‘We’ve an honored guest come to the city,’ Cehmai said.
‘We’ve had many honored guests in the city,’ the overseer said, with a grin. ‘Damn few in the bottom of the hole, though. There’s no palaces down here.’
‘But Machi’s fortunes rest on its mines,’ Maati said. ‘So in a sense these are the deepest cellars of the palaces. The ones where the best treasures are hidden.’
The overseer grinned.
‘I like this one,’ he said to Cehmai. ‘He’s got a quick head on him.’
‘I heard about the pumps the Khai’s eldest son had designed,’ Maati said. ‘I was wondering if you could tell me of them?’
The grin widened, and the overseer launched into an expansive and delighted discussion of water and mines and the difficulty of removing the one from the other. Maati listened, struggling to follow the vocabulary and grammar particular to the trade.
‘He had a gift for them,’ the overseer said, at last. His voice was melancholy. ‘We’ll keep at them, these pumps, and they’ll get better, but not like they would have with Biitrah-cha on them.’
‘He was here, I understand, on the day he was killed,’ Maati said. He saw the young poet’s head shift, turning to consider him, and he ignored it as he had the andat’s.
‘That’s truth. And I wish he’d stayed. His brothers aren’t bad men, but they aren’t miners. And . . . well, he’ll be missed.’
‘I had thought it odd, though,’ Maati said. ‘Whichever brother killed him, they had to know where he would be - that he would be called out here, and that the work would take so much of the day that he wouldn’t return to the city itself.’
‘I suppose that’s so,’ the overseer said.
‘Then someone knew your pumps would fail,’ Maati said.
The lamplight flickered off the surface of the water, casting shadows up the overseer’s face as this sank in. Cehmai coughed. Maati said nothing, did not move, waited. If any man here had been involved with it, the overseer was most likely. But Maati saw no rage or wariness in his expression, only the slow blooming of implication that might be expected in a man who had not thought the murder through. So perhaps he could be used after all.
‘You’re saying someone sabotaged my pumps to get him out here,’ the overseer said at last.
Maati wished deeply that Cehmai and his andat were not present - this was a thing better done alone. But the moment had arrived, and there was nothing to be done but go forward. The servants at least were far enough away not to overhear if he spoke softly. Maati dug in his sleeve and came out with a letter and a small leather pouch, heavy with silver lengths. He pressed them both into the surprised overseer’s hands.
‘If you should discover who did, I would very much like to speak with them before the officers of the utkhaiem or the head of your house. That letter will tell you how to find me.’
The overseer tucked away the pouch and letter, taking a pose of thanks which Maati waved away. Cehmai and the andat were silent as stones.
‘And how long is it you’ve been working these mines?’ Maati asked, forcing a lightness to his tone he did not feel. Soon the overseer was regaling them with stories of his years underground, and they were walking together toward the surface again. By the time Maati stepped out from the long, sloping throat of the mine and into daylight, his feet were numb. A litter waited for them, twelve strong men prepared to carry the three of them back to the palaces. Maati stopped for a moment to wring the water from the hem of his robes and to appreciate having nothing but the wide sky above him.
‘Why was it the Dai-kvo sent you?’ Cehmai asked as they climbed into the wooden litter. His voice was almost innocent, but even the andat was looking at Maati oddly.
‘There are suggestions that the library may have some old references that the Dai-kvo lacks. Things that touch on the grammars of the first poets.’
‘Ah,’ Cehmai said. The litter lurched and rose, swaying slightly as the servants bore them away back to the palaces. ‘And nothing more than that?’
‘Of course not,’ Maati said. ‘What more could there be?’
He knew that he was convincing no one. And that was likely a fine thing. Maati had spent his first days in Machi learning the city, the courts, the teahouses. The Khai’s daughter had introduced him to the gatherings of the younger generation of the utkhaiem as the poet Cehmai had to the elder. Maati had spent each night walking a different quarter of the city, wrapped in thick wool robes with close hoods against the vicious cold of the spring air. He had learned the intrigues of the court: which houses were vying for marriages to which cities, who was likely to be extorting favors for whom over what sorts of indiscretion, all the petty wars of a family of a thousand children.
He had used the opportunities to spread the name of Itani Noygu - saying only that he was an old friend Maati had heard might be in the city, whom he would very much like to see. There was no way to say that it was the name Otah Machi had invented for himself in Saraykeht, and even if there had been, Maati would likely not have done so. He had come to realize exactly how little he knew what he ought to do.
He had been sent because he knew Otah, knew how his old friend’s mind worked, would recognize him should they meet. They were advantages, Maati supposed, but it was hard to weigh them against his inexperience. There was little enough to learn of making discreet inquiries when your life was spent in the small tasks of the Dai-kvo’s village. An overseer of a trading house would have been better suited to the task. A negotiator, or a courier. Liat would have been better, the woman he had once loved, who had once loved him. Liat, mother of the boy Nayiit, whom Maati had held as a babe and loved more than water or air. Liat, who had been Otah’s lover as well.
