grace to move away a few paces, expressionless.

"We're doing well," Issandra said.

"I didn't hear a declaration of marriage," Otah said. He felt

disagreeable despite the evidence of Ana's changing heart. He felt

dishonest, and it made him sour.

"So long as nothing comes to throw her off, it will come. In time. I

know my daughter. I've seen this all before."

"Really? How odd," Otah said. "I know my son, and I never have."

"Then perhaps Ana is a lucky woman," Issandra said. He was surprised to

hear something wistful in the woman's voice. The moon passed behind a

high cloud, deepening the darkness around them, and then was gone.

Issandra stood before him, her head high and proud, her mouth in a

half-smile. She was, he thought, an interesting woman. Not beautiful in

the traditional sense, and all the more attractive for that.

"A marriage is what you make of it," she said.

Otah considered the words, then took a pose that both agreed and

expressed a gentle sorrow. He did not know how much of his meaning she

understood. She nodded and strode off, leaving him with his armsmen.

Otah suffered through the rest of the banquet and returned to his

apartments, sure he would not sleep. The night air had cooled. The fire

in the grate warmed his feet. The fear that had dogged him all these

last months didn't vanish, but its hold upon him faded. Somewhere under

the stars just then, Danat and Ana were playing out their drama in

touches and whispers; Issandra and Fatter Dasin in silences and the

knowledge of long association. Idaan was hunting, Ashua Radaani was

hunting, Sinja was hunting. And he was alone and sleepless with nothing

to do.

He closed his eyes and tried to feel Kiyan's presence, tried to bring

some sense of her out of the scent of smoke and the sound of distant

singing. He tricked himself into thinking that she was here, but not so

well that he could forget it was a trick.

Tomorrow, there would be another wide array of men and women requesting

his time. Another schedule of ritual and audience and meeting. Perhaps

it would all go as well as today had, and he would end the day in his

rooms, feeling old and maudlin despite his success. There were so many

men and women in the court-in the world-who wanted nothing more than

power. Otah, who had it, had always known how little it changed.

He slept deeply and without dreams. When he woke, every man and woman of

Galt had gone blind.

16

It had been raining for two full days. Occasionally the water changed to

sleet or hail, and small accumulations of rotten ice had begun to form

in the sheltered corners of the courtyard. Maati closed his shutters

against the low clouds and sat close to the fire, the weather tapping on

wood like fingers on a table. It might almost have been pleasant if it

hadn't made his spine stiffen and ache.

The cold coupled with Eiah's absence had turned life quiet and slow,

like a bear preparing to sleep through the winter. Maati went down to

the kitchen in the morning and ate with the others. Large Kae and Irit

had started rehearsing old songs together to pass the time. They sang

while they cooked, and the harmonies were prettier than Maati would have

imagined. When Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight were there, the andat would

grow restive, its eyes shifting from one singer to the next and back

again until Vanjit started to fidget and took her charge away. Small Kae

had no ear for music, so instead spent her time reading the old texts

that Clarity-of-Sight had been built from and asking questions about the

finer points of their newly re-created grammar.

Most of the day, Maati spent alone in his rooms, or dressed in several

thick robes, walking through the halls. He would not say it, but the

space had begun to feel close and restricting. Likely it was only the

sense of winter moving in.

With the journey to Pathai and back, along with the trading and

provisioning, he couldn't expect Eiah's return for another ten days. He

hadn't expected to feel that burden so heavily upon him, and so both

delight and dread touched him when Small Kae interrupted his halfdoze.

"She's come back. Vanjit's been watching from the classroom, and she

says Eiah's come back. She's already turned from the high road, and if

the path's not too muddy, she'll be here by nightfall."

Maati rose and opened the shutters, as if by squinting at the gray he

could match Vanjit's sight. A gust of cold and damp pulled at the

shutter in his hand. He was half-tempted to find a cloak of oiled silk

and go out to meet her. It would be folly, of course, and gain him

nothing. He ran a hand through the thin remnants of his hair, wondering

how many days it had been since he'd bathed and shaved himself, and then

realized that Small Kae was still there, waiting for him to speak.

"Well," he said, "whatever we have that's best, let's cook it up.

Eiahcha's going to have fresh supplies, so there's no point in saving it."

Small Kae grinned, took a pose that accepted his instruction, and

bustled out. Maati turned back to the open window. Ice and mud and

gloom. And set in it, invisible to him, Eiah and news.

There was no sunset; Eiah arrived shortly after the clouds had faded

into darkness. In the light of hissing torches, the cart's wheels were

beige with mud and clay. The horse trembled with exhaustion, driven too

hard through the wet. Large Kae, clucking her tongue in disapproval,

took the poor beast off to be rubbed down and warmed while the rest of

them crowded around Eiah. She wrung the water from her hair with pale

fingers, answering the first question before it was asked.

"Ashti Beg's left. She said she didn't want to come back. We were in a

low town just south of here off the high road. She said we could talk

about it, but when I got up in the morning, she'd already gone." She

looked at Maati when she finished. "I'm sorry."

He took a pose that forgave and also diminished the scale of the thing,

then waved her in. Vanjit followed, and then Irit and Small Kae. The

meal was laid out and waiting. Barley soup with lemon and quail. Rice

and sausage. Watered wine. Eiah sat near the brazier and ate like a

woman starved, talking between mouthfuls.

"We never reached Pathai. There was a trade fair halfway to the city.

Tents, carts, the wayhouse so full they were renting out space on the

kitchen floor. There was a courier there gathering messages from all the

low towns."

"So the letters were sent?" Irit asked. Eiah nodded and scooped up

another mouthful of rice.