darker, but far from unpeopled. Eiah heard a man's laugh from one
direction, a woman's voice lifted in drunken song from another. The
ships that filled the seafront docks stood silent, their masts like
winter trees, and the ocean beyond them gray with a low mist.
There was a beauty in it, and a familiarity. Eiah had made her studies
in places like this, whatever city she'd been in. She'd sewn closed the
flesh of whores and thieves as often as soothed the coughs and pains of
the utkhaiem in their perfumed palaces. It was a decision she'd made
early in her career, not to be a court physician, not to care only for
the powerful. Her father had approved, and even, she thought, been proud
of the decision. For all their differences-and there were many-it was
one reason she loved him.
The steamcart appeared first as a sound: the rough clatter of iron-bound
wheels against the bricks of the street, the chuff of the boiler, the
low rumble of the kiln. And then, as Eiah stood and shook the dirt and
grime from her robe, it turned into the wide street they called the
Nantan and came down toward the statue. In the light of the kiln, she
saw seven or perhaps eight figures clinging to the cart's side. The
firekeeper himself sat on the top, guiding the cart with a series of
levers and pedals that made the most ornate loom seem simple. Eiah
stepped forward as the cart trundled past, took one of the leather
grips, and hoisted herself up to the cart's side runner along with the
others.
"Two coppers," the firekeeper said without looking at her.
Eiah dug in her sleeve with her free hand, came out with two lengths of
copper, and tossed them into the lacquer box at the firekeeper's feet.
The man nodded rather than take any more-complex pose. His hands and
eyes were occupied. The breeze shifted, a waft of smoke and thick steam
washing her in its scent, and the cart lurched, shuddered, and turned
again to the north along its constant route. Eiah sighed and made
herself comfortable. It would take her almost the time for the moon to
move the width of her hand before she stepped down at the pathway that
led to the palaces. In the meantime, she watched the night city pass by her.
The streets nearest the seafront alternated between the high roofs of
warehouses and the low of the tradesmen's shops. In the right season,
the clack of looms would have filled the air, even this late at night.
The streets converged on wide squares where the litter of the week's
market still fouled the street: cheeses dropped to the cobbles and trod
into mush, soiled cabbages and yams, even a skinned rabbit too corrupt
to sell and not worth hauling away. One of the men on the far side of
the steamcart stepped down, shifting the balance slightly. Eiah watched
as his red-brown cloak passed into darkness.
There had been a time, she knew, when the streets had been safe to walk
down, even alone. There had been a time beggars with their boxes would
have been on the corners, filling the night with plaintive, amateur
song. She had never seen it, never heard it. It was a story she knew,
Old Saraykeht from long ago. She knew it like she knew Bakta, where she
had never been, and the courts of the Second Empire, gone from the world
for hundreds of years. It was a story. Once upon a time there was a city
by the sea, and it lived in prosperity and innocence. But it didn't anymore.
The steamcart passed into the compounds of the merchant houses, three,
four, five stories tall. They were almost palaces in themselves. There
were more lights here, more voices. Lanterns hung from ropes at the
crossroads, spilling buttery light on the bricks. Three more of Eiah's
fellows stepped down from the cart. Two stepped on, dropping their
copper lengths into the firekeeper's box. They didn't speak, didn't
acknowledge one another. She shifted her hands on the leather grip. The
palaces of the utkhaiem would be coming soon. And her apartments, and
bed, and sleep. The kiln roared when the firekeeper opened it and poured
in another spade's worth of coal.
The servants met her at the gateway that separated the palaces from the
city, the smooth brick streets from the crushed marble pathways. The air
smelled different here, coal smoke and the rich, fetid stink of humanity
displaced by incense and perfume. Eiah felt relieved to be back, and
then guilty for her relief. She answered their poses of greeting and
obeisance with one of acknowledgment. She was no longer her work. Among
these high towers and palaces, she was and would always be her father's
daughter.
"Eiah-cha," the most senior of the servants said, his hands in a pose of
ritual offering, "may we escort you to your rooms?"
"No," she said. "Food first. Then rest."
Eiah suffered them to take her satchel, but refused the sable cloak they
offered against the night air. It really wasn't that cold.
"Is there word from my father?" she asked as they walked along the wide,
empty paths.
"No, Eiah-cha," the servant replied. "Nor from your brother. There have
been no couriers today."
Eiah kept her pleasure at the news from her expression.
The palaces of Saraykeht had suffered less under their brief Galtic
occupation than many others had. Nantani had been nearly ruined. Udun
had been razed and never rebuilt. In Saraykeht, it was clear where
statues had once been and were gone, where jewels had been set into the
goldwork around the doorways and been wrenched out, but all the
buildings except the Khai's palace and the library still stood. The
utkhaiem of the city hadn't restored the damage or covered it over. Like
a woman assaulted but with unbroken spirit, Saraykeht wore her scars
without shame. Of all the cities of the Khaiem, she was the least
devastated, the strongest, and the most arrogant in her will to survive.
Eiah thought she might love the city just a little, even as it made her sad.
A singing slave occupied the garden outside Eiah's apartments. Eiah left
the shutters open so that the songs could come through more clearly. A
fire burned in the grate and candles glowed in glass towers. A Galtic
clock marked the hours of the night in soft metallic counterpoint to the
singer, and as she pulled off her robes and prepared for sleep, Eiah was
amazed to see how early it was. The night had hardly exhausted its first
third. It had seemed longer. She put out the candles, pulled herself
into her bed, and drew the netting closed.
The night passed, and the day that followed it, and the day that
followed that. Eiah's life in Saraykeht had long since taken on a
rhythm. The mornings she spent at the palaces working with the court
physicians, the afternoons down in the city or in the low towns that
spread out from Saraykeht. To those who didn't know her, she gave
herself out to be a visitor from Cetani in the north, driven to the
summer cities by hardship. It wasn't an implausible tale. There were
many for whom it was true. And while it couldn't be totally hidden, she