returned to Saraykeht. A half-dozen or so, each a man whose company she had enjoyed, and all of whom she could remember fondly.
She thought, sometimes, that she'd reversed the way women were intended to love. Butterfly flirtations, flitting from one man to another, taking none seriously, were best kept by the young. Had she taken her casual lovers as a girl, they would have been exciting and new, and she would have known too little to notice that they were empty. Instead, Liat had lost her heart twice before she'd seen twenty summers, and if those loves were gone-even this one, sleeping now at her side-the memory of them was there. Once, she had told herself the world was nothing if she didn't have a man who loved her. A man of importance and beauty, a man whom she might, through her gentle guidance, save.
She had been another woman, then. And who, she wondered, had she become now?
She rose quietly, parting the netting, and stepped out onto the cool floor. She found her outer robe and wrapped it around herself. Her inner robes and her sandals she could reclaim tomorrow. Now she wanted her own bed, and pillows less thick with memories.
She slipped out the door, pulling it closed behind her. So far North and without an ocean to hold the warmth of the day, Machi's nights were cold, even now with spring at its height. Gooseflesh rose on her legs and arms, her belly and breasts, as she trotted along the wide, darkened paths to the apartments that Irani or Otah or the Khai Machi had given to her and her son.
More than a week had passed since he had come to Maati's apartments, gathering up a children's hook and a daughter halfway to womanhood and leaving behind a lasting unease. Liat had not spoken with him since, but the dread of the coming conversation weighed heavy. As Nayiit had grown, she'd seen nothing in him but himself. Even when people swore that the boy had her eyes, her mouth, her way of sighing, she'd never seen it. Perhaps when there was no space between a mother and her child, the sameness becomes invisible. Perhaps it merely seemed normal. She would have admitted that her son looked something like his father. It was only in seeing them together, seeing the simple, powerful knowing in Otah's wife's expression, that Liat understood the depth of her error in letting Nayiit come.
And with that came her understanding of how it could not he undone. Her first impulse had been to send him away at once, to hide him again the way a child caught with a forbidden sweet might stuff it away into a sleeve as if unseen now might somehow mean never seen at all. Only the years of running her house had counseled her otherwise. The situation was what it was. Attempting any subterfuge would only make the Khai wary, and his unease might mean Nayiit's death. As long as her son lived, he posed a threat to Danat, and she knew enough to understand that a babe held from its first breath meant something that a man full-grown never could. If Utah were forced to choose, Liat had no illusions what that choice would be.
And so she prepared herself, prepared her arguments and her negotiating strategies, and told herself it would end well. They were all together, allies against the Galts. 'T'here would be no need. She told herself there would be no need.
At her apartments, no candles were lit, but a fire burned in the grate: old pine, rich with sap that popped and hissed and filled the air with its scent. When she entered, her son looked up from the flames and took a pose of welcome, gesturing to a divan beside him. Liat hesitated, surprised by a sudden embarrassment, then gathered her sense of humor and sat beside him. He smelled of wine and smoke, and his robes hung as loose on him as her own did on her.
'You've been to the teahouses,' Liat said, trying to keep any note of disapproval from her voice.
'You've been with my father,' he replied.
'I've been with Maati,' Liat said as if it were an agreement and not a correction.
Nayiit leaned forward and took up a length of iron, prodding the burning logs. Sparks rose and vanished like fireflies.
'I haven't been able to see him,' Nayiit said. ' WN'e've been here weeks now, and he hasn't come to speak with me. And every time I go to the library he's gone or he's with you. I think you're trying to keep us from each other.'
Liat raised her eyebrows and ran her tongue across the inside of her teeth, weighing the coppery taste that sprang to her mouth, thinking what it meant. She coughed.
'You aren't wrong,' she said at last. 'I'm not ready for it. Maati's not who he was back then.'
'So instead of letting us face each other and see what it is we see, you've decided to start up an affair with him and take all his time and attention?' 'There was no rancor in his voice, only sadness and amusement. 'It doesn't seem the path of wisdom, Mother.'
'Well, not when you say it that way,' Liat said. 'I was thinking of it as coming to know him again before the conflict began. I did love him, you know.'
'And now?'
'And still. I still love him, in my fashion,' Liat said, her voice rueful. 'I know I'm not what he wants. I'm not the person he wants me to be, and I doubt I ever have been, truly. But we enjoy each other. 'There are things we can say to each other that no one else would understand. They weren't there, and we were. And he's such a little boy. He's carried so much and been so disappointed, and there's still the possibility in him of this… JOY. I can't explain it.'
'If I ask you as a favor, will you let me know him as well? We may not actually fight like pit dogs if you let us in the same room together. And if there's conflict at all, it's between us. Not you.'
Liat opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head. She sighed.
'Of course,' she said. 'Of course, I'm sorry. I've been an old hen, and I'm sorry for it, but… I know it's not a trade. We aren't negotiating, not really. But Nayiit-kya, you can't say you haven't been with a woman since we've cone here. You didn't choose to go south, even when I asked you to. Sweet, is it so had at home?'
'Bad?' he said, speaking slowly. As if tasting the word. 'I don't know. No. Not bad. Only not good. And yes, I know I haven't been keeping to my own bed. Do you think my darling wife has been keeping to hers?'
Liat's mind turned, searching for words, making sense as best she could of what he had asked and what he had meant by it. It was true enough that Tai had come into the world at an odd time, but he was a first child, and wombs weren't made to he certain. She rushed through her memory, looking for signs she might have missed, suggestions back in their lives in Saraykeht that would have pointed at some venomous question, and slowly she began, if not to understand, then at least to guess.
'You think he isn't yours,' she said. 'You think Tai is another man's child.'
'Nothing like that,' Nayiit said. 'It's only that you can make a child from love or from anger. Or inattention. Or only from not knowing what better to do. A baby isn't proof of anything between the father and mother beyond a few moments' pressure.'
'It isn't the child's fault.'
'No, I suppose not,' Nayiit said.
''t'his is why you came, then? To Nantani, and then up here? To he away from them?'
'I came because I wanted to. Because it was the world, and when was I going to see it again? Because you wanted someone to carry your bags and wave off dogs. It was only partly that I couldn't stay. And then when you were going to see him, NIaati-cha… How could I not come along for that too? The chance to see my father again. I remember him, you know? I do, from when I was small, I remember a day we were all in a small but. 'T'here was an iron stove, and it was raining, and you were singing while he bathed me. I don't know when that was, I can't put a time on it. But I remember his face.'
'You would have known him, if you'd seen him in passing. You'd have known who he was.'
Nayiit took a pose of affirmation. He pursed his lips and chuckled ruefully.
'I don't know what it is to be a father. I'm only working from-'
'Nayiit-kya?' came a voice from the shadows behind them. A soft, feminine voice. 'Is everything well?'
She stepped toward the light. A young woman, twenty summers, perhaps as many as twenty-two. She wore bedding tied around her waist, her breasts bare, her hair still wild from the pillows.
'Jaaya-cha, this is my mother. Mother, Jaaya Biavu.'
The girl blanched, then flushed. She took a pose of welcome, not bothering to cover herself, but her gaze was on Nayiit. It spoke of both humiliation and contempt. Nayiit didn't look at her. The woman turned and stalked away.
'That wasn't kind,' Liat said.
