wine waited steaming on a low wooden table, and archways to either side
showed rooms with real beds waiting for them. Liat's body seemed drawn
to the bed like a stone rolling downhill. She had not realized how much
she loathed shipboard hammocks.
She took a pose of thanks that the girl responded to neatly as the
servant boy put the crate down gently by the fire.
"I will let you rest," the girl said. "If you have need of me, any of
the servants can find me for you. And I will, of course, send word when
my father returns."
"You're very kind," Nayiit said, smiling his disarming smile. "Forgive
me, but is there a bathhouse near? I don't think shipboard life has left
me entirely prepared for good company."
"Of course," the girl said. "I would be pleased to show you the way."
I'm sure you would, Liat thought. Was I so obvious at her age?
"Mother," Nayiit said, "would you care to. .
Liat waved the offer away.
"A basin and a sponge will be enough for me. I have letters to write
before dinner. Perhaps, Ceinat-cha, if you would leave word with your
couriers that I will have things to send south?"
The girl took an acknowledging pose, then turned to Nayiit with a
flutter of a smile and gestured for him to follow her.
"Nayiit," Liat said, and her son paused in the apartment's doorway.
"Find out what you can about the situation in Machi. I'd like to know
what we're walking into."
Nayiit smiled, nodded, and vanished. The servant boy also left,
promising the basin and sponge shortly. Liat sighed and sat down,
stretching her feet out toward the burning logs. The wine tasted good,
though slightly overspiced to her taste.
Machi. She was going to Machi. She let her mind turn the fact over
again, as if it were a puzzle she had nearly solved. She was going to
present her discoveries and her fears to the man she'd once called a
lover, back when he'd been a seafront laborer and called himself Itani.
Now he was the Khai Machi. And Maati, with whom she had betrayed him.
The idea tightened her throat every time she thought of it.
Maati. Nayiit was going to see hlaati, perhaps to confront him, perhaps
to seek the sort of advice that a son can ask only of a father.
Something, perhaps, that touched on the finer points of going to foreign
bathhouses with young women in snowfox robes. Liat sighed.
Nayiit had been thinking about what it would he to walk away from his
wife, the son he'd brought to the world. He'd said as much, and more
than once. She had thought it was a question based in anger-an
accusation against Nlaati. It only now occurred to her that perhaps
there was also longing in it, and she thought to wonder how complex her
quiet, pleasant son's heart might he.
BALASAR LEANED OVER THE BALCONY AND LOOKED DOWN A'1" HE COVRTYARI)
below. A crowd had gathered, talking animatedly with the brownskinned,
almond-eyed curiosity he had spirited from across the sea. They peppered
him with questions-why was he called a poet when he didn't write poems,
what did he think of Acton, how had he learned to speak Galtic so well.
"Their eyes were bright and the conversation as lively as water dropped
on a hot skillet. For his part, Riaan Vaudathat drank it all in,
answering everything in the slushy singsong accent of the Khaiem. When
the people laughed, he joined in as if they were not laughing at him.
Perhaps he truly didn't know they were.
Riaan glanced up and saw him, raising his hands in a pose that Balasar
recognized as a form of greeting, though he couldn't have said which of
the half-thousand possible nuances it held. He only waved in return and
stepped away from the edge of the balcony.
"It's like I've taught a dog to wear clothes and talk," Balasar said,
lowering himself onto a bench beside Tustin.
"Yes, sir."
""They don't understand."
"You can't expect them to, sir. "They're simple folk, most of 'em. Never
been as far as Eddensea. "They've been hearing about the Khaiem and the
poets and the andat all their lives, but they've never seen 'em. Now
they have the chance."
"Well, it'll help my popularity at the games," Balasar said, his voice
more bitter than he'd intended.
""They don't know the things we do, sir. You can't expect them to think
like us."
"And the High Council? Can I expect it of them? Or are they in chambers
talking about the funny brown man who dresses like a girl?"
Eustin looked down, silent for long enough that Balasar began to regret
his tone.
"All fairness, sir," Eustin said, "the robes do look like a girl's."
It was six years now since he and Eustin and Coal had returned to the
hereditary estate outside Kirinton, half a year since they had recruited
the fallen poet of Nantani, and three weeks since Balasar had received
the expected summons. He'd come to Acton with his best men, the hooks,
the poet, the plans. The High Council had heard him out-the dangers of
the andat, the need to end the supremacy of the Khaiem. That part had
gone quite well. No one seriously disputed that the Khaiem were the
single greatest threat to Galt. It was only when he began to reveal his
plans and how far he had already gone that the audience began to turn
sour on him.
Since then, the Council had met without him. They might have been
debating the plan he had laid out before them, or they might have moved
to other business, leaving him to soak in his own sweat. He and Eustin
and the poet Riaan had lived in the apartments assigned to them. Balasar
had spent his days sitting outside the Council's halls and meeting
chambers, and his nights walking the starlit streets, restless as a
ghost. Each hour that passed was wasted. Every night was one less that
he would have in the autumn when the end of his army was racing against
the snow and cold of the Khaiate North. If the Council's intention had
been to set him on edge, they had done their work.
A flock of birds, black as crows but thinner, burst from the walnut
trees beyond the courtyard, whirled overhead, and settled back where
they had come from. Balasar wove his fingers together on one knee.
"What do we do if they don't move forward?" Eustin asked quietly.
"Convince them."
"And if they can't he convinced?"
"Convince them anyway," Balasar said.
Eustin nodded. Balasar appreciated that the man didn't press the issue.
Eustin had known him long enough to understand that bloodymindedness was
how Balasar moved through the world. From the beginning, he'd been
cursed by a small stature, a shorter reach than his brothers or the boys
with whom he'd trained. He'd gotten used to working himself harder,
training while other boys slept and drank and whored. Where he couldn't