'I said that my business wasn't with him, but with Ana-cha. He began declaiming something in rhymed verse about him and his love being one flesh. Ana-cha told him to stop, but he only started bellowing it.'
'How did Ana-cha react?'
Danat's grin widened. Blood had pinked his teeth.
'She seemed a bit embarrassed. I began speaking to her as if he weren't there. And…'
Danat shrugged.
'He hit you?'
'I may have goaded him,' Danat said. 'A little.'
Otah sat back, stunned. Danat raised his hands to a pose appropriate to the announcement of victory in a game. Otah let himself smile too, but there was a touch of melancholy behind it. His son was no longer the ill, fragile child he'd known. That boy was gone. In his place was a young man with the same instinct to rough-and- tumble as any number of young men. The same as Otah had suffered once himself. It was so easy to forget.
'I had the palace armsmen throw him in a cell,' Danat said. 'I've set a guard on him in case anyone decides to defend my abused dignity by killing him.'
'Yes, that would complicate things,' Otah agreed.
'Ana followed the whole way shrieking, but she was as angry at Hanchat-cha as at me. Once I get to looking a bit less like an apprentice showfighter's first night, I'm sending an invitation to Ana-cha for a formal dinner at which we can further discuss her poor treatment of our hospitality. And then I'm going to meet my new lover.'
'Your new lover?'
'Shija Radaani has offered to play the role. I think she was flattered to be asked. Issandra-cha is adamant that nothing makes a man worth having like another woman smiling at him.'
'Issandra-cha is a dangerous woman,' Otah said.
'She is,' Danat agreed.
They laughed together for a moment. Otah was the first to sober.
'Will it work, do you think?' he asked. 'Can it be done?'
'Can I win Ana's heart and make her want what she's professed before everyone of power in two empires that she hates?' Danat said. Saying it that way, he sounded like his mother. 'I don't know. And I can't say what I feel about the way it's happening. I'm plotting against her. Her own mother is plotting against her. I feel that I ought to disapprove. That it isn't honest. And yet…'
Danat shook his head. Otah took a querying pose.
'I'm enjoying myself,' Danat said. 'Whatever it says of me, I've been struck bloody by a Galt boy, and I feel I've scored a point in some game.
'It's an important game.'
Danat rose. He took a pose that promised his best effort, appropriate to a junior competitor to his teacher, and left.
There had to be some way that he could aid in Danat's task, but for the moment, he couldn't think what it might be. Perhaps if there was a way to arrange some sort of isolation for the two. A journey, perhaps, to Yalakeht. Or, no, there was the conspiracy with Obar State there that still hadn't been rooted out. Well, Cetani, then. Something long and arduous and cold by the time they got there. And without the bastard who'd struck his son…
Otah finished his fish and rice, lingering over a last bowl of wine and looking out at the small garden. It was, he thought, the size of the walled yard at the wayhouse Kiyan had owned before she became his first and only wife and he became the Khai Machi. That little space of green and white, of finches in the branches and voles scuttling in the low grass, might have been the size of his life.
Until the Galts came and slaughtered them all with the rest of Udun.
And instead, he had the world, or most of it. And a son. And, however little she liked it, a daughter. And Kiyan's ashes and his memory of her. But it had been a pretty little garden.
Otah returned to the waiting supplicants with his mind moving in ten different directions at once. He did his best to focus on the work before him, but everything seemed trivial. No matter that men's fortunes lay in his decision. No matter that he was the final appeal for justice, or if not that, at least peace. Or mercy. Justice and peace and mercy all seemed insignificant when held next to duty. His duty to Chaburi-Tan and all the other cities, to Danat and Eiah and the shape of the future. By the time the sun sank in the western hills, he had almost forgotten Idaan.
His sister waited for him in the apartments Sinja had found for her. She looked out of place among the sweeping arches and intricately carved stonework. Her hands were thick and calloused, her face roughened by sun. Some servant had arranged a robe for her, well-cut silk of green and cream. He considered her dark eyes and calm, weighing expression. He could not forget that she had killed men coldly, with calculation. But then so had he.
'Idaan-cha,' he said as she rose. Her hands took a pose of greeting formal as court, but made awkward by decades without practice. Otah returned it.
'You've made a decision,' she said.
'Actually, no. I haven't. I hope to by this time tomorrow. I'd like you to stay until then.'
Idaan's eyes narrowed, her lips pressed thin. Otah fought the urge to step back.
'Forgive me if it isn't my place to ask, Most High. But is there something more important going on than Maati bringing back the andat?'
'There are a hundred things that are more certain,' Otah said. 'He may manage it, but the chances are that he won't. Meantime, I know for certain of three… four other things that are happening that could unmake the cities of the Khaiem. I don't have time to play in might be.'
He'd meant to turn at the end of his pronouncement and walk from the rooms. Her voice was cutting.
'So instead, you'll wait until is?' Idaan said. 'Or is it only that you have too many apples in the air, and you're only a middling juggler?'
'I'm not in the mood to be-'
'Dressed down by a woman who's only breathing because you've chosen to let her? Listen to yourself. You sound like the villain from some children's bedtime story.'
'Idaan-cha,' he said, and then found that he had nothing to follow it.
'I've come to tell you that your old friend and enemy is harnessing gods, and not for your benefit. It's the most threatening thing I can imagine happening. And what's your response? You knew. You've known for years. What's more, knowing now that he's redoubling his efforts, you can't be bothered even to consider the question until you've cleared your sheet of audiences? I've held a thousand opinions of you over the years, brother, but I never thought you were stupid.'
Otah felt rage bloom in his chest, rising like a fiery wave, only to die with the woman's next words.
'It's the guilt, isn't it?' she said. When he didn't answer at once, she nodded to herself. 'You aren't the only one that's done this, you know.'
'Been Emperor? Are there others?'
'Betrayed the people you loved,' she said. 'Come. Sit down. I still have a little tea.'
Almost to his surprise, Otah walked forward, sitting on a divan while the former exile poured pale green tea into two carved bone bowls.
'After you set me free, I spent years without sleeping through a full night. I'd dream of the people I'd… the people I was responsible for. Our father. Adrah. Danat. You never knew Danat, did you?'
'I named my son for him,' Otah said. Idaan smiled, but there was a sorrow in her eyes.
'He'd have liked that, I think. Here. Choose a bowl. I'll drink first if you'd like. I don't mind.'
Otah drank. It was overbrewed and sweetened with honey; sweet and bitter. Idaan sipped at hers.
'After you sent me away, there was a time I went about the business of living with what I'd done by working myself like a war slave,' she said. 'Sunrise to dark, I did whatever it was I was doing until I could fall down at the end half-dead and too tired to dream.'
'It doesn't sound pleasant,' Otah said.
'I did a lot of good,' Idaan said. 'You wouldn't guess it, but I organized a constabulary through half of the low towns in the north. I was actually a judge for a few years, if you'll picture that. I found that meting out justice wasn't something I felt suited for, but I kept a few murderers and rapists from making a habit of it. I made a few places safer. I wasn't utterly ineffective, even though half the time I was too tired to focus my eyes.
