"And the two Kaes," Eiah said, "so that they couldn't follow her."
"Yes," Idaan said, "but that's not the question. 117hy notMaati?"
"Because . . ." Maati began, and then fell short. Because she cared for
him more? Because she didn't fear him? Nothing he could think of rang true.
"I think she wants to be found," Otah said. "I think she wants to be
found, in specific, by Maati."
Idaan grunted appreciatively. Eiah frowned and then nodded slowly.
"Why would she want that?" Maati asked.
"Because your attention is the mark of status," Eiah answered. "You are
the teacher. The Dai-kvo. Which of us you choose to give your time to
determines who is in favor and who isn't. And she wants to show herself
that she can take you from me."
"That's idiotic," Maati said.
"No," Idaan said, her voice oddly soft. "It's only childish."
"It fits together if you've raised a daughter," Otah agreed. "It's just
what Eiah would have done when at twelve summers. But if I'm right, it
changes things. I didn't want to say it in front of Ana-cha, but if your
poet's truly gone to ground, I can't believe we'd find her before
spring. She can find new allies if she needs them, or use the andat to
threaten people and get what she wants from them. At best, we might have
her by Candles Night."
"But if she's waiting to be found," Danat said.
"Then it's a matter of guessing where she'd wait," Otah said. "Where
she'd expect Maati to go looking for her."
"I don't know the answer to that," Maati said. "The school, maybe. She
might make her way back there."
"Or at the camp where we lost her," Eiah suggested.
Silence fell over the room for a moment. A decision had just been made,
and Maati could tell that each of them knew it. Utani would wait. They
were hunting Vanjit.
"The camp's nearest," Danat said.
"You can send one of the armsmen north with a letter," Eiah said. "Even
if we fail, it doesn't mean a larger search can't be organized while we
try."
"I'll round up the others," Idaan said, rising from the table. "No point
wasting daylight. Danat-cha, if you could tell our well-armed escorts
that we're leaving?"
Danat swilled down the last of his tea, took a pose that accepted his
aunt's instructions, and rose. In moments, only Otah, Eiah, and Maati
himself were left in the room. Otah took a bite of egg and stared out
into nothing.
"Otah-kvo," Maati said.
The Emperor looked over, his eyebrow raised in something equally query
and challenge. Maati felt his chest tighten as if it were bound by wire.
He sat silent for the rest of the meal.
To Maati's dismay, Ashti Beg, Large Kae, and Small Kae all preferred to
stay behind. There was a logic to it, and the keeper was more than happy
to take Otah's silver in return for a promise to look after them. Still,
Maati found himself wishing that they had come.
The Emperor's boat was, if anything, smaller than the one Maati had
hired. One of the armsmen had been sent north with letters that Otah had
hastily drafted, another to the south. Half of the rest were set to
finding a second boat and following with the supplies, and yet the
little craft felt crowded as they nosed out into the river.
Otah stood at the bow, Danat at his side. Idaan had appointed herself
shepherd of Eiah and Ana, the blinded women. Maati sat alone near the
stern. The sky was pale with haze, the river air rich with the scent of
decaying leaves and autumn. The kiln roared to itself, and the wheel
slapped the water. Far above, two vees of geese headed south, their
brash unlovely voices made beautiful by distance.
His rage was gone, and he missed it. All his fantasies of Otah Machi
apologizing, of Otah Machi debased before him, melted like sugar in
water when faced with the man himself. Maati felt small and alone, and
perhaps that was merely accurate. He had lost everything now except
perhaps Eiah. Irit was gone, and the wisest of them all for fleeing. He
couldn't imagine Large Kae and Small Kae would return to him. Ashti Beg
had left once already. And then Vanjit. All of his little family was
gone now.
His family. Ashti Beg's voice returned to him. Vanjit and
Clarity-ofSight and the need for family.
"Oh," he said, almost before he knew what he meant. And then, "Oh."
Maati made his unsteady way to the bow, touching crates with his
fingertips to keep from stumbling. Otah and Danat turned at the sound of
his approach, but said nothing. Maati reached them short of breath and
oddly elated. His smile seemed to surprise them.
"I know where she's gone," he said.
27
Udun had been a river city. A city of birds.
Otah remembered the first time he'd come to it, a letter of introduction
from a man he had known briefly years before limp in his sleeve. After
years of life in the eastern islands, it was like walking into a dream.
Canals laced the city, great stone quays as busy as the streets. Great
humped bridges with stairs cut in each side rose up to let even the
tallest boats pass. On the shores, tree branches bent under the brightly
colored burden of wings and beaks and a thousand kinds of song. The
street carts sold food and drink as they did everywhere, but with each
paper basket of lemon fish, every bowl of rice and sausage, there would
be a twist of colored cloth.
Open the cloth, and seeds would spill out, and then within a heartbeat
would come the birds. Fortunes were told by which birds reached you.
Finches for love, sparrows for pain, and so on, and so on. Wealth,
birth, death, love, sex, and mystery all spelled out in feathers and
hunger for those wise enough to see or credulous enough to believe.
The palaces of the Khai Udun had spanned the wide river itself, barges
disappearing into the seemingly endless black tunnel and then emerging
again into the light. Beggars sang from rafts, their boxes floating at
the side. The firekeepers' kilns had all been enameled the green of the
river water and a deep red Otah had never seen elsewhere. And at a
wayhouse with a little garden, there had been a keeper with a foxsharp
face and threads of white in her black hair.
He had entered the gentleman's trade there, become a courier and
traveled through the world, bringing his messages back to House Siyanti
and sleeping at Kiyan's wayhouse. He knew all the cities and many of the
low towns as they had been back then, but Udun had been something precious.
And then the Galts had come. There were tales afterward that the river
downstream from the ruins stank of corpses for a year. Thousands of men
and women and children had died in the bloodiest slaughter of the war.