An Autumn War (Long Price Quartet #3)

An Autumn War (Long Price Quartet #3) Page 4

"What's the matter?" Kiyan asked. She was already dressed in the silk shift that she slept in, her hair tied back from her thin foxlike face. It occurred to Otah for the first time just how long ago the sun had set. He sat on the bed at her side and let himself feel the aches in his back and knees.

"Sitting too long," he said. "I don't know why doing nothing should hurt as badly as hauling crates."

Kiyan put a hand against his back, her fingers tracing his spine through the fine-spun wool of his robes.

"For one thing, you haven't hauled a crate for your living in thirty summers.

""Twenty-five," he said, leaning back into the soft pressure of her hands. ""Twenty-six now."

"For another, you've hardly done nothing. As I recall, you were awake before the sun rose."

Otah considered the sleeping chamber-the domed ceiling worked in silver, the wood and bone inlay of the floors and walls, the rich gold netting that draped the bed, the still, somber flame of the lantern. The east wall was stone-pink granite thin as eggshell that glowed when the sun struck it. He couldn't recall how long it had been since he'd woken to see that light. Last summer, perhaps, when the nights were shorter. He closed his eyes and lay hack into the soft, enfolding bed. His weight pressed out the scent of crushed rose petals. Hayes closed, he felt Kiyan shift, the familiar warmth and weight of her body resting against him. She kissed his temple.

"Our friend from the I)ai-kvo will finally leave soon. A message came recalling him," Otah said. "That was a bright moment. Though the gods only know what kept him here so long. Sinja's likely halfway to the VVestlands by now."

"The envoy stayed for Maati's work," Kiyan said. "Apparently he hardly left the library these last weeks. Eiah's been keeping me informed."

"Well, the gods and Eiah, then," Otah said.

"I'm worried about her. She's brooding about something. Can you speak with her?"

Dread touched Otah's belly, and a moment's resentment. It had been such a long day, and here waiting for him like a stalking cat was another problem, another need he was expected to meet. The thought must have expressed itself in his body, because Kiyan sighed and rolled just slightly away.

"You think it's wrong of me," Kiyan said.

"Not wrong," Otah said. "Unnecessary isn't wrong."

"I know. At her age, you were living on the streets in the summer cities, stealing pigeons off firekeeper's kilns and sleeping in alleys. And you came through just fine."

"Oh," Otah said. "Have I told that story already?"

"Once or twice," she said, laughing gently. "It's just that she seems so distant. I think there's something bothering her that she won't say. And

  then I wonder whether it's only that she won't say it to me."

"And why would she talk to me if she won't she talk to you?"

When he felt Kiyan shrug, Otah opened his eyes and rolled to his side. "There were tears shining in his lover's eyes, but her expression was more amused than sorrowful. He touched her cheek with his fingertips, and she kissed his palm absently.

"1 don't know. Because you're her father, and I'm only her mother? It was just ... a hope. The problem is that she's half a woman," Kiyan said. "When the sun's up, I know that. I remember when I was that age. My father had me running half of his wayhouse, or that's how it felt back then. Up before the clients, cooking sausages and barley. Cleaning the rooms during the day. He and Old Mani would take care of the evenings, though. They wanted to sell as much wine as they could, but they didn't want a girl my age around drunken travelers. I thought they were being so unfair."

Kiyan pursed her lips.

"But maybe I've told that story already," she said.

"Once or twice," Otah agreed.

"There was a time I didn't worry about the whole world and everything in it, you know. I remember that there was. It doesn't make sense to me. One had season, an illness, a fire-anything, really, and I could have lost the wayhouse. But now here I am, highest of the Khaiem, a whole city that will bend itself in half to hand me whatever it thinks I want, and the world seems more fragile."

"We got old," Otah said. "It's always the ones who've seen the most who think the world's on the edge of collapse, isn't it? And we've seen more than most."

Kiyan shook her head.

"It's more than that. Losing a wayhouse would have made the world harder for me and Old Mani. There are more people than I can count here in the city, and all the low towns. And you carry them. It makes it matter more."

"I sit through days of ceremony and let myself be hectored over the things I don't do the way other people prefer," Otah said. "I'm not sure that anything I've done here has actually made any difference at all. If they stuffed a robe with cotton and posed the sleeves ..."

"You care about them," Kiyan said.

