When a servant came and announced Sian Noygu, Otah almost refused the audience before he recognized it as the name Idaan traveled under. His heart racing, he let himself be led to a smaller chamber of carved granite and worked gold. His sister sat between a small fountain and a shadowed alcove. She wore a gray robe under a colorless cloak, and her boots were soft with wear. A long scratch across the back of her hand was the dark red of scabs and old blood.
The servant made his obeisance and retreated. Otah took a pose of greeting appropriate to close family, and Idaan tilted her head like a dog hearing an unfamiliar sound.
"I had intended to meet you when you came into the city. I didn't know you were planning a festival."
"I wasn't," Otah said, sitting beside her. The fountain clucked and burbled. "Traveling quietly seems beyond me these days."
"It was all as subtle as a rockslide," Idaan agreed. "But there's some good in it. The louder you are, the less people are looking at me."
"You've found something then?" Otah asked.
"I have," Idaan said.
"What have you learned?"
A different voice answered from the darkness of the alcove at Idaan's side. A woman's voice.
"Everything," it said.
Otah rose to his feet. The woman who emerged was young: not more than forty summers and the white in her hair still barely more than an accent. She wore robes as simple as Idaan's but held herself with a mixture of angry pride and uncertainty that Otah had become familiar with. Her pupils were gray and sightless, but her eyes were the almond shape that marked her as a citizen of the Empire. This was a victim of the new poet, but she was no Galt.
"Idaan-cha knows everything," the blind woman said again, "because I told it to her."
Idaan took the woman's hand and stood. When she spoke, it was to her companion.
"This is my brother, the Emperor," Idaan said, then turned to him. "Otah-cha, this is Ashti Beg."
20
When before Maati had considered death, it had been in terms of what needed to be done. Before he died, he had to master the grammars of the Dai-kvo, or find his son again, or most recently see his errors with Sterile made right. It was never the end itself that drew his attention. He had reduced his mortality to the finish line of a race. This and this and this done, and afterward, dying would be like rest at the end of a long day.
With Eiah's pronouncement, his view shifted. No list of accomplishments could forgive the prospect of his own extinction. Maati found himself looking at the backs of his hands, the cracked skin, the dark blotches of age. He was becoming aware of time in a way he never had. There was some number of days he would see, some number of nights, and then nothing. It had always been true. He was no more or less a mortal being because his blood was slowing. Everything born, dies. He had known that. He only hadn't quite understood. It changed everything.
It also changed nothing. They traveled slowly, keeping to lesserknown roads and away from the larger low towns. Often Eiah would call the day's halt with the sun still five hands above the horizon because they had found a convenient wayhouse or a farm willing to board them for the night. The prospect of letting Maati sleep in cold air was apparently too much for her to consider.
On the third day, Eiah had parted with the company, rejoining them on the fifth with a cloth sack of genuinely unpleasant herbs. Maati suffered a cup of the bitter tea twice daily. He let his pulses be measured against one another, his breath smelled, his fingertips squeezed, the color of his eyes considered and noted. It embarrassed him.
The curious thing was that, despite all his fears and Eiah's attentions, he felt fine. If his breath was short, it was no shorter than it had been for years. He tired just when he'd always tired, but now six sets of eyes shifted to him every time he grunted. He dismissed the anxiety when he saw it in the others, however closely he felt it himself.
He would have expected the two feelings to balance each other: the dismissive self-consciousness at any concern over him and the presentiment of his death. He did not understand how he could be possessed by both of them at the same time, and yet he was. It was like there were two minds within him, two Maati Vaupathais, each with his own thoughts and concerns, and no compromise between them was required.
For the most part, Maati could ignore this small failure to be at one with himself. Each morning, he rose with the others, ate whatever rubbery eggs or day-old meat the waykeeper had to offer, choked down Eiah's tea, and went on as usual. The autumn through which they passed was crisp and fragrant of new earth and rotting leaves. The snow that had plagued the school had also visited the foothills and shallow passes that divided the western plains of Pathai from the river valleys of the east, but it was rarely more than three fingers deep. In many places, the sun was still strong enough to banish the pale mourning colors to the shadows.
With rumors that Otah himself had taken up the hunt, they kept a balance between the smaller, less-traveled roads and those that were wider and better maintained. So far from the great cities, the ports and trading posts, there were no foreign faces to be seen. None of the handful of adventurous Westlands women had made their way here to try for a Khaiate husband and a better life. There was no better life to be had here. The lack of children, of babies, gave the towns a sense of tolerating a slow plague. It was only the world. It no longer troubled Maati. This was another journey in a life that seemed to be woven of distance. Apart from the overattentiveness of his traveling companions, there was no reason to reflect on his mortality; he had no cause to consider that these small chores and pleasantries of the road might be among his last.
It was only days later, at the halfway point between the school and the river Qiit, that without intending it, Eiah called the question.
They had stopped at a wayhouse at the side of a broad lake. A wide wooden deck stood out over the water, the wind pulling small waves to lap at its pilings. A flock of cranes floated and called to one another at the far shore. Maati sat on a three-legged stool, his traveling cloak still wrapping his shoulders. He looked out on the shifting water, the gray-green trees, the hazy white sky. He heard Eiah behind him, her voice coming from the main building as if it were coming from a different world. When she came out, he heard her footsteps and the leather physician's satchel bumping against her hip. She stopped just behind him.
"They're beautiful," he said, nodding at the cranes.
"I suppose," Eiah said.
"Vanjit? The others?"
"In their rooms," Eiah said, a trace of satisfaction in her voice. "Three rooms, and all of them private. Meals this evening and before we go. One length of silver and two copper."
"You could have paid them the normal price," NIaati said.
"My pride won't allow it," Eiah said. She stepped forward and knelt. "There was something. If you're not tired."
"I'm an old man. I'm always tired."
Her eyes held some objection, but she didn't give it voice. Instead she unbuckled her satchel, rooted in it for a moment, and drew out a paper. Maati took it, frowning. The characters were familiar, a part of Eiah's proposed binding, but the structure of them was different. Awkward.
"It isn't perfect," Eiah said. "But I thought we could consider it. I've mentioned the idea to Large Kae, and she has some ideas about how to make it consonant with the grammar."
Maati lifted his hand, palm out, and stopped the flow of words. The cranes called, their harsh voices crossing the water swifter than arrows. He sounded out each phrase, thinking through the logic as he did.