"I don't think I'm looking forward to that."
Otah raised her hand to his lips. Gently, she caressed his cheek. Ile
drew her close, folding his arms around her, feeling the warmth of her
body against him, smelling the familiar scent of her hair, and willing
the moment to not end. If only the future could never come.
Kiyan sensed it in the tension of his spine, the fierceness of his
embrace. Something. She did not speak, but only breathed, softening
against him with every exhalation, and in time he felt himself beginning
to relax with her. One of the lanterns, burning the last of its oil,
dimmed, spat, and went out. The smoke touched the air with a smell of
endings.
"I missed you," she said. "Every night, I went to bed thinking you might
not come hack. I kept telling the children over and over that things
would he fine, that you'd he home soon. And I was sick. I was sick with it."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't. Don't apologize. Don't be sorry. Just know it. Just know we
wanted you hack. Not the Khai and not the emperor. You. Remember that
you are a good man and I love you."
Ile raised her chin and kissed her, wondering how she knew so well the
way to fill him with joy without asking him to abandon his sorrow.
"It's Nlaati's now," Otah whispered. "If he can bind Seedless before the
spring thaw, this will all he over."
I Ic felt an odd relaxation in her body, as if by saying the thing, he'd
freed her from some secret effort she'd been making.
"And if he can't?" she asked. "If it's all going to fall apart anyway,
can we run? You and me and the children? If I take them and go, are you
going to come with us, or stay here and fight?"
Ile kissed her again. She rested her hands against his shoulders,
leaning into him. Otah didn't answer, and he knew from the sound of her
breath that she understood.
"11: WE TAKE 'I'I I I: NI'ANCE of MOVEMENT'-ANNAY IN NI 'RAT AND THE
SYMBOL set you worked up for the senses of continuance," Nlaati
said, "I think then we'll have something we can work with."
Cehmai's eves were bloodshot, his hair wild from another long evening of
combing frustrated fingers through it. Around them, the lamplight shone
on a bedlam of paper. The library would have seemed a rat's nest to any
but the two of them: books laid open; scrolls unfurled and weighted by
other scrolls which were themselves unfurled; loose pages of a dozen
codices stacked together. The mass of information and inference, grammar
and poetry and history would have been overwhelming, \laati thought, to
anyone who didn't know how profoundly little it was. Cchnlai ran his
fingertips down the notes \laati had made and shook his head.
"It's still the same," he said. "Nurat is modified by the fourth case of
a(/at, and then it's exactly the same logical structure as the one
Fleshai used."
"No, it isn't," \laati said, slapping the table with an open palm. "It's
differ r ut. "
Cchmai took a long, slow breath, raising his hands palms-out. It wasn't
a formal gesture, but \laati understood it all the same. They were both
worn raw. I Ic sat hack in his chair, feeling the knots in his back and
neck. The brazier in the corner made the wide room smell warm without
seeming to actually heat it.
"Look," \laati said. "Let's put it aside for the day. We need to move
the library underground soon anyway. It's going to he too cold tip here
to do more than watch our fingers turn blue."
Cehmai nodded, then looked around at the disarray. Nlaati could read the
despair in his face.
"I'll put it hack together," MIaati said. ""Then a dozen slaves with
strong hacks, and I'll put it all together in the winter quarters in two
days' time."
"I should move the poet's house down too," Cehmai said. "I feel like I
haven't been there in weeks."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. The place seems too big without Stone-Made-Soft anyway. "loo
quiet. It reminds me of ... well, of everything."
Nlaati rose, his knees aching. His feet tingled with the pins and
needles that long motionlessness brought him these days. lie clapped his
hand on Cehmai's Shoulder.
"Meet me in three days," he said. "I'll have the hooks in order. We'll
start again fresh."
Cehmai took a pose of agreement, but he looked exhausted. Worn thin. The
younger poet began snuffing the lanterns as %Iaati walked back toward
his apartments, placing his feet carefully until normal feeling returned
to them. Stepping the wrong way and breaking his ankle would he just the
thing to make the winter even more miserable than it already promised to he.
The rooms in which he spent his summers were already bare. The fire
grate was empty of everything but old soot. The tapestries were gone,
the couches, the tables, the cabinets. Everything had been moved to the
lower city. Winter are the middle of things in the North. The snows
would come soon, blocking the doors and windows. The second-story snow
doors would open out for anyone who needed to travel into the world.
Below, in the warmth of the ground, all the citizens of Machi, and now
of Cetani too, would huddle and talk and fight and sing and play at
tiles and stones until winter lost its grip and the snows turned to
meltwater and washed the black-cobbled streets. Only the metalworkers
remained at the ground level, the green copper roofs of the forges free
of snow and ice, the plumes of coal smoke rising almost as high as the
towers all through the winter.
At least all through this winter. This one last winter before the Galts
came and butchered them all.
If only there was some other way to phrase the idea of removing.
Seedless's true name would have been better translated Removing-the-
Part-"That-Continues. Continuity was a fairly simple problem. The old
grammars had several ways to conceptualize continuance. It was removal ...
Nlaati reached the thin red doorway at the back of the rooms, and
started down the stairs. It was dark as night. Darker. He would need to
talk with the palace servant masters about seeing that lanterns were lit
here. With as many people as there were filling every available niche in
the tunnels and, from what he heard, the mines as well, it seemed
unlikely that no one could he spared to be sure there was a little light
on his path.
Or they might be rationing lamp oil already. There was a depressing thought.
He descended, one hand on the smooth, cool stone of the wall to keep him
steady. He moved slowly because going quickly would get him winded, and
it was dark enough that he wanted to stay sure of his footing. His mind
was only half concerned with walking anyway. Cehmai was right. The
logical structure was the same whether he used nurat or something else.
So that was another dead end.
Removal.