"I don't," he said. "I care about you and Eiah and I)anat. And Maati. I know that I'm supposed to care about everyone and everything in Machi, but love, I'm only a man. "l'hey can tell me I gave tip my own name when I took the chair, but really the Khai Machi is only what I do. I wouldn't keep the work if I could find a way out."

Kiyan embraced him with one arm. Her hair was fragrant with lavender oil.

"You're sweet," she said.

"Am I? I'll try to confess my incompetence and selfishness more often."

"As long as it includes me," she said. "Now go let those poor men change your clothes and get hack to beds of their own."

The servants had become accustomed to the Khai's preference for brief ablutions. Otah knew that his own father had managed somehow to enjoy the ceremony of being dressed and bathed by others. But his father had been raised to take the chair, had followed the traditions and forms of etiquette, and had never that Otah knew stepped outside the role he'd been horn to. Otah himself had been turned out, and the years he had spent being a simple, free man, reliant upon himself had ruined him for the fawning of the court. He endured the daily frivolity of having foods brought to him, his hands cleaned for him, his hair combed on his behalf. He allowed the body servants to pull off his formal robes and swathe him in a sleeping shift, and when he returned to his bed, Kiyan's breath was already deep, slow, and heavy. He slipped in beside her, pulling the blankets up over himself, and closed his eyes at last.

Sleep, however, did not come. His body ached, his eyes were tired, but it seemed that the moment he laid his head back, Utah's mind woke. I Ic listened to the sounds of the palace in night: the almost silent wind through a distant window, the deep and subtle ticking of cooling stone, the breath of the woman at his side. Beyond the doors to the apartments, someone coughed-one of the servants set to watch over the Khai Machi in case there was anything he should desire in the night. Utah tried not to move.

He hadn't asked Kiyan about Danat's health. He'd meant to. But surely if there had been anything concerning, she would have brought it up to him. And regardless, he could ask her in the morning. Perhaps he would cancel the audiences before midday and go speak with Danat's physicians. And speak to Eiah. He hadn't said he would do that, but Kiyan had asked, and it wasn't as if being present in his own daughter's life should he an imposition. He wondered what it would have been to have a dozen wives, whether he would have felt the need to attend to all of their children as he did to the two he had now, how he would have stood watching his boys grow tip when he knew he would have to send them away or else watch them slaughter one another over which of them would take his own place here on this soft, sleepless bed and fear in turn for his own sons.

The night candle ate through its marks as he listened to the internal voice nattering in his mind, gnawing at half a thousand worries both justified and inane. The trade agreements with tJdun weren't in place yet. Perhaps something really was the matter with Eiah. He didn't know how long stone buildings stood; nothing stands forever, so it only made sense that someday the palaces would fall. And the towers. The towers reached so high it seemed that low clouds would touch them; what would he do if they fell? But the night was passing and he had to sleep. If he didn't the morning would be worse. He should talk with Maati, find out how things had gone between him and the Dai-kvo's envoy. Perhaps a dinner.

And on, and on, and on. When he gave tip, slipping from the bed softly to let Kiyan, at least, sleep, the night candle was past its threequarter mark. Utah walked to the apartment's main doors on bare, chilled feet and found his keeper in the hall outside dozing. He was a young man, likely the son of some favored servant or slave of Utah's own father, given the honor of sitting alone in the darkness, bored and cold. Utah considered the boy's soft face, as peaceful in sleep as a corpse's, and walked silently past him and into the dim hallways of the palace.

His night walks had been growing more frequent in recent months. Sometimes twice in a week, Utah found himself wandering in the darkness, sleep a stranger to him. He avoided the places where he might encounter another person, jealously keeping the time to himself. 'lbnight, he took a lantern and walked down the long stairways to the ground, and then on down, to the tunnels and underground streets into which the city retreated in the deep, hone-breaking cold of winter. With spring come, Utah found the palace beneath the palace empty and silent. The smell of old torches, long gone dark, still lingered in the air, and Utah imagined the corridors and galleries of the city descending forever into the earth. Dark archways and domed sleeping chambers cut from stone that had never seen daylight, narrow stairways leading endlessly down like a thing from a children's song.

He didn't consider where he intended to go until he reached his father's crypt and found himself unsurprised to be there. The dark stone seemed to wrap itself in shadows, words of ancient language cut deep into the walls. An ornate pedestal held the pale urn, a dead flower. And beneath it, three small boxes-the remains of Biitrah, Danat, Kaiin. Otah's brothers, dead in the struggle to become the new Khai Nlachi. Lives cut short for the honor of having a pedestal of their own someday, deep in the darkness.

