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A feast had been prepared, and baths. Servants descended on the group

like moths, and Otah submitted to being only emperor once again.

The celebration of his arrival was as annoying as it was pointless. Dish

after dish of savory meat and sweet bread, hot curry and chilled fish,

all accompanied by the best acrobats and musicians that could be scraped

together with little notice. And Ana Dasin sitting at his table, her

empty eyes a constant, unintentional reproach. Finding Maati and this

new poet was going to be like hunting quail with a circus. He would have

to do something to let them move discreetly. He didn't yet know what

that would be.

The rooms he'd been given were blond stone, the ceiling vaulted and set

with tiles of indigo and silver. A thousand candles set the air glowing

and filled his senses with the scent of hot wax and perfume. It was, he

thought, the sort of space that was almost impossible to keep warm.

Danat, Ana, and the armsmen were all being seen to elsewhere. He sat on

a long, low couch and hoped that Danat, at least, would be able to get

out into the city and make a few inquiries.

When a servant came and announced Sian Noygu, Otah almost refused the

audience before he recognized it as the name Idaan traveled under. His

heart racing, he let himself be led to a smaller chamber of carved

granite and worked gold. His sister sat between a small fountain and a

shadowed alcove. She wore a gray robe under a colorless cloak, and her

boots were soft with wear. A long scratch across the back of her hand

was the dark red of scabs and old blood.

The servant made his obeisance and retreated. Otah took a pose of

greeting appropriate to close family, and Idaan tilted her head like a

dog hearing an unfamiliar sound.

"I had intended to meet you when you came into the city. I didn't know

you were planning a festival."

"I wasn't," Otah said, sitting beside her. The fountain clucked and

burbled. "Traveling quietly seems beyond me these days."

"It was all as subtle as a rockslide," Idaan agreed. "But there's some

good in it. The louder you are, the less people are looking at me."

"You've found something then?" Otah asked.

"I have," Idaan said.

"What have you learned?"

A different voice answered from the darkness of the alcove at Idaan's

side. A woman's voice.

"Everything," it said.

Otah rose to his feet. The woman who emerged was young: not more than

forty summers and the white in her hair still barely more than an

accent. She wore robes as simple as Idaan's but held herself with a

mixture of angry pride and uncertainty that Otah had become familiar

with. Her pupils were gray and sightless, but her eyes were the almond

shape that marked her as a citizen of the Empire. This was a victim of

the new poet, but she was no Galt.

"Idaan-cha knows everything," the blind woman said again, "because I

told it to her."

Idaan took the woman's hand and stood. When she spoke, it was to her

companion.

"This is my brother, the Emperor," Idaan said, then turned to him.

"Otah-cha, this is Ashti Beg."

20

When before Maati had considered death, it had been in terms of what

needed to be done. Before he died, he had to master the grammars of the

Dai-kvo, or find his son again, or most recently see his errors with

Sterile made right. It was never the end itself that drew his attention.

He had reduced his mortality to the finish line of a race. This and this

and this done, and afterward, dying would be like rest at the end of a

long day.

With Eiah's pronouncement, his view shifted. No list of accomplishments

could forgive the prospect of his own extinction. Maati found himself

looking at the backs of his hands, the cracked skin, the dark blotches

of age. He was becoming aware of time in a way he never had. There was

some number of days he would see, some number of nights, and then

nothing. It had always been true. He was no more or less a mortal being

because his blood was slowing. Everything born, dies. He had known that.

He only hadn't quite understood. It changed everything.

It also changed nothing. They traveled slowly, keeping to lesserknown

roads and away from the larger low towns. Often Eiah would call the

day's halt with the sun still five hands above the horizon because they

had found a convenient wayhouse or a farm willing to board them for the

night. The prospect of letting Maati sleep in cold air was apparently

too much for her to consider.

On the third day, Eiah had parted with the company, rejoining them on

the fifth with a cloth sack of genuinely unpleasant herbs. Maati

suffered a cup of the bitter tea twice daily. He let his pulses be

measured against one another, his breath smelled, his fingertips

squeezed, the color of his eyes considered and noted. It embarrassed him.

The curious thing was that, despite all his fears and Eiah's attentions,

he felt fine. If his breath was short, it was no shorter than it had

been for years. He tired just when he'd always tired, but now six sets

of eyes shifted to him every time he grunted. He dismissed the anxiety

when he saw it in the others, however closely he felt it himself.

He would have expected the two feelings to balance each other: the

dismissive self-consciousness at any concern over him and the

presentiment of his death. He did not understand how he could be

possessed by both of them at the same time, and yet he was. It was like

there were two minds within him, two Maati Vaupathais, each with his own

thoughts and concerns, and no compromise between them was required.

For the most part, Maati could ignore this small failure to be at one

with himself. Each morning, he rose with the others, ate whatever

rubbery eggs or day-old meat the waykeeper had to offer, choked down

Eiah's tea, and went on as usual. The autumn through which they passed

was crisp and fragrant of new earth and rotting leaves. The snow that

had plagued the school had also visited the foothills and shallow passes

that divided the western plains of Pathai from the river valleys of the

east, but it was rarely more than three fingers deep. In many places,

the sun was still strong enough to banish the pale mourning colors to

the shadows.

With rumors that Otah himself had taken up the hunt, they kept a balance

between the smaller, less-traveled roads and those that were wider and

better maintained. So far from the great cities, the ports and trading

posts, there were no foreign faces to be seen. None of the handful of

adventurous Westlands women had made their way here to try for a Khaiate

husband and a better life. There was no better life to be had here. The

lack of children, of babies, gave the towns a sense of tolerating a slow

plague. It was only the world. It no longer troubled Maati. This was

another journey in a life that seemed to be woven of distance. Apart