"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.
"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 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. 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 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 way
s 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 madness. 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."
Kiyan tilted her head, like a fox that's heard a strange noise, then laughed once.
"You think I'm upset you didn't tell me? You think I'm upset because you had a secret and you didn't spill it the first time we shared a bed? Irani, this may surprise you, but I have secrets a thousand times less important than that, and I've kept them a hundred times better."
`But you want me to leave?
"Of course I want you to leave. Are you dim? Do you know what happened to the men who guarded your eldest brother? They're dead. Do you recall what happened when the Khai Yalakeht's sons turned on each other six years back? 't'here were a dozen corpses before that was through, and only two of them were related to the Khai. Now look around you. How do you expect me to protect my house? How can I protect Old Mani? And think before you speak, because if you tell me that you'll be strong and manly and protect me, I swear by all the gods I'll turn you in myself."
"No one will find out," Otah said.
She closed her eyes. A tear broke free, tracing a bright line down her cheek. When he leaned close, reaching out to wipe it away, she slapped his hand before it touched her.
"I would almost be willing to take that chance, if it were only me. Not quite, but nearly. It isn't, though. It's everyone and everything I've worked for."
"Kiyan-kya, together we could ..."
"Do nothing. Together we could do nothing, because you are leaving now. And odd as it sounds, I do understand. Why you concealed what you did, why you told inc now. And I hope ghosts haunt you and chew out your eyes at night. I hope all the gods there are damn you for making me love you and then doing this to me. Now get out. If you're here in half a hand's time, I will call for the guard."
Outside the window, a flutter of wings and then the fluting melody of a songbird. The constant distant sound of the river. The scent of pine.
"Do you believe me?" she asked. "That I'll call the guard on you if you stay?"
"I do," he said.
"Then go."
"I love you."
"I know you do, 'Tani-kya. Go."
House Siyanti had quarters in the city for its people-small rooms hardly large enough for a cot and a brazier, but the blankets were thick and soft, and the kitchens sold meals at half the price a cart on the street would. When the rain came that night, Otah lay in the glow of the coals and listened to patter of water
against leaves mix with the voices from the covered courtyard. Someone was playing a nomad's harp, and the music was lively and sorrowful at the same time. Sometimes voices would rise up together in song or laughter. He turned Kiyan's words over in his mind and noticed how empty they made him feel.
He'd been a fool to tell her, a fool to say anything. If he had only kept his secrets secret, he could have made a life for himself based on lies, and if the brothers he only knew as shadows and moments from a halfrecalled childhood had ever discovered him, Kiyan and Old Mani and anyone else unfortunate enough to know him might have been killed without even knowing why.
Kiyan had not been wrong.
A gentle murmur of thunder came and went. Otah rose from his cot and walked out. Amiit Foss kept late hours, and Otah found him sitting at a fire grate, poking the crackling flames with a length of iron while he joked over his shoulder with the five men and four women who lounged on cushions and low chairs. He smiled when he saw Otah and called for a howl of wine for him. The gathering looked so calm and felt so relaxed that only someone in the gentleman's trade would have recognized it for the business meeting that it was.
"Itani-cha is one of the couriers I mean to send north, if I can pry him away from his love of sloth and comfort," Amiit said with a smile. The others greeted him and made him welcome. Otah sat by the fire and listened. There would be nothing said here that he was not permitted to know. Amiit's introduction had established with the subtlety of a master Otah's rank and the level of trust to be afforded him, and no one in the room was so thick as to misunderstand him.
The news from the north was confusing. The two surviving sons of Machi had vanished. Neither had appeared in the other cities of the Khaiem, going to courts and looking for support as tradition would have them do. Nor had the streets of Machi erupted in bloodshed as their bases of power within the city vied for advantage. The best estimates were that the old Khai wouldn't see another winter, and even some of the houses of the utkhaiem seemed to be preparing to offer up their sons as the new Khai should the succession fail to deliver a single living heir. Something very quiet was happening, and House Siyanti-like everyone else in the world-was aching with curiosity. Otah could hear it in their voices, could see it in the way they held their wine. Even when the conversation shifted to the glassblowers of Cetani and the collapse of the planned summer fair in Amnat-Tan, all minds were drawn toward Machi. He sipped his wine.