Utah sat on the bare floor, the lantern at his side, and contemplated the man he'd never known or loved whose place he had taken. Here was how his own end would look. An urn, a tomb, high honors and reverence for hones and ashes. And between the chill floor and the pale urn, perhaps another thirty summers. Perhaps forty. Years of ceremony and negotiation, late nights and early mornings and little else.

But when the time came, at least his crypt would be only his own. Danat, brotherless, wouldn't be called upon to kill or die in the succession. 't'here would be no second sons left to kill the other for the black chair. It seemed a thin solace, having given so much of himself to achieve something that a merchant's son could have had for free.

It would have been easier if he'd never been anything but this. A man horn into the Khaiem who had never stepped outside wouldn't carry the memories of fishing in the eastern islands, of eating at the wayhouses outside Yalakeht, of being free. If he could have forgotten it all, becoming the man he was supposed to be might have been easier. Instead he was driven to follow his own judgment, raise a militia, take only one wife, raise only one son. "I'hat his experience told him that he was right didn't make bearing the world's disapproval as easy as he'd hoped.

The lantern flame guttered and spat. Otah shook his head, uncertain now how long he had been lost in his reverie. When he stood, his left leg had gone numb from being pressed too long against the bare stone. He took up the lantern and walked-moving slowly and carefully to protect his numbed foot-back toward the stairways that would return him to the surface and the day. By the time he regained the great halls, feeling had returned. The sky peeked through the windows, a pale gray preparing itself to blue. Voices echoed and the palaces woke, and the grand, stately beast that was the court of Machi stirred and stretched.

His apartments, when he reached them, were a flurry of activity. A knot of servants and members of the utkhaiem gabbled like peahens, Kiyan in their center listening with a seriousness and sympathy that only he knew masked amusement. Her hand was on the shoulder of the body servant whom Otah had passed, the peace of sleep banished and anxiety in its place.

"Gentlemen," Otah said, letting his voice boom, calling their attention to him. "Is there something amiss?"

To a man, they adopted poses of obeisance and welcome. Otah responded automatically now, as he did half a hundred times every day.

"Most High," a thin-voiced man said-his Master of 'T'ides. "We came to prepare you and found your bed empty."

Otah looked at Kiyan, whose single raised brow told them that empty had only meant empty of him, and that she'd have been quite pleased to keep sleeping.

"I was walking," he said.

"We may not have the time to prepare you for the audience with the envoy from Tan-Sadar," the Master of 'rides said.

"Put him off," Otah said, walking through the knot of people to the door of his apartments. "Reschedule everything you have for me today."

The Master of'I'ides gaped like a trout in air. Otah paused, his hands in a query that asked if the words bore repeating. The Master of Tides adopted an acknowledging pose.

"The rest of you," he said, "I would like breakfast served in my apartments here. And send for my children."

"Eiah-cha's tutors . . ." one of the others began, but Otah looked at the man and he seemed to forget what he'd been saying.

"I will be taking the day with my family," Otah said.

"You will start rumors, Most High," another said. "They'll say the boy's cough has grown worse again."

"And I would like black tea with the meal," Otah said. "In fact, bring the tea first. I'll be in by the fire, warming my feet."

He stepped in, and Kiyan followed, closing the door behind her.

"Bad night?" she asked.

"Sleepless," he said as he sat by the fire grate. "That's all."

Kiyan kissed the top of his head where she assured him that the hair was thinning and stepped out of the room. He heard the soft rustle of cloth against stone and Kiyan's low, contented humming, and knew she was changing her robes. The warmth of the fire pressed against the soles of his feet like a comforting hand, and he closed his eyes for a moment.

No building stands forever, he thought. Even palaces fall. Even towers. He wondered what it would have been like to live in a world where Nlachi didn't exist-who he might have been, what he might have done-and he felt the weight of stone pressing down upon the air he breathed. What would he do if the towers fell? Where would he go, if could go anywhere?

"Papa-kya!" Danat's bright voice called. "I was in the Second Palace, and I found a closet where no one had been in ever, and look what I found!"

Otah opened his eyes, and turned to his son and the wood-and-string model he'd discovered. Eiah arrived a hand and a half later, when the thin granite shutters glowed with the sun. For a time, at least, Otah's own father's tomb lay forgotten.

