THE (tlpq-4) (22 page)

guess. The forces at play are deadlier than fires or floods. If I were

someone else, I wouldn't wager a length of copper on my chances if you

offered me odds."

"That isn't true," Maati said. He hadn't meant to shout, and lowered his

voice when he spoke again. "That isn't true. We've done good work here.

The equal of anything I learned from the Dai-kvo. Your chances are equal

to the best any poet has faced. I'll swear to that if you'd like."

"There's no call," she said. From down the hall, he heard voices in

bright conversation. He heard laughter. Vanjit took his hand. He had

never noticed how small her hands were. How small she was, hardly more

than a child herself.

"Thank you," she said. "Whatever happens, thank you. If I die today,

thank you. Do you understand?"

"No."

"You've made living bearable," she said. "It's more than I can ever repay.

"You can. You can repay all of it and more. Don't die. Succeed."

Vanjit smiled and took a pose that accepted instruction, then moved

forward, wrapping her arms around Maati in a bear hug. He cradled her

head on his breast, his eyes pressed closed, his heart sick and anxious.

The chamber they had set aside for the binding had once been the

sleeping room for one of the younger cohorts. The lines of cots were

gone now. The windows shone with the light of middle morning. Vanjit

took a round of chalk and began writing out her binding on the wide

south wall, ancient words and recent blending together in the new

grammar they had all created. From Maati's cushion at the back of the

room, the letters were blurry and indistinct, but from their shape

alone, he could see that the binding had shifted since the last time

he'd seen it.

Eiah sat at his side, her hand on his arm, her gaze fixed on the

opposite wall. She looked half-ill.

"It's going to be all right," Maati murmured.

Eiah nodded once, her eyes never leaving the pale words taking over the

far wall like a bright shadow. When Vanjit was finished, she walked to

the beginning again, paced slowly down the wall reading all she'd

written, and then, satisfied, put the chalk on the ground. A single

cushion had been placed in the middle of the room for her. She stopped

at it, her binding behind her, her face turned toward the small assembly

at the back. She took a silent pose of gratitude, turned, and sat.

Maati had a powerful urge to stand, to call out. He could wash the wall

clean, talk through the binding again, check it for errors one last

time. Vanjit began to chant, the cadences unlike anything he had heard

before. Her voice was soft, coaxing, gentle; she was singing her andat

into the world. He clenched his fists and stayed quiet. Eiah seemed to

have stopped breathing.

The sound of Vanjit's voice filled the air, reverberating as if the

building had grown huge. The chant began to echo, and Vanjit's actual

voice receded. Words and phrases combined, voice against echo, making

new sentences and meanings. The lilt of the girl's voice fell into

harmony with itself, and Maati heard a third voice, neither Vanjit nor

her echo, but something deep and sonorous as a bell. It was reciting

syllables borrowed from the words of the binding, creating another layer

of sound and intention. The air thickened, and Vanjit's back-her

shoulders hunched, her head bowed-seemed very far away. Maati smelled

hot iron, or perhaps blood. His heart began to race with a fear he

couldn't express.

Something's wrong. T' have to stop her, he said to Eiah, but though he

could feel the words vibrate in his throat, he couldn't hear them.

Vanjit's circling voice had made a kind of silence that Maati was

powerless to break. Another layer of echoes came, the words seeming to

come before Vanjit spoke them, echoing from the other direction in time.

Beside him, Eiah's face had gone white.

Vanjit's voice spoke a single word-the last of the binding-at the same

time as all the layered echoes, a dozen voices speaking as one. The

world itself chimed, pandemonium resolving into a single harmonious

chord. The room was only a room again. When Maati stood, he could hear

the hem of his robe whispering against the stone. Vanjit sat where she

had been, her head bowed. No new form stood before her. It should have

been there.

She's failed, Maati thought. It hasn't worked, and she's paid the price

of it.

The others were on their feet, but he took a pose that commanded them to

remain where they were. This was his. However bad it was, it was his.

His belly twisted as he walked toward her corpse. He had seen the price

a failed binding exacted: always different, always fatal. And yet

Vanjit's ribs rose and fell, still breathing.

"Vanjit-kya?" he said, his voice no more than a murmur.

The girl shifted, turned her head, and looked up at him. Her eyes were

bright with joy. In her lap, something squirmed. Maati saw the round,

soft flesh, the tubby, half-formed hands and feet, a toothless mouth,

and black eyes full of empty rage. Except for the eyes, it could have

been a human baby.

"He's come," Vanjit said. "Look, Maati-kvo. We've done it. He's here."

As if freed from silence by the poet's words, Clarity-of-Sight opened

its tiny throat and wailed.

11

Kiyan-kya-

I look athow longI carriedthe world, orthoughtI did, andl

wonder how many times we have to learn the same lessons.

Until we remember them, I suppose. It isn't that I've

stopped worrying. The gods all know I crawl into my bed at

night half-tempted to call for reports from Sinja and Danat

and Ashua. Even if I had them dragged into my chambers to

recount everything they'd seen and done, how would it change

things? Would I need less sleep? Would I be able to remake

the world through raw will like a poet? I'm only a man,

however fancy the robes they put me in. I'm not more suited

to lead a war fleet or root out a conspiracy or win a young

girl's love than any of them.

Why is it so hard for me to believe that someone besides

myself might be competent? Or did I ./ear that letting go of

any one part would mean everything would all away?

No, love. Idaan was right. I have been punishing myself all

this time for not saving the people I cared for most. I

think some nights that I will never stop mourning you.

