Daikani mines and to the wayhouse where her brother had died at Oshai's
hands. When she was finished, neither man spoke. Adrah looked stricken.
Oshai, merely thoughtful. At length, the assassin took a pose of gratitude.
"You were right to call me, Idaan-cha," he said. "I doubt the poet knows
precisely what he's looking for, but that he's looking at all is had
enough."
"What do we do?" Adrah said. The desperation in his voice made Oshai
look up like a hunting dog hearing a bird.
"You do nothing, most high," Oshai said. "Neither you nor the great lady
does anything. I will take care of this."
"You'll kill him," Idaan said.
"If it seems the best course, I may...."
Idaan took a pose appropriate to correcting a servant. Oshai's words faded.
"I was not asking, Oshai-cha. You'll kill him."
The assassin's eyes narrowed for a moment, but then something like
amusement flickered at the corners of his mouth and the glimmer of
candlelight in his eyes grew warmer. He seemed to weigh something in his
mind, and then took a pose of acquiescence. Idaan lowered her hands.
"Will there be anything else, most high?" Oshai asked without taking his
gaze from her.
"No," Adrah said. "'T'hat will be all."
"Wait half a hand after I've gone," Oshai said. "I can explain myself,
and the two of you together borders on the self-evident. All three would
be difficult."
And with that, he vanished. Idaan looked at the sky doors. She was
tempted to open them again, just for a moment. To see the land and sky
laid out before her.
"It's odd, you know," she said. "If I had been born a man, they would
have sent me away to the school. I would have become a poet or taken the
brand. But instead, they kept me here, and I became what they're afraid
of. Kaiin and Danat are hiding from the brother who has broken the
traditions and come back to kill them for the chair. And here I am. I am
Otah Machi. Only they can't see it."
"I love you, Idaan-kya."
She smiled because there was nothing else to do. He had heard the words,
but understood nothing. It would have meant as much to talk to a dog.
She took his hand in hers, laced her fingers with his.
"I love you too, Adrah-kya. And I will be happy once we've done all this
and taken the chair. You'll be the Khai Machi, and I will be your wife.
We'll rule the city together, just as we always planned, and everything
will be right again. It's been half a hand by now. We should go."
They parted in one of the night gardens, he to the east and his family
compound, and she to the south, to her own apartments, and past them and
west to tree-lined path that led to the poet's house. If the shutters
were closed, if no light shone but the night candle, she told herself
she wouldn't go in. But the lanterns were lit brightly, and the shutters
open. She paced quietly through the grounds, peering in through windows,
until she caught the sound of voices. Cehmai's soft and reasonable, and
then another. A man's, loud and full of a rich selfimportance. Baarath,
the librarian. Idaan found a tree with low branches and deep shadows and
sat, waiting with as much patience as she could muster, and silently
willing the man away. The full moon was halfway across the sky before
the two came to the door, silhouetted. Baarath swayed like a drunkard,
but Cehmai, though he laughed as loud and sang as poorly, didn't waver.
She watched as Baarath took a sloppy pose of farewell and stumbled off
along the path. Cehmai watched him go, then looked back into the house,
shaking his head.
Idaan rose and stepped out of the shadows.
She saw Cehmai catch sight of her, and she waited. He might have another
guest-he might wave her away, and she would have to go back through the
night to her own apartments, her own bed. The thought filled her with
black dread until the poet put one hand out to her, and with the other
motioned toward the light within his house.
Stone-Made-Soft brooded over a game of stones, its massive head cupped
in a hand twice the size of her own. The white stones, she noticed, had
lost badly. The andat looked up slowly and, its curiosity satisfied, it
turned back to the ended game. The scent of mulled wine filled the air.
Cehmai closed the door behind her, and then set about fastening the
shutters.
"I didn't expect to see you," the poet said.
"Do you want me to leave?"
'T'here were a hundred things he could have said. Graceful ways to say
yes, or graceless ways to deny it. He only turned to her with the
slightest smile and went back to his task. Idaan sat on a low couch and
steeled herself. She couldn't say why she was driven to do this, only
that the impulse was much like draping her legs out the sky doors, and
that it was what she had chosen to do.
"Daaya Vaunyogi is approaching the Khai tomorrow. He is going to
petition that Adrah and I be married."
Cehmai paused, sighed, turned to her. His expression was melancholy, but
not sorrowful. He was like an old man, she thought, amused by the world
and his own role in it. There was a strength in him, and an acceptance.
"I understand," he said.
"Do You?"
"No.'
"He is of a good house, their bloodlines-"
"And he's well off and likely to oversee his family's house when his
father passes. And he's a good enough man, for what he is. It isn't that
I can't imagine why he would choose to marry you, or you him. But, given
the context, there are other questions."
"I love him," Idaan said. "We have planned to do this for ... we have
been lovers for almost two years."
Cehmai sat beside a brazier, and looked at her with the patience of a
man studying a puzzle. The coals had burned down to a fine white ash.
"And you've come to be sure I never speak of what happened the other
night. To tell me that it can never happen again."
The sense of vertigo returned, her feet held over the abyss.
"No," she said.
"You've come to stay the night?"
"If you'll have me, yes."
The poet looked down, his hands laced together before him. A cricket
sang, and then another. The air seemed thin.
"Idaan-kya, I think it might be better if-"
"Then lend me a couch and a blanket. If you ... let me stay here as a
friend might. We are friends, at least? Only don't make me go back to my
rooms. I don't want to be there. I don't want to be with people and I
can't stand being alone. And I ... I like it here."
She took a pose of supplication. Cehmai rose and for a moment she was
sure he would refuse. She almost hoped he would. Scoot forward, no more
effort than sitting up, and then the sound of wind. But Cehmai took a