armsmen to keep him there. If this is a fresh assassin ..

"Then he'll answer more questions than the last one can," Maati said.

""Take me there."

As they left, Maati saw Baarath swoop down on the hooks and scrolls like

a mother reunited with her babe. Maati knew that they would all he

hidden in obscure drawers and shelves by the time he came hack. Some, he

would likely never see again.

The sun was moving toward the mountain peaks in the west, early evening

descending on the valley. They walked together down the white gravel

path that led to the Fourth Palace, looking, Maati was sure, like

nothing so much as a teacher and his student in their matching brown

poet's robes. Except that Cehmai was the man who held the andat, and

Maati was only a scholar. They didn't speak, but Maati felt a knot of

excitement and apprehension tightening in him.

At the palace's great hall, a servant met them with a pose of formal

welcome that couldn't hide the brightness in her eyes. At a gesture, she

led them down a wide corridor and then up a flight of stairs to a

gallery that looked down into the courtyard. Maati forced himself to

breathe deeply as he stepped to the edge and looked down, Cehmai at his

side.

The space was modest, but lush. Thin vines rose along one wall and part

of another. Two small, sculpted maple trees stood, one at either end of

a long, low stone bench. It looked like a painting-the perfectly

balanced garden, with the laborer in his ill-cut robes the only thing

out of place. A breeze stirred the branches of the trees with a sound

equal parts flowing water and dry pages turning. Maati stepped hack. His

throat was tight, but his head felt perfectly clear. So this was how it

would happen. Very well.

Cehmai was frowning down warily at Otah-kvo. Maati put his hand on the

young man's shoulder.

"I have to speak with him," Maati said. "Alone."

"You don't think he's a threat?"

"It doesn't matter. I still need to speak with him."

"Maati-kvo, please take one of the armsmen. Even if you keep him at the

far end of the yard, you can ..."

Maati took a pose that refused this, and saw something shift in the

young man's eyes. Respect, Maati thought. He thinks I'm being brave. How

odd that I was that young once.

"Take me there," Maati said.

OTAH SAT IN THE GARDEN, HIS BACK AND NECK TIGHT FROM RIDING AND from

fear, and remembered being young in the summer cities. In one of the low

towns outside Saraykeht, there had been a rock at the edge of a cliff

that jutted out over the water so that, when the tide was just right, a

boy of thirteen summers might step out to its edge and peer past his

toes at the ocean below him and feel like a bird. There had been a hand

of them-the homeless young scraping by on pity and small laborwho had

dared each other to dive from that cliff. The first time he had made the

leap himself, he had been sure the moment his feet left the rough, hot

stone that he would die. That pause, divorced from earth and water,

willing himself hack up, trying to force himself to fly and take hack

that one irrevocable moment, had felt very much like sitting quiet and

alone in this garden. The trees shifted like slow dancers, the flowers

trembled, the stone glowed where the sun struck it and faded to gray

where it did not. He rubbed his fingers against the gritty bench to

remind himself where he was, and to keep the panic in his breast from

possessing him.

He heard the door slide open with a whisper, and then shut again. He

rose, forcing his body to move deliberately and took a pose of greeting

even before he looked up. Maati Vaupathai. 'l'ime had thickened him, and

there was a sorrow in the lines of his face that hadn't been there even

in the weary days when he had stood between his master Heshaikvo and the

death that had eventually come. Otah wondered whether that change had

sprung from Heshai's murder, and whether Maati had ever guessed that

Otah had been the one who drew the cord across the old poet's throat.

Maati took a pose of welcome appropriate for a student to a teacher.

"It wasn't me," Otah said. "My brother. You. I had nothing to do with

any of it."

"I had guessed that." Maati said. He did not come nearer.

"Are you going to call the armsmen? There must be half a dozen out

there. Your student could have been more subtle in calling them."

"'There's more than that, and he isn't my student. I don't have any

students. I don't have anything." A strange smile twitched at the corner

of his mouth. "I have been something of a disappointment to the Daikvo.

Why are you here?"

"Because I need help," Otah said, "and I hoped we might not be enemies.

Maati seemed to weigh the words. He walked to the bench, sat, and leaned

forward on clasped hands. Otah sat beside him, and they were silent. A

sparrow landed on the ground before them, cocked its head, and fluttered

madly away again.

"I came back because it was controlling me," Otah said. "This place.

These people. I've spent a lifetime leaving them, and they keep coming

back and destroying everything I build. I wanted to see it. I wanted to

look at the city and my brothers and my father."

He looked at his hands.

"I don't know what I wanted," Otah said.

"Yes," Maati said, and then, awkwardly, "It was foolish, though. And

there will be consequences."

"There have been already."

"There'll be more."

Again, the silence loomed. There was too much to say, and no order for

it. Otah frowned hard, opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again.

"I have a son," Maati said. "Liat and I have a son. His name's Nayiit.

He's probably just old enough now that he's started to notice that girls

aren't always repulsive. I haven't seen them in years."

"I didn't know," Otah said.

"How would you? The Dal-kvo said that I was a fool to keep a family. I

am a poet, and my duty is to the world. And when I wouldn't renounce

them, I fell from favor. I was given duties that might as well have been

done by an educated slave. And you know, there was an odd kind of pride

about it for a while. I was given clothing, shelter, food for myself.

Only for myself. I thought of leaving. Of folding my robes on the bed

and running away as you did. I thought of you, the way you had chosen

your own shape for your life instead of the shapes that were offered

you. I thought I was doing the same. Gods, Otah-kvo, I wish you had been