as clever as any man who had ever lived. When the Emperor saw him…"
Otah backed away, his son's voice becoming a murmur of sound, inflected like words but too faint to mean anything. Their whole journey, it had been like this. Each time Otah thought they might have a moment alone, Ana was near, or one of the armsmen, or Otah had brought himself to the edge of speech and then failed. Every courier they stopped along the road was another reminder to Otah that his son had to know, had to be told. But no word had come from Idaan, and Danat still didn't know that Eiah was involved in the slow death of Galt and, with it, the future Otah had fought for.
Before Pathai, Otah had told himself when they were on the road. During the journey itself, it hardly mattered whether Danat knew, but once they reached their destination, his son couldn't be set out without knowing what it was they were searching for and why. Otah had no faith that another, better chance would come the next day. He made his way back upstairs, found a servant woman, and had cheese, fresh bread, and a carafe of rice wine taken to Danat's room. Otah waited there until the Galtic clock, clicking to itself in a corner, marked the night as almost half-gone. Otah didn't notice that he was dozing until the opening door roused him.
Otah broke the news as gently as he could, outlining his own halfknowledge of Maati's intentions, Idaan's appearance in Saraykeht, Eiah's appearance on the list of possible backers, and his own decision to set his sister to hunt down his daughter. Danat listened carefully, as if picking through the words for clues to some deeper mystery. When, at length, Otah went silent, Danat looked into the fire in its grate, wove his fingers together, and thought. The flames made his eyes glitter like jewels.
"It isn't her," he said at last. "She wouldn't do this."
"I know you love her, Danat-kya. I love her too, and I don't want to think this of her either, but-"
"I don't mean she didn't back Maati," Danat said. "We don't know that she did, but at least that part's plausible. I'm only saying that this blindness isn't her work."
His voice wasn't loud or strident. He seemed less like a man fighting an unpalatable truth than a builder pointing out a weakness in an archway's design. Otah took a pose that invited him to elaborate.
"Eiah hates your plan," Danat said. "She even came to me a few times to argue that I should refuse it."
"I didn't know that."
"I didn't tell you," Danat said, his hands taking a pose that apologized, though his voice held no regret. "I couldn't see that it would make things between the two of you any better. But my point is that her arguments were never against Galts. She couldn't stand to see a generation of our own women ignored. Their pain was what she lived in. When you started allowing the import of bed slaves as… well
…"
"Brood mares," Otah said. "I do remember her saying that."
"Well, that," Danat agreed. "Eiah took that as saying that none of the women here mattered. That she didn't matter. If the problems of the Empire could be solved by hauling in wombs that would bear, then all that was important to you about women was the children they could yield."
"But if there's no children, there can't be-"
Danat shifted forward in his seat, putting his palm over Otah's mouth. The boy's eyes were dark, his mouth set in the half-smile Kiyan had often worn.
"You need to listen to me, Papa-kya. I'm not telling you that she's right. I'm not telling you she's wrong, for that. I'm telling you Eiah loves people and she hates pain. If she's been backing Uncle Maati, it's to take away the pain, not to…"
Danat gestured at the shutters, and by implication at the world on the other side of them. The logs in the grate popped and the song of a single cricket, perhaps the last one alive before the coming winter, sang counterpoint to the ticking clock. Otah rubbed his chin, his mind turning his son's words over like a jeweler considering a gem.
"She may be part of this," Danat said. "I think you're right to find her. But the poet we want? It isn't her."
"I wish I could be certain of that," Otah said.
"Well, start with not being certain that she is," Danat said. "The world will carry you the rest of the way, if I'm right."
Otah smiled and put his hand on his son's head.
"When did you become wise?" Otah asked.
"It's only what you'd have said, if you weren't busy feeling responsible for all of it," Danat said. "You're a good man, Papa-kya. And we're doing what we can in unprecedented times."
Otah let his hand fall to his side. Danat smiled. The cricket, wherever it was, went silent.
"Go," Danat said. "Sleep. We've got a long ride tomorrow, and I'm exhausted."
Otah rose, his hands taking a pose that accepted the command. Danat chuckled; then as Otah reached the door, he sobered.
"Thank you, by the way, for what you said about Ana," Danat said. "You were right. We weren't treating her with the respect she deserved."
"It's a mistake we all make, one time and another," Otah said. "I'm glad it was an error we could correct."
Perhaps mine also will be, he thought. It terrified him in some fundamental and joyous way to think that possibly, possibly, this might still end without a sacrifice that was too great for him to bear. He hadn't realized how much he had tried to harden himself against the prospect of killing his own daughter, or how poorly he had managed it.
He crawled into his bed. Danat's certainty lightened the weight that bore him down. The poet wasn't Eiah. This blindness wasn't in her, wasn't who she was. The andat might have been bound by Maati or some other girl. Some girl whom he could bring himself to kill. He closed his eyes, considering how he might avoid having the power of the andat turned on him. The fear would return, he was sure of that. But now, for a moment, he could afford himself the luxury of being more frightened of loss than of the price of victory.