these are the deepest cellars of the palaces. The ones where the best
treasures are hidden."
The overseer grinned.
"I like this one," he said to Cehmai. "He's got a quick head on him."
"I heard about the pumps the Khai's eldest son had designed," Maati
said. "I was wondering if you could tell me of them?"
The grin widened, and the overseer launched into an expansive and
delighted discussion of water and mines and the difficulty of removing
the one from the other. Maati listened, struggling to follow the
vocabulary and grammar particular to the trade.
"He had a gift for them," the overseer said, at last. His voice was
melancholy. "We'll keep at them, these pumps, and they'll get better,
but not like they would have with Biitrah-cha on them."
"He was here, I understand, on the day he was killed," Maati said. He
saw the young poet's head shift, turning to consider him, and he ignored
it as he had the andat's.
"That's truth. And I wish he'd stayed. His brothers aren't bad men, but
they aren't miners. And ... well, he'll be missed."
"I had thought it odd, though," Nlaati said. "Whichever brother killed
him, they had to know where he would be-that he would be called out
here, and that the work would take so much of the day that he wouldn't
return to the city itself."
"I suppose that's so," the overseer said.
"Then someone knew your pumps would fail," Maati said.
The lamplight flickered off the surface of the water, casting shadows up
the overseer's face as this sank in. Cehmai coughed. Maati said nothing,
did not move, waited. If any man here had been involved with it, the
overseer was most likely. But Maati saw no rage or wariness in his
expression, only the slow blooming of implication that might be expected
in a man who had not thought the murder through. So perhaps he could be
used after all.
"You're saying someone sabotaged my pumps to get him out here," the
overseer said at last.
Maati wished deeply that Cehmai and his andat were not presentthis was a
thing better done alone. But the moment had arrived, and there was
nothing to be done but go forward. The servants at least were far enough
away not to overhear if he spoke softly. Maati dug in his sleeve and
came out with a letter and a small leather pouch, heavy with silver
lengths. He pressed them both into the surprised overseer's hands.
"If you should discover who did, I would very much like to speak with
them before the officers of the utkhaiem or the head of your House. That
letter will tell you how to find me."
The overseer tucked away the pouch and letter, taking a pose of thanks
which Maati waved away. Cehmai and the andat were silent as stones.
"And how long is it you've been working these mines?" Maati asked,
forcing a lightness to his tone he did not feel. Soon the overseer was
regaling them with stories of his years underground, and they were
walking together toward the surface again. By the time Maati stepped out
from the long, sloping throat of the mine and into daylight, his feet
were numb. A litter waited for them, twelve strong men prepared to carry
the three of them back to the palaces. Maati stopped for a moment to
wring the water from the hem of his robes and to appreciate having
nothing but the wide sky above him.
"Why was it the Dai-kvo sent you?" Cehmai asked as they climbed into the
wooden litter. His voice was almost innocent, but even the andat was
looking at Maati oddly.
"There are suggestions that the library may have some old references
that the Dai-kvo lacks. Things that touch on the grammars of the first
poets."
"Ah," Cehmai said. The litter lurched and rose, swaying slightly as the
servants bore them away hack to the palaces. "And nothing more than that?"
"Of course not," Maati said. "What more could there he?"
He knew that he was convincing no one. And that was likely a fine thing.
Maati had spent his first days in Machi learning the city, the courts,
the teahouses. The Khai's daughter had introduced him to the gatherings
of the younger generation of the utkhaiem as the poet Cehmai had to the
elder. Maati had spent each night walking a different quarter of the
city, wrapped in thick wool robes with close hoods against the vicious
cold of the spring air. He had learned the intrigues of the court: which
houses were vying for marriages to which cities, who was likely to be
extorting favors for whom over what sorts of indiscretion, all the petty
wars of a family of a thousand children.
He had used the opportunities to spread the name of Irani Noygu- saying
only that he was an old friend Maati had heard might be in the city,
whom he would very much like to see. There was no way to say that it was
the name Otah Machi had invented for himself in Saraykeht, and even if
there had been, Maati would likely not have done so. He had come to
realize exactly how little he knew what he ought to do.
He had been sent because he knew Otah, knew how his old friend's mind
worked, would recognize him should they meet. They were advantages,
Maati supposed, but it was hard to weigh them against his inexperience.
There was little enough to learn of making discreet inquiries when your
life was spent in the small tasks of the Dai-kvo's village. An overseer
of a trading house would have been better suited to the task. A
negotiator, or a courier. Liat would have been better, the woman he had
once loved, who had once loved him. Liat, mother of the boy Nayiit, whom
Maati had held as a babe and loved more than water or air. Liat, who had
been Otah's lover as well.
For the thousandth time, Maati put that thought aside.
When they reached the palaces, Maati again thanked Cehmai for taking the
time from his work to accompany him, and Cehmai-still with the
half-certain stance of a dog hearing an unfamiliar soundassured him that
he'd been pleased to do so. Maati watched the slight young man and his
thick-framed andat walk away across the flagstones of the courtyard.
Their hems were black and sodden, ruining the drape of the robes. Much
like his own, he knew.
Thankfully, his own apartments were warm. He stripped off his robes,
leaving them in a lump for the servants to remove to a launderer, and
replaced them with the thickest he had-lamb's wool and heavy leather
with a thin cotton lining. It was the sort that natives of Machi wore in
deep winter, but Maati pulled it close about him, vowing to use it
whenever he went out, whatever the others might think of him. His boots