Otah, sitting slump-shouldered on his bunk, took the hot tea and sipped it dutifully. His eyes were dry now, and staring into the middle distance. Milah pulled a stool up beside him, and they sat for a long moment in silence before he spoke.
“You did that boy out there no favors today.”
Otah lifted a hand in a pose of correction accepted.
“Comforting a boy like that . . . it doesn’t make him stronger. I know it isn’t easy being a teacher. It requires a hard sort of compassion to treat a child harshly, even when it is only for their own good in the end.”
Otah nodded, but didn’t look up. When he spoke, his voice was low.
“Has anyone ever been turned out from the black robes?”
“Expelled? No, no one. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve failed,” Otah said, then paused. “I’m not strong enough to teach these lessons, Milah-kvo.”
Milah looked down at his hands, thinking of his old master. Thinking of the cost that another journey to the school would exact from that old flesh. He couldn’t keep the weight of the decision entirely out of his voice when he spoke.
“I am removing you from duty for a month’s time,” he said, “while we call for the Dai-kvo.”
“OTAH,” THE FAMILIAR VOICE WHISPERED. “WHAT DID YOU DO?”
Otah turned on his bunk. The brazier glowed, the coals giving off too little light to see by. Otah fixed his gaze on the embers.
“I made a mistake, Ansha,” he said. It was the reply he’d given on the few occasions in the last days that someone had had the courage to ask.
“They say the Dai-kvo’s coming. And out of season.”
“It may have been a serious mistake.”
It may be the first time that anyone has risen so far and failed so badly, Otah thought. The first time anyone so unsuited to the black robes had been given them. He remembered the cold, empty plain of snow he’d walked across the night Milah-kvo had promoted him. He could see now that his flight hadn’t been a sign of strength after all—only a presentiment of failure.
“What did you do?“ Ansha asked in the darkness.
Otah saw the boy’s face again, saw the bloodied hand and the tears of humiliation running down the dirty cheeks. He had caused that pain, and he could not draw the line between the shame of having done it and the shame of being too weak to do it again. There was no way for him to explain that he couldn’t lead the boys to strength because in his heart, he was still one of them.
“I wasn’t worthy of my robe,” he said.
Ansha didn’t speak again, and soon Otah heard the low, deep breath of sleep. The others were all tired from their day’s work. Otah had no reason to be tired after a day spent haunting the halls and rooms of the school with no duties and no purpose wearing the black robe only because he had no other robes of his own.
He waited in the darkness until even the embers deserted him and he was sure the others were deeply asleep. Then he rose, pulled on his robe, and walked quietly out into the corridor. It wasn’t far to the chilly rooms where the younger cohorts slept. Otah walked among the sleeping forms. Their bodies were so small, and the blankets so thin. Otah had been in the black for so little time, and had forgotten so much.
The boy he was looking for was curled on a cot beside the great stone wall, his back to the room. Otah leaned over carefully and put a hand over the boy’s mouth to stifle a cry if he made one. He woke silently, though, his eyes blinking open. Otah watched until he saw recognition bloom.
“Your hands are healing well?” Otah whispered.
The boy nodded.
“Good. Now stay quiet. We don’t want to wake the others.”
Otah drew his hand away, and the boy fell immediately into a pose of profound apology.
“Otah-kvo, I have dishonored you and the school. I . . .”
Otah gently folded the boy’s fingers closed.
“You have nothing to blame yourself for,” Otah said. “The mistake was mine. The price is mine.”
“If I’d worked harder—”
“It would have gained you nothing,” Otah said. “Nothing.”
THE BRONZE DOORS BOOMED AND SWUNG OPEN. THE BOYS STOOD IN THEIR ranks holding poses of welcome as if they were so many statues. Otah, standing among the black robes, held his pose as well. He wondered what stories the cohorts of disowned children had been telling themselves about the visit: hopes of being returned to a lost family, or of being elevated to a poet. Dreams.
The old man walked in. He seemed less steady than Otah remembered him. After the ceremonial greetings, he blessed them all in his thick, ruined whisper. Then he and the teachers retired, and the black robes—all but Otah—took charge of the cohorts that they would lead for the day. Otah returned to his room and sat, sick at heart, waiting for the summons he knew was coming. It wasn’t long.
“Otah,” Tahi-kvo said from the doorway. “Get some tea for the Dai-kvo.”
“But the ceremonial robe . . .”
“Not required. Just tea.”
Otah rose into a pose of submission. The time had come.
THE DAI-KVO SAT SILENTLY, CONSIDERING THE FIRE IN THE GRATE. HIS hands, steepled before him, seemed smaller than Milah remembered them, the skin thinner and loose. His face showed the fatigue of his journey around the eyes and mouth, but when he caught Milah’s gaze and took a pose part query, part challenge, Milah thought there was something else as well. A hunger, or hope.
“How are things back in the world?” Milah asked. “We don’t hear much of the high cities here.”
“Things are well enough,” the Dai-kvo said. “And here? How are your boys?”
“Well enough, most high.”
