Idaan rose and stepped out of the shadows.
She saw Cehmai catch sight of her, and she waited. He might have another guest - he might wave her away, and she would have to go back through the night to her own apartments, her own bed. The thought filled her with black dread until the poet put one hand out to her, and with the other motioned toward the light within his house.
Stone-Made-Soft brooded over a game of stones, its massive head cupped in a hand twice the size of her own. The white stones, she noticed, had lost badly. The andat looked up slowly and, its curiosity satisfied, it turned back to the ended game. The scent of mulled wine filled the air. Cehmai closed the door behind her, and then set about fastening the shutters.
‘I didn’t expect to see you,’ the poet said.
‘Do you want me to leave?’
There were a hundred things he could have said. Graceful ways to say yes, or graceless ways to deny it. He only turned to her with the slightest smile and went back to his task. Idaan sat on a low couch and steeled herself. She couldn’t say why she was driven to do this, only that the impulse was much like draping her legs out the sky doors, and that it was what she had chosen to do.
‘Daaya Vaunyogi is approaching the Khai tomorrow. He is going to petition that Adrah and I be married.’
Cehmai paused, sighed, turned to her. His expression was melancholy, but not sorrowful. He was like an old man, she thought, amused by the world and his own role in it. There was a strength in him, and an acceptance.
‘I understand,’ he said.
‘Do you?’
‘No.’
‘He is of a good house, their bloodlines—’
‘And he’s well off and likely to oversee his family’s house when his father passes. And he’s a good enough man, for what he is. It isn’t that I can’t imagine why he would choose to marry you, or you him. But, given the context, there are other questions.’
‘I love him,’ Idaan said. ‘We have planned to do this for . . . we have been lovers for almost two years.’
Cehmai sat beside a brazier, and looked at her with the patience of a man studying a puzzle. The coals had burned down to a fine white ash.
‘And you’ve come to be sure I never speak of what happened the other night. To tell me that it can never happen again.’
The sense of vertigo returned, her feet held over the abyss.
‘No,’ she said.
‘You’ve come to stay the night?’
‘If you’ll have me, yes.’
The poet looked down, his hands laced together before him. A cricket sang, and then another. The air seemed thin.
‘Idaan-kya, I think it might be better if—’
‘Then lend me a couch and a blanket. If you . . . let me stay here as a friend might. We are friends, at least? Only don’t make me go back to my rooms. I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to be with people and I can’t stand being alone. And I . . . I like it here.’
She took a pose of supplication. Cehmai rose and for a moment she was sure he would refuse. She almost hoped he would. Scoot forward, no more effort than sitting up, and then the sound of wind. But Cehmai took a pose that accepted her. She swallowed, the tightness in her throat lessening.
‘I’ll be back. The shutters . . . it might be awkward if someone were to happen by and see you here.’
‘Thank you, Cehmai-kya.’
He leaned forward and kissed her mouth, neither passionate nor chaste, then sighed again and went to the back of the house. She heard the rattle of wood as he closed the windows against the night. Idaan looked at her hands, watching them tremble as she might watch a waterfall or a rare bird. An effect of nature, outside herself. The andat shifted and turned to look at her. She felt her brows rise, daring the thing to speak. Its voice was the low rumble of a landslide.
‘I have seen generations pass, girl. I’ve seen young men die of age. I don’t know what you are doing, but I know this. It will end in chaos. For him, and for you.’
Stone-Made-Soft went silent again, stiller than any real man, not even the pulse of breath in it. She glared into the wide, placid face and took a pose of challenge.
‘It that a threat?’ she asked.
The andat shook its head once - left, and then right, and then still as if it had never moved in all the time since the world was young. When it spoke again, Idaan was almost startled at the sound.
‘It’s a blessing,’ it said.
‘What did he look like?’ Maati asked.
Piyun See, chief assistant to the Master of Tides, frowned and glanced out the window. The man sensed that he had done something wrong, even if he could not say what it had been. It made him reluctant. Maati sipped tea from a white stone bowl and let the silence stretch.
‘A courier. He wore decent robes. He stood half a head taller than you, and had a good face. Long as a northman’s.’
‘Well, that will help me,’ Maati said. He couldn’t keep his impatience entirely to himself.
Piyun took a pose of apology formal enough to be utterly insincere.
‘He had two eyes and two feet and one nose, Maati-cha. I thought he was your acquaintance. Shouldn’t you know better than I what he looks like?’
‘If it is the man.’
‘He didn’t seem pleased to hear you’d been asking after him. He made an excuse and lit out almost as soon as he heard of you. It isn’t as if I knew that he wasn’t to be told of you. I didn’t have orders to hold back your name.’