For the thousandth time, Maati put that thought aside.
When they reached the palaces, Maati again thanked Cehmai for taking the time from his work to accompany him, and Cehmai - still with the half-certain stance of a dog hearing an unfamiliar sound - assured him that he’d been pleased to do so. Maati watched the slight young man and his thick-framed andat walk away across the flagstones of the courtyard. Their hems were black and sodden, ruining the drape of the robes. Much like his own, he knew.
Thankfully, his own apartments were warm. He stripped off his robes, leaving them in a lump for the servants to remove to a launderer, and replaced them with the thickest he had - lamb’s wool and heavy leather with a thin cotton lining. It was the sort that natives of Machi wore in deep winter, but Maati pulled it close about him, vowing to use it whenever he went out, whatever the others might think of him. His boots thrown into a corner, he stretched his pale, numb feet almost into the fire grate and shuddered. He would have to go to the wayhouse where Biitrah Machi had died. The owners there had spoken to the officers of the utkhaiem, of course. They had told their tale of the moon-faced man who had come with letters of introduction, worked in their kitchens, and been ready to take over for a night when the overseers all came down ill. Still, he could not be sure there was nothing more to know unless he made his visit. Some other day, when he could feel his toes.
The summons came to him when the sun - red and angry - was just preparing to slide behind the mountains to the west. Maati pulled on thick, warm boots of soft leather, added his brown poet’s robes over the warmer ones, and let himself be led to the Khai Machi’s private chambers. He passed through several rooms on his way - a hall of worked marble the color of honey with a fountain running through it like a creek, a meeting chamber large enough to hold two dozen at a single table, then a smaller corridor that led to chambers of a more human size. Ahead of him, a woman passed from one side of the corridor to the other leaving the impression of night-black hair, warm brown skin, and robes the yellow of sunrise. One of the wives, Maati knew, of a man who had several.
At last, the servant slid open a door of carved rosewood, and Maati stepped into a room hardly larger than his own bedroom. The old man sat on a couch, his feet toward the fire that burne
d in the grate. His robes were lush, the silks seeming to take up the firelight and dance with it. They seemed more alive than his flesh. Slowly, the Khai raised a clay pipe to his mouth and puffed on it thoughtfully. The smoke smelled rich and sweet as a cane field on fire.
Maati took a pose of greeting as formal as high court. The Khai Machi raised an ancient eyebrow and only smiled. With the stem of the pipe, he pointed to the couch opposite him and nodded to Maati that he should sit.
‘They make me smoke this,’ the Khai said. ‘Whenever my belly troubles me, they say. I tell them they might as well make it air, burn it by the bushel in all the firekeepers’ kilns, but they only laugh as if it were wit, and I play along.’
‘Yes, most high.’
There was a long pause as the Khai contemplated the flames. Maati waited, uncertain. He noticed the catch in the Khai Machi’s breath, as if it pained him. He had not noticed it before.
‘Your search for my outlaw son,’ the Khai said. ‘It is going well?’
‘It is early yet, most high. I have made myself visible. I have let it be known that I am looking into the death of your son.’
‘You still expect Otah to come to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And if he does not?’
‘Then it will take more time, most high. But I will find him.’
The old man nodded, then exhaled a plume of pale smoke. He took a pose of gratitude, his wasted hands holding the position with the grace of a lifetime’s practice.
‘His mother was a good woman. I miss her. Iyrah, her name was. She gave me Idaan too. She was glad to have a child of her own that she could keep.’
Maati thought he saw the old man’s eyes glisten for a moment, lost as he was in old memories of which Maati could only guess the substance. Then the Khai sighed.
‘Idaan,’ the Khai said. ‘She’s treated you gently?’
‘She’s been nothing but kind,’ Maati said, ‘and very generous with her time.’
The Khai shook his head, smiling more to himself than his audience.
‘That’s good. She was always unpredictable. Age has calmed her, I think. There was a time she would study outrages the way most girls study face paints and sandals. Always sneaking puppies into court or stealing dresses she fancied from her little friends. She relied on me to keep her safe, however far she flew,’ he said, smiling fondly. ‘A mischievous girl, my daughter, but good-hearted. I’m proud of her.’
Then he sobered.
‘I am proud of all my children. It’s why I am not of one mind on this,’ the Khai said. ‘You would think that I should be, but I am not. With every day that the search continues, the truce holds, and Kaiin and Danat still live. I’ve known since I was old enough to know anything that if I took this chair, my sons would kill each other. It wasn’t so hard before I knew them, when they were only the idea of sons. But then they were Biitrah and Kaiin and Danat. And I don’t want any of them to die.’
‘But tradition, most high. If they did not—’
‘I know why they must,’ the Khai said. ‘I was only wishing. It’s something dying men do, I’m told. Sit with their regrets. It’s likely that which kills us as much as the sickness. I sometimes wish that this had all happened years ago. That they had slaughtered each other in their childhood. Then I might have at least one of them by me now. I had not wanted to die alone.’
