"Which of the others would be best for the city now that Biitrah is
gone?" Otah asked.
The older man named Kaiin, and the younger man and woman Danat, in the
same moment, the syllables grinding against each other in the warm, damp
air, and they immediately fell to debate. Kaiin was a master negotiator;
Danat was better thought of by the utkhaiem. Kaiin was prone to fits of
temper, Danat to weeks of sloth. Each man, to hear it, was a paragon of
virtue and little better than a street thug. Otah listened, interjected
comments, asked questions crafted to keep the conversation alive and on
its course. His mind was hardly there.
When at last he made his excuses, the three debaters hardly paused in
their wrangle. Otah dried himself by a brazier and collected his
robes-laundered now, smelling of cedar oil and warm from the kiln. The
streets were fuller than when he had gone into the bathhouse. The sun
would fall early, disappearing behind the peaks to the west long before
the sky grew dark, but it still hovered two hands above the mountainous
horizon.
Otah walked without knowing where he was walking to. The black cobbles
and tall houses seemed familiar and exotic at the same time. The towers
rose into the sky, glowing in the sunlight. At the intersection of three
large streets, Otah found a courtyard with a great stone archway inlaid
with wood and metal sigils of chaos and order. Harsh forge smoke from
the east mixed with the greasy scent of a cart seller's roasting duck
and, for a moment, Otah was possessed by the memory of being a child no
more than four summers old. The smoke scent wove with the taste of
honeybread nearly too hot to eat, the clear open view of the valley and
mountains from the top of the towers, and a woman's skin-mother or
sister or servant. There was no way to know.
It was a ghost memory, strong and certain as stone, but without a place
in his life. Something had happened, once, that tied all these senses
together, but it was gone and he would never have it. He was upstart and
traitor. Poisoner and villain. None of it was true, but it made for an
interesting story to tell in the teahouses and meeting rooms-a variation
on the theme of fratricide that the Khaiem replayed in every generation.
A deep fatigue pressed into him. He had been an innocent to think that
he might be forgotten, that Otah Machi might escape the venomous
speculation of the traders and merchants, high families and low
townsmen. There was no use for truth when spectacle was at issue. And
there was nothing in the city that could matter less than the
halfrecalled memories of a courier's abandoned childhood. The life he'd
built mattered less than ashes to these people. His death would be a
relief to them.
He returned to House Nan just as the stars began to glimmer in the deep
northern sky. There was fresh bread and pepper-baked lamb, distilled
rice wine and cold water. The other men who were to share his room
joined him at the table, and they laughed and joked, traded information
and gossip from across the world. Otah slid back comfortably into Itani
Noygu, and his smiles came more easily as the night wore on, though a
cold core remained in his breast. It was only just before he went to
crawl into his cot that he found the steward, recovered his pouch of
letters, and prepared himself.
All the letters were, of course, still sewn shut, but Otah checked the
knots. None had been undone so far as he could tell. It would have been
a breach of the gentleman's trade to open letters held in trust, and it
would have been foolishness to trust to honor. Had House Nan been
willing to break trust, that would have been interesting to know as
well. He laid them out on his cot, considering.
Letters to the merchant houses and lower families among the utkhaiem
were the most common. He didn't carry a letter for the Khai himself-he
would have balked at so high a risk-but his work would take him to the
palaces. And there were audiences, no doubt, to which he could get an
invitation. If he chose, he could go to the Master of Tides and claim
business with members of the court. It wouldn't even require stretching
the truth very far. He sat in silence, feeling as if there were two men
within him.
One wanted nothing more than to embrace the fear and flee to some
distant island and be pleased to live wondering whether his brothers
would still be searching him out. The other was consumed by an anger
that drove him forward, deeper into the city of his birth and the family
that had first discarded him and then fashioned a murderer from his memory.
Fear and anger. He waited for the calm third voice of wisdom, but it
didn't come. He was left with no better plan than to act as Irani Noygu
would have, had he been nothing other than he appeared. When at last he
repacked his charges and lay on his cot, he expected that sleep would
not come, but it did, and he woke in the morning forgetful of where he
was and surprised to find that Kiyan was not in the bed beside him.
The palaces of the Khai were deep within the city, and the gardens
around them made it seem more like a walk into some glorious low town
than movement into the center of a great city. Trees arched over the
walkways, branches bright with new leaves. Birds fluttered past him,
reminding him of Udun and the wayhouse he had almost made his home. The
greatest tower loomed overhead, dark stone rising up like twenty
palaces, one above the other. Otah stopped in a courtyard before the
lesser palace of the Master of Tides and squinted up at the great tower,
wondering whether he had ever been to the top of it. Wondering whether
being here, now, was valor, cowardice, foolishness, or wisdom; the
product of anger or fear or the childish drive to show that he could
defy them all if he chose.
He gave his name to the servants at the door and was led to an an
techamber larger than his apartments back in Udun. A slave girl plucked
a lap harp, filling the high air with a sweet, slow tune. He smiled at
her and took a pose of appreciation. She returned his smile and nodded,
but her fingers never left the strings. The servant, when he came, wore
robes of deep red shot with yellow and a silver armband. He took a pose
of greeting so brief it almost hadn't happened.
"Irani Noygu. You're Itani Noygu, then? Ah, good. I am Piyun See, the
Master of Tides' assistant. He's too busy to see you himself. So House
Siyanti has taken an interest in Machi, then?" he said. Otah smiled,
though he meant it less this time.
"I couldn't say. I only go where they send me, Piyun-cha."
The assistant took a pose of agreement.
"I had hoped to know the court's schedule in the next week," Otah said.
"I have business-"
"With the poet. Yes, I know. He left your name with us. He said we
should keep a watch out for you. You're wise to come to us first. You
wouldn't imagine the people who simply drift through on the breeze as if
the poets weren't members of the court."