THE PROBLEM WITH ATHAI-KVO, MAATI DECIDED, WAS THAT HE WAS SIMPIX an unlikable man. "There was no single thing that he did or said, no single habit or affect that made him grate on the nerves of all those around him. Some men were charming, and would be loved however questionable their behavior. And then on the other end of the balance, there was Athai. The weeks he had spent with the man had been bearable only because of the near-constant stream of praise and admiration given to Nlaati.

"It will change everything," the envoy said as they sat on the steps of the poet's house-Cehmai's residence. "I'his is going to begin a new age to rival the Second Empire."

"Because that ended so well," Stone-Made-Soft rumbled, its tone amused as always.

The morning was warm. The sculpted oaks separating the poet's house from the palaces were bright with new leaves. Far above, barely visible through the boughs, the stone towers rose into the sky. Cehmai reached across the envoy to pour more rice wine into Maati's bowl.

"It is early yet to pass judgment," Nlaati said as he nodded his thanks to Cehmai. "It isn't as though the techniques have been tried."

"But it makes sense," Athai said. "I'm sure it will work."

"If we've overlooked something, the first poet to try this is likely to die badly," Cehmai said. ""1'he Dai-kvo will want a fair amount of study done before he puts a poet's life on the table."

"Next year," Athai said. "I'll wager twenty lengths of silver it will be used in bindings by this time next year."

"Done," the andat said, then turned to Cehmai. "You can back me if I lose."

The poet didn't reply, but Maati saw the amusement at the corners of Cehmai's mouth. It had taken years to understand the ways in which Stone-Made-Soft was an expression of Cehmai, the ways they were a single thing, and the ways they were at war. The small comments the andat made that only Cehmai understood, the unspoken moments of private struggle that sometimes clouded the poet's days. They were like nothing so much as a married couple, long accustomed to each other's ways.

Maati sipped the rice wine. It was infused with peaches, a moment of autumn's harvest in the opening of spring. Athai looked away from the andat's broad face, discomforted.

"You must be ready to return to the Dai-kvo," Cehmai said. "You've been away longer than you'd intended."

Athai waved the concern away, pleased, Maati thought, to speak to the man and forget the andat.

"I wouldn't have traded this away," he said. "Maati-kvo is going to be remembered as the greatest poet of our generation."

"Have some more wine," Maati said, clinking the envoy's bowl with his own, but Cehmai shook his head and gestured toward the wooded path. A slave girl was trotting toward them, her robes billowing behind her. Athai put down his bowl and stood, pulling at his sleeves. Here was the moment they had been awaiting-the call for Athai to join the caravan to the East. Maati sighed with relief. Half a hand, and his library would be his own again. The envoy took a formal pose of farewell that Maati and Cehmai returned.

"I will send word as soon as I can, Maati-kvo," Athai said. "I am honored to have studied with you."

Maati nodded uncomfortably; then, after a moment's awkward silence, Athai turned. Maati watched until the slave girl and poet had both vanished among the trees, then let out a breath. Cehmai chuckled as he put the stopper into the flask of wine.

"Yes, I agree," Cehmai said. "I think the I)ai-kvo must have chosen him specifically to annoy the Khai."

"Or he just wanted to be rid of him for a time," Maati said.

"I liked him," Stone-Made-Soft said. "Well, as much as I like anyone."

The three walked together into the poet's house. The rooms within were neatly kept-shelves of books and scrolls, soft couches and a table laid out with the black and white stones on their hoard. A lemon candle burned at the window, but a fly still buzzed wildly about the corners of the room. It seemed that every winter Maati forgot about the existence of flies, only to rediscover them in spring. He wondered where the insects all went during the vicious cold, and what the signal was for them to return.

"He isn't wrong, you know," Cehmai said. "If you're right, it will be the most important piece of analysis since the fall of the Empire."

"I've likely overlooked something. It isn't as though we haven't seen half a hundred schemes to bring hack the glory of the past before now, and there hasn't been one that's done it."

"And I wasn't there to look at the other ideas," Cehmai said. "But since I was here to talk this one over, I'd say this is at least plausible. That's more than most. And the Dai-kvo's likely to think the same."

"He'll probably dismiss it out of hand," Maati said, but he smiled as he spoke.

Cehmai had been the first one he'd shown his theories to, even before he'd known for certain what they were. It had been a curiosity more than anything else. It was only as they'd talked about it that Maati had understood the depths he'd touched upon. And Cehmai had also been the one to encourage bringing the work to the Dai-kvo's attention. All Athai's enthusiasm and hyperbole paled beside a few thoughtful words from Cchmai.

