mountainside. The exhalation could only be a comment. Cehmai felt the
subject of their conversation changing even before the andat spoke.
"She's come."
And there, dressed black as rooks and pale as mourning, Idaan Machi
moved among the dancers. Her mask hid only part of her face and not her
identity. Wrapped as he was by the darkness, she did not see him. Cehmai
felt a lightening in his breast as he watched her move through the
crowd, greeting friends and looking, he thought, for something or
perhaps someone among them. She was not beautiful-well painted, but any
number of the girls and women were more nearly perfect. She was not the
most graceful, or the best spoken, or any of the hundred things that
Cehmai thought of when he tried to explain to himself why this girl
should fascinate him. The closest he could come was that she was
interesting, and none of the others were.
"It won't end well," the andat murmured.
"It hasn't begun," Cehmai said. "How can something end when it hasn't
even started?"
Stone-blade-Soft sighed again, and Cehmai rose, tugging at his robes to
smooth their lines. The music had paused and someone in the crowd
laughed long and high.
"Come back when you've finished and we'll carry on our conversation,"
the andat said.
Cchmai ignored the patience in its voice and strode forward, back into
the light. The reed organ struck a chord just as he reached Idaan's
side. He brushed her arm, and she turned-first annoyed and then
surprised and then, he thought, pleased.
"Idaan-cha," he said, the exaggerated formality acting as its opposite
without taking him quite into the intimacy that the kya suffix would
have suggested. "I'd almost thought you wouldn't be joining us."
"I almost wasn't," she said. "I hadn't thought you'd be here."
The organ set a beat, and the drums picked it up; the dance was
beginning again. Cehmai held out a hand and, after a pause that took a
thousand years and lasted perhaps a breath, Idaan took it. The music
began in earnest, and Cehmai spun her, took her under his arm, and was
turned by her. It was a wild tune, rich and fast with a rhythm like a
racing heart. Around him the others were grinning, though not at him.
Idaan laughed, and he laughed with her. The paving stones beneath them
seemed to echo hack the song, and the sky above them received it.
As they turned to face each other, he could see the flush in Idaan's
check, and felt the same blood in his own, and then the music whirled
them off again.
In the center of the frenzy, someone took Cehmai's elbow from behind,
and something round and hard was pressed into his hands. A man's voice
whispered urgently in his ear.
"Hold this."
Cehmai faltered, confused, and the moment was gone. He was suddenly
standing alone in a throng of people, holding an empty bowl-a thread of
wine wetting the rim-while Adrah Vaunyogi took Idaan Machi through the
steps and turns of the dance. The pair shifted away from him, left him
behind. Cehmai felt the flush in his cheek brighten. He turned and
walked through the shifting bodies, handing the bowl to a servant as he
left.
"He is her lover," the andat said. "Everyone knows it."
"I don't," Cehmai said.
"I just told you."
"You tell me things all the time; it doesn't mean I agree to them."
"This thing you have in mind," Stone-Made-Soft said. "You shouldn't do it."
Cehmai looked up into the calm gray eyes set in the wide, placid face.
He felt his own head lift in defiance, even as he knew the words were
truth. It was stupid and mean and petty. Adrah Vaunyogi wasn't even
entirely in the wrong. There was a perspective by which the little
humiliation Cehmai had been dealt was a small price for flirting so
openly with another man's love.
And yet.
The andat nodded slowly and turned to consider the dancers. It was easy
enough to pick out Idaan and Adrah. They were too far for Cehmai to be
sure, but he liked to think she was frowning. It hardly mattered. Cehmai
focused on Adrah's movements-his feet, shifting in time with the drums
while Idaan danced to the flutes. He doubled his attention, feeling it
through his own body and also the constant storm at the hack of his
mind. In that instant he was both of them-a single being with two bodies
and a permanent struggle at the heart. And then, at just the moment when
Adrah's foot came hack to catch his weight, Cehmai reached out. The
paving stone gave way, the smooth stone suddenly soft as mud, and Adrah
stumbled backward and fell, landing on his rear, legs splayed. Cehmai
waited a moment for the stone to flow back nearer to smooth, then let
his consciousness return to its usual state. The storm that was
Stone-Made-Soft was louder, more present in his mind, like the proud
flesh where a thorn has scratched skin. And like a scratch, Cehmai knew
it would subside.
"We should go," Cehmai said, "before I'm tempted to do something childish."
The andat didn't answer, and Cehmai led the way through the nightdark
gardens. The music floated in the distance and then faded. Far from the
kilns and dancing, the night was cold-not freezing, but near it. But the
stars were brighter, and the moon glowed: a rim of silver that made the
starless thumbprint darker by contrast. They passed by the temple and
the counting house, the bathhouse and base of the great tower. The andat
turned down a side path then, and paused when Cehmai did not follow.
Stone-Made-Soft took a pose of query.
"Is this not where you were going?" it asked.
Cehmai considered, and then smiled.
"I suppose it is," he said, and followed the captive spirit down the
curving pathway and up the wide, shallow steps that led to the library.
The great stone doors were barred from within, but Cehmai followed the
thin gravel path at the side of the building, keeping close to the wall.
The windows of Baarath's apartments glowed with more than a night
candle's light. Even with the night half gone, he was awake. The door
slave was an ancient man, and Cehmai had to shake him by the shoulder
before he woke, retreated into the apartments, and returned to lead them in.
The apartments smelled of old wine, and the sandalwood resin that
Baarath burned in his brazier. The tables and couches were covered with
books and scrolls, and no cushion had escaped from some ink stain.
Baarath, dressed in deep red robes thick as tapestry, rose from his desk
and took a pose of welcome. His copper tore of office was lying
discarded on the floor at his feet.
"Cehmai-cha, to what do I owe this honor?"
Cehmai frowned. "Are you angry with me?" he asked.
"Of course not, great poet. How could a poor man of books dare to feel
angry with a personage like yourself?"