It was a concept of relative motion. "faking something enclosed and
producing a distance between it and its-now previous-enclosure. Plucking
out a seed, or a baby. A gemstone from its setting. A man from his bed
or his home. Removing. Heshai's work in framing Seedless was so elegant,
so simple, that it seemed inevitable. That was the curse of second and
third bindings of the same andat. Finding something equally graceful,
but utterly different. It made his jaw ache just thinking about it.
I is reached the bottom of the stairs and the wide upper chamber of his
winter quarters. The night candle burning there was hardly to its first
quarter mark, which given the lengthening nights of autumn meant the
city beneath him would likely still he awake and active. Rest for him,
though. His day had been full already. He took up the candle, passed
down a short, close corridor, and reached the second stairway, which led
down to the bedchambers.
The air was noticeably warmer here than in the library-in part from the
heat of ten thousand people in the earth below him rising up, and in
part from its stillness. Servants had prepared his bed with blankets and
furs. A light meal of rice and spiced pork in one of the bowls of
handthick iron that could hold the heat for the better part of a day
waited on his writing table. Maati sat, ate slowly, not tasting the
food, drinking rice wine as if it were water. Even as he sucked the
pepper sauce off the last bit of pork, his feet and fingers were still
cold. Removing-the-ChillFrom-the-Old-Man's-Flesh. There was an andat.
Nlaati closed the lid of the great iron bowl, slipped out of his robes,
hefted himself into his bed, and willed himself to sleep. For a time, he
lay watching the candle burn, smelling the wax as it melted and dripped,
and could not get comfortable. IIe couldn't get the cold out of his toes
and knuckles, couldn't make his mind stop moving. He couldn't avoid the
growing fear that when he closed his eyes, the nightmares that had begun
plaguing him would return.
The images his mind held when his eyes were closed had become more
violent, more anxious. Fathers weeping for sons who were also sacks of
bloodied grain and dead mice; long, sleeping hours spent searching
through bodies in a charnel house hoping to find his child still living
and only finding Otah's children again and again and again; the
recurring dream of a tunnel that led down past the city, deeper than the
mines, and into the earth until the stone itself grew fleshy and angry
and bled. And the cry that woke him-a man's voice shouting from a great
distance that demanded to know whose child this was. Whose (hil<1.?
With this mind, Maati thought as he watched the single flame of the
night candle, I'm intended to hind an andat. It's like driving nails
with rotten meat.
The night candle had burned through three of its smallest marks when he
abandoned his bed, pulled on his robes, and left his private chambers
for the wide, arched galleries of the tunnels below the palaces. The
bathhouses were at least warm. If he wasn't to sleep, he could at least
be miserable in comfort.
The public spaces were surprisingly full with men and women in the
glorious robes of the utkhaiem. It made sense, he supposed. Cetani had
not only brought its merchants and craftsmen. There would be two courts
living tinder the palaces this winter. And so twice the social intrigue.
Who precisely was sleeping with whom would he even more complex, and
even the threat of their death at the hands of a Galtic army wouldn't
stop the courtiers playing for rank.
As he passed, the utkhaiem took poses of respect and welcome, the
servants and slaves ones of abasement. hlaati repressed a swelling
hatred of all of them. It wasn't their fault, after all, that he had to
save them. And himself. And Liat and Nayiit and Otah and all the people
he had ever known, all the cities he had ever seen. His world, and
everything in it.
It was the Galts who deserved his anger. And they would feel it, by Al
the gods. Failed crops, gelded men, and barren women until they rebuilt
everything they'd broken and given back everything they took. If he
could only think of a better way to say removing.
I Ic brooded his way along the dim galleries and through the great
chambers until the air began to thicken with the first presentiment of
steam, and the prospect of hot water, and of finally warming his chilled
feet, intruded on him.
Ic found his way into the men's changing rooms, where he shrugged off
his robes and hoots and let the servant offer him a howl of clear, cold
water to drink before he went into the public baths and sweated it all
out again. When he passed through the inner door, Maati shivered at the
warmth. Voiccs filled the dim, gray space-conversations between people
made invisible by the steam rising from the water. "There had been a
time, Maati considered as he stepped gingerly down the submerged stairs
and waded toward a low bench, when the idea of strangers wandering naked
in the baths-men and women together-had held some erotic frisson. "Truth
often disappoints.
Ic lowered himself to the thick, water-logged wood of the bench, the hot
water rising past his belly, past his chest, until the small warm waves
danced against the hollow of his throat. At last, his feet felt warm,
and he leaned back against the warm stone, sighing with a purely
physical contentment. He resolved to move down toward the warmer end
before he went back to his rooms. If he boiled himself thoroughly
enough, he might even carry the heat back to his bed.
Across the bath, hidden in the mist, two men talked of grain supplies
and how best to address the problem of rats. Far away toward the hotter
end of the bath, someone shouted, and there was a sound of splashing.
Children, Nlaati supposed, and then fell into a long, gnawing plan for
how best to move the volumes in the library. His concentration was so
profound he didn't notice v%-hen the children approached.
"t'nclc Nlaati?"
F,iah was practically at his side, crouched low in the water to preserve
her modesty. A gaggle of children of the utkhaiem behind her at what
Maati supposed must be a respectful distance. He raised hands from the
water and took a pose of greeting, somewhat cramped by being held high
enough to be seen.
"I haven't seen you in ages, I?iah-kya," he said. "What's been keeping you?"
The girl shrugged, sending ripples.
"'T'here are a lot of new people from Cetani," she said. ""There's a
whole other Radaani family here now. And I've been studying with
Loya-cha about how to fix broken bones. And ... and 'Mama-kva said you
were htisy and that I shouldn't bother you."
"You should always bother
me," \laati said with a
grin. "Is it going well%"
"It's a complicated thing," \laati said. "But it's a long wait until
spring. We'll have time."