slow way through the night skies.
"It has moons around it. Three of them."
He laughed and shook his head, but Vanjit didn't join him. Her face was
still and cool. Maati's laughter died.
"A star with ... moons?"
Vanjit nodded. Maati looked up again at the bright golden glimmer above
the trees. He frowned first and then smiled.
"Show me," he said.
13
The fleet left Saraykeht on the first truly cool morning of autumn. A
dozen ships with bright sails, and the marks of the Empire and Galt
flying together from their masts. From the shore, Otah could no longer
make out the shapes of the individual sailors and soldiers that crowded
the distant decks, much less Sinja himself, dressed though the man was
in gaudy commander's array. Fatter Dasin's ships still stood at anchor,
and the other Galtic ships which had been promised but were not yet
prepared to sail.
Sinja had met with him for the last time less than a hand and a half
before he'd stepped onto the small boat to make his last inspection.
Otah had made himself comfortable in a teahouse near the seafront,
waiting for the ceremony that would send off the fleet. The walls of the
place were stained with decades of lantern smoke, the floorboards
spotted with the memory of spilled wine. Sitting at the back table, Otah
had felt like a peacock in a hen coop. Sinja, breezing through the open
doors in a robe of bright green and hung with silk scarves and golden
pendants, had made him feel less ridiculous only by comparison.
"Well, this is your last chance to call the whole thing quits," Sinja
said, dropping into the chair across from Otah as casually as a drinking
companion. Otah fumbled in his sleeve for a moment and drew out the
letters intended for the utkhaiem of Chaburi-Tan. Sinja took them,
considered the bright thread that sewed each of them closed, and sighed.
"I'd feel better if Balasar was leading the first command," Sinja said.
"I thought you'd decided that he'd be better staying to arrange your
reinforcements."
"Agreed. I agreed. He decided. And it does make sense. Farrer-cha and
the others who've followed his example will be able to swallow all this
better if they're answering to a Galtic general."
"And waiting for them to be ready ..." Otah said.
"Madness," Sinja said, slipping the letters into his own sleeve. "We've
been too long already. I'm not saying that it's a bad plan. I only wish
that there was a brilliant, well-crafted scheme that had Balasar-cha
going out and me following behind to see whether the raiders sank
everyone. Any word from Chaburi-Tan?"
"Nothing new," Otah said.
"Fair enough. We'll send word once we get there."
A silence followed, the unasked questions as heavy in the air as smoke.
Otah leaned forward. Sinja knew about Idaan's list; Otah had told him in
a fit of candor and regretted it since. Sinja knew better than to raise
the issue where they might be overheard, but disapproval haunted his
expression.
"There is some movement on the question of Obar State," Otah said.
"Ashua Radaani bribed their ambassador. He has a list of men who have
been in negotiation to break the eastern cities from the Empire with
backing from Obar State. Two dozen men in four families."
"That's good work," Sinja said.
"He's asking permission to kill them."
"Sounds very tidy, assuming it's true and Radaani isn't involved in the
conspiracy himself."
"Very tidy then too," Otah said. "I'm ordering the men brought to Utani.
I can speak with them there."
"And if Radaani refuses?"
"Then I'll invite just him," Otah said. Sinja took an approving pose.
Otah thought for a moment that they might be done.
"The other matter?"
"Being addressed," Otah said.
Four of the members of Idaan's list had been quietly looked into, the
irregularities of their behavior clarified. One had been hiding
half-a-dozen mistresses from a wife with a notoriously short temper. Two
others had been conspiring to undercut the glass trades in the north,
setting up workshops nearer the alum mines of Eddensea. The fourth had
also appeared on Ashua Radaani's list, and had no clear connection to Maati.
Sinja had made it perfectly clear that he thought examining Eiah's
actions was the wisest course. If she was Maati's backer, better to find
it quickly and put a stop to the whole affair. If she wasn't, best to
know that and stop losing sleep. There was a cold logic to his argument,
and Otah knew what his own reluctance meant. His daughter had turned to
her Uncle Maati. Turned against her father. And the pain of that loss
was almost more than he could bear.
"Well," Sinja said. "I suppose I'd better go before the sailors all get
too drunk to know sunrise from sunset and land us all in Eymond. If I
don't come back, make sure they put up statues of me."
"You'll come back," Otah said.
"You only say that because I always have before," Sinja replied,
smiling. He sobered. "See that Balasar comes quickly, though. These
ships will make a grand spectacle, but it would be a short fight."
"I'll see to it," Otah said.
Sinja rose and took a pose of leave-taking. It might be the last time
Otah ever saw the man. It was a fact he'd known, but something in the
set of Sinja's body or the studied blankness of his face drove the point
home. For the space of a breath, Otah felt the loss as if the worst had
already happened.
"I would have been lost without you, these last years," Otah said. "You
know that."
"I know you think it," Sinja said, matching Otah's quiet tone. "Take
care, Most High. Do what needs doing."
Sitting now on his dais, watching the ships recede and vanish, Otah
thought the phrase had been intended as last words. Do what needs doing.
Meaning, more specifically, find Eiah. The sun rose from its morning
home in the east; the seafront surged with a hundred languages, creoles,
pidgins. Where the armsmen of the palace ended, merchants set up their
tall, thin stalls and proclaimed their wares. When Otah took his leave,
they would do the same in the space he now inhabited. Returning to the
palaces would be like taking his finger out of water. It wouldn't leave
a hole. He wondered, sometimes, if the whole world wasn't the same.
Back at the palaces, Otah suffered through the ritual change of robes,
the closing ceremony that followed seeing off the fleet. He dearly hoped
that when Balasar's reinforcements departed, he could avoid repeating
the entire pointless exercise. He hoped, but doubted it. Once the last
cymbal had chimed, the last priest intoned the final passage, and Otah