Maati stayed awhile, talking and laughing, comparing impressions of Athai now that he'd left. And then he took his leave, walking slowly enough that he didn't become short of breath. Fourteen, almost fifteen years ago, he'd come to Machi. The black stone roadways, the constant scent of the coal smoke billowing up from the forges, the grandeur of the palaces and the hidden city far beneath his feet had become his home as no other place ever had before. He strode down pathways of crushed marble, under archways that flowed with silken banners. A singing slave called from the gardens, a simple melody of amazing clarity and longing. He turned down a smaller way that would take him to his apartments behind the library.

Nlaati found himself wondering what he would do if the I)ai-kvo truly thought his discovery had merit. It was an odd thought. He had spent so many years now in disgrace, first tainted by the death of his master Heshai, then by his choice to divide his loyalty between his lover and son on the one hand and the Dai-kvo on the other. And then at last his entrance into the politics of the court, wearing the robes of the poet and supporting Otah Machi, his old friend and enemy, to become Khai Machi. It had been simple enough to believe that his promotion to the ranks of the poets had been a mistake. He had, after all, been gifted certain insights by an older boy who had walked away from the school: Otah, before he'd been a laborer or a courier or a Khai. Maati had reconciled himself to a smaller life: the library, the companionship of a few friends and those lovers who would bed a disgraced poet halfway to fat with rich foods and long, inactive hours.

After so many years of failure, the thought that he might shake off that reputation was unreal. It was like a dream from which he could only hope never to wake, too pleasant to trust in.

Eiah was sitting on the steps when he arrived, frowning intently at a moth that had lighted on the back of her hand. Her face was such a clear mix of her parents-Kiyan's high cheeks, Otah's dark eyes and easy smile. Maati took a pose of greeting as he walked up, and when Eiah moved to reply, the moth took wing, chuffing softly through the air and away. In flight, the wings that had been simple brown shone black and orange.

"Athai's gone then?" she asked as Maati unlocked the doors to his apartments.

"He's likely just over the bridge by now."

Maati stepped in, Eiah following him without asking or being asked. It was a wide room, not so grand as the palaces or so comfortable as the poet's house. A librarian's room, ink blocks stacked beside a low desk, chairs with wine-stained cloth on the arms and hack, a small bronze brazier dusted with old ash. Maati waved Eiah off as she started to close the door.

"Let the place air out a bit," he said. "It's warm enough for it now. And what's your day been, Eiah-kya?"

"Father," she said. "He was in a mood to have a family, so I had to stay in the palaces all morning. He fell asleep after midday, and Mother said I could leave."

"I'm surprised. I wasn't under the impression Otah slept anymore. He always seems hip-deep in running the city."

Eiah shrugged, neither agreeing nor voicing her denial. She paced the length of the room, squinting out the door at nothing. Maati folded his hands together on his belly, considering her.

"Something's bothering you," he said.

The girl shook her head, but the frown deepened. Maati waited until, with a quick, birdlike motion, Eiah turned to face him. She began to speak, stopped, and gathered herself visibly.

"I want to be married," she said.

Maati blinked, coughed to give himself a moment to think, and leaned forward in his chair. The wood and cloth creaked slightly beneath him. Eiah stood, her arms crossed, her gaze on him in something almost like accusation.

"Who is the boy?" Maati said, regretting the word boy as soon as it left his mouth. If they were speaking of marriage, the least he could do was say man. But Eiah's impatient snort dismissed the question.

"I don't know," she said. "Whoever."

"Anyone would do?"

"Not just anyone. I don't want to be tied to some low town firekeeper. I want someone good. And I should be able to. Father doesn't have any other daughters, and I know people have talked with him. But nothing ever happens. How long am I supposed to wait?"

hlaati rubbed a palm across his cheeks. This was hardly a conversation he'd imagined himself having. He turned through half a hundred things he might say, approaches he might take, and felt a blush rising in his cheeks.

"You're voting, Eiah-kya. I mean ... I suppose it's natural enough for a young woman to ... he interested in men. Your body is changing, and if I recall the age, there are certain feelings that it's ..."

Eiah looked at him as if he'd coughed up a rat.

"Or perhaps I've misunderstood the issue," he said.

"It's not that," she said. "I've kissed lots of boys."

The blush wasn't growing less, but Nlaati resolved to ignore it.

