vengeance. If it's not Otah protecting you, who is it? One of the high

families of the utkhaiem? A trading house? Who?"

"I have strong backing," Maati said. "But I won't tell you more than that."

"Every danger you face, my husband faces too," Idaan said. "If you want

him to take your risks, you have to tell him what protection you can offer."

"I have an ear in the palaces anytime I need it. Otah won't be able to

mount any kind of action against me without warning finding me. You can

trust to that."

"You have to tell us more," Idaan said.

"He doesn't," Cehmai said, sharply. "He doesn't have to offer me

protection because I'm not going to do the work. I'm done, love. I'm

finished. I want a few more years with you and a quiet death, and I'll

be quite pleased with that."

"The world needs you," Maati said.

"It doesn't," Cehmai said. "You've come a long way, Maati-kvo, and I've

disappointed you. I'm sorry for that, but you have my answer. I used to

be a poet, but I'm not anymore. I can reconsider as long as we both keep

breathing, and we'll come to the same place."

"We can't stay on here," Idaan said. Her voice was soft. "I've loved it

here too. This place, these years ... we've been lucky to have them. But

Maati-cha's right. This season, and perhaps five or ten after it, we'll

make do. But eventually the work will pass us. We're not getting

younger, and we can't hire on hands to help us. There aren't any."

"Then we'll leave," Cehmai said. "We'll do something else, only not that."

"Why not?" Maati asked.

"Because I don't want to kill any more people," Cehmai said. "Not the

girls you're encouraging to try this, not the foreigners who would try

to stop us, not whatever army came in the next autumn's war."

"It doesn't have to be like that," Maati said.

"It does," Cehmai said. "We held the power of gods, and the world envied

us and turned against us, and they always will again. I can't say I

think much of where we stand now, but I remember what happened to bring

us here, and I don't see how making poets of women instead of men will

make a world any different or better than the one we had then."

"It may not," Maati said, "but it will be better than the one we have

now. If you won't help me, then I'll do without you, but I'd thought

better of you, Cehmai. I'd thought you had more spine."

"Rice is getting cold," Idaan said. Her voice was controlled rage.

"Perhaps we should eat it before it goes bad."

They finished the meal alternating between artificially polite

conversation and strained silence. After, Cehmai took the bowls away to

clean and didn't return. Idaan led Maati to a small room near the back

with a straw pallet and a night candle already burning. Maati slept

poorly and found himself still upset when he woke. He left in the dark

of the morning without speaking again to either of his hosts, one from

disappointment and shame and the other, though he would never have said

it, from fear.

Nantani was the nearest port to the lands of Galt, but the scars of war

were too fresh there and too deep. Instead, the gods had conspired to

return Otah to the city of his childhood: Saraykeht.

The fastest ships arrived several days before the great mass of the

fleet. They stood out half a hand's travel from the seafront, and Otah

took in the whole city. He could see the masts at the farthest end of

the seafront, berthed in order to leave the greatest space for the

incoming traffic. Bright cloth hung from every window Otah could see,

starting with the dock master's offices nearest the water to the towers

of the palaces, high and to the north where the vibrant colors were

grayed by humidity.

Crowds filled the docks, and he heard a roar of voices and snatches of

drum and flute carried by the breeze. The air itself smelled different:

rank and green and familiar in a way he hadn't expected.

The Emperor of the Khaiem had been away from his cities for eight

months, almost nine, and his return with the high families of Galt in

tow was the kind of event seen once in history and never again. This was

the day that every man and woman at the seafront or watching from the

windows above the streets would recall until death's long fingers

touched them. The day that the new empress, the Galtic empress, arrived

for the first time.

There were stories Otah had read in books that had been ashes for almost

as long as this new Empress had been alive, about an emperor's life

mirroring the state of his empire. An emperor with many children meant

rich, fertile land; one without heir spoke of poor crops and thin

cattle. An emperor who drank himself to sleep meant an empire of

libertines; one who studied and prayed, a somber land of great wisdom.

He had halfbelieved the stories then. He had no faith in them now.

"You would think they would have made some allowance for our arrival," a

man's peevish voice said from behind him. Otah looked back at Balasar

Gice, dressed in formal brocade armor and shining with sweat. Otah took

a pose of powerlessness before the gods.

"The wind does what the wind does," he said. "We'll be on land by

nightfall."

"We will," Balasar said. "But the others will be docking and unloading

all night."

It was true. Saraykeht would likely add something near a tenth of its

population in the next day, Galts filling the guest quarters and

wayhouses and likely half the beds in the soft quarter. It was the

second time in Otah's life that a pale-skinned, round-eyed neighborhood

without buildings had appeared in his city. Only now, it would happen

without drawn blades and blood.

"They're sending tow galleys out for us," Otah said. "It will all be fine."

The galleys, with their flashing banks of white oars and ornamental

ironwork rails, reached the great ship just after midday. With a great

clamor of voices-protests, laughter, orders, counterorders-thick cables

of hemp were made fast to the ship's deck. The sails were already down,

and with the sound of a bell clanging like an alarm, Otah's ship

lurched, shifted directly into the wind, and began the last, shortest

leg of his journey home.

A welcoming platform had been erected especially for the occasion. The

broad beams were white as snow, and a ceremonial guard waited by a

litter while a somewhat less ceremonial one kept the press of the crowds

at a distance. Balasar and six of the Galtic High Council had made their

way to Otah's ship in order to disembark with him. The Avenger with Ana

and her parents would likely come next, after which the roar of