‘Did you have orders to volunteer me to him?’ Maati asked.
‘No, but . . .’
Maati waved the objection away.
‘House Siyanti. You’re sure of that?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘How do I reach their compound?’
‘They don’t have one. House Siyanti doesn’t trade in the winter cities. He would be staying at a wayhouse. Or sometimes the houses here will let couriers take rooms.’
‘So other than the fact that he came, you can tell me nothing,’ Maati said.
This time the pose of apology was more sincere. Frustration clamped Maati’s jaw until his teeth hurt, but he forced himself into a pose that thanked the assistant and ended the interview. Piyun See left the small meeting room silently, closing the door behind him.
Otah was here, then. He had come back to Machi, using the same name he had had in Saraykeht. And that meant . . . Maati pressed his fingertips to his eyes. That meant nothing certain. That he was here suggested that Biitrah’s death was his work, but as yet it was only a suggestion. He doubted that the Dai-kvo or the Khai Machi would see it that way. His presence was as much as proof to them, and there was no way to keep it secret. Piyun See was no doubt spreading the gossip across the palaces even now - the visiting poet and his mysterious courier. He had to find Otah himself, and he had to do it now.
He straightened his robes and stalked out to the gardens, and then the path that would lead him to the heart of the city. He would begin with the teahouses nearest the forges. It was the sort of place couriers might go to drink and gossip. There might be someone there who would know of House Siyanti and its partners. He could discover whether Itani Noygu had truly been working for Siyanti. That would bring him one step nearer, at least. And there was nothing more he could think of to do now.
The streets were busy with children playing street games with rope and sticks, with beggars and slaves and water carts and firekeepers’ kilns, with farmers’ carts loaded high with spring produce or lambs and pigs on their way to the fresh butcher. Voices jabbered and shouted and sang, the smells of forge smoke and grilling meat and livestock pressed like a fever. The city seemed busy as an anthill, and Maati’s mind churned as he navigated his way through it all. Otah had come to the winter cities. Was he killing his brothers? Had he chosen to become the Khai Machi?
And if he had, would Maati have the strength to stop him?
He told himself that he could. He was so focused and among so many distractions
that he almost didn’t notice his follower. Only when he found what looked like a promising alley - hardly more than a shoulder-wide crack between two long, tall buildings - did he escape the crowds long enough to notice. The sound of the street faded in the dim twilight that the band of sky above him allowed. A rat, surprised by him, scuttled through an iron grating and away. The thin alley branched, and Maati paused, looked down the two new paths, and then glanced back. The path behind him was blocked. A dark cloak, a raised hood, and shoulders so broad they touched both walls. Maati hesitated, and the man behind him didn’t move. Maati felt the skin at the back of his neck tighten. He picked one turning of the alleyway and walked down it briskly until the dark figure reached the intersection as well and turned after him. Then Maati ran. The alley spilled out into another street, this less populous. The smoke of the forges made the air acrid and hazy. Maati raced toward them. There would be men there - smiths and tradesmen, but also firekeepers and armsmen.
When he reached the mouth where the street spilled out onto a major throughway, he looked back. The street behind him was empty. His steps slowed, and he stopped, scanning the doorways, the rooftops. There was nothing. His pursuer - if that was what he had been - had vanished. Maati waited there until he’d caught his breath, then let himself laugh. No one was coming. No one had followed. It was easy to see how a man could be eaten by his fears. He turned to the metalworkers’ quarter.
The streets widened here, with shops and stalls facing out, filled with the tools of the metal trades as much as their products. The forges and smiths’ houses were marked by the greened copper roofs, the pillars of smoke, the sounds of yelling voices and hammers striking anvils. The businesses around them - sellers of hammers and tongs, suppliers of ore and wax blocks and slaked lime - all did their work loudly and expansively, waving hands in mock fury and shouting even when there was no call to. Maati made his way to a teahouse near the center of the district where sellers and workers mixed. He asked after House Siyanti, where their couriers might be found, what was known of them. The brown poet’s robes granted him an unearned respect, but also wariness. It was three hands before he found an answer - the overseer of a consortium of silversmiths had had word from House Siyanti. The courier had said the signed contracts could be delivered to House Nan, but only after they’d been sewn and sealed. Maati gave the man two lengths of silver and his thanks and had started away before he realized he would also need better directions. An older man in a red and yellow robe with a face round and pale as the moon overheard his questions and offered to guide him there.
‘You’re Maati Vaupathai,’ the moon-faced man said as they walked. ‘I’ve heard about you.’
‘Nothing scandalous, I hope,’ Maati said.
‘Speculations,’ the man said. ‘The Khaiem run on gossip and wine more than gold or silver. My name is Oshai. It’s a pleasure to meet a poet.’
