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chorus of singers sat in the rigging, as if the ship itself had joined

the song. Swinging down in the landsman's chair, Otah saw half-a-dozen

men he knew, including, his face upturned and amused, Balasar Gice.

Farrer Dasin stood with his wife Issandra and the young woman-the

girl-Ana. Otah let himself be drawn up from the chair by his servants,

and stepped forward to his hosts. Farrer stood stiff as cast iron, his

smile never reaching his eyes. Issandra's eyes still had the reddened

rims that Otah recalled, but there was also pleasure there. And her

daughter ...

Ana Dasin, the Galt who would one day be Empress of the Khaiem, reminded

Otah of a rabbit. Her huge, brown eyes and small mouth looked

perpetually startled. She wore a gown of blue as pale as a robin's egg

that didn't fit her complexion and a necklace of raw gold that did. She

would have seemed meek, except that there was something of her mother in

the line of her jaw and the set of her shoulders.

All he knew of her had come from court gossip, Balasar Gice's comments,

and the trade of formal documents that had flowed by the crate once the

agreements were made. It was difficult to believe that this was the girl

who had beaten her own tutor at numbers or written a private book of

etiquette that had been the scandal of its season. She was said to have

ridden horses from the age of four; she was said to have insulted the

son of an ambassador from Eddensea to his face and gone on to make her

case so clearly that the insulted boy had offered apology. She had

climbed out windows on ropes made from stripped tapestry, had climbed

the walls of the palaces of Acton dressed as an urchin boy, had broken

the hearts of men twice her age. Or, again, perhaps she had not. He had

heard a great deal about her, and knew nothing he could count as truth.

It was to her he made his first greeting.

"Ana-cha," he said. "I hope I find you well."

"Thank you, Most High," she said, her voice so soft, Otah halfwondered

whether he'd understood. "And you also."

"Emperor," Farrer Dasin said in his own language.

"Councilman Dasin," Otah said. "You are kind to invite me."

Farrer's nod made it clear that he would have preferred not to. The

singers above them reached the end of one song, paused, and launched

into another. Issandra stepped forward smiling and rested her hand on

Otah's arm.

"Forgive my husband," she said. "He was never fond of shipboard life.

And he spent seven years as a sailor."

"I hadn't known that," Otah said.

"Fighting Eymond," the councilman said. "Sank twelve of their ships.

Burned their harbor at Cathir."

Otah smiled and nodded. He wondered how his own history as a fisherman

would be received if he shared it now. He chose to leave the subject behind.

"The weather is treating us gently," Otah said. "We will be in Saraykeht

before summer's end."

He could see in all their faces that it had been the wrong thing. The

father's jaw tightened, his nostrils flared. The mother's smile lost its

sharp corners and her eyes grew sad. Ana looked away.

"Come see what they've done with the kitchens, Most High," Issandra

said. "It's really quite remarkable."

After a short tour of the ship, Issandra released him, and Otah made his

way to the dais that was intended for him. Other guests arrived from

Galtic ships and the utkhaiem, each new person greeting the councilman

and his family, and then coming to Otah. He had expected to see a

division among them: the Galts resentful and full of barely controlled

rage much like Fatter Dasin, and Otah's own people pleased at the

prospects that his treaty opened for them. Instead, he saw as the guests

came and went, as the banquet was served, as priests of Galt intoned

their celebratory rites, that opinions were more varied and more complex.

At the opening ceremony, the divisions were clear. Here, the robes of

the Khaiem, there the tunics and gowns of the Galts. But very quickly,

the people on the deck began to shift. Small groups fell into

discussion, often no more than two or three people. Otah's practiced eye

could pick out the testing smile and almost flirtatious laughter of men

on the verge of negotiation. And as the evening progressed-candles

burning down and being replaced, slow courses of wine and fish and meat

and pastry making their way from the very cleverly built kitchens to the

gently shifting deck-as many Galts as utkhaiem had the glint in their

eyes that spoke of sensed opportunity. Larger groups formed and broke

apart, the proportions of their two nations seeming almost even. Otah

felt as if he'd stirred a muddy pool and was now seeing the first

outlines of the new forms that it might take.

And yet, some groups were unmoved. Two clusters of Galts never budged or

admitted in anyone wearing robes, but also a fair-sized clot of people

of the cities of the Khaiem sat near the far rail, their backs to the

celebration, their conversation almost pointedly relying on court poses

too subtle for foreigners to follow.

Women, Otah noted. The people of his nation whose anger was clearest in

their bodies and speech tended to be women. He thought of Eiah, and cool

melancholy touched his heart. Trafficking in wombs, she would have

called it. To her, this agreement would be the clearest and most nearly

final statement that what mattered about the women of the cities-about

his own daughter-was whether they could bear. He could hear her voice

saying it, could see the pain in the way she held her chin. He murmured

his counterarguments, as if she were there, as if she could hear him.

It wasn't a turning away, only an acknowledgment of what they all knew.

The woman of the Khaiem were just as clever, just as strong, just as

important as they had ever been. The brokering of marriage-and yes,

specifically marriage bent on producing children-was no more an attack

on Eiah and her generation than building city militias or hiring

mercenary companies or any of the other things he had done to hold the

cities safe had been.

It sounded patronizing, even to him.

There had to be some way, he thought, to honor and respect the pain and

the loss that they had suffered without forfeiting the future. He

remembered Kiyan warning him that some women-not all, but somewho could

not bear children went mad from longing. She told stories of babies

being stolen, and of pregnant women killed and the babes taken from

their dying wombs.

Wanting could be a sickness, his wife had said. He remembered the night

she'd said it, where the lantern had been, how the air had smelled of

burning oil and pine boughs. He remembered his daughter's expression at

hearing the phrase, like she'd found expression for something she'd

always known, and his own sense of dread. Kiyan had tried to warn him of

something, and it had to do with the backs of the people now at the