becoming the man he was supposed to be might have been easier. Instead
he was driven to follow his own judgment, raise a militia, take only one
wife, raise only one son. "I'hat his experience told him that he was
right didn't make bearing the world's disapproval as easy as he'd hoped.
The lantern flame guttered and spat. Otah shook his head, uncertain now
how long he had been lost in his reverie. When he stood, his left leg
had gone numb from being pressed too long against the bare stone. He
took up the lantern and walked-moving slowly and carefully to protect
his numbed foot-back toward the stairways that would return him to the
surface and the day. By the time he regained the great halls, feeling
had returned. The sky peeked through the windows, a pale gray preparing
itself to blue. Voices echoed and the palaces woke, and the grand,
stately beast that was the court of Machi stirred and stretched.
His apartments, when he reached them, were a flurry of activity. A knot
of servants and members of the utkhaiem gabbled like peahens, Kiyan in
their center listening with a seriousness and sympathy that only he knew
masked amusement. Her hand was on the shoulder of the body servant whom
Otah had passed, the peace of sleep banished and anxiety in its place.
"Gentlemen," Otah said, letting his voice boom, calling their attention
to him. "Is there something amiss?"
To a man, they adopted poses of obeisance and welcome. Otah responded
automatically now, as he did half a hundred times every day.
"Most High," a thin-voiced man said-his Master of 'T'ides. "We came to
prepare you and found your bed empty."
Otah looked at Kiyan, whose single raised brow told them that empty had
only meant empty of him, and that she'd have been quite pleased to keep
sleeping.
"I was walking," he said.
"We may not have the time to prepare you for the audience with the envoy
from Tan-Sadar," the Master of 'rides said.
"Put him off," Otah said, walking through the knot of people to the door
of his apartments. "Reschedule everything you have for me today."
The Master of'I'ides gaped like a trout in air. Otah paused, his hands
in a query that asked if the words bore repeating. The Master of Tides
adopted an acknowledging pose.
"The rest of you," he said, "I would like breakfast served in my
apartments here. And send for my children."
"Eiah-cha's tutors . . ." one of the others began, but Otah looked at
the man and he seemed to forget what he'd been saying.
"I will be taking the day with my family," Otah said.
"You will start rumors, Most High," another said. "They'll say the boy's
cough has grown worse again."
"And I would like black tea with the meal," Otah said. "In fact, bring
the tea first. I'll be in by the fire, warming my feet."
He stepped in, and Kiyan followed, closing the door behind her.
"Bad night?" she asked.
"Sleepless," he said as he sat by the fire grate. "That's all."
Kiyan kissed the top of his head where she assured him that the hair was
thinning and stepped out of the room. He heard the soft rustle of cloth
against stone and Kiyan's low, contented humming, and knew she was
changing her robes. The warmth of the fire pressed against the soles of
his feet like a comforting hand, and he closed his eyes for a moment.
No building stands forever, he thought. Even palaces fall. Even towers.
He wondered what it would have been like to live in a world where Nlachi
didn't exist-who he might have been, what he might have done-and he felt
the weight of stone pressing down upon the air he breathed. What would
he do if the towers fell? Where would he go, if could go anywhere?
"Papa-kya!" Danat's bright voice called. "I was in the Second Palace,
and I found a closet where no one had been in ever, and look what I found!"
Otah opened his eyes, and turned to his son and the wood-and-string
model he'd discovered. Eiah arrived a hand and a half later, when the
thin granite shutters glowed with the sun. For a time, at least, Otah's
own father's tomb lay forgotten.
THE PROBLEM WITH ATHAI-KVO, MAATI DECIDED, WAS THAT HE WAS SIMPIX an
unlikable man. "There was no single thing that he did or said, no single
habit or affect that made him grate on the nerves of all those around
him. Some men were charming, and would be loved however questionable
their behavior. And then on the other end of the balance, there was
Athai. The weeks he had spent with the man had been bearable only
because of the near-constant stream of praise and admiration given to
Nlaati.
"It will change everything," the envoy said as they sat on the steps of
the poet's house-Cehmai's residence. "°I'his is going to begin a new age
to rival the Second Empire."
"Because that ended so well," Stone-Made-Soft rumbled, its tone amused
as always.
The morning was warm. The sculpted oaks separating the poet's house from
the palaces were bright with new leaves. Far above, barely visible
through the boughs, the stone towers rose into the sky. Cehmai reached
across the envoy to pour more rice wine into Maati's bowl.
"It is early yet to pass judgment," Nlaati said as he nodded his thanks
to Cehmai. "It isn't as though the techniques have been tried."
"But it makes sense," Athai said. "I'm sure it will work."
"If we've overlooked something, the first poet to try this is likely to
die badly," Cehmai said. ""1'he Dai-kvo will want a fair amount of study
done before he puts a poet's life on the table."
"Next year," Athai said. "I'll wager twenty lengths of silver it will be
used in bindings by this time next year."
"Done," the andat said, then turned to Cehmai. "You can back me if I lose."
The poet didn't reply, but Maati saw the amusement at the corners of
Cehmai's mouth. It had taken years to understand the ways in which
Stone-Made-Soft was an expression of Cehmai, the ways they were a single
thing, and the ways they were at war. The small comments the andat made
that only Cehmai understood, the unspoken moments of private struggle
that sometimes clouded the poet's days. They were like nothing so much
as a married couple, long accustomed to each other's ways.
Maati sipped the rice wine. It was infused with peaches, a moment of
autumn's harvest in the opening of spring. Athai looked away from the
andat's broad face, discomforted.
"You must be ready to return to the Dai-kvo," Cehmai said. "You've been
away longer than you'd intended."
Athai waved the concern away, pleased, Maati thought, to speak to the
man and forget the andat.
"I wouldn't have traded this away," he said. "Maati-kvo is going to be
remembered as the greatest poet of our generation."