They turned south, leaving the smoke and cacophony behind them. As they stepped into a smaller, quieter street, Maati looked back, half expecting to see the looming figure in the dark robes. There was nothing.
‘Rumor has it you’ve come to look at the library,’ Oshai said.
‘That’s truth. The Dai-kvo sent me to do research for him.’
‘Pity you’ve come at such a delicate time. Succession. It’s never an easy thing.’
‘It doesn’t affect me,’ Maati said. ‘Court politics rarely reach the scrolls on the back shelves.’
‘I hear the Khai has books that date back to the Empire. Before the war.’
‘He does. Some of them are older than the copies the Dai-kvo has. Though, in all, the Dai-kvo’s libraries are larger.’
‘He’s wise to look as far afield as he can, though,’ Oshai said. ‘You never know what you might find. Was there something in particular he expected our Khai to have?’
‘It’s complex,’ Maati said. ‘No offense, it’s just . . .’
Oshai smiled and waved the words away. There was something odd about his face - a weariness or an emptiness around his eyes.
‘I’m sure there are many things that poets know that I can’t comprehend, ’ the guide said. ‘Here, there’s a faster way down through here.’
Oshai moved forward, taking Maati by the elbow and leading him down a narrow street. The houses around them were poorer than those near the palaces or even the metalworkers’ quarter. Shutters showed the splinters of many seasons. The doors on the street level and the second-floor snow doors both tended to have cheap leather hinges rather than worked metal. Few people were on the street, and few windows open. Oshai seemed perfectly at ease despite his heightened pace so Maati pushed his uncertainty away.
‘I’ve never been in the library myself,’ Oshai said. ‘I’ve heard impressive things of it. The power of all those minds, and all that time. It isn’t something that normal men can easily conceive.’
‘I suppose not,’ Maati said, trotting to keep up. ‘Forgive me, Oshai-cha, but are we near House Nan?’
‘We won’t be going much further,’ his guide said. ‘Just around this next turning.’
But when they made the turn, Maati found not a trading house’s compound, but a small courtyard covered in flagstone, a dry cistern at its center. The few windows that opened onto the yard were shuttered or empty. Maati stepped forward, confused.
‘Is this . . .’ he began, and Oshai punched him hard in the belly. Maati stepped back, surprised by the attack, and astounded at the man’s strength. Then he saw the blade in the guide’s hand, and the blood on it. Maati tried to back away, but his feet caught the hem of his robe. Oshai’s face was a grimace of delight and hatred. He seemed to jump forward, then stumbled and fell.
When his hands - out before him to catch his fall - touched the ground, the flagstone splashed. Oshai’s hands vanished to the wrist. For a moment that seemed to last for days, Maati and his attacker both stared at the ground. Oshai began to struggle, pulling with his shoulders to no effect. Maati could hear the fear in the muttered curses. The pain in his belly was lessening, and a warmth taking its place. He tried to gather himself, but the effort was such that he didn’t notice the dark-robed figures until they were almost upon him. The larger one had thrown back its hood and the wide, calm face of the andat considered him. The other form - smaller, and more agitated - knelt and spoke in Cehmai’s voice.
‘Maati-kvo! You’re hurt.’
‘Be careful!’ Maati said. ‘He’s got a knife.’
Cehmai glanced at the assassin struggling in the stone and shook his head. The poet looked very young, and yet familiar in a way that Maati hadn’t noticed before. Intelligent, sure of himself. Maati was struck by an irrational envy of the boy, and then noticed the blood on his own hand. He looked down, and saw the wetness blackening his robes. There was so much of it.
‘Can you walk?’ Cehmai said, and Maati realized it wasn’t the first time the question had been asked. He nodded.
‘Only help me up,’ he said.
The younger poet took one arm and the andat the other and gently lifted him. The warmth in Maati’s belly was developing a profound ache in its center. He pushed it aside, walked two steps, then three, and the world seemed to narrow. He found himself on the ground again, the poet leaning over him.
‘I’m going for help,’ Cehmai said. ‘Don’t move. Don’t try to move. And don’t die while I’m gone.’
Maati tried to raise his hands in a pose of agreement, but the poet was already gone, pelting down the street, shouting at the top of his lungs. Maati rolled his head to one side to see the assassin struggling in vain and allowed himself a smile. A thought rolled through his mind, elusive and dim, and he shook himself, willing a lucidity he didn’t possess. It was important. Whatever it was bore the weight of terrible significance. If he could only bring himself to think it. It had something to do with Otah-kvo and all the thousand times Maati had imagined their meeting. The andat sat beside him, watching him with the impassive distance of a statue, and Maati did
n’t know that he intended to speak to it until he heard his own words.