“Really? Some nights I find I wonder.”
Milah took a pose inviting the Dai-kvo to elaborate, but to no effect. The ancient eyes had turned once more to the flames. Milah let his hands drop to his lap.
Tahi returned and took a pose of obedience and reverence before bending into his chair.
“The boy is coming,” Tahi said.
The Dai-kvo took a pose of acknowledgement, but nothing more. Milah saw his own concern mirrored in Tahi. It seemed too long before the soft knock came at the door and Otah Machi entered, carrying a tray with three small bowls of tea. Stone-faced, the boy put the tray on the low table and took the ritual pose of greeting.
“I am honored by your presence most high Dai-kvo,” Otah said perfectly.
The old man’s eyes were alive now, his gaze on Otah with a powerful interest. He nodded, but didn’t commend the boy to his studies. Instead, he gestured to the empty seat that Milah usually took. The boy looked over, and Milah nodded. Otah sat, visibly sick with anxiety.
“Tell me,” the Dai-kvo said, picking up a bowl of tea, “what do you know of the andat?”
The boy took a moment finding his voice, but when he did, there was no quavering in it.
“They are thoughts, most high. Translated by the poet into a form that includes volition.”
The Dai-kvo sipped his tea, watching the boy. Waiting for him to say more. The silence pressed Otah to speak, but he appeared to have no more words. At last the Dai-kvo put down his cup.
“You know nothing more of them? How they are bound? What a poet must do to keep his work unlike that which has gone before? How one may pass a captured spirit from one generation to the next?”
“No, most high.”
“And why not?” The Dai-kvo’s voice was soft.
“Milah-kvo told us that more knowledge would be dangerous to us. We weren’t ready for the deeper teachings.”
“True,” the Dai-kvo said. “True enough. You were only tested. Never taught.”
Otah looked down. His face gray, he adopted a pose of contrition.
“I am sorry to have failed the school, most high. I know that I was to show them how to be strong, and I wanted to, but—”
“You have not failed, Otah. You have won through.”
Otah’s stance faltered, and
his eyes filled with confusion. Milah coughed and, taking a pose that begged the Dai-kvo’s permission, spoke.
“You recall our conversation in the snow the night I offered you the black? I said then that a weak-minded poet would be destroyed by the andat?”
Otah nodded.
“A cruel-hearted one would destroy the world,” Milah said. “Strong and kind, Otah. It’s a rare combination.”
“We see it now less often than we once did,” the Dai-kvo said. “Just as no boy has taken the black robes without a show of his strength of will, no one has put the black robe away without renouncing the cruelty that power brings. You have done both, Otah Machi. You’ve proven yourself worthy, and I would take you as my apprentice. Come back with me, boy, and I will teach you the secrets of the poets.”
The boy looked as if he’d been clubbed. His face was bloodless, his hands still, but a slow comprehension shone in his eyes. The moment stretched until Tahi snapped.
“Well? You can say something, boy.”
“What I did . . . the boy . . . I didn’t fail?“
“That wasn’t a failure. That was the moment of your highest honor.”
A slow smile came to Otah’s lips, but it was deathly cold. When he spoke, there was fury in his voice.
“Humiliating that boy was my moment of highest honor?”
Milah saw Tahi frown. He shook his head. This was between the boy and the Dai-kvo now.
“Comforting him was,” the old man said.
“Comforting him for what I did.”
“Yes. And yet how many of the other black-robed boys would have done the same? The school is built to embody these tests. It has been this way since the war that destroyed the Empire, and it has held the cities of the Khaiem together. There is a wisdom in it that runs very deep.”
Slowly, Otah took a pose of gratitude to a teacher, but there was something odd about it—something in the cant of the wrists that spoke of an emotion Milah couldn’t fathom.
“If that was honor, most high, then I truly understand.”
“Do you?” the old man asked, and his voice sounded hopeful.
“Yes. I was your tool. It wasn’t only me in that garden. You were there, too.”
“What are you saying, boy?” Tahi snapped, but Otah went on as if he had not spoken.
“You say Tahi-kvo taught me strength and Milah-kvo compassion, but there are other lessons to be taken from them. As the school is of your design, I think it only right that you should know what I’ve learned at your hand.”
The Dai-kvo looked confused, and his hands took some half-pose, but the boy didn’t stop. His gaze was fastened on the old man, and he seemed fearless.
“Tahi-kvo showed me that my own judgement is my only guide and Milah-kvo that there is no value in a lesson half-learned. My judgement was to leave this place, and I was right. I should never have let myself be tempted back.
“And that, most high, is all I’ve ever learned here.”
Otah rose and took a pose of departure.
“Otah!” Tahi barked. “Take your seat!”
The boy ignored him, turned, and walked out, closing the door behind him. Milah crossed his arms, staring at the door, unsure what to say or even think. In the grate, the ashes settled under their own weight.
“Milah,” Tahi whispered.
Milah looked over, and Tahi gestured to the Dai-kvo. The old man sat, barely breathing. His hands were held in an attitude of profound regret.
