When he was here, when I could touch him, when he would smile at me and
make me laugh, when I worried for him. When my boy lived. Back then.
Before I lost him.
Before the world changed.
She sighed in the darkness, and didn't bother to wipe away the tears.
They were meaningless-her body responding without her. 't'hey couldn't
undo what had been done, and so they didn't matter. Voices echoed in the
hall outside her apartments here in the tunnels, and she ignored them.
If they had been shouting warnings of fire, she would have ignored those
too.
Sometimes she would think of all the people who had died. The amateur
soldiers that Otah had led into battle outside the village of the
l)ai-kvo, the Galts dead on the road from Cetani. The sad rogue poet
Riaan, slaughtered by the men he thought his friends. The innocent,
naive men and women and children in Nantani and Utani and Chaburi- 'lan
and all the other sacked cities. The children at the poets' school.
Every one of them had a mother. Every mother who had not had the luck to
die was trapped in the quiet desperation that imprisoned her now. Liat
thought of all these other grieving women, held them up in her mind as
proof that she was being stupid and weak. Mothers lost their sons all
the time, all across the world. In every nation, in every city, in every
age. Her suffering wasn't so much compared with all of them.
And then she would hear someone cough in Nayiit's voice, or she'd
mistake the shape of a man's back, and her idiot, traitor heart would
sing for a moment. Even as her mind told her no it wasn't, her heart
would soar before it fell.
The scratch at her door was so faint and tentative, Liat thought a first
it was only a rat tricked by the darkness into believing the room empty.
But the sound came again, the intentional rhythm of a hand against wood.
Likely it was Otah, coming again to hold her hand and sit quietly. I le
had done so several times, when he could free himself from the rigors of
peace and war and Empire. They spoke little because there was too much
to say, and no words adequate. Or perhaps one of his physicians, come to
look in on her health. Or a servant sent to declaim poems or sing.
Someone to distract her in the name of comfort. She wished they wouldn't
come.
The scratch repeated itself, more loudly.
"Who?" Liat managed to ask. For answer, the door slid open, and Kiyan
stood framed in the doorway, a lantern in her hand. The expression on
the woman's fox-thin face seemed equally pity and unease.
"Liat-kya," she said. "May I cone in?"
"If you like," Liat said.
The lantern cast a thousand broken shadows as Kiyan moved across the
room. The tapestries on the wall, hidden so long in darkness, seemed to
breathe. Hat considered the space in which she had been for so many days
without seeing it. It was small. The furnishings were costly and
exquisite. It didn't matter. Kiyan went to the wall sconces, taking down
the pale wax candles, touching them to the lantern flame, putting them
back in their places glowing. The soft light slowly filled the air, the
shadows smoothed away.
"I heard you had missed your breakfast," Kiyan said, her voice cheerful
and forced, as she lit the last of the candles.
"And my dinner," Liat said.
"Yes, I heard that too."
The lantern made a clunking sound-iron on wood-as Kiyan set it on the
bedside table. She sat on the mattress at Liat's side. Otah's wife
looked weary and drawn. Perhaps the andat's price had been worse for her
than it had for Hat. Perhaps it was something else.
"'They've put the Galts in the southern tunnels," Kiyan said. ""There's
almost no room. I don't know how it will he when the worst of the cold
comes. And spring ... we'll have to start sending people south and east
as soon as it's safe to travel."
"Good that so many died," Liat said, and saw the other woman flinch. Now
that she'd said it, the words did seem pointed. Liat hadn't meant them
to he; she only couldn't he bothered to weigh the effect of her actions
just now. Kiyan fumbled in her sleeve and drew out a small package
wrapped in waxed cloth. Liat could smell the raisins and honey. She knew
it should have been appetizing. Without speaking, Kiyan placed the
little cake on the bedside table and rose to leave.
"Stop it," Liat said, sitting up on her bed.
Otah's wife, the mother of his children, turned hack, her hands in a
pose of query.
"Stop moving around me like I'm made of eggshell," Liat said. "It's not
in your power to keep me from breaking. I've broken. Move on."
"I'm sorry. I didn't-"
"Didn't what? Didn't mean to throw your boy and mine onto a company of
Galtic swords? Didn't mean to have your daughter play findme-find-you
until it wasn't safe to flee? Well, there's a relief. And here I thought
you wanted both our children dead instead of just mine."
Kivan's face hardened. Liat felt the rage billow in her like she was a
sheet thrown over a fire. It ate her and it held her up.
"I didn't mean to treat you as if you were fragile," Kiyan said. "\Ve
both know I didn't mean for Nayiit-"
"Didn't mean for him to be a threat to your precious Danat? Didn't mean
to let him he a threat to your family? I Ic wasn't. Ile never was. I
offered to have him take the brand."
"I know," Kiyan said. "Otah told me."
But she might as well not have spoken. Liar could no more stop the words
now than will the blood to stop flowing from a wound.
"I offered to take him away. I didn't want him fighting to he the Khai
any more than you did. I wouldn't have put him in danger, and he would
never have hurt I)anat. IIe would never have hurt your boy. Ide wouldn't
have hurt anyone. It's your mewling half-dead son that's caused this. If
he'd been able to fight off a cough, Otah would never have kept Nayiit
from the brand. Nayiit would never have fought, never have hurt rin
hods' children. Ile was ... he was ..."
The tears came again. She couldn't say what would have come. She
couldn't say that Danat and Nayiit would never have come to face one
another as custom demanded. perhaps in the years ahead the gods would
have pitted them against each other. If the world was what it had been.
If things hadn't changed. Sobs as violent as sickness racked her, and
she found Kiyan's arms around her, her own fists full of the soft wool
of the woman's robe, her screams echoing as if by will alone she could
pull the stones down and bury then all.
Time changed its nature. The sorrow and rage and the physical ache of
her heart went on forever and only a moment. The only measure was that
the candles had burned a quarter of their length before the fit passed,
and exhaustion reclaimed her again. She was embarrassed to see the damp