And so, Sinja supposed with a sense of genuine regret, the right thing was to work for him.
6
The poet's house was warm, the scent of trees thick in the air. The false dawn, prolonged by the mountains to the east, had just come, the sun making its way above the peaks to bathe the world in light. Through the opened door, N9aati could hear the songs of birds deep in the yearly quest to draw mates to their nests. The dances and parties of the utkhaiem were much the same-who had the loveliest plumage, the more enticing song. There were fewer differences between men and birds than men liked to confess.
He sat on a couch, watching Cehmai at one side of the small table and Stone-Made-Soft at the other. Between them was the game hoard with its worn lines and stones. The game had been central to the binding Manat [)oru had performed generations ago that first brought Stone-blade-Soft into existence, and as part of the legacy he bore, Cehmai had to play the game again-white stones moving forward against the black-as a reaffirmation of his control over the spirit. Fortunately, Nlanat Doru had also made Stone-Made-Soft a terrible player. Cehmai tapped his fingertips against the wood and shifted a black stone in the center of the hoard toward the left. Stone-Made-Soft frowned, its wide face twisted in concentration.
"No word yet," Cehmai said. "It's early days, though."
"What do you think he'll do?" Maati asked.
"I'm trying to think, please," the andat rumbled. "They ignored it. Cehmai leaned back in his seat. The years had treated him kindly. The fresh-faced, talented young man Maati had met when he first came to Machi was still there. If there was the first dusting of gray in the boy's hair, if the lines at the corners of his mouth were deeper now, and less prone to vanish when he relaxed, it did nothing to take away from the easy smile or the deep, grounded sense of self that Cehmai had always had. And even the respect he had for Maati-no longer a dread-touched awe, but still profound in its way-had never failed with familiarity.
"I'm afraid he'll do the thing," Cehmai said. "I suppose I'm also afraid that he won't. There's not a good solution."
"He could take a middle course," Maati said. "Demand that the Gaits hand back Riaan on the threat of taking action. If the Dai-kvo tells them that he knows, it might be enough."
The andat lifted a thick-fingered hand, gently touched a white stone, and slid it forward with a hiss. Cehmai glanced over, considered, and pushed the black stone he'd moved before back into the space it had come from. The andat coughed in frustration and set its head on balled fists, staring at the hoard.
"It's Odd," Cehmai said. "There was a time when I was at the school-before I'd even taken the black robes, so early on. There was a pigeon that had taken up residence in my cohort's rooms. Nasty thing. It would flap around through the air and drop feathers and shit on us all, and every time we waved it outside, it would come hack. Then one day, one of the boys got lucky. He threw a hoot at the poor thing and broke its wing. Well, we knew we were going to have to kill it. Even though it had been nothing but annoyance and filth, it was hard to break its neck."
"Were you the one that did it?" Maati asked.
Cehmai took a pose of acknowledgment.
"It felt like this," the younger poet said. "I won't enjoy this, if it's what we do."
The andat looked up from the board.
"Has it ever struck you people how arrogant you are?" it asked, huge hands taking an attitude of query that bordered on accusation. "You're talking of slaughtering a nation. Thousands of innocent people destroyed, lands made barren, mountains leveled and the sea pulled up over them like a blanket. And you're feeling sorry for yourself that you had to wring a bird's neck as a boy? How can anyone have feelings that delicate and that numbed both at the same time?"
"It's your move," Cehmai said.
Stone-Made-Soft sighed theatrically-it had no need for breath, so every sigh it made was a comment-and turned back toward the game. It was essentially over. The andat had lost again as it always did, but they played to the last move, finishing the ritual humiliation once again.
"We're off to the North," Cehmai said as he put the stones hack into their trays. "There's a new vein the Radaani want to explore, but I'm not convinced it's possible. Their engineers are swearing that the structure won't collapse, but those mountains are getting near lacework."
"Eight generations is a long time," Maati agreed. "Even without help, the mines would have become a maze by now."
"I fear the day an earthquake comes," Cehmai said as he stood and stretched. "One shake, and half these mountains will fold up flat, I'd swear it."
`°I'hen I suppose we'd have to spend months digging up the bodies," Maati said.
"Not really," the andat said. Its voice was placid again, now that the game was ended. "If we make it soft enough, the bodies will float up through it. If stone is water, almost anything floats. We could have a whole field of stone flat as a lake, with mine dogs and men popping up out of it like bubbles."
"What a pleasant thought," Cehmai said, gently sarcastic. "And here I was wondering why we weren't invited to more dinners. And you, Maati-kvo? What's your day?"
"More work in the library," Maati said. "I want the place in order. If the Dai-kvo calls for me…"
"He will," Cehmai said. "You can count on that."
"If he does, I want the place left in order. A sane order that someone else could make sense of. Baarath had the thing put together like a puzzle. 'look me three years just to make sense of it, and even then some of it I just went through book by book and made my own classifications."
"Well, he had a different opinion than yours," Cehmai said. "He wanted the library to be a place to bury secrets, not display them. It was how he made himself feel as if he mattered. I don't suppose I can blame him too much for that."
"I suppose not," Maati agreed.
The three of them walked along the wooded path that led to the palaces of the Khai. The stone towers of Machi rose high above the city, bright with the light of morning, and the smoke of the forges plumed up from the metalworkers' district in the south. Maati kept company with Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft as far as the compound of House Radaani, where a litter and donkeys were waiting. They took poses of farewell, even the andat, and Maati sat on the steps of the compound to watch them lumber away to the North.
In the days since he, Otah, and Liat had broken the news to Cehmai, Maati had found himself less and less able to do his work. The familiar stacks and shelves and galleries of the library were uncomforting. The songs of the singing slaves in the gardens seemed to pull at him when he caught a phrase of their melodies. He found himself seeking out food when he wasn't hungry, wine when he had no thirst. He walked the streets of the city and the paths of the palaces more than he had in living memory, and even when his knees ached, he found himself tinconsciously rising to pace the rooms of his apartments. Restless. He had become restless.
In part it was the knowledge that Liat and Nayiit were in the city, in the palaces even. At any time, he could seek them out, invite them to eat with him or talk with him. Nayiit, whom he had not known since the boy was shorter than little Danat was now. Liat, whose breath and body he had once said he would never he whole without. They were here at last.
In part it was the anticipation of a courier from the Dai-kvo, whether about his own work or Liat's case against the Galts. And of the two, he found the Galtic issue the lesser. Liat's argument was enough to convince him that they did have a rogue poet, but the chances that he would bind a new andat seemed remote. There in the middle of Galt without references, without the Dai-kvo or his fellow poets to work through the fine points of the binding, the most likely thing was that the man would try, fail, and die badly. It was a problem that would solve itself. And if the Dai-kvo took Liat's view and turned the andat loose against Galt, the chances of tragedy coming to the cities of the Khaiem was even less.