and about myself. He was, I think, the best teacher I have known. I
doubt I would have been chosen to study with the Dai-kvo if it hadn't
been for him. But then he refused the chance to become a poet."
"And the brand," the Khai said. "He refused the brand. Perhaps he had
ambitions even then."
He was a boy, and angry, Maati thought. He had beaten Tahi-kvo and
Milah-kvo on his own terms. He'd refused their honors. Of course he
didn't accept disgrace.
The utkhaiem high enough to express an opinion nodded among themselves
as if a decision made in heat by a boy not yet twelve might explain a
murder two decades later. Maati let it pass.
"I met him again in Saraykeht," Maati said. "I had gone there to study
under Heshai-kvo and the andat Removing-the-Part-ThatContinues. Otah-kvo
was living under an assumed name at the time, working as a laborer on
the docks."
"And you recognized him?"
"I did," Maati said.
"And yet you did not denounce him?" The old man's voice wasn't angry.
Maati had expected anger. Outrage, perhaps. What he heard instead was
gentler and more penetrating. When he looked up, the redrimmed eyes were
very much like Otah-kvo's. Even if he had not known before, those eyes
would have told him that this man was Otah's father. He wondered briefly
what his own father's eyes had looked like and whether his resembled
them, then forced his mind back to the matter at hand.
"I did not, most high. I regarded him as my teacher, and ... and I
wished to understand the choices he had made. We became friends for a
time. Before the death of the poet took me from the city."
"And do you call him your teacher still? You call him Otah-kvo. That is
a title for a teacher, is it not?"
Maati blushed. He hadn't realized until then that he was doing it.
"An old habit, most high. I was sixteen when I last saw Otah-cha. I'm
thirty now. It has been almost half my life since I have spoken with
him. I think of him as a person I once knew who told me some things I
found of use at the time," Maati said, and sensing that the falsehood of
those words might be clear, he continued with some that were more nearly
true. "My loyalty is to the Dai-kvo."
"That is good," the Khai Machi said. "Tell me, then. How will you
conduct this examination of my city?"
"I am here to study the library of Machi," Maati said. "I will spend my
mornings there, most high. After midday and in the evenings I will move
through the city. I think ... I think that if Otah-kvo is here it will
not be difficult to find him."
The gray, thin lips smiled. Maati thought there was condescension in
them. Perhaps even pity. He felt a blush rise in his cheeks, but kept
his face still. He knew how he must appear to the Khai's weary eyes, but
he would not flinch and confirm the man's worst suspicions. He swallowed
once to loosen his throat.
"You have great faith in yourself," the Khai Machi said. "You come to my
city for the first time. You know nothing of its streets and tunnels,
little of its history, and you say that finding my missing son will be
easy for you."
"Rather, most high, I will make it easy for him to find me."
It might have been his imagination-he knew from experience that he was
prone to see his own fears and hopes in other people instead of what was
truly there-but Maati thought there might have been a flicker of
approval on the old man's face.
"You will report to me," the Khai said. "When you find him, you will
come to me before anyone else, and I will send word to the Dai-kvo."
"As you command, most high," Maati lied. He had said that his loyalty
lay with the Dal-hvo, but there was no advantage he could see to
explaining all that meant here and now.
The meeting continued for a short time. The Khai seemed as exhausted by
it as Maati himself was. Afterward, a servant girl led him to his
apartments within the palaces. Night was already falling as he closed
the door, truly alone for the first time in weeks. The journey from his
home in the Dai-kvo's village wasn't the half-season's trek he would
have had from Saraykeht, but it was enough, and Maati didn't enjoy the
constant companionship of strangers on the road.
A fire had been lit in the grate, and warm tea and cakes of honeyed
almonds waited for him at a lacquered table. He lowered himself into the
chair, rested his feet, and closed his eyes. Being here, in this place,
had a sense of unreality to it. To have been entrusted with anything of
importance was a surprise after his loss of status. The thought stung,
but he forced himself to turn in toward it. He had lost a great deal of
the Dai-kvo's trust between his failure in Saraykeht and his refusal to
disavow Liat, the girl who had once loved Otah-kvo but left both him and
the fallen city to be with Maati, when it became clear she was bearing
his child. If there had been time between the two, perhaps it might have
been different. One scandal on the heels of the other, though, had been
too much. Or so he told himself. It was what he wanted to believe.
A scratch at the door roused him from his bitter reminiscences. He
straightened his robes and ran a hand through his hair before he spoke.
"Come in."
The door slid open and a young man of perhaps twenty summers wearing the
brown robes of a poet stepped in and took a pose of greeting. Maati
returned it as he considered Cehmai Tyan, poet of Mach]. The broad
shoulders, the open face. Here, Maati thought, is what I should have
been. A talented boy poet who studied under a master while young enough
to have his mind molded to the right shape. And when the time came, he
had taken that burden on himself for the sake of his city. As I should
have done.
"I only just heard you'd arrived," Cehmai Tyan said. "I left orders at
the main road, but apparently they don't think as much of me as they
pretend."
There was a light humor in his voice and manner. As if this were a game,
as if he were a person whom anyone in Machi-or in the worldcould truly
treat with less than total respect. He held the power to soften stone-it
was the concept, the essential idea, that Manat I)oru had translated
into a human form all those generations ago. This widefaced, handsome
boy could collapse every bridge, level every mountain. The great towers
of Machi could turn to a river of stone, fast-flowing and dense as
quicksilver, which would lay the city to ruin at his order. And he made
light of being ignored as if he were junior clerk in some harbormaster's
house. Maati couldn't tell if it was an affectation or if the poet was