his body.
"What have I done this time?" she demanded, her tone carrying a sarcasm
that dismissed his concerns even before he spoke them. "Did your patrons
want me to wear red on a day I chose yellow?"
The mention of his hackers, even as obliquely as that, made him stiffen
and peer around, looking for slaves or servants who might overhear.
Idaan laughed-a cruel, short sound.
"You look like a kitten with a bell on its tail," she said. "There's no
one here but us. You needn't worry that someone will roll the rock off
our little conspiracy. We're as safe here as anywhere."
Adrah strode over and crouched beside her all the same. He smelled of
crushed violets and sage, and it struck Idaan that it had not been so
long ago that the scent would have warmed her heart and brought a flush
to her cheeks. His face was long and pretty-almost too pretty to be a
man's. She had kissed those lips a thousand times, but now it seemed
like the act of another woman-some entirely different Idaan Machi whose
body and memory she had inherited when the first girl died. She smiled
and raised her hands in a pose of formal query.
"Arc you mad?" Adrah demanded. "Don't speak about them. Not ever. If
we're found out ..."
"Yes. You're right. I'm sorry," Idaan said. "I wasn't thinking."
""There are rumors you spent a day with Cchmai and the andat. You were
seen.
"The rumors are true, and I meant to be seen. I can't see how my having
a close relationship to the poet would hurt the cause, and in fact I
think it will help, don't you? When the time comes that half the houses
of the utkhaiem arc vying for my father's chair, an upstart house like
yours would do well to boast a friendship with Cehmai."
"I think being married to a daughter of the Khai will be quite enough,
thank you," Adrah said, "and your brothers aren't dead yet, in case
you'd forgotten."
"No. I remember."
"I don't want you acting strangely. Things are too delicate just now for
you to start attracting attention. You are my lover, and if you are off
half the time drinking rice wine with the poet, people won't be saying
that I have strong friendship with him. They'll be saying that he's
cuckolding me, and that Vaunyogi is the wrong house to draw a new Khai
from."
"So you don't want me seeing him, or you just want more discretion when
I do?" Idaan asked.
That stopped him. His eyes, deep brown with flecks of red and green,
peered into hers. A sudden memory, powerful as illness, swept over her
of a winter night when they had met in the tunnels. He had gazed at her
then by firelight, had been no further from her than he was now. She
wondered how these could be those same eyes. Her hand rose as if by
itself and stroked his cheek. He folded his hands around hers.
"I'm sorry," she said, ashamed of the catch in her voice. "I don't want
to quarrel with you."
"What are you doing, little one?" he asked. "Don't you see how dangerous
this is that we're doing? Everything rests on it."
"I know. I remember the stories. It's strange, don't you think, that my
brothers can slaughter each other and all the people do is applaud, but
if I take a hand, it's a crime worse than anything."
"You're a woman," he said, as if that explained everything.
"And you," she said calmly, almost lovingly, "are a schemer and an agent
of the Galts. So perhaps we deserve each other."
She felt him stiffen and then force the tension away. His smile was
crooked. She felt something warm in her breast-painful and sad and warm
as the first sip of rum on a midwinter night. She wondered if it might
be hatred, and if it were, whether it was for herself or this man before
her.
"It's going to be fine," he said.
that surprise me. I don't know how I should act or who I should be. I
don't know where the normal grief that anyone would feel stops or turns
into something else." She shook her head. "This seemed simpler when we
were only talking about it."
"I know, love. It will be simple again, I promise you. It's only this in
the middle that feels complicated."
"I don't know how they do it," she said. "I don't know how they kill one
another. I dream about him, you know. I dream that I am walking through
the gardens or the palaces and I see him in among a crowd of people."
Tears came to her eyes unbidden, flowing warm and thick down her cheeks,
but her voice, when she continued, was steady and calm as a woman
predicting the weather. "He's always happy in the dreams. He's always
forgiven me."
"I'm sorry," he said. "I know you loved him."
Idaan nodded, but didn't speak.
"Be strong, love. It will be over soon. It will all be finished very soon.
She wiped the tears away with the hack of her hand, her knuckles
darkened where her paints were running, and pulled him close. He seemed
to hold back for a moment, then folded against her, his arms around her
trembling shoulders. He was warm and the smell of sage and violet was
mixed now with his skin-the particular musk of his body that she had
treasured once above all other scents. He murmured small comforts into
her ears and stroked her hair as she wept.
