really so utterly naive.
"The Khai left orders as well," Maati said.
"Ah, well. Nothing to be done about that, then. I trust everything is
acceptable with your apartments?"
"I ... I really don't know. I haven't really looked around yet. 'Ibo
busy sitting on something that doesn't move, I suppose. I close my eyes,
and I feel like I'm still jouncing around on the back of a cart."
The young poet laughed, a warm sound that seemed full of selfconfidence
and summer light. Maati felt himself smiling thinly and mentally
reproved himself for being ungracious. Cehmai dropped onto a cushion
beside the fire, legs crossed under him.
"I wanted to speak with you before we started working in the morning,"
Cehmai said. "The man who guards the library is ... he's a good man, but
he's protective of the place. I think he looks on it as his trust to the
ages."
"Like a poet," Maati said.
Cehmai grinned. "I suppose so. Only he'd have made a terrible poet. He's
puffed himself three times larger than anyone else just by having the
keys to a building full of papers in languages only half a dozen people
in the city can read. If he'd ever been given something important to do,
he'd have popped like a tick. Anyway, I thought it might ease things if
I came along with you for the first few days. Once Baarath is used to
you, I expect he'll be fine. It's that first negotiation that's tricky."
Maati took a pose that offered gratitude, but was also a refusal.
"There's no call to take you from your duties," he said. "I expect the
order of the Khai will suffice."
"I wouldn't only be doing it as a favor to you, Maati-kvo," Cehmai said.
The honorific took Maati by surprise, but the young poet didn't seem to
notice his reaction. "Baarath is a friend of mine, and sometimes you
have to protect your friends from themselves. You know?"
Maati took a pose that was an agreement and looked into the flames.
Sometimes men could be their own worst enemies. That was truth. He
remembered the last time he had seen Otah-kvo. It had been the night
Maati had admitted what Liat had become to him and what he himself was
to her. His old friend's eyes had gone hard as glass. Heshai-kvo, the
poet of Saraykeht, had died just after that, and Maati and Liat had left
the city together without seeing Otah-kvo again.
The betrayal in those dark eyes haunted him. He wondered how much the
anger had festered in his old teacher over the years. It might have
grown to hatred by now, and Maati had come to hunt him down. The fire
danced over the coal, flames turning the black to gray, the stone to
powder. He realized that the boy poet had been speaking, and that the
words had escaped him entirely. Maati took a pose of apology.
"My mind wandered. You were saying?"
"I offered to come by at first light," Cehmai said. "I can show you
where the good teahouses are, and there's a streetcart that sells the
best hot eggs and rice in the city. Then, perhaps, we can brave the
library?"
"That sounds fine. Thank you. But now I think I'd best unpack my things
and get some rest. You'll excuse me."
Cehmai bounced up in a pose of apology, realizing for the first time
that his presence might not be totally welcome, and Maati waved it away.
They made the ritual farewells, and when the door closed, Maati sighed
and rose. He had few things: thick robes he had bought for the journey
north, a few hooks including the small leatherbound volume of his dead
master's that he had taken from Saraykeht, a packet of letters from
Liat, the most recent of them years old now. The accumulated memories of
a lifetime in two bags small enough to carry on his hack if needed. It
seemed thin. It seemed not enough.
He finished the tea and almond cakes, then went to the window, slid the
paper-thin stone shutter aside, and looked out into the darkness. Sunset
still breathed indigo into the western skyline. The city glittered with
torches and lanterns, and to the south the glow of the forges of the
smith's quarter looked like a brush fire. The towers rose black against
the stars, windows lit high above him where some business took place in
the dark, thin air. Maati sighed, the night cold in his face and lungs.
All these unknown streets, these towers, and the lacework of tunnels
that ran beneath the city: midwinter roads, he'd heard them called. And
somewhere in the labyrinth, his old friend and teacher lurked, planning
murder.
Maati let his imagination play a scene: Otah-kvo appearing before him in
the darkness, blade in hand. In Maati's imagination, his eyes were hard,
his voice hoarse with anger. And there he faltered. He might call for
help and see Otah captured. He might fight him and end the thing in
blood. He might accept the knife as his due. For a dream with so vivid a
beginning, Maati could not envision the end.
He closed the shutter and went to throw another black stone onto the
fire. His indulgence had turned the room chilly, and he sat on the
cushion near the fire as the air warmed again. His legs didn't fold as
easily as Cehmai's had, but if he shifted now and again, his feet didn't
go numb. He found himself thinking fondly of Cehmai-the boy was easy to
befriend. Otah-kvo had been like that, too.
Maati stretched and wondered again whether, if all this had been a song,
he would have sung the hero's part or the villain's.
No ONE HAD EVER SEEN IDAAN'S REBELLIONS AS HUNGER. THA'1' HAD BEEN their
fault. If her friends or her brothers transgressed against the etiquette
of the court, consequences came upon them, shame or censure. But Idaan
was the favored daughter. She might steal a rival girl's gown or arrive
late to the temple and interrupt the priest. She could evade her
chaperones or steal wine from the kitchens or dance with inappropriate
men. She was Idaan Machi, and she could do as she saw fit, because she
didn't matter. She was a woman. And if she'd never screamed at her
father in the middle of his court that she was as much his child as
Biitrah or Danat or Kaiin, it was because she feared in her bones that
he would only agree, make some airy comment to dismiss the matter, and
leave her more desperate than before.
Perhaps if once someone had taken her to task, had treated her as if her
actions had the same weight as other people's, things would have ended
differently.
Or perhaps folly is folly because you can't see where it moves from
ambition into evil. Arguments that seem solid and powerful prove hollow
once it's too late to turn back. Arguments like Why should it be right
for them but wrong for me?