contradicted the instructions from the Master of Keys, and neither
allowed for what the guards and armsmen said they needed to do. Otah
built his own fire in the grate, lighting it from the stub of a candle,
and let raw chaos reign about him.
Danat found him there, looking into the fire. His son's eyes were wide,
but his shoulders hadn't yet sagged. Otah took a pose of welcome and
Danat crouched before him.
"What are you doing, Papa-kya," Danat said. "You're just sitting here?"
"I'm thinking," Otah said, aware as he did so how weak the words sounded.
"They need you. You have to gather the high utkhaiem. You have to tell
them what's going on."
He looked at his son. The strong face, the sincere eyes the same rich
brown as Kiyan's had been. He would have made a good emperor. Better
than Otah had. He took his boy's hand.
"The fleet is doomed," Otah said. "Galt is broken. These new poets,
wherever they are, no longer answer to the Empire. What would you have
me say?"
"That," Danat said. "If nothing else, say that. Say what everyone knows
is true. How can that be wrong?"
"Because I have nothing to say after it," Otah said. "I don't know what
to do. I don't have an answer."
"Then tell them that we're thinking of one," Danat said.
Otah sat silent, his hands on his knees, and let the fire in the grate
fill his eyes. Danat shook his shoulder with a sound that was part
frustration and part plea. When Otah couldn't find a response, Danat
stood, took a pose that ended an audience, and strode out. The young
man's impatience lingered in the air like incense.
There had been a time when Otah had been possessed of the certainty of
youth. He had held the fate of nations in his hands, and done what
needed doing. He had killed. Somewhere the years had pressed it out of
him. Danat would see the same complexity, futility, and sorrow, given
time. He was young. He wasn't tired yet. His world was still simple.
Servants came, and Otah turned them away. He considered going to his
desk, writing another of his letters to Kiyan, but the effort of it was
too much. He thought of Sinja, riding the swift autumn waves outside
Chaburi-Tan and waiting for aid that would never come. Would he know?
Were there Galts enough among his crew to guess what had happened?
The world was so large and so complex, it was almost impossible to
believe that it could collapse so quickly. Idaan had been right again.
All the problems that had plagued him were meaningless in the face of this.
Eiah. Maati. The people he had failed. They had taken the world from
him. Well, perhaps they'd have a better idea what to do with it. And if
a few hundred or a few thousand Galts died, there was nothing Otah could
do to save them. He was no poet. He could have been. One angry, rootless
boy's decision differently made, and everything would have been different.
A servant woman came and took away a tray of untouched food that Otah
hadn't known was there. The pine branches in the grate were all ashes
now. The sun was almost at the height of its day's arc. Otah rubbed his
eyes and only then recognized the sound that had drawn him from his
reverie. Trumpets and bells. Callers' voices ringing out over the
palaces, over the city, over sea and sky and everything in it. A
pronouncement was to be made, and all men and women of the utkhaiem were
called to hear it.
He made his way through the back halls, set like stagecraft, that
allowed him to appear at the appropriate ritual moment. What few
servants there were bent themselves almost double in poses of obeisance
as he passed. Otah ignored them.
A side hall, almost too narrow for a man to walk down, took him to a
hidden seat. Years before, it had been a place where the Khai Saraykeht
could watch entertainments without being seen. Now it was Otah's own. He
looked down upon the hall. It was packed so thickly there was no room to
sit. The cushions meant to allow people to take their rest were all
being trampled underfoot. Whisperers had to fight to hold their
positions. And among the bright robes and jeweled headdresses of the
utkhaiem, there were also the tunics and gray, empty eyes of Galts come
to hear what was said. He saw them and thought of an old dream he'd had
of Heshai, the poet he had once killed, attending a dinner though still
very much dead. Corpses walked among the utkhaiem. Balasar was not among
them.
Silence took the hall as if someone had cupped his hands over Otah's
ears, and he turned toward the dais. His son stood there, his robe the
pale of mourning.
"My friends," Danat said. "There is little I can say which you do not
already know. Our brothers and sisters of Galt have been struck. The
only plausible cause is this: a new poet has been trained, a new andat
has been bound, and, against all wisdom, it has been used first as a
weapon."
Danat paused as the whisperers repeated his words out through the wide
galleries and, no doubt, into the streets.
"The fleet is in peril," Danat continued. "Chaburi-Tan placed at risk.
We do not know who the poet is that has done this thing. We cannot trust
that they will be as quick to blind our enemies as they have our
friends. We cannot trust that they will undo the damage they have caused
to our new allies. Our new families. And so my father has asked me to
find this new poet and kill him."
Otah's fingers pressed against the carved stone until his joints ached.
His chest ached with dread. He doesn't know, Otah wanted to shout. His
sister is part of this, and he does not know it. He shook and kept
silent. There was only the swelling roar of the people, the whisperers
shouting above it, and his son standing proud and still, shoulders set.
"There are some among us who look upon what has happened today as a
moment of hope. They believe that the andat returned to the world marks
the end of our hard times. With all respect, it marks their beginning,
and neither I nor. .
Otah turned away, pushing his way down the narrow hall, afraid to let
his hands leave the stone for fear he should lose his balance. In the
dim hallways, he gathered himself. He had expected shame. Seeing Danat
speaking as he himself could not, he thought that he would feel shame.
He didn't. There was only anger.
The first servant he found, he grabbed by the sleeve and spun halfway
around. The woman started to shout at him, then saw who he was, saw his
face, and went pale.
"Whatever you were doing, stop it," Otah said. "Find me the Master of
Tides. Bring her to my rooms. Do it now."
She might have taken a pose that accepted the command or one of
obeisance or any other of the hundred thousand things the physical
grammar of the Khaiem might express. Otah didn't stop long enough to
see, and didn't care.