anyone like her.'
'It was a clumsy lie,' Liat said. 'All of it from beginning to end. And, Itani, it's the Galts.'
Whether she had used his old, assumed name in error or as a ploy to make him recall the days of his youth, the effect was the same. Otah drew a deep breath, and felt a sick weight descend to his belly as he exhaled. He had spent so many years wary of the schemes of Galt that her evidence, thin as it was, almost had the power to convince him. He felt the gazes of the others upon him. Mlaati leaned forward in his seat, fingers knotted together in his lap. Kiyan's rueful half-smile was sympathetic and considering both. The silence stretched.
'Is there any reason to think he would have… done this?' Otah asked. 'I'he poet. Why would he agree to this?'
Liat turned and nodded to her son. The man licked his lips before he spoke.
'I went to the I)ai-kvo's village,' Nayiit said. 'My mother, of course, couldn't. 'There were stories that Riaan had suffered a fever the winter before he was sent away. A serious one. Apparently he came close to death. Afterward, his skin peeled like he'd been too long in the sun. They say it changed him. He became more prone to anger. He wouldn't think before he acted or spoke. The Dai-kvo sat with him for weeks, training him like he was fresh from the school. It did no good. Riaan wasn't the man he'd been when the I)ai-kvo accepted him. So…'
'So the Dai-kvo sent him away in disgrace for something that wasn't his fault,' Otah said.
'No, not at first,' Nayiit said. 'The Dal-kvo only told him that he wasn't to continue with his binding. That it was too great a risk. They say Riaan took it poorly. There were fights and drunken rants. One man said Riaan snuck a woman into the village to share his bed, but I never heard anyone confirm that. Whatever the details, the Dai-kvo lost patience. He sent him away.'
'You learned quite a lot,' Otah said. 'I'd have thought the poets would he closer with their disgraces.'
'Once Riaan left, it wasn't their disgrace. It was his,' Nayiit said. 'And they knew I had come from Nantani. I traded stories for stories. It wasn't hard.'
'The Dai-kvo wouldn't meet with us,' Liat said. 'I sent five petitions, and two of them his secretaries didn't even bother to send refusals. It's why we came here.'
'Because you wanted me to make this argument? I'm not in the Daikvo's best graces myself just now. He seems to think I blame the Galts when I cough,' Otah said. 'Maati might be the better man to make the case.
Maati took a pose that disagreed.
'I would hardly be considered disinterested,' Maati said. His words were calm and controlled despite their depth. 'I may have done some interesting work, but no one will have forgotten that I defied the last Dai-kvo by not abandoning these precise two people.'
The rest of the thought hung in the air, just beyond speech. She abandoned me. It was true enough. Liat had taken the child and made her own way in the world. She had never answered Nlaati's letters until now, when she had need of him. There was something almost like shame in Liat's downcast eyes. Nayiit shifted his weight, as if to interpose himself between the two of them-between his mother and the man who had wanted badly to be his father and had been denied.
'We could also ask Cehmai,' Kiyan said. 'Ile's a poet of enough prestige and ability to hold Stone-blade-Soft, and his reputation hasn't been compromised.'
'That might be wise,' Otah said, grabbing for the chance to take the conversation away from the complexities of the past. 'But let's go over the evidence you have, Liat-cha. All of it. From the start.'
It took the better part of the day. Otah listened to the full story; he read the statements of the missing poet's slaves and servants, the contracts broken by the fleeing Galtic trade ship, the logs of couriers whose whereabouts Nayiit had compiled. Whatever objections he raised, Liat countered. He could see the fatigue in her face and hear the impatience in her voice. This matter was important to her. Important enough to bring her here. That she had come was proof enough of her conviction, if not of the truth of her claim. The girl he had known had been clever enough, competent enough, and still had been used as a stone in other people's games. Perhaps he was harsh in still thinking of her in that light. The years had changed him. They certainly could have changed her as well.
And, as the sun shifted slowly toward the western peaks, Otah found his heart growing heavy. The case she made was not complete, but it was evocative as a monster tale told to children. Galt might well have taken in this mad poet. 'There was no way to know what they might do with him, or what he might do with their help. The histories of the Empire murmured in the back of Otah's mind: wars fought with the power of gods, the nature of space itself broken, and the greatest empire the world had ever known laid waste. And yes, if all Liat suspected proved true, it might happen again.
But if they acted on their fears, if the Dai-kvo mandated the use of the andat to remove the possibility of a Galtic poet, thousands would die who knew nothing of the plots that had brought down their doom. Children not old enough to speak, men and women who led simple, honest lives. Galt would be made a wasteland to rival the ruins of the Empire. Otah wondered how certain they would all have to be in order to take that step. How certain or else how frightened.
'Let me sit with this,' he said at last, nodding to Liat and her son. 'I'll have apartments cleared for you. You'll stay here at the palaces.'
'There may not be much time,' Maati said softly.
'I know it,' Otah said. 'Tomorrow I'll decide what to do. If Cehmai's the right bearer, we can do this all again with him in the room. And then… and then we'll sec what shape the world's taken and do whatever needs doing.'
Liat took a pose of gratitude, and a heartbeat later Nayiit mirrored her. Otah waved the gestures away. He was too tired for ceremony. Too troubled.
When Maati and the two visitors had left, Otah rose and stood beside Kiyan at the railing, looking out over the city as it fell into its early, sudden twilight. Plumes of smoke rose from among the green copper roofs of the forges. The great stone towers thrust toward the sky as if they supported the deepening blue. Kiyan tossed an almond out into the wide air, and a black-winged bird swooped down to catch it before it reached the distant ground. Otah touched her shoulder; she turned to him smiling as if half-surprised to find him there.
'How are you, love?' he asked.
'I should be the one asking,' she said. 'Those two… that's more than one lifetime's trouble they're carrying.'
'I know it. And Maati's still in love with her.'
'With both of them,' Kiyan said. 'One way and another, with both of them.'
Otah took a pose that agreed with her.
'You know her well enough,' Kiyan said. 'Does she love him, do you think?'
'She did once,' Otah said. 'But now? It's too many years. We've all become other people.'
The breeze smelled of smoke and distant rain. The first chill of evening raised gooseflesh on Kiyan's arm. He wanted to turn her toward him, to taste her mouth and lose himself for a while in simple pleasure. He wanted badly to forget the world. As if hearing his thought, she smiled, but he didn't touch her again and she didn't move nearer to him.
'What are you going to do?' she asked.
'Iell Cehmai, send out couriers west to see what we can divine about the situation in Galt, appeal to the Dai-kvo. What else can I do? A mad poet, prone to fits of temper and working for the Galtic High Council? There's not a story worse than that.'
'Will the Dai-kvo do what she asks, do you think?'
'I don't know,' Otah said. 'He'll know this Riaan better than any of us. If he's certain that the man's not capable of a proper binding, perhaps we'll let him try and pay the price of it. One simple death is the best we can hope for, sometimes. If it saves the world.'
'And if the Dai-kvo isn't sure?'
'Then he'll spin a coin or throw tiles or whatever it is he does to make a decision, and we'll do that and hope it was right.'
Kiyan nodded, crossing her arms and leaning forward, gazing out into the distance as if by considering carefully, she could see Galt from here. Otah's belly growled, but he ignored it.
'He'll destroy them, won't he?' she asked. 'The Dai-kvo will use the andat against the Galts.'
'Likely.'
'Good,' Kiyan said with certainty that surprised him. 'If it's going to happen, let it happen there. At least Eiah
