for more-anecdotes of Nayiit and his friends, his early lovers, the city, anything. She searched for them and offered them up, part apology, part sacrifice. The candles had grown visibly shorter before he asked whether Nayiit had stayed in Saraykeht, and Liat reluctantly shook her head.

'I've left him at the wayhouse,' she said. 'I wasn't certain how this would go, between us. I didn't want him to be here if it was bad.'

Mlaati's hands started to move toward some pose-a denial, perhaps-then faltered. His eyes locked on hers. 'There were decades in them. She felt tears welling up.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'If that's worth anything, I am sorry, Maatikya.'

'For what?' he asked, and his tone said that he could imagine a number of answers.

'That you weren't a part of his life until now.'

'It was my choice as much as yours. And it will be good to see him again.'

He heaved a sigh and pressed the stopper back into the bottle's neck. The sun was long gone, and a cold breeze, thick with the perfume of night-flowering gardens, raised bumps on her arms. Only the air. Not dread.

'You haven't asked me why I've come,' she said.

He chuckled and leaned back against his couch. His cheeks were ruddy from the candlelight and wine. His eyes seemed to glitter.

'I was pretending it was for me. Mending old wounds, making peace,' Maati said. The anger she'd seen was there now, swimming beneath the pleasant, joking surface. She wondered if she'd waited too long to come to the issue. She should have asked before she'd told him Nayiit was in the city, before the sour memories came back.

Maati took a pose of query, inviting her to share her true agenda.

'I need your help,' Liat said. 'I need an audience with the Khai.'

'You want to talk to Otah-kvo? You don't need my help for that. You could just-'

'I need you to help me convince him. To argue my case with me. We have to convince him to intercede with the Dai-kvo.'

Maati's eyes narrowed, and his head tilted like that of a man considering a puzzle. Liat felt herself starting to blush. She'd had too much of the wine, and her control wasn't all it should be.

'Intercede with the Dai-kvo?' he said.

'I've been following the world. And the Galts. It was what Amat Kyaan built the house to do. I have decades of books and ledgers. I've made note of every contract they've made in the summer cities. I know every ship that sails past, what her captain's name is, and half the time, what cargo she carries. I know, Maati. I've seen them scheming. I've even blocked them a time or two.'

'They had hands in the succession here too. They were backing the woman, Otah-kvo's sister. Anything you want to say about Galt, he'll half-believe before he's heard it. But how is the Dai-kvo part of it?'

'They won't do it without the Uai-kvo,' Liat said. 'He has to say it's the right thing, or they won't do it.'

'Who won't do what?' Nlaati said, impatience growing in his voice.

'I'he poets,' Liat said. 'They have to kill the Galts. And they have to do it now.'

Maati presented the meeting as a luncheon, a social gathering of old friends. He chose a balcony high in the palace looking out over the wide air to the south. The city lay below them, streets paved in black stone, tile and metal roofs pointing sharply at the sky. The towers rose above, only sun and clouds hanging higher. The wind was thick with the green, permeating scent of spring and the darker, acrid forge smoke. Between them, the low stone table was covered with plates-bread and cheese and salt olives, honeyed almonds and lemon trout and a sweetbread topped with sliced oranges. The gods alone knew where the kitchen had found a fresh orange.

Yet of all those present none of them ate.

Maati had made the introductions. Liat and Nayiit and Otah and Kiyan. The young man, Liat's son, had taken all the appropriate poses, said all the right phrases, and then taken position standing behind his mother like a bodyguard. Maati leaned against the stone banister, the sky at his hack. Otah-formal, uneased, and feeling more the Khai Machi than ever under the anxious gaze of woman who had been his lover in his youth-took a pose of query, and Liat shared the news that changed the world forever: the Galts had a poet of their own.

'His name is Riaan Vaudathat,' Liat said. 'He was the fourth son of a high family in the courts of Nantani. Ills father sent him to the school when he was five.'

'This was well after our time,' Nlaati said to Otah. 'Neither of us would have known him. Not from there.'

'He was accepted by the Dai-kvo and taken to the village to be trained,' Liat said. 'That was eight years ago. He was talented, well liked, and respected. The Dai-kvo chose him to study for the binding of a fresh andat.'

Kiyan, sitting at Otah's side, leaned forward in a pose of query. 'Don't all the poets train to hold andat?'

'We all try our hands at preparing a binding,' Maati said. 'We all study enough to know how it works and what it is. But only a few apply the knowledge. If the Dai-kvo thinks you have the temperament to take on one that's already hound, he'll send you there to study and prepare yourself to take over control when the poet grows too old. If you're bright and talented, he'll set you to working through a fresh binding. It can take years to be ready. Your work is read by other poets and the Daikvo, and attacked, and torn apart and redone perhaps a dozen times. Perhaps more.'

'Because of the consequences of failing?' Kiyan asked. Maati nodded.

'Riaan was one of the best,' Liat said. 'And then three years ago, he was sent hack to Nantani. To his family. Fallen from favor. No one knew why, he just appeared one day with a letter for his father, and after that he was living in apartments in the Vaudathat holdings. It was a small scandal. And it wasn't the last of them. Riaan was sending letters every week hack to the Dai-kvo. Asking to be taken back, everyone supposed. He drank too much, and sometimes fought in the streets. By the end, he was practically living in the comfort houses by the seafront. The story was that he'd bet he could bed every whore in the city in a summer. His family never spoke of it, but they lost standing in the court. 'There were rumors of father and son fighting, not just arguing, but taking up arms.

'And then, one night, he disappeared. Vanished. His family said that he'd been summoned on secret business. The Dai-kvo had a mission for him, and he'd gone the same day the letter had come. But there wasn't a courier who'd admit to carrying any letter like it.'

'They might not have said it,' Otah said. 'They call it the gentleman's trade for a reason.' ,, we thought of that,' Nayiit replied. He had a strong voice; not loud, but powerful. 'Later, when we went to the Dai-kvo, I took a list of the couriers who'd come to Nantani in the right weeks. None of them had been to the I)ai-kvo's village at the right time. The Dai-kvo wouldn't speak to me. But of the men who would, none believed that Riaan had been sent for.'

Otah could still think of several objections to that, but he held them hack, gesturing instead for Liat to go on.

'No one connected the disappearance with a Galtic merchant ship that left that night with half her cargo still waiting to he loaded,' Liat said. 'Except me, and I wouldn't have if I hadn't made it my business to track all things Galtic.'

'You think he was on that ship?' Otah said.

'I'm certain of it.'

'Why?' he asked.

'The wealth of coincidences,' Liat said. 'The captain-Arnau Fentin-was the second brother of a family on the Galtic High Council. A servant in the Vaudathat household saw Riaan's father burning papers. Letters, he said. And in a foreign script.'

'Any trade cipher could look like a foreign script,' Otah said, but Liat wouldn't be stopped.

'The ship had been hound for Chaburi-'Ian and then Bakta. But it headed west instead-hack to Galt.'

'Or Eddensea, or Eymond.'

'Otah-kya,' Kiyan said, her voice gentle, 'let her finish.'

Ile saw Liat's gaze flicker toward her, and her hands take a pose of thanks. He leaned hack, his palms flat on his thighs, and silently nodded for Liat to continue.

'There were stories of Riaan having met a new woman in the weeks before he left. That was what his family thought, at least. He'd spent several evenings every week at a comfort house whose hack wall was shared with the compound of House Fentin. The captain's family. I have statements that confirm all of this.'

'I went to the comfort house myself,' Nayiit said. 'I asked after the lady Riaan had described. 'There wasn't

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