"Let me sit with this," he said at last, nodding to Liat and her son.
"I'll have apartments cleared for you. You'll stay here at the palaces."
"There may not be much time," Maati said softly.
"I know it," Otah said. "Tomorrow I'll decide what to do. If Cehmai's
the right bearer, we can do this all again with him in the room. And
then ... and then we'll sec what shape the world's taken and do whatever
needs doing."
Liat took a pose of gratitude, and a heartbeat later Nayiit mirrored
her. Otah waved the gestures away. He was too tired for ceremony. Too
troubled.
When Maati and the two visitors had left, Otah rose and stood beside
Kiyan at the railing, looking out over the city as it fell into its
early, sudden twilight. Plumes of smoke rose from among the green copper
roofs of the forges. The great stone towers thrust toward the sky as if
they supported the deepening blue. Kiyan tossed an almond out into the
wide air, and a black-winged bird swooped down to catch it before it
reached the distant ground. Otah touched her shoulder; she turned to him
smiling as if half-surprised to find him there.
"How are you, love?" he asked.
"I should be the one asking," she said. "Those two ... that's more than
one lifetime's trouble they're carrying."
"I know it. And Maati's still in love with her."
"With both of them," Kiyan said. "One way and another, with both of them."
Otah took a pose that agreed with her.
"You know her well enough," Kiyan said. "Does she love him, do you think?"
"She did once," Otah said. "But now? It's too many years. We've all
become other people."
The breeze smelled of smoke and distant rain. The first chill of evening
raised gooseflesh on Kiyan's arm. He wanted to turn her toward him, to
taste her mouth and lose himself for a while in simple pleasure. He
wanted badly to forget the world. As if hearing his thought, she smiled,
but he didn't touch her again and she didn't move nearer to him.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
""Iell Cehmai, send out couriers west to see what we can divine about
the situation in Galt, appeal to the Dai-kvo. What else can I do? A mad
poet, prone to fits of temper and working for the Galtic High Council?
There's not a story worse than that."
"Will the Dai-kvo do what she asks, do you think?"
"I don't know," Otah said. "He'll know this Riaan better than any of us.
If he's certain that the man's not capable of a proper binding, perhaps
we'll let him try and pay the price of it. One simple death is the best
we can hope for, sometimes. If it saves the world."
"And if the Dai-kvo isn't sure?"
""Then he'll spin a coin or throw tiles or whatever it is he does to
make a decision, and we'll do that and hope it was right."
Kiyan nodded, crossing her arms and leaning forward, gazing out into the
distance as if by considering carefully, she could see Galt from here.
Otah's belly growled, but he ignored it.
"He'll destroy them, won't he?" she asked. ""The Dai-kvo will use the
andat against the Galts."
"Likely."
"Good," Kiyan said with certainty that surprised him. "If it's going to
happen, let it happen there. At least Eiah and Danat are safe from it."
Otah swallowed. He wanted to rise to the defense of the innocent in
Galt, wanted to say the sort of high-minded words that he'd held as
comfort many years ago when he had been moved to kill in the name of
mercy. But the years had taken that man. The years he had lived, and the
dark, liquid eyes of his children. If black chaos was to he loosed, he
had to side with Kiyan. Better that it was loosed elsewhere. Better a
thousand thousand Galtic children die than one of his own. It was what
his heart said, but it made him feel lessened and sad.
"And the other problem?" Kiyan asked. Her voice was low, but there was a
hardness to it almost like anger. Otah took a querying pose. Kiyan
turned to him. He hadn't expected to see fear in her eyes, and the
surprise of it filled him with dread as deep as any he had suffered.
"What is it?" he asked.
She looked at him, part in surprise, part accusation.
"Nayiit," she said. "No one would think that man was Maati's child. Not
for a heartbeat. You have two sons, Otah-kya."
S
Balasar was quickly coming to resent the late-spring storms of the
Westlands. Each morning seemed to promise a bright day in which his
masters of supply could make their inventories, his captains could train
their men. Before midday, great white clouds would hulk up in the south
and advance upon him. The middle afternoon had been roaring rain and
vicious lightning for the past six days. The training fields were
churned mud, the wood for the steam wagons was soaked, and the men were
beginning to mirror Balasar's own impatience.
They had been guests of the Warden of Aren for two weeks now, the troops
in their tents outside the city walls, Balasar and his captains sleeping
in the high keep. The Warden was an old man, fat and boisterous, who
understood as well as Balasar the dangers of an army grown restless,
even an army still only half assembled. The Warden put a pleasant face
on things-he'd agreed to allow a Galtic army on his lands, after all.
"There was little enough to do now besides be pleasant and hope they'd
go away again.
Ile had even been so kind as to offer Balasar the use of his library. It
was a small room overlooking a courtyard, less grand than Balasar's own
home in Galt, less than the smallest apartments of the least of the
Khaiate nobility. But it was serviceable, and it had the effect each man
desired. Balasar had a place to brood, and the Westlanders had a
convenient way to keep clear of him.
The afternoon rains pecked at the windows. The pot of black tea had
grown tepid and hitter, ignored on a corner of the wide, oaken table.
Balasar looked again at the maps. Nantani would be the first, and the
easiest. The western forces would be undivided-five full legions with
support of the mercenaries hired with the High Council's gold and
promises of plunder. The city wouldn't stand for a morning. Then one
legion would turn North, going overland to Pathai while two others took
the mercenaries to Shosheyn-Tan, Lachi, and Saraykeht. That left him two
legions to go upriver to Udun, Utani, and Tan-Sadar, less whatever men
he left behind to occupy the conquered. Eight of the cities. Over half,
but the least important.
Coal and his men were already in place, waiting in the low towns and
smugglers' camps outside Chaburi-Tan. When the andat failed, they would
sack the city, and take ships North to Yalakeht. The pieces for
steam-driven boats were already in the warehouses of the Galtic
tradesmen, ready to be pegged onto rafts and sped upriver to the village