‘You are not alone, most high. The whole court . . .’
Maati broke off. The Khai Machi took a pose accepting correction, but the amusement in his eyes and the angle of his shoulders made a sarcasm of it. Maati nodded, accepting the old man’s point.
‘I can’t say which of them I would have wanted to live, though,’ the Khai said, puffing thoughtfully on his pipe. ‘I love them all. Very dearly. I cannot tell you how deeply I miss Biitrah.’
‘Had you known him, you would have loved Otah as well.’
‘You think so? Certainly you knew him better than I. I can’t think he would have thought well of me,’ the Khai said. Then, ‘Did you go back? After you took your robes? Did you go to see your parents?’
‘My father was very old when I went to the school,’ Maati said. ‘He died before I completed my training. We did not know each other.’
‘So you have never had a family.’
‘I have, most high,’ Maati said, fighting to keep the tightness in his chest from changing the tone of his voice. ‘A lover and a son. I had a family once.’
‘But no longer. They died?’
‘They live. Only not with me.’
The Khai considered him, bloodshot eyes blinking slowly. With his thin, wrinkled skin, he reminded Maati of a very old turtle or else a very young bird. The Khai’s gaze softened, his brows tilting in understanding and sorrow.
‘It is never easy for fathers,’ the Khai said. ‘Perhaps if the world had needed less from us.’
Maati waited a long moment until he trusted his voice.
‘Perhaps, most high.’
The Khai exhaled a breath of gray, his gaze trapped by the smoke.
‘It isn’t the world I knew when I was young,’ the old man said. ‘Everything changed when Saraykeht fell.’
‘The Khai Saraykeht has a poet,’ Maati said. ‘He has the power of the andat.’
‘It took the Dai-kvo eight years and six failed bindings,’ the Khai said. ‘And every time word came of another failure, I could see it in the faces of the court. The utkhaiem may put on proud faces, but I’ve seen the fear that swims under that ice. And you were there. You said so in the audience when I greeted you.’
‘Yes, most high.’
‘But you didn’t say everything you knew,’ the Khai said. ‘Did you?’
The yellowed eyes fixed on Maati. The intelligence in them was unnerving. Maati felt himself squirming, and wondering what had happened to the melancholy dying man he’d been speaking with only moments before.
‘I . . . that is . . .’
‘There were rumors that the poet’s death was more than an angry east island girl’s revenge. The Galts were mentioned.’
‘And Eddensea,’ Maati said. ‘And Eymond. There was no end of accusation, most high. Some even believed what they charged. When the cotton trade collapsed, a great number of people lost a great amount of money. And prestige.’
‘They lost more than that,’ the Khai said, leaning forward and stabbing at the air with the stem of his pipe. ‘The money, the trade. The standing among the cities. They don’t signify. Saraykeht was the death of certainty. They lost the conviction that the Khaiem would hold the world at bay, that war would never come to Saraykeht. And we lost it here too.’
‘If you say so, most high.’
‘The priests say that something touched by chaos is never made whole,’ the Khai said, sinking back into his cushions. ‘Do you know what they mean by that, Maati-cha?’
‘I have some idea,’ Maati said, but the Khai went on.
‘It means that something unthinkable can only happen once. Because after that, it’s not unthinkable any longer. We’ve seen what happens when a city is touched by chaos. And now it’s in the back of every head in every court in all the cities of the Khaiem.’
Maati frowned and leaned forward.
‘You think Cehmai-cha is in some danger?’
‘What?’ the Khai said, then waved the thought away, stirring the smoky air. ‘No. Not that. I think my city is at risk. I think Otah . . . my upstart son . . .’
He’s forgiven you, a voice murmured in the back of Maati’s mind. The voice of Seedless, the andat of Saraykeht. They were the words the andat had spoken to Maati in the instant before Heshai’s death had freed it.
It had been speaking of Otah.
‘I’ve called you here for a reason, Maati-cha,’ the Khai said, and Maati pulled his attention back to the present. ‘I didn’t care to speak of it around those who would use it to fuel gossip. Your inquiry into Biitrah’s death. You must move more quickly.’
‘Even
with the truce?’
‘Yes, even at the price of my sons returning to their tradition. If I die without a successor chosen - especially if Danat and Kaiin are still gone to ground - there will be chaos. The families of the utkhaiem start thinking that perhaps they would sit more comfortably in my chair, and schemes begin. Your task isn’t only to find Otah. Your task is to protect my city.’
‘I understand, most high.’
‘You do not, Maati-cha. The spring roses are starting to bloom, and I will not see high summer. Neither of us has the luxury of time.’
The gathering was all that Cehmai had hoped for, and less. Spring breezes washed the pavilion with the scent of fresh flowers. Kilns set along the edges roared behind the music of reed organ, flute, and drum. Overhead, the stars shone like gems strewn on dark velvet. The long months of winter had given musicians time to compose and practice new songs, and the youth of the high families week after weary week to tire of the cold and dark and the terrible constriction that deep winter brought to those with no business to conduct on the snow.