Otah's pen hung in the cool night air, the brass nib just above the

paper. The night breeze smelled of the sea and the city, rich and heavy

as an overripe grape whose skin has only just split. In Machi, they

would already be moving down to the tunnels beneath the city. In Utani,

where his central palace stood wrapped in cloth, awaiting his return,

the leaves would have turned to red and yellow and gold. In Pathai,

where Eiah worked with her latest pet physician and pointedly ignored

all matters of politics and power, there might be frost in the mornings.

Here in Saraykeht, the change of seasons was only a difference of scent

and the surprise that the sun, which had so plagued them at summer's

height, could grow tired so early. He wrote a few more sentences, the

pen sounding like bird's feet against the paper, and then blew on the

ink to cure it, folded the letter, and put it in with all the others he

had written to her.

His eyes ached. His back ached. The joints of his hands were stiff, and

his spine felt carved from wood. For days, he had been poring over

records and agendas, letters and accountancy reports, searching for some

connection that would uncover Maati's suspected patron. There were

patterns to be looked for-people who had traveled extensively in the

past few years who might be moving with the poet, supplies that had

vanished with no clear destination, opposition to the planned alliance

with Galt. And, with that, Maati's boast of an ear in the palaces. And

the gods all knew there were patterns to be found. The courts of the

Khaiem were thick with petty intrigue. Flushing out any one particular

scheme was like plucking a particular thread from a tapestry.

To make matters worse, the servants and high families that Idaan had

chided him for not making better use of had no place here. Even if Maati

didn't have the well-placed spy he'd claimed, Otah still couldn't afford

the usual gossip. Maati had to be found and the situation resolved

before he managed to bind some new andat, and no one-Galt, Westlander,

no one-could hear of it for fear of the reaction it would bring.

That meant that the records and reports were brought to Otah's private

chambers. Crate after crate until they piled near the ceiling. And the

only eyes that he could trust to the task were his own and, through the

twisted humor that gods seemed to enjoy, Idaan's.

She was stretched out on a long silk divan now, half a month's lading

records from the harbor master's office arrayed about her. Her closed

eyes shifted beneath their lids, but her breath was as steady as the

tide. Otah found a thin wool blanket and draped it over her.

It had not particularly been his intention to embrace his exiled sister

and make her a part of the hunt for Maati, but the work was more than he

could manage on his own. The only other person who knew of the problem

was Sinja, and he was busy with Balasar and the creation of the unlikely

fleet whose mission was to save Chaburi-Tan. Idaan knew the workings of

the poets as well as any woman alive; she had been the enemy of one, the

lover of another. She knew a great deal about court intrigue and also

the mechanics of living an unobtrusive life. There was no one better

equipped for the investigation.

He did not trust her, but had resolved to behave as if he did. At least

for the present. The future was as unpredictable as it had always been,

and he'd given up hope of anticipating its changes.

He knew from long experience that he wouldn't sleep if he went to bed

now. His mind might be in a deep fog, but his body was punishing him for

sitting too long. As it would have punished him for working too hard.

The range allowed to him was so much narrower than when he'd been young.

A walk to loosen his joints, and he might be able to rest.

The armsmen at the door of his apartments took poses of obeisance as he

stepped out. He only nodded and made his way south. He wore a simple

robe of cotton. The cloth was of the first quality, but the cut was

simple and the red and gray less than gaudy. Someone who didn't know him

by sight might have mistaken him for a member of the utkhaiem, or even a

particularly powerful servant. He made a game of walking with his head

down, trying to pass as a functionary in his own house.

The halls of the palaces were immense and ornate. Many small

items-statues, paintings, jeweled decoration-had vanished during the

brief occupation by Galt, but the huge copper-sheathed columns and the

high, clear glass of the unshuttered windows spoke of greater days. The

wood floors shone with lacquer even where they were scraped and pitted.

Incense burned in unobtrusive brass bowls, filling the air with the

scent of sandalwood and desert sage. Even this late at night, singing

slaves carried their harmonies in empty chambers. Crickets, Otah

thought, would have been as beautiful.

His back had begun to relax and his feet to complain when the illusion

of traveling the palaces unnoticed was broken. A servant in a gold robe

appeared at the far end of the hall, walking purposefully toward him.

Otah stopped. The man took a pose of obeisance and apology as he drew near.

"Most High, I am sorry to interrupt. Ana Dasin has come to request an

audience. I would have turned her away, but under the circumstances ..."

"You did well," he said. "Take her to the autumn garden."

The servant took a pose that accepted the command, but then hesitated.

"Should I send for an outer robe, Most High?"

Otah looked down at the wrinkled fabric and wondered what Ana would see

if he met her like this: a man of great power and consequence at the end

of a long day's work, or an old slob in a cotton robe.

"Yes," he said with a sigh. "An outer robe would be welcome. And tea.

Bring us fresh tea. She might not care for it, but I want some."

The man scurried away. They had known where he was, and that he didn't

wish to be disturbed. And they had known when to disturb him. To be the

Emperor of the Khaiem was above all else to be known by people he did

not know. He had discovered that truth a thousand times before, and

likely would do so a thousand times again, and each one discomforted him.

The autumn garden was nestled within the palaces. Trees and vines hid

the stone walls, and paper lanterns gave the flagstone path a soft

light. Near the center, a small brass fountain, long given to verdigris,

chuckled to itself and a small wooden pavilion rested in the darkness.

Otah walked down the path, still tugging the black and silver outer robe

into place. Ana Dasin sat in the pavilion, her gaze on the water