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.
Going north was dangerous. He knew that, and still it didn't escape him
that the Khai Machi dying by inches was his father, that these men were
the brothers he knew only as vague memories. And because of these men,
he had lost everything again. If he was going to be haunted his whole
life by the city, perhaps he should at least see it. The only thing he
risked was his life.
At length, the conversation turned to less weighty matters andwithout a
word or shift in voice or manner-the meeting was ended. Otah spoke as
much as any, laughed as much, and sang as loudly when the pipe players
joined them. But when he stretched and turned to leave, Amiit Foss was
at his side. Otah and the overseer left together, as if they had only
happened to rise at the same time, and Otah knew that no one in the
drunken, boisterous room they left had failed to notice it.
"So, it sounds as if all the interesting things in the world were
happening in Machi," Otah said as they strode back through the hallways
of the house compound. "You are still hoping to send me there?"
"I've been hoping," Amiit Foss agreed. "But I have other plans if you
have some of your own."
"I don't," Otah said, and Amiit paused. In the dim lantern light, Otah
let the old man search his face. Something passed over Amiit, the ghost
of some old sorrow, and then he took a pose of condolence.
"I thought you had come to quit the house," Amiit said.
"I'd meant to," Otah said, surprised at himself for admitting it.
Amiit gestured Otah to follow him, and together they retired to Amiit's
apartments. The rooms were large and warm, hung with tapestries and lit
by a dozen candles. Utah sat on a low seat by a table, and Amiit took a
box from his shelf. Inside were two small porcelain bowls and a white
stoppered bottle that matched them. When Amiit poured, the scent of rice
wine filled the room.
"We drink to the gods," Amiit said, raising his bowl. "May they never
drink to us."
Otah drank the wine at a gulp. It was excellent, and he felt his throat
grow warmer. He looked at the empty bowl in his fingers and nodded.
Amiit grinned.
"It was a gift from an old friend," Amiit said. "I love to drink it, but
I hate to drink alone."
"I'm pleased to be of service," Otah said as Amiit filled the bowl again.
"So things with the woman didn't work out?"