"Ah," he said. "Well, then. If it's that you want apartments of your own, something outside the women's quarters, you could always-"

""Ialit Radaani's being married to the third son of the Khai Pathai," Eiah said, and then a heartbeat later, "She's half a year younger than I am."

It was like feeling a puzzle box click open in his fingers. He understood precisely what was happening, what it meant and didn't mean. He rubbed his palms against his knees and sighed.

"And she gloats about that, I'd bet," he said. Eiah swiped at her betraying eyes with the back of a hand. "After all, she's younger and lower in the courts. She must think that she's got proof that she's terribly special."

Eiah shrugged.

"Or that you aren't," Maati continued, keeping his voice gentle to lessen the sting of the words. "That's what she thinks, isn't it?"

"I don't know what she thinks."

"Well, then tell me what you think."

"I don't know why he can't find me a husband. It isn't as if I'd have to leave. There's marriages that go on for years before anyone does anything. But it's understood. It's arranged. I don't see why he can't do that much for me."

"I lave you asked him?"

"He should know this," Eiah snapped, pacing between the open door and the fire grate. "He's the Khai Machi. He isn't stupid."

"lie also isn't . . ." hlaati said and then bit down on the words a child. The woman Eiah thought she was would never stand for the name. "He isn't fourteen summers old. It's not so hard for men like me and your father to forget what it was like to be young. And I'm sure he doesn't want to see you married yet, or even promised. You're his daughter, and ... it's hard, Eiah-kya. It's hard losing your child."

She stopped, her brow furrowed. In the trees just outside his door, a bird sang shrill and high and took flight. Maati could hear the fluttering of its wings.

"It's not losing me," she said, but her voice was less certain than it had been. "I don't die."

"No. You don't, but you'll likely leave to be in your husband's city. There's couriers to carry messages back and forth, but once you've left, it's not likely you'll return in Otah's life, or Kiyan's. Or mine. It's not death, but it is still loss, dear. And we've all lost so much already, it's hard to look forward to another."

"You could come with me," Eiah said. "My husband would take you in. He wouldn't be worth marrying if he wouldn't, so you could come with me."

Maati allowed himself to chuckle as he rose from his seat.

"It's too big a world to plan for all that just yet," he said, mussing Eiah's hair as he had when she'd been younger. "When we come nearer, we'll see where things stand. I may not be staying here at all, depending on what the Dai-kvo thinks. I might be able to go hack to his village and use his libraries."

"Could I go there with you?"

"No, Eiah-kya. Women aren't allowed in the village. I know, I know. It isn't fair. But it isn't happening today, so why don't we walk to the kitchens and see if we can't talk them out of some sugar bread."

They left his door open, leaving the spring air and sunlight to freshen the apartments. The path to the kitchens led them through great, arching halls and across pavilions being prepared for a night's dancing; great silken banners celebrated the warmth and light. In the gardens, men and woman lay back, eyes closed, faces to the sky like flowers. Outside the palaces, Maati knew, the city was still alive with commerce-the forges and metalworkers toiling through the night, as they always did, preparing to ship the works of Machi. There was bronze, iron, silver and gold, and steel. And the hand-shaped stonework that could be created only here, under the inhuman power of Stone-Made-Soft. None of that work was apparent in the palaces. The utkhaiem seemed carefree as cats. Maati wondered again how much of that was the studied casualness of court life and how much was simple sloth.

At the kitchens, it was simple enough for the Khai's daughter and his permanent guest to get thick slices of sugar bread wrapped in stiff cotton cloth and a stone flask of cold tea. He told Eiah all of what had happened with Athai since she'd last come to the library, and about the Dal-kvo, and the andat, and the world as Maati had known it in the years before he'd come to Machi. It was a pleasure to spend the time with the girl, flattering that she enjoyed his own company enough to seek him out, and perhaps just the slightest hit gratifying that she would speak to him of things that Otah-kvo never heard from her.

They parted company as the quick spring sun came within a hand's width of the western mountains. Maati stopped at a fountain, washing his fingers in the cool waters, and considered the evening that lay ahead. He'd heard that one of the winter choirs was performing at a teahouse not far from the palaces-the long, dark season's work brought out at last to the light. The thought tempted, but perhaps not more than a book, a flask of wine, and a bed with thick wool blankets.

He was so wrapped up by the petty choice of pleasures that he didn't notice that the lanterns had been lit in his apartments or that a woman was sitting on his couch until she spoke.