'Very little of what she and I do involves kindness,' he said. 'I don't expect I'll see her again. By which I mean, I don't suppose she'll see me.'
'Is she politically connected? If her family is utkhaiem…'
'I don't think she is,' Nayiit said, his face in his hands. It was hard to be sure in the firelight, but she thought the tips of his ears were blushing. 'I suppose I should have asked.'
He struggled for a moment, trying to speak and failing. his brow furrowed and Liat had to resist the urge to reach over and smooth it with her thumb, the way she had when he'd been a babe.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'You know that I'm sorry.'
't~ or what?' she asked, her voice low and stern. As if there were any number of things for which he might he.
'For not being a better man,' he said.
The fire popped, as if in comment. Liat took her son's hand, and for a long moment, they were silent. 'Then:
'I don't care what you do with your marriage, Nayiit-kya. If you don't love her, end it. Or if you don't trust her. As you see fit. People come together and they part. It's what we do. But the boy. You can't leave the boy. That isn't fair.'
'It's what Maati-cha did to us.'
'No,' Liat said, giving his hand the smallest pressure, and then releasing it. 'We left him.'
Nayiit turned to her slowly, his hands folding into a pose that asked confirmation. It was as if the words were too dangerous to speak.
'I left him,' Liat said. 'I took you when you were still a babe, and I was the one to leave him.'
She saw a moment's shock in his expression, gone as fast as it had come. His face went grave, his hands as still as stones. As still as a man bending his will to keep them still.
'Why?' he asked. His voice was low and thready.
'Oh, love. It was so long ago. I was someone else, then,' she said, and knew as she said it that it wasn't enough. 'I did because he was only half there. And because I couldn't see to all of his needs and all of yours and have no one there to look after me.'
'It was better without him?'
'I thought it would be. I thought I was cutting my losses. And then, later, when I wasn't so certain anymore, I convinced myself it had been the right thing, just so I could tell myself I hadn't been wrong.' lie was shaken, though he tried to cover it. She knew him too well to be fooled.
'tic wasn't there, Nayiit. But he never left you.'
And part of me never left him, she thought. What would the world have been if I had chosen otherwise? Where would we all be now if that part of him and of me had been enough? Still in that little hut in the low town near the I)ai-kvo? Would they all have lived together in the library these past years as Nlaati had?
'Those other, ghostlike people made a pretty dream, but then there would have been no one to hear of the Galts and the missing poet, no one to travel to Nantani. And little Tai would not have been horn, and she would never have seen Amat Kyaan again. Someone else would have been with the old woman when she died-someone else or no one. And Liat would never have taken House Kyaan, would never have proven herself competent to the world and to her own satisfaction.
It was too much. The changes, the differences were too great to think of as good or as bad. The world they had now was too much itself, good and evil too tightly woven to wish for some other path. And still it would be wrong to say she found herself without regrets.
'Maati loves you,' she said, softly. 'You should see him. I won't interfere again. But first, VOL] should go tend to your guest. Smooth things over.
Nayiit nodded, and then a moment later, he smiled. It was the same charming smile she'd known when she was a girl and it had been on different lips. Nayiit would charm the girl, say something sweet and funny, and the pain would be forgotten for a time. He was his father's son. Son of the Khai Machi. Eldest son, and doomed to the fratricidal struggle of succession that stained every city in each generation. She wondered how far Utah would go to avoid that, to keep his boy safe from her schemes. 't'hat conversation had to come, and soon. Perhaps it would he best if she took it to the Khai herself, if she stopped waiting for him to find a right moment.
Nayiit took a querying pose, and Liat shook herself. She waved his concern away.
'I'm tired,' she said. 'I've come all this way back to have my own bed to myself, and I'm still not in it. I'm too old to sleep in a lover's arms. They twitch and snore and keep me awake all night.'
'They do, don't they?' Nayiit said. 'Does it get better, do you think? With enough time, would you he so accustomed to it, you'd sleep through?'
'I don't know,' Liat said. 'I've never made the attempt.'
'Like mother, like son, I suppose,' Nayiit said as he rose. He bent and kissed the crown of her head before he retreated back into the shadows.
Like mother, like son.
I, iat pulled her robe tighter and sat near the fire, as if touched by a sudden chill.
7
The jeweler was a small man, squat but broad. To his credit, he seemed truly ill at ease. It took courage, Otah thought as he listened, to bring a matter such as this before a Khai. He wondered how many others had seen something of the sort and looked away. Any merchant has to expect some losses from theft. And after all, she was the daughter of the Khai…
When it was over-and it seemed to take half a day, though it couldn't have lasted more than half a hand-Otah thanked the man, ordered that payment be made to him, and waited calm and emotionless until the servants and court followers had gone. Only the body servants remained, half a dozen men and women of the utkhaiem who dedicated their lives to bringing him a cracker if he felt like one, or a cup of limed water.
'Find Eiah and take her to the blue chamber. Bring her under guard if you have to.'
'tinder guard?' the eldest of the servants said.
'No, don't. Just bring her. See that she gets there.'
'Most High,' the man said, taking a pose that accepted the command. Otah rose and walked out of the room without replying. He stalked the halls of the palace, ignoring the Master of 'fides and his ineffectual flapping papers, ignoring the poses of obeisance and respect turned to him wherever he went, looking only for Kiyan. The rest of these people were unimportant.
He found her in the great kitchens, standing beside the chief cook with a dead chicken in her hands. The cook, a woman of not less than sixty summers who had served Otah's father and grandfather, met his eyes and went pale. Ile wondered belatedly how many times the previous Khaiem of Machi had visited their kitchens, great or low.
'What's happened?' Kiyan asked instead of a greeting.
'Not here,' Otah said. His wife nodded, passed the bird's carcass back to the cook, and followed Otah to their rooms. As calmly as he could, Otah related the audience. Eiah and two of her friends-Talit Radaani and Shoyen Pak-had visited a jeweler's shop in the goldsmiths' quarter. Eiah had stolen a brooch of emerald and pearl. The jeweler and his boy had seen it, had come to the court asking for payment.
'He was quite polite about the whole thing,' Otah said. 'He cast it as a mistake. Eiah-cha, in her girlish flights of attention, forgot to arrange for payment. He was sorry to bother me with it, but he hadn't been sure who I would prefer such issues be taken to and on and on and on. Gods!'
'How much was it?' Kiyan asked.
'Three lengths of gold,' Otah said. 'Not that it matters. I've got the whole city to put on for taxes and half a thousand bits of jewelry in boxes that no one's worn in lifetimes. It's… She's a thief! She's going through the city, taking whatever catches her eye and…'
Otah ran out of words and had to make do with a rough, frustrated grunt. He threw himself down on a couch, shaking his head.
