slaughtered in a distant city raced in his mind until the figure came
out between him and his doorway, silhouetted in the dim light. Cehmai's
heart didn't slow, but it did change contents.
She still wore the half-mask she'd had at the gathering. Her black and
white robes shifted, the cloth so rich and soft, and he could hear it
even over the murmur of the trees. He stepped toward her, taking a pose
of welcome.
"Idaan," he said. "Is there something ... I didn't expect to find you
here. I mean ... I'm doing this rather badly, aren't l?"
"Start again," she said.
"Idaan."
"Cehmai."
She took a step toward him. He could see the flush in her cheek and
smell the faint, nutty traces of distilled wine on her breath. When she
spoke, her words were sharp and precise.
"I saw what you did to Adrah," she said. "He left a heel mark in the stone."
"Have I given offense?" he asked.
"Not to me. He didn't see it, and I didn't say."
In the back of his mind, or in some quarter of his flesh, Cehmai felt
Stone-Made-Soft receding as if in answer to his own wish. They were
alone on the dark path.
"It's difficult for you, isn't it?" she said. "Being a part of the court
and yet not. Being among the most honored men in the city, and yet not
of Machi."
"I bear it. You've been drinking."
"I have. But I know who I am and where I am. I know what I'm doing."
"What are you doing, Idaan-kya?"
"Poets can't take wives, can they?"
"We don't, no. There's not often room in our lives for a family."
"And lovers?"
Cehmai felt his breath coming faster and willed it to slow. An echo of
amusement in the back of his mind was not his own thought. He ignored it.
"Poets take lovers," he said.
She stepped nearer again, not touching, not speaking. There was no chill
to the air now. There was no darkness. Cehmai's senses were as fresh and
bright and clear as midday, his mind as focused as the first day he'd
controlled the andat. Idaan took his hand and slowly, deliberately, drew
it through the folds of her robes until it cupped her breast.
"You ... you have a lover, Idaan-kya. Adrah ..."
"Do you want me to sleep here tonight?"
"Yes, Idaan. I do."
"And I want that too."
He struggled to think, but his skin felt as though he was basking in
some hidden sun. There seemed to be some sound in his ears that he
couldn't place that drove away everything but his fingertips and the
cold-stippled flesh beneath them.
"I don't understand why you're doing this," he said.
Her lips parted, and she moved half an inch back. His hand pressed
against her skin, his eyes were locked on hers. Fear sang through him
that she would take another step back, that his fingers would only
remember this moment, that this chance would pass. She saw it in his
face, she must have, because she smiled, calm and knowing and sure of
herself, like something from a dream.
"Do you care?" she asked.
"No," he said, half-surprised at the answer. "No, I truly don't."
THE CARAVAN LEFT THE LOW TOWN BEFORE DAWN, CARTWHEELS RATTLING on the
old stone paving, oxen snorting white in the cold, and the voices of
carters and merchants light with the anticipation of journey's end. The
weeks of travel were past. By midday, they would cross the bridge over
the Tidat and enter Machi. The companionship of the roadalready somewhat
strained by differences in political opinions and some unfortunate words
spoken by one of the carters early in the journeywould break apart, and
each of them would be about his own business again. Otah walked with his
hands in his sleeves and his heart divided between dread and
anticipation. Irani Noygu was going to Machi on the business of his
house-the satchel of letters at his side proved that. There was nothing
he carried with him that would suggest anything else. He had come away
from this city as a child so long ago he had only shreds of memory left
of it. A scent of musk, a stone corridor, bathing in a copper tub when
he was small enough to be lifted with a single hand, a view from the top
of one of the towers. Other things as fragmentary, as fleeting. He could
not say which memories were real and which only parts of dreams.
It was enough, he supposed, to be here now, walking in the darkness. He
would go and see it with a man's eyes. He would see this place that had
sent him forth and, despite all his struggles, still had the power to
poison the life he'd built for himself. Itani Noygu had made his way as
an indentured laborer at the seafronts of Saraykeht, as a translator and
fisherman and midwife's assistant in the east islands, as a sailor on a
merchant ship, and as a courier in House Siyanti and all through the
cities. He could write and speak in three tongues, play the flute badly,
tell jokes well, cook his own meals over a half-dead fire, and comport
himself well in any company from the ranks of the utkhaiem to the
denizens of the crudest dockhouse. This from a twelve-year-old boy who
had named himself, been his own father and mother, formed a life out of
little more than the will to do so. Irani Noygu was by any sane standard
a success.
It was Otah Machi who had lost Kiyan's love.
The sky in the east lightened to indigo and then royal blue, and Otah
could see the road out farther ahead. Between one breath and the next,
the oxen came clearer. And the plains before them opened like a vast
scroll. Far to the north, mountains towered, looking flat as a painting
and blued by the distance. Smoke rose from low towns and mines on the
plain, the greener pathway of trees marked the river, and on the
horizon, small as fingers, rose the dark towers of Machi, unnatural in
the landscape.
Otah stopped as sunlight lit the distant peaks like a fire. The
brilliance crept down and then the distant towers blazed suddenly, and a
moment later, the plain flooded with light. Otah caught his breath.
This is where I started, he thought. I come from here.
He had to trot to catch hack up with the caravan, but the questioning
looks were all answered with a grin and a gesture. The enthusiastic
courier still nave enough to be amazed by a sunrise. There was nothing
more to it than that.
House Siyanti kept no quarters in Machi, but the gentleman's trade had
its provisions for this. Other Houses would extend courtesy even to
rivals so long as it was understood that the intrigues and prying were
kept to decorous levels. If a courier were to act against a rival House
or carried information that would too deeply tempt his hosts, it was
better form to pay for a room elsewhere. Nothing Otah carried was so