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 simple 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
