the spring. He pressed his frustration back into yoke.
"I didn't mean that," he said. "I know that the Dai-kvo doesn't intend
to dictate to me. Or any of the Khaiem. I appreciate your concern, but
the creation of the guard isn't a threat. It's hardly an army, you know.
A few hundred men trained up to maybe half the level of a Westlands
garrison could hardly topple the world."
"We are concerned for the stability of all the cities," the envoy said.
"When one of the Khaiem begins to study war, it puts all the others on
edge."
"It's hardly studying war to hand a few men knives and remind them which
end's the handle."
"It's more than any of the Khaiem have done in the past hundred years.
And you must see that you haven't made it your policy to ally yourself
with ... well, with anyone."
\Vell, this is going just as poorly as I expected, Otah thought.
"I have a wife, thank you," Otah said, his manner cool. But the envoy
had clearly reached the end of his patience. Hearing him stand, Otah
turned. The young man's face was flushed, his hands folded into the
sleeves of his brown poet's robes.
"And if you were a shopkeeper, having a single woman would be
admirable," the envoy said. "But as the Khai Machi, turning away every
woman who's offered to you is a pattern of insult. I can't be the first
one to point this out. From the time you took the chair, you've isolated
yourself from the rest of the Khaiem, the great houses of the utkhaiem,
the merchant houses. Everyone."
Otah ran through the thousand arguments and responses-the treaties and
trade agreements, the acceptance of servants and slaves, all of the ways
in which he'd tried to bind himself and Machi to the other cities. They
wouldn't convince the envoy or his master, the Dai-kvo. They wanted
blood-his blood flowing in the veins of some boy child whose mother had
come from south or east or west. They wanted to know that the Khai
Yalakeht or Pathai or 'Ian-Sadar might be able to hope for a grandson on
the black chair in Machi once Otah had died. His wife Kiyan was past the
age to bear another child, but men could get children on younger women.
For one of the Khaiem to have only two children, and both by the same
woman-and her a wayhouse keeper from Udun.. They wanted sons from him,
fathered on women who embodied wise political alliances. They wanted to
preserve tradition, and they had two empires and nine generations of the
Khaiate court life to back them. Despair settled on him like a thick
winter cloak.
There was nothing to be gained. He knew all the reasons for all the
choices he had made, and he could as easily explain them to a mine dog
as to this proud young man who'd traveled weeks for the privilege of
taking him to task. Otah sighed, turned, and took a deeply formal pose
of apology.
"I have distracted you from your task, Athai-cha. That was not my
intention. What was it again the Dai-kvo wished of me?"
The envoy pressed his lips bloodless. They both knew the answer to the
question, but Otah's feigned ignorance would force him to restate it.
And the simple fact that Otah's bed habits were not mentioned would make
his point for him. Etiquette was a terrible game.
"The militia you have formed," the envoy said. ""I'he Dai-kvo would know
your intention in creating it."
"I intend to send it to the Westlands. I intend it to take contracts
with whatever forces there are acting in the best interests of all the
cities of the Khaiem. I will he pleased to draft a letter saying so."
Otah smiled. The young poet's eyes flickered. As insults went, this was
mild enough. Eventually, the poet's hands rose in a pose of gratitude.
""There is one other thing, Most High," the envoy said. "If you take any
aggressive act against the interests of another of the Khaiem, the
Dal-kvo will recall Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft. If you take arms against
them, he will allow the Khaiem to use their poets against you and your
city."
"Yes," Otah said. "I understood that when I heard you'd come. I am not
acting against the Khaiem, but thank you for your time, Athai-cha. I
will have a letter sewn and sealed for you by morning."
After the envoy had left, Otah sank into a chair and pressed the heels
of his hands to his temples. Around him, the palace was quiet. He
counted fifty breaths, then rose again, closed and latched the door, and
turned hack to the apparently empty room.
"Well?" he asked, and one of the panels in the corner swung open,
exposing a tiny hidden chamber brilliantly designed for eavesdropping.
The man who sat in the listener's chair seemed both at ease and out of
place. At ease because it was Sinja's nature to take the world lightly,
and out of place because his suntanned skin and rough, stained leathers
made him seem like a gardener on a chair of deep red velvet and silver
pins fit for the head of a merchant house or a member of the utkhaiem.
He rose and closed the panel behind him.
"He seems a decent man," Sinja said. "I wouldn't want him on my side of
a fight, though. Overconfident."
"I'm hoping it won't come to that," Otah said.
"For a man who's convinced the world he's bent on war, you're a bit
squeamish about violence."
Otah chuckled.
"I think sending the Dai-kvo his messenger's head might not be the most
convincing argument for my commitment to peace," he said.
"Excellent point," Sinja agreed as he poured himself a bowl of wine.
"But then you are training men to fight. It's a hard thing to preach
peace and stability and also pay men to think what's the best way to
disembowel someone with a spear."
"I know it," Otah said, his voice dark as wet slate. "Gods. You'd think
having total power over a city would give you more options, wouldn't you?"
Otah sipped the wine. It was rich and astringent and fragrant of late
summer, and it swirled in the bowl like a dark river. He felt old.
Fourteen years he'd spent trying to be what Machi needed him to
besteward, manager, ruler, half-god, fuel for the gossip and backbiting
of the court. Most of the time, he did well enough, but then something
like this would happen, and he would be sure again that the work was
beyond him.
"You could disband it," Sinja said. "It's not as though you need the
extra trade."
"It's not about getting more silver," Otah said.
"Then what's it about? You aren't actually planning to invade Cetani,
are you? Because I don't think that's a good idea."
Otah coughed out a laugh.
"It's about being ready," he said.
"Ready?"
"Every generation finds it harder to bind fresh andat. Every one that
slips away becomes more difficult to capture. It can't go on forever.