"Is it too late?" she asked. "Can we stop it, Adrah? Can we take it all
hack?"
He kissed her eyes, his lips soft as a girl's. His voice was calm and
implacable and hard as stone. When she heard it, she knew he had been
thinking himself down the same pathways and had come to the same place.
"No, love. It's too late. It was too late as soon as your brother died.
We have started, and there's no ending it now except to win through or die."
They stayed still in each others' embrace. If all went well, she would
die an old woman in this man's arms, or he would die in hers. While
their sons killed one another. And there had been a time not half a year
ago she'd thought the prize worth winning.
"I should go," she murmured. "I have to attend to my father. There's
some dignitary just come to the city that I'm to smile at."
"Have you heard of the others? Kaiin and Danat?"
"Nothing," Idaan said. "They've vanished. Gone to ground."
"And the other one? Otah?"
Idaan pulled back, straightening the sleeves of her robes as she spoke.
"Otah's a story that the utkhaiem tell to make the song more
interesting. He's likely not even alive any longer. Or if he is, he's
wise enough to have no part of this."
"Are you certain of that?"
"Of course not," she said. "But what else can I give you?"
They spoke little after that. Adrah walked with her through the gardens
of the Second Palace and then out to the street. Idaan made her way to
her rooms and sent for the slave boy who repainted her face. The sun
hadn't moved the width of two hands together before she strode again
though the high palaces, her face cool and perfect as a player's mask.
The formal poses of respect and deference greeted and steadied her. Sh
e
was Idaan Machi, daughter of the Khai and wife, though none knew it yet,
of the man who would take his place. She forced confidence into her
spine, and the men and women around her reacted as if it were real.
Which, she supposed, meant that it was. And that the sorrow and darkness
they could not see were false.
When she entered the council chambers, her father greeted her with a
silent pose of welcome. He looked ill, his skin gray and his mouth
pinched by the pain in his belly. The delicate lanterns of worked iron
and silver made the wood-sheathed walls glow, and the cushions that
lined the floor were thick and soft as pillows. The men who sat on
them-yes, men, all of them-made their obeisances to her, but her father
motioned her closer. She walked to his side and knelt.
"There is someone I wish you to meet," her father said, gesturing to an
awkward man in the brown robes of a poet. "The I)ai-kvo has sent him.
Maati Vaupathai has come to study in our library."
Fear flushed her mouth with the taste of metal, but she simpered and
took a pose of welcome as if the words had meant nothing. Her mind
raced, ticking through ways that the Dal-kvo could have discovered her,
or Adrah, or the Galts. The poet replied to her gesture with a formal
pose of gratitude, and she took the opportunity to look at him more
closely. The body was soft as a scholar's, the lines of his face round
as dough, but there was a darkness to his eyes that had nothing to do
with color or light. She felt certain he was someone worth fearing.
"The library?" she said. "That's dull. Surely there are more interesting
things in the city than room after room of old scrolls."
"Scholars have strange enthusiasms," the poet said. "But it's true, I've
never been to any of the winter cities before. I'm hoping that not all
my time will be taken in study."
'T'here had to be a reason that the Dai-kvo and the Galts wanted the
same thing. There had to be a reason that they each wanted to plumb the
depths of the library of Machi.
"And how have you found the city, Maati-cha?" she asked. "When you
haven't been studying."
"It is as beautiful as I had been told," the poet said.
"He has been here only a few days," her father said. "Had he come
earlier, I would have had your brothers here to guide him, but perhaps
you might introduce him to your friends."
"I would be honored," Idaan said, her mind considering the thou sand
ways that this might be a trap. "Perhaps tomorrow evening you would join
me for tea in the winter gardens. I have no doubt there are many people
who would be pleased to join us."
"Not too many, I hope," he said. He had an odd voice, she thought. As if
he was amused at something. As if he knew how badly he had shaken her.
Her fear shifted slightly, and she raised her chin. "I already find
myself forgetting names I should remember," the poet continued. "It's
most embarrassing."
"I will he pleased to remind you of my own, should it be required," she
said. Her father's movement was almost too slight to see, but she caught
it and cast her gaze down. Perhaps she had gone too far. But when the
poet spoke, he seemed to have taken no offense.
"I expect I will remember yours, Idaan-cha. It would be very rude not
to. I look forward to meeting your friends and seeing your city. Perhaps
even more than closeting myself in your library."
