Maati let his imagination play a scene: Otah-kvo appearing before him in the darkness, blade in hand. In Maati’s imagination, his eyes were hard, his voice hoarse with anger. And there he faltered. He might call for help and see Otah captured. He might fight him and end the thing in blood. He might accept the knife as his due. For a dream with so vivid a beginning, Maati could not envision the end.
He closed the shutter and went to throw another black stone onto the fire. His indulgence had turned the room chilly, and he sat on the cushion near the fire as the air warmed again. His legs didn’t fold as easily as Cehmai’s had, but if he shifted now and again, his feet didn’t go numb. He found himself thinking fondly of Cehmai - the boy was easy to befriend. Otah-kvo had been like that, too.
Maati stretched and wondered again whether, if all this had been a song, he would have sung the hero’s part or the villain’s.
No one had ever seen Idaan’s rebellions as hunger. That had been their fault. If her friends or her brothers transgressed against the etiquette of the court, consequences came upon them, shame or censure. But Idaan was the favored daughter. She might steal a rival girl’s gown or arrive late to the temple and interrupt the priest. She could evade her chaperones or steal wine from the kitchens or dance with inappropriate men. She was Idaan Machi, and she could do as she saw fit, because she didn’t matter. She was a woman. And if she’d never screamed at her father in the middle of his court that she was as much his child as Biitrah or Danat or Kaiin, it was because she feared in her bones that he would only agree, make some airy comment to dismiss the matter, and leave her more desperate than before.
Perhaps if once someone had taken her to task, had treated her as if her actions had the same weight as other people’s, things would have ended differently.
Or perhaps folly is folly because you can’t see where it moves from ambition into evil. Arguments that seem solid and powerful prove hollow once it’s too late to turn back. Arguments like Why should it be right for them but wrong for me?
She haunted the Second Palace now, breathing in the emptiness that her eldest brother had left. The vaulted arches of stone and wood echoed her soft footsteps, and the sunlight that filtered though the stone shutters thickened the air to a golden twilight. Here was the bedchamber, bare even of the mattress he and his wife had slept upon. There, the workshop where he had labored on his enthusiasms, keeping engineers by his side sometimes late into the night or on into morning. The tables were empty now. Dust lay thick on them, ignored even by the servants until the time came for some new child of the Khaiem to take residence . . . to live in this opulence and keep his ear pricked for the sound of his brother’s hunting dogs.
She heard Adrah coming long before he stepped into the room. She recognized his gait by the sound of it, and didn’t call. He was clever, she thought bitterly; if he wanted to find her, he could puzzle it out. Adrah Vaunyogi, bright-eyed and broad-shouldered, father of her children if all went well. Whatever well meant anymore.
‘There you are,’ Adrah said. She could see his anger in the way he held 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 backers, 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.
‘Are 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 Cehmai 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 are 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.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I knew it would be hard. It’s the ways it’s hard 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 back 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 back?’
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 other’s 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. She 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 Dai-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 Dai-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.’
There 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 thousand 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 be 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 Maati Vaupathai. If he was a threat, he would be added to the list. Biitrah, 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 she poured out the bucket. Gray water flowed over the bricks that paved the small garden at the back 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 be so heavy. For a moment, his mind flickered back to a bathhouse in Saraykeht an
d 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.