slake his thirst. Almost enough food to live as well, though not quite.

He had no clothing but the rags he'd worn when he'd come back to Machi

and the cloak that Maati had brought. When dawn was coming near and the

previous day's heat had gone from the tower, he would be huddling in

that cloth. Through the day, sun heated the great tower, and that heat

rose. And as it rose, it grew. In his stone cage, Otah lay sweating as

if he'd been working at hard labor, his throat dry and his head pounding.

The towers of Machi, Otah had decided, were the stupidest buildings in

the world. Too cold in winter, too hot in summer, unpleasant to use,

exhausting to climb. They existed only to show that they could exist.

More and more of the time, his mind was in disarray; hunger and boredom,

the stifling heat and the growing presentiment of his own death

conspired to change the nature of time. Otah felt outside it all, apart

from the world and adrift. He had always been in this room; the memories

from before were like stories he'd heard told. He would always be in

this room unless he wriggled out the window and into the cool, open air.

Twice already he had dreamed that he'd leapt from the tower. Both times,

he woke in a panic. It was that as much as anything that kept him from

taking the one control left to him. When despair washed through him, he

remembered the dream of falling, with its shrill regret. He didn't want

to die. His ribs were showing, he was almost nauseated with thirst, his

mind would not slow down or be quiet. He was going to be put to death,

and he did not want to die.

The thought that his suffering saved Kiyan had ceased to comfort him.

Part of him was glad that he had not known how wretched his father's

treatment of him would be. He might have faltered. At least now he could

not run. He would lose-he had lost, and badly-but he could not run. Mai

sat on her chair-the tall, thin one with legs of woven cane that she'd

had in their island hut. When she spoke, it was in the soft liquid

sounds of her native language and too fast for Otah to follow. He

struggled, but when he croaked out that he couldn't understand her, his

own voice woke him until he drifted away again into nothing, troubled

only by the conviction that he could hear rats chewing through the stone.

The shriek woke him completely. He sat upright, his arms trembling. The

room was real again, unoccupied by visions. Outside the great door, he

heard someone shout, and then something heavy pounded once against the

door, shaking it visibly. Otah rose. There were voices-new ones. After

so many days, he knew the armsmen by their rhythms and the timbre of

their murmurs. The throats that made the sounds he heard now were

unfamiliar. He walked to the door and leaned against it, pressing his

ear to the hairline crack between the wood and its stone frame. One

voice rose above the others, its tone commanding. Otah made out the word

"chains."

The voices went away again for so long Otah began to suspect he'd

imagined it all. The scrape of the bar being lifted from the door

startled him. He stepped hack, fear and relief coming together in his

heart. This might be the end. He knew his brother had returned; this

could be his death come for him. But at least it was an end to his time

in this cell. He tried to hold himself with some dignity as the door

swung open. The torches were so bright that Otah could hardly see.

"Good evening, Otah-cha," a man's voice said. "I hope you're well enough

to move. I'm afraid we're in a bit of a hurry."

"Who are you?" Otah asked. His own voice sounded rough. Squinting, he

could make out perhaps ten men in black leather armor. They had blades

drawn. The armsmen lay in a pile against the far wall, stacked like

goods in a warehouse, a black pool of blood surrounding them. The smell

of them wasn't rotten, not yet, but it was disturbingcoppery and

intimate. They had only been dead for minutes. If all of them were dead.

"We're the men who've come to take you out of here," the commander said.

He was the one actually standing in the doorway. He had the long face of

a man of the winter cities, but a westlander's flowing hair. Otah moved

forward and took a pose of gratitude that seemed to amuse him.

"Can you walk?" he asked as Utah came out into the larger room. The

signs of struggle were everywhere-spilled wine, overturned chairs, blood

on the walls. The armsmen had been taken by surprise. Utah put a hand

against the wall to steady himself. The stone felt warm as flesh.

"I'll do what I have to," Otah said.

"That's admirable," the commander said, "but I'm more curious about what

you can do. I've suffered long confinement myself a time or two, and I

know what it does. We can't take the easy way down. We've got to walk.

If you can do this, that's all to the good. If you can't, we're prepared

to carry you, but I need to have you out of the city quickly."

"I don't understand. Did Maati send you?"

"There's better places to discuss this, Otah-cha. We can't go down by

the chains. Even if there weren't more armsmen waiting there, we've just

broken them. Can you walk down the tower?"

A memory of the endlessly turning stairs and the ghost of pain in his

knees and legs. Otah felt a stab of shame, but pulled himself up and

shook his head.

"I don't believe I can," he said. The commander nodded and two of his

men pulled lengths of wood from their backs and fitted them together in

a cripple's litter. There was a small seat for Otah, canted against the

slope of the stairway, and the poles were set one longer than the other

to fit the tight curve. It would have been useless in any other

situation, but for this task it was perfect. As one of the men helped

Otah take his place on it, he wondered if the device had been built for

this moment, or if things like it existed in service of these towers.

The largest of the men spat on his hands and gripped the carrying poles

that would start down the stairs and bear most of Otah's weight. One of

his fellows took the other end, and Otah lurched up.

They began their descent, Otah with his back to the center of the spiral

staircase. He watched the stone of the wall curl up from below. The men

grunted and cursed, but they moved quickly. The man on the higher poles

stumbled once, and the one below shouted angrily back at him.

The journey seemed to last forever-stone and darkness, the smell of

sweat and lantern oil. Otah's knees bumped against the wall before him,

his head against the wall behind. When they reached the halfway point,

another huge man was waiting to take over the worst of the carrying.

Otah felt his shame return. He tried to protest, but the commander put a

strong, hard hand on his shoulder and kept him in the chair.

"You chose right the first time," the commander said.