no one would see, he would have allowed himself. But he was a commander and not a child. Dignity had its price.
When he returned to the brazier, nothing was left but blackened hinges, split leather, gray ash. Balasar stirred the ruins with a stick, making sure no text had survived, and then, satisfied, turned to his cot. The day before him would be long.
As he lay in the darkness, half asleep, he felt the ghosts again. The men he had left in the desert. The men still alive whom he would leave in the field. Riaan, hooks cradled in his arms. Balasar's sacrifices filled the pavilion, and their presence and expectation comforted him until a small voice came from the hack of his mind.
Kya, it said. Sinja-kya, he called him. Sinja-cha would have been the proper form, wouldn't it? Kya is used for a lover or a brother. Why would Riaan have thought of Sinja as a brother?
And then, as if Eustin were seated beside the cot, his voice whispered, Seemed like he might he trying to keep the poor bastard from saying something.
Liat walked through darkness between the Khai's Palaces and the library where Maati, she hoped, was still awake and waiting for her. She felt like a washrag wrung out, soaked, and wrung out again. It was seven days now since Stone-Made-Soft had escaped, and she'd spent the time either meeting with the Khai Machi or waiting to do so. Long days spent in the gilded halls and corridors of the palaces were, she found, more tiring than travel. Her back ached, her legs were sore, and she couldn't even think what she had done to earn the pain. Sitting shouldn't carry such a price. If she'd lifted something heavy, there would at least be a reason…
The city seemed darker now than when she'd arrived. It might be only her imagination, but there seemed fewer lanterns lit on the paths, fewer torches at the doorways. The windows of the palaces that shone with light seemed dimmed. No slaves sang in the gardens, the mem hers of the utkhaiem that she saw throughout her day all shared a tension that she understood too well.
Candles flickered behind Maati's closed shutters, a thin line of light where the wooden frames had warped over the years. Liat found herself more grateful than she had expected to be as she took the last steps down the path that led to his door.
Nlaati sat on the low couch, a bowl of wine cradled in his fingers. A bottle less than half full sat on the floor at his feet. He smiled as she let herself in, but she saw at once that something wasn't well. She took a pose of query, and he looked away.
'hlaati-kya?'
'I've had a letter from the Dai-kvo,' hlaati said. 'The timing of all this isn't what I'd hoped, you know. I've spent years puttering through the library here, looking for nothing in particular, and only stumbled on my little insight now. Just when the Galts have gotten out of hand. And now Cehmai. And… forgive me, love, and you. And our boy.'
'I don't understand,' Liat said. ''['he I)ai-kvo. What did he say?'
'Ile said that I should come.' Maati sighed. 'There's nothing in the letter about the Galts or the missing poet. 'There's nothing about StoneMade-Soft, of course. The courier won't be there with that sorry news for days yet. It's only about me. It's the thing I'd always hoped for. It's my absolution, Liat-kya. I have been out of favor since before Nayiit was horn. After I took Otah's cause in the succession, they almost forbade me from wearing the robes, you know. The old Dai-kvo made it very clear he didn't consider me a poet.'
Liat leaned against the cool stone wall. Her pains were forgotten. She watched Maati raise his brows, shake his head. His lips shifted as if he were having some silent conversation to which she was only half welcome. A familiar heaviness touched her heart.
'You must have hoped for this,' she said.
'[)reamed of it, when I dared to. I'm welcomed back with honor and dignity. I'm saved.'
'That's a hitter tone for a saved man,' she said.
'I've only just met you again. I've only just started to know Nayiit. And Otah-kvo's in need. And the Galts are stirring trouble again. My shining hour has come to call me away from everyone who actually matters.'
'You can't refuse the I)ai-kvo,' Liat said softly. 'You have to go.'
'Do I?'
The air between them grew still. Half a hundred other conversations echoed in their words. Liat closed her eyes, weariness dragging her like rain-heavy robes.
'It's all happening again, isn't it?' she said. 'It's all the things we've suffered before, coming back at once. The Galts. Stone-Made-Soft set free. Cehmai lost and mourning the way Heshai was that summer, after Seedless killed the baby. And then us. You and I.'
'1'ou and I, ending again,' NMTaati said. 'All of history pressed into one season. It doesn't seem fair.'
'I low is Cehmai?' she asked, turning the conversation to safer ground, if only for a moment. 'Has he been eating?'
'A little. Not enough.'
'Does be know yet what happened? How Stone-Made-Soft slipped free?'
'No, but… but he suspects. And I do, too.'
Liat moved forward, sat beside Maati, took the bowl from his hands and drank the wine. Her throat and chest warmed and relaxed. Maati took a bottle from the floor.
'Not every poet is made for slaughter,' Maati said as he tipped rice wine clear as water into the howl. 'There was a part of him that rebelled at the prospect of turning the andat against the Galts. I know he struggled with it, and he and I both believed he'd made his peace with. 11 it.
'But now you think not?'
'Now I think perhaps he wasn't as certain as he told himself he was. He may not even have known what he meant to do. It would take so little, in a way. The decision of a moment, and then gone beyond retrieval. If he regretted it in the next breath, it would already be too late. But it can't he a coincidence, the Galts and Stone- Made-Soft.'
Liat sipped now, just enough to maintain the warmth in her body but not so much as to make her drunk. Maati drank directly from the bottle, wiping it with his sleeve after.
'There's another explanation,' she said. 'The Galts could have done it.'
'How? They can't unmake a binding.'
`.. They could have bought him.'
Nlaati shook his head, frowning. 'Not Cehmai. There's not a man in the world less likely to turn against the Khaiem.'
'You're sure of that?'
'Yes. I'm sure,' Nlaati said. 'He was happy. He had his life and his place in the world, and he was happy.'
'So much the worse for him,' Liat said. 'At least we don't have that to suffer, eh?'
'And now who sounds hitter?'
Liat chuckled and took a pose accepting the point that was made awkward by the howl in one hand.
'How are things with Otah-kvo?' Maati asked.
'He's like the wind on legs,' Liat said. 'Ile wants to know everything at once, control all of it, and I think he's driving the court half mad. And… don't say I said it, but it's almost as if he's enjoying it. Everything's falling apart except him. If simple force of will can hold a city together, I think Machi will he fine.'
'It can't, though.'
'No,' she agreed. 'It can't.'
The back of Maati's hand brushed against her arm. It was a small, tentative gesture, familiar as breath. It was something he had always done when he was uncertain and in need of comfort. There had been times when she'd found it powerfully annoying and times when she'd found herself doing it too. Now, she shifted the wine howl to her other hand, and resolutely laced her fingers with his.
'I haven't written hack to the Dal-kvo,' Nlaati said. His voice was as low as a confession. 'I'm not sure what I should… I haven't been hack to Saraykeht, you know. I could… I mean… Gods, I'm saying this badly. If you want it, Liat-kya, I could come hack with you. You and Nayiit.'
'No,' she said. 'There isn't room for you. My life there has a certain shape to it, and I don't want you to he a part of it. And Nayiit's a grown man. It's too late to start raising him now. I love you. And Nayiit is better, I think,
