"I know how crippled I am," Ana said. "It gives me room to guess. I know
how little I can do to stop it."
There was a soft sound, and Danat hushing her. Otah took a careful step
back, away from the door. When Ana's voice came again, it was thick with
tears.
"Tell me," she said. "Tell me one of those stories. The ones where a
child with two races could still win out."
"In the sixteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Adani Beh," Danat
said, his voice bright and soft, "there came to court a boy whose blood
was half-Bakta, his skin the color of soot, and his mind as clever as
any man who had ever lived. When the Emperor saw him ..."
Otah backed away, his son's voice becoming a murmur of sound, inflected
like words but too faint to mean anything. Their whole journey, it had
been like this. Each time Otah thought they might have a moment alone,
Ana was near, or one of the armsmen, or Otah had brought himself to the
edge of speech and then failed. Every courier they stopped along the
road was another reminder to Otah that his son had to know, had to be
told. But no word had come from Idaan, and Danat still didn't know that
Eiah was involved in the slow death of Galt and, with it, the future
Otah had fought for.
Before Pathai, Otah had told himself when they were on the road. During
the journey itself, it hardly mattered whether Danat knew, but once they
reached their destination, his son couldn't be set out without knowing
what it was they were searching for and why. Otah had no faith that
another, better chance would come the next day. He made his way back
upstairs, found a servant woman, and had cheese, fresh bread, and a
carafe of rice wine taken to Danat's room. Otah waited there until the
Galtic clock, clicking to itself in a corner, marked the night as almost
half-gone. Otah didn't notice that he was dozing until the opening door
roused him.
Otah broke the news as gently as he could, outlining his own
halfknowledge of Maati's intentions, Idaan's appearance in Saraykeht,
Eiah's appearance on the list of possible backers, and his own decision
to set his sister to hunt down his daughter. Danat listened carefully,
as if picking through the words for clues to some deeper mystery. When,
at length, Otah went silent, Danat looked into the fire in its grate,
wove his fingers together, and thought. The flames made his eyes glitter
like jewels.
"It isn't her," he said at last. "She wouldn't do this."
"I know you love her, Danat-kya. I love her too, and I don't want to
think this of her either, but-"
"I don't mean she didn't back Maati," Danat said. "We don't know that
she did, but at least that part's plausible. I'm only saying that this
blindness isn't her work."
His voice wasn't loud or strident. He seemed less like a man fighting an
unpalatable truth than a builder pointing out a weakness in an archway's
design. Otah took a pose that invited him to elaborate.
"Eiah hates your plan," Danat said. "She even came to me a few times to
argue that I should refuse it."
"I didn't know that."
"I didn't tell you," Danat said, his hands taking a pose that
apologized, though his voice held no regret. "I couldn't see that it
would make things between the two of you any better. But my point is
that her arguments were never against Galts. She couldn't stand to see a
generation of our own women ignored. Their pain was what she lived in.
When you started allowing the import of bed slaves as ... well ..."
"Brood mares," Otah said. "I do remember her saying that."
"Well, that," Danat agreed. "Eiah took that as saying that none of the
women here mattered. That she didn't matter. If the problems of the
Empire could be solved by hauling in wombs that would bear, then all
that was important to you about women was the children they could yield."
"But if there's no children, there can't be-"
Danat shifted forward in his seat, putting his palm over Otah's mouth.
The boy's eyes were dark, his mouth set in the half-smile Kiyan had
often worn.
"You need to listen to me, Papa-kya. I'm not telling you that she's
right. I'm not telling you she's wrong, for that. I'm telling you Eiah
loves people and she hates pain. If she's been backing Uncle Maati, it's
to take away the pain, not to ..."
Danat gestured at the shutters, and by implication at the world on the
other side of them. The logs in the grate popped and the song of a
single cricket, perhaps the last one alive before the coming winter,
sang counterpoint to the ticking clock. Otah rubbed his chin, his mind
turning his son's words over like a jeweler considering a gem.
"She may be part of this," Danat said. "I think you're right to find
her. But the poet we want? It isn't her."
"I wish I could be certain of that," Otah said.
"Well, start with not being certain that she is," Danat said. "The world
will carry you the rest of the way, if I'm right."
Otah smiled and put his hand on his son's head.
"When did you become wise?" Otah asked.
"It's only what you'd have said, if you weren't busy feeling responsible
for all of it," Danat said. "You're a good man, Papa-kya. And we're
doing what we can in unprecedented times."
Otah let his hand fall to his side. Danat smiled. The cricket, wherever
it was, went silent.
"Go," Danat said. "Sleep. We've got a long ride tomorrow, and I'm
exhausted."
Otah rose, his hands taking a pose that accepted the command. Danat
chuckled; then as Otah reached the door, he sobered.
"Thank you, by the way, for what you said about Ana," Danat said. "You
were right. We weren't treating her with the respect she deserved."
"It's a mistake we all make, one time and another," Otah said. "I'm glad
it was an error we could correct."
Perhaps mine also will be, he thought. It terrified him in some
fundamental and joyous way to think that possibly, possibly, this might
still end without a sacrifice that was too great for him to bear. He
hadn't realized how much he had tried to harden himself against the
prospect of killing his own daughter, or how poorly he had managed it.
He crawled into his bed. Danat's certainty lightened the weight that
bore him down. The poet wasn't Eiah. This blindness wasn't in her,
wasn't who she was. The andat might have been bound by Maati or some
other girl. Some girl whom he could bring himself to kill. He closed his
eyes, considering how he might avoid having the power of the andat
turned on him. The fear would return, he was sure of that. But now, for
a moment, he could afford himself the luxury of being more frightened of
loss than of the price of victory.
They left before sunrise with the steamcarts' supplies of wood, coal,