1
> +
Amat Kyaan, senior overseer for the Galtic House Wilsin, picked her way through the crowd with a cane despite the sureness of her steps. She savored the play of grammar and vocabulary crashing together like children playing sand tag. Knowing how to speak and what to say was her strength. It was the skill that had taken her from a desperate freelance scribe to here, wearing the colors of an honorable, if foreign, house and threading her way through the press of bodies and baled cotton to a meeting with her employer. There were ways from her rooms at the edge of the soft quarter to Marchat Wilsin’s favorite bathhouse that wouldn’t have braved the seafront. Still, whenever her mornings took her to the bathhouse, this was the way she picked. The seafront was, after all, the pride and symbol of her city.
She paused in the square at the mouth of the Nantan—the wide, gray-bricked street that marked the western edge of the warehouse quarter. The ancient bronze statue of Shian Sho, the last great emperor, stood looking out across the sea, as if in memory of his lost empire—rags and wastelands for eight generations now, except for the cities of the Khaiem where the unrest had never reached. Below him, young men labored, shirtless in the heat, hauling carts piled high with white, oily bales. Some laughed, some shouted, some worked with a dreadful seriousness. Some were free men taking advantage of the seasonal work. Others were indentured to houses or individual merchants. A few were slaves. And all of them were beautiful—even the fat and the awkward. Youth made them beautiful. The working of muscles under skin was more subtle and enticing than the finest robes of the Khaiem, maybe because it wasn’t considered. How many of them, she wondered, would guess that their sex was on display to an old woman who only seemed to be resting for a moment on the way to a business meeting?
All of them, probably. Vain, lovely creatures. She sighed, lifted her cane, and moved on.
The sun had risen perhaps half the width of one hand when she reached her destination. The bathhouses were inland, clustered near the banks of the Qiit and the aqueducts. Marchat Wilsin preferred one of the smaller. Amat had been there often enough that the guards knew her by sight and took awkward poses of welcome as she entered. She often suspected Wilsin-cha of choosing this particular place because it let him forget his own inadequacies of language. She sketched a pose of welcome and passed inside.
Working for a foreign house had never been simple, and translating contracts and agreements was the least of it. The Galts were a clever people, aggressive and successful in war. They held lands as wide and fertile as the Empire had at its height; they could command the respect and fear of other nations. But the assumptions they made—that agreements could be enforced by blades, that threat of invasion or blockade might underscore a negotiation—failed in the cities of the Khaiem. They might send their troops to Eddensea or their ships to Bakta, but when called upon for subtlety, they floundered. Galt might conquer the rest of the world if it chose; it would still bow before the andat. Marchat Wilsin had lived long enough in Saraykeht to have accepted the bruise on his people’s arrogance. Indulging his eccentricities, such as doing business in a bathhouse, was a small price.
The air inside was cooler, and ornate woodworked screens blocked the windows while still letting the occasional cedar-scented breeze through. Voices echoed off the hard floors and walls. Somewhere in the public rooms, a man was singing, the tones of his voice ringing like a bell. Amat went to the women’s chamber, shrugged out of her robe and pulled off her sandals. The cool air felt good against her bare skin. She took a drink of chilled water from the large granite basin, and—naked as anyone else—walked through the public baths, filled with men and women shouting and splashing one another, to the private rooms at the back. To Marchat Wilsin’s corner room, farthest from the sounds
of voices and laughter.
“It’s too hot in this pisshole of a city,” Wilsin-cha growled as she entered the room. He lay half-submerged in the pool, the water lapping at his white, wooly chest. He had been a thinner man when she had first met him. His hair and beard had been dark. “It’s like someone holding a hot towel over your face.”
“Only in the summer,” Amat said and she laid her cane beside the water and carefully slipped in. The ripples rocked the floating lacquer tray with its bowls of tea, but didn’t spill it. “If it was any further north, you’d spend all winter complaining about how cold it was.”
“It’d be a change of pace, at least.”
He lifted a pink and wrinkled hand from the water and pushed the tray over toward her. The tea was fresh and seasoned with mint. The water was cool. Amat lay back against the tiled lip of the pool.
“So what’s the news?” Marchat asked, bringing their morning ritual to a close.
Amat made her report. Things were going fairly well. The shipment of raw cotton from Eddensea was in and being unloaded. The contracts with the weavers were nearly complete, though there were some ambiguities of translation from Galtic into the Khaiate that still troubled her. And worse, the harvest of the northern fields was late.
“Will they be here in time to go in front of the andat?”
Amat took another sip of tea before answering.
“No.”
Marchat cursed under his breath. “Eddensea can ship us a season’s bales, but we can’t get our own plants picked?”
“Apparently not.”
“How short does it leave us?”
“Our space will be nine-tenths full.”
Marchat scowled and stared at the air, seeing imagined numbers, reading the emptiness like a book. After a moment, he sighed.
“Is there any chance of speaking with the Khai on it? Renegotiating our terms?”
“None,” Amat said.
Marchat made an impatient noise in the back of his throat.