low town comfort house, too afraid to come to the streets. And every

story they told of him, they also told of Kaiin.

It had begun. At long last, after years of waiting, one of the men who

might one day be Khai Machi had made his move. The city waited for the

drama to unfold. This pyre was only the opening for them, the first

notes of some new song that would make this seem to be about something

honorable, comprehensible, and right.

Hiami took a pose of thanks and accepted a lit torch from the

firekeeper. She stepped to the oil-soaked wood. A dove fluttered past

her, landed briefly on her husband's chest, and then flew away again.

She felt herself smile to see it go. She touched the flame to the small

kindling and stepped back as the fire took. She waited there as long as

tradition required and then went back to the Second Palace. Let the

others watch the ashes. "Their song might be starting, but hers here had

ended.

Her servant girl was waiting for her at the entrance of the palace's

great hall. She held a pose of welcome that suggested there was some

news waiting for her. Hiami was tempted to ignore the nuance, to walk

through to her chambers and her fire and bed and the knotwork scarf that

was now nearly finished. But there were tear-streaks on the girl's

cheeks, and who was Hiami, after all, to treat a suffering child

unkindly? She stopped and took a pose that accepted the welcome before

shifting to one of query.

"Idaan Machi," the servant girl said. "She is waiting for you in the

summer garden."

Hiami shifted to a pose of thanks, straightened her sleeves, and walked

quietly down the palace halls. The sliding stone doors to the garden

were open, a breeze too cold to be comfortable moving through the hall.

And there, by an empty fountain surrounded by bare-limbed cherry trees,

sat her once-sister. If her formal robes were not the pale of mourning,

her countenance contradicted them: reddened eyes, paint and powder

washed away. She was a plain enough woman without them, and Hiami felt

sorry for her. It was one thing to expect the violence. It was another

to see it done.

She stepped forward, her hands in a pose of greeting. Idaan started to

her feet as if she'd been caught doing something illicit, but then she

took an answering pose. Hiami sat on the fountain's stone lip, and Idaan

lowered herself, sitting on the ground at her feet as a child might.

"Your things are packed," Idaan said.

"Yes. I'll leave tomorrow. It's weeks to "Ian-Sadar. It won't be so

hard, I think. One of my daughters is married there, and my brother is a

decent man. They'll treat me well while I make arrangements for my own

apartments."

"It isn't fair," Idaan said. "They shouldn't force you out like this.

You belong here."

"It's tradition," Hiami said with a pose of surrender. "Fairness has

nothing to do with it. My husband is dead. I will return to my father's

house, whoever's actually sitting in his chair these days."

"If you were a merchant, no one would require anything like that of you.

You could go where you pleased, and do what you wanted."

"True, but I'm not, am I? I was born to the utkhaiem. You were horn to a

Khai."

"And women," Idaan said. Hiami was surprised by the venom in the word.

"We were born women, so we'll never even have the freedoms our brothers do."

Hiami laughed. She couldn't help herself, it was all so ridiculous. She

took her once-sister's hand and leaned forward until their foreheads

almost touched. Idaan's tear-red eyes shifted to meet her gaze.

"I don't think the men in our families consider themselves unconstrained

by history," she said, and Idaan's expression twisted with chagrin.

"I wasn't thinking," she said. "I didn't mean that ... Gods ... I'm

sorry, Hiami-kya. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry ..."

Hiami opened her arms, and the girl fell into them, weeping. Hiami

rocked her slowly, cooing into her ear and stroking her hair as if she

were comforting a babe. And as she did, she looked around the gardens.

This would be the last time she saw them. "Thin tendrils of green were

rising from the soil. The trees were bare, but their bark had an

undertone of green. Soon it would be warm enough to turn on the fountains.

She felt her sorrow settle deep, an almost physical sensation. She

understood the tears of the young that were even now soaking her robes

at the shoulder. She would come to understand the tears of age in time.

They would be keeping her company. There was no need to hurry.

At length, Idaan's sobs grew shallower and less frequent. The girl

pulled back, smiling sheepishly and wiping her eyes with the back of her

hand.

"I hadn't thought it would be this had," Idaan said softly. "I knew it

would be hard, but this is ... How did they do it?"

"Who, dear?"

"All of them. All through the generations. How did they bring themselves

to kill each other?"

"I think," Hiami said, her words seeming to come from the new sorrow

within her and not from the self she had known, "that in order to become

one of the Khaiem, you have to stop being able to love. So perhaps

Biitrah's tragedy isn't the worst that could have happened."

Idaan hadn't followed the thought. She took a pose of query.

"Winning this game may be worse than losing it, at least for the sort of

man he was. He loved the world too much. Seeing that love taken from him

would have been had. Seeing him carry the deaths of his brothers with

him ... and he wouldn't have been able to go slogging through the mines.

He would have hated that. He would have been a very poor Khai Maehi."

"I don't think I love the world that way," Idaan said.

"You don't, Idaan-kya," Hiami said. "And just now I don't either. But I

will try to. I will try to love things the way he did."

They sat a while longer, speaking of things less treacherous. In the

end, they parted as if it were just another absence before them, as if

there would be another meeting on another day. A more appropriate

farewell would have ended with them both in tears again.

The leave-taking ceremony before the Khai was more formal, but the

emptiness of it kept it from unbalancing her composure. He sent her back

to her family with gifts and letters of gratitude, and assured her that

she would always have a place in his heart so long as it beat. Only when

he enjoined her not to think ill of her fallen husband for his weakness

did her sorrow threaten to shift to rage, but she held it down. They

were only words, spoken at all such events. They were no more about