Idaan had spent the first night of the festival with him, weeping and

laughing, taking comfort and coupling until they had both fallen asleep

in the middle of their pillow talk. The night candle had hardly burned

down a full quarter mark when the servant had come, tapping on his door

to wake him. He'd risen for the trek to the mines, and Idaan- alone in

his bed-had turned, wrapping his bedclothes about her naked body, and

watched him as if afraid he would tell her to leave. By the time he had

found fresh robes, her eyelids had closed again and her breath was deep

and slow. He'd paused for a moment, considering her sleeping face. With

the paint worn off and the calm of sleep, she looked younger. Her lips,

barely parted, looked too soft to bruise his own, and her skin glowed

like honey in sunlight.

But instead of slipping back into bed and sending out a servant for new

apples, old cheese, and sugared almonds, he'd strapped on his boots and

gone out to meet his obligations. His horse plodded along, flies buzzed

about his face, and the path turned away from the ore chute and looked

back toward the city.

There would be celebrations from now until Idaan's wedding to Adrah

Vaunyogi. Between those two joys-the finished succession and the

marriage of the high families-there would also be the preparations for

the Khai Machi's final ceremony. And, despite everything Maati-kvo had

done, likely the execution of Otah Machi in there as well. With as many

rituals and ceremonies as the city faced, they'd be lucky to get any

real work done before winter.

The yipping of the mine dogs brought him back to himself, and he

realized he'd been half-dozing for the last few switchbacks. He rubbed

his eyes with the heel of his palm. He would have to pull himself

together when they began working in earnest. It would help, he told

himself, to have some particular problem to set his mind to instead of

the tedium of travel. Thankfully, Stone-Made-Soft wasn't resisting him

today. The effort it would have taken to force the unwilling andat to do

as it was told could have pushed the day from merely unpleasant to awful.

They reached the mouth of the mine and were greeted by several workers

and minor functionaries. Cehmai dismounted and walked Unsteadily to the

wide table that had been set up for their consultations. His legs and

back and head ached. When the drawings and notes were laid out before

him, it took effort to turn his attention to them. His mind wandered off

to Idaan or his own discomfort or the mental windstorm that was the andat.

"We would like to join these two passages," the overseer was saying, his

fingers tracing lines on the maps. Cehmai had seen hundreds of sets of

plans like this, and his mind picked up the markings and translated them

into holes dug through the living rock of the mountain only slightly

less easily than usual. "The vein seems richest here and then here. Our

concern is-"

"My concern," the engineer broke in, "is not bringing half the mountain

down on us while we do it."

The structure of tunnels that honeycombed the mountain wasn't the most

complicated Cehmai had ever seen, but neither was it simple. The mines

around Machi were capable of a complexity difficult in the rest of the

world, mostly because he himself was not in the rest of the world, and

mines in the Westlands and Galt weren't interested in paying the Khai

Mach] for his services. The engineer made his casewhere the stone would

support the tunnels and where it would not. The overseer made his

counter-case-pointing out where the ores seemed richest. The decision

was left to him.

The servants gave them bowls of honeyed beef and sausages that tasted of

smoke and black pepper; a tart, sweet paste made from last year's

berries; and salted Hatbrcad. Cehmai ate and drank and looked at the

maps and drawings. Fie kept remembering the curve of Idaan's mouth, the

feeling of her hips against his own. He remembered her tears, her

reticence. He would have sacrificed a good deal to better understand her

sorrow.

It was more, he thought, than the struggle to face her father's mortal

ity. Perhaps he should talk to Maati about it. He was older and had

greater experience with women. Cehmai shook his head and forced himself

to concentrate. It was half a hand before he saw a path through the

stone that would yield a fair return and not collapse the works.

Stone-Made-Soft neither approved nor dissented. It never did.

The overseer took a pose of gratitude and approval, then folded tip the

maps. The engineer sucked his teeth, craning his neck as the diagrams

and notes vanished into the overseer's satchel, as if hoping to see one

last objection, but then he too took an approving pose. They lit the

lanterns and turned to the wide, black wound in the mountain's side.

The tunnels were cool, and darker than night. The smell of rock dust

made the air thick. As he'd guessed, there were few men working, and the

sounds of their songs and the barking of their dogs only made the

darkness seem more isolating. They talked very little as they wound

their way through the maze. Usually Cehmai made a practice of keeping a

mental map, tracking their progress through the dark passages. After the

second unexpected intersection, he gave up and was content to let the

overseer lead them.

Unlike the mines on the plain, even the deepest tunnels here were dry.

When they reached the point Cehmai had chosen, they took out the maps

one last time, consulting them in the narrow section of the passageway

that the lanterns lit. Above them, the mountain felt bigger than the sky.

"Don't make it too soft," the engineer said.

"It doesn't bear any load," the overseer said. "Gods! Who's been telling

you ghost stories? You're nervous as a puppy first time down the hole."

Cehmai ignored them, looked up, considering the stone above him as if he

could see through it. He wanted a path wide as two men walking with

their arms outstretched. And it would need to go forward from here and

then tilt to the left and then up. Cehmai pictured the distances as if

he would walk them. It was about as far from where he was now to the

turning point as from the rose pavilion to the library. And then, the

shorter leg would be no longer than the walk from the library to Maati's

apartments. He turned his mind to it, pressed the whirlwind, applied it

to the stone before him, slowly, carefully loosening the stone in the

path he had imagined. Stone-Made-Soft resisted-not in the body that

scowled now looking at the tunnel's blank side, but in their shared

mind. The andat shifted and writhed and pushed, though not so badly as

it might have. Cehmai reached the turning point, shifted his attention

and began the shorter, upward movement.

The storm's energy turned and leapt ahead, spreading like spilled water,

pushing its influence out of the channel Cehmai's intention had