war against the Khaiem and the andat. And as always, he tried to set the
guilt aside. It was better to forget the ruins of Nantani and the bodies
of the Dai-kvo and his poets, the corpses of Otah's own men scattered
like scythed wheat and the smell of book paste catching fire. It was
better, but it was difficult. He knew he would never wholly succeed.
He was more than half drunk when the conversation turned to his
unfinished letter, still on his desk.
"It's pathetic, I suppose," Otah said, "but it's the habit I've made."
"I don't think it's pathetic," Balasar said. "You're keeping faith with
her. With what she was to you, and what she still is. That's admirable."
"Tends toward the maudlin, actually," Otah said. "But I think she'd
forgive me that. I only wish she could write back. There were things
she'd understand in an instant that I doubt I'd ever have come to. If
she were here, she'd have found a way to win the vote."
"I can't see that," Balasar said ruefully.
Otah took a pose of correction that spilled a bit of the wine from his bowl.
"She had a different perspective," Otah said. "She was ... she ..."
Otah's mind shifted under him, struggling against the fog. There was
something. He'd just thought it, and now it was almost gone again.
Kiyan-kya, his beloved wife, with her fox-sharp face and her way of
smiling. Something about the ways that the world she'd seen were
different from his own experience. The way talking with her had been
like living twice...
"Otah?" Balasar said, and Otah realized it wasn't the first time.
"Forgive me," Otah said, suddenly short of breath. "Balasar-cha, I think
... will you excuse me? There's something I need to ..."
Otah put his wine bowl on the desk and walked to the door of his rooms.
The corridors of the suite were dark, only the lowest of servants still
awake, cleaning the carpets and polishing the latches. Eyes widened and
hands fluttered as Otah passed, but he ignored them. The scribes and
translators were housed in a separate building across a flagstone
square. Otah passed the dry fountain in its center before the thought
that had possessed him truly took form. He had to restrain himself from
laughing.
The chief scribe was so dead asleep that Otah had to shake the woman
twice. When consciousness did come into her eyes, her face went pale.
She took a pose of apology that Otah waved away.
"How many of your best calligraphers can work in Galtic?"
"All of them, Most High," the chief scribe said. "It's why I brought them."
"How many? How many can we put to work now, tonight?"
"Ten?" she said as if it were a question.
"Wake them. Get them to their desks. Then I'll need a translator in my
apartments. Or two. Best get two. An etiquette master and a trade
specialist. Now. Go, now! This won't wait for morning."
On the way back to his rooms, his heart was tripping over, but his mind
was clearing, the alcohol burning off in the heat of his plan. Balasar
was seated where Otah had left him, an expression of bleary concern on
his face.
"Is all well?"
"All's excellent," Otah said. "No, don't go. Stay here, Balasar-cha. I
have a letter to write, and I need you."
"What's happened?"
"I can't convince the men on the council. You've said as much. And if I
can't talk to the men who wield the power, I'll talk to the women who
wield the men. Tell me there's a councilman's wife out there who doesn't
want grandchildren. I defy you to."
"I don't understand," Balasar said.
"I need a list of the names of all the councilmen's wives. And the men
of the convocation. Theirs too. Perhaps their daughters if ... Well,
those can wait. I'm going to draft an appeal to the women of Galt. If
anyone can sway the vote, it's them."
"And you think that would work?" Balasar asked, incredulity in his
expression.
In the event, Otah's letter seemed for two full days to have no effect.
The letters went out, each sewn with silk thread and stamped with Otah's
imperial seal, and no word came back. He attended the ceremonies and
meals, the entertainments and committee meetings, his eyes straining for
some hint of change like a snow fox waiting for the thaw. It was only on
the morning of the third day, just as he was preparing to send a fresh
wave of appeals to the daughters of the families of power, that his
visitor was announced.
She was perhaps ten years younger than Otah, with hair the gray of dry
slate pulled back from an intimidating, well-painted face. The reddening
at her eyelids seemed more likely to be a constant feature than a sign
of recent weeping. Otah rose from the garden bench and took a pose of
welcome simple enough for anyone with even rudimentary training to
recognize. His guest replied appropriately and waited for him to invite
her to sit in the chair across from him.
"We haven't met," the woman said in her native language. "Not formally."
"But I know your husband," Otah said. He had met with all the members of
the High Council many times. Farrer Dasin was among the
longest-standing, though not by any means the most powerful. His wife
Issandra had been no more than a polite smile and another face among
hundreds until now. Otah considered her raised brows and downcast eyes,
the set of her mouth and her shoulders. There had been a time when he'd
lived by knowing how to interpret such small indications. Perhaps he
still did.
"I found your letter quite moving," she said. "Several of us did."
"I am gratified," Otah said, not certain it was quite the correct word.
"Fatter and I have talked about your treaty. The massive shipment of
Galtic women to your cities as bed servants to your men, and then
hauling back a crop of your excess male population for whatever girls
escaped. It isn't a popular scheme."
The brutality of her tone was a gambit, a test. Otah refused to rise to it.
"Those aren't the terms I put in the treaty," he said. "I believe I used
the term wife rather than bed servant, for example. I understand that
the men of Galt might find it difficult. It is, however, needed."
He spread his hands, as if in apology. She met his gaze with the bare
intellect of a master merchant.
"Yes, it is," she said. "Majesty, I am in a position to deliver a
decisive majority in both the High Council and the convocation. It will
cost me all the favors I'm owed, and I have been accruing them for
thirty years. It will likely take me another thirty to pay back the debt
I'm going into for you.
Otah smiled and waited. The cold blue eyes glittered for a moment.
"You might offer your thanks," she said.
"Forgive me," Otah said. "I didn't think you'd finished speaking. I