you might introduce him to your friends."
"I would be honored," Idaan said, her mind considering the thou sand
ways 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