He had to know. He had to. Except that she was not being led away under
guard. She was not being taken to the quiet chambers and questioned. If
he did not know, he must only suspect.
Let him suspect, then. She would get word to Adrah and the Galts. They
would know better than she what to do with this NIaati Vaupathai. If he
was a threat, he would be added to the list. I3iitrah, Danat, Kaiin,
Otah, Maati. The men she would have to kill or have killed. She smiled
at him gently, and he nodded to her. One more name could make little
difference now, and he, at least, was no one she loved.
"WHEN ARE THEY SENDING YOU?" KIYAN ASKED AS SIZE POURED OUT THE bucket.
Gray water flowed over the bricks that paved the small garden at the
hack of the wayhouse. Otah took the longhandled brush and swept the
water off to the sides, leaving the walkway deep red and glistening in
the sunlight. He felt Kiyan's gaze on him, felt the question in the air.
The gardens smelled of fresh turned earth. Spices for the kitchen grew
here. In a few weeks, the place would be thick with growing things:
basil and mint and thyme. He imagined scrubbing these bricks week after
week over the span of years until they wore smooth or he died, and felt
an irrational surge of fondness for the walkway. He smiled to himself.
"Itani?"
"I don't know. That is, I know they want me to go to Machi in two weeks
time. Amiit Foss is sending half the couriers he has up there, it seems.
"Of course he is. It's where everything's happening."
"But I haven't decided to go."
The silence bore down on him now, and he turned. Kiyan stood in the
doorway-in her doorway. Her crossed arms, her narrowed eyes, and the
single frown-line drawn vertically between her brows, made Otah smile.
He leaned on his brush.
"We need to talk, sweet," he said. "There are some things ... we have
some business, I think, to attend to."
Kiyan answered by taking the brush from him, leaning it against the
wall, and marching to a meeting room at the back of the house. It was
small but formal, with a thick wooden door and a window that looked out
on the corner of the interior courtyard. The sort of place she might
give to a diplomat or a courier for an extra length of copper. The sort
of place it would be difficult to be overheard. That was as it should be.
Kiyan sat carefully, her face as blank as that of a man playing tiles.
Otah sat across from her, careful not to touch her hand. She was holding
herself back, he knew. She was restraining herself from hoping until she
knew, so that if what he said did not match what she longed to hear, the
disappointment would not he so heavy. For a moment, his mind flickered
back to a bathhouse in Saraykeht and another woman's eyes. He had had
this conversation once before, and he doubted he would ever have it again.
"I don't want to go to the north," Otah said. "For more reasons than one.
"Why not?" Kiyan asked.
"Sweet, there are some things I haven't told you. Things about my
family. About myself...."
And so he began, slowly, carefully, to tell the story. He was the son of
the Khai Machi, but his sixth son. One of those cast out by his family
and sent to the school where the sons of the Khaiem and utkhaiem
struggled in hope of one day being selected to be poets and wield the
power of the andat. He had been chosen once, and had walked away. Itani
Noygu was the name he had chosen for himself, the man he had made of
himself. But he was also Otah Machi.
He was careful to tell the story well. He more than half expected her to
laugh at him. Or to accuse him of a self-aggrandizing ma
dness. Or to
sweep him into her arms and say that she'd known, she'd always known he
was something more than a courier. Kiyan defeated all the stories he had
spun in his dreams of this moment. She merely listened, arms crossed,
eyes turned toward the window. The vertical line between her brows
deepened slightly, and that was all. She did not move or ask questions
until he had nearly reached the end. All that was left was to tell her
he'd chosen to take her offer to work with her here at the wayhouse, but
she knew that already and lifted her hands before he could say the words.
"Irani ... lover, if this isn't true ... if this is a joke, please tell
me. Now."
"It isn't a joke," he said.
She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. When she spoke, she
seemed calm in a way that he knew meant rage beyond expression. At the
first tone of it, his heart went tight.
"You have to leave. Now. Tonight. You have to leave and never come hack."
"Kiyan-kya..."
"No. No kya. No sweet. No my lone. None of that. You have to leave my
house and you can't ever come back or tell anyone who you are or who I
am or that we knew each other once. Igo you understand that?"
"I understand that you're angry with me," Otah said, leaning toward her.
"You have a right to be. But you don't know how carefully I have had to
guard this."