with wide, pale wings the size of his hands and eyes as black and wet as

river stones hovered at the window and then vanished. A soft breeze

rattled the open shutters. He pulled back the sleeve of his robe, but

before the bronze tip touched the paper, a soft knock came at his door.

"Most High," the servant boy said, his hands in a pose of obeisance.

"Balasar-cha requests an audience."

Otah smiled and took a pose that granted the request and implied that

the guest should be brought to him here, the nuance only slightly

hampered by the pen still in his hand. As the servant scampered out,

Otah straightened his sleeves and stuck the pen nib-first into the ink

brick.

Once, Balasar Gice had led armies against the Khaiem, and only raw

chance had kept him from success. Instead of leading Galt to its

greatest hour, he had precipitated its slow ruin. That the Khaiem shared

that fate took away little of the sting. The general had spent years

rebuilding his broken reputation, and even now was less a force within

Galt than once he had been.

And still, he was a man to be reckoned with.

He came into the room, bowing to Otah as he always did, but with a wry

smile which was reserved for occasions out of the public eye.

"I came to inquire after your health, Most High," Balasar Gice said in

the language of the Khaiem. His accent hadn't lessened in the years

since they had met. "Councilman Trathorn was somewhat relieved by your

absence, but he had to pretend distress."

"Well, you can tell him his distress in every way mirrors my own," Otah

said. "I couldn't face it. I've been too much in the world. There is

only so much praise I can stand from people who'd be happy to see my

head on a plate. Please, sit. I can have a fire lit if you're cold...."

Balasar sat on a low couch beside the window. He was a small man, more

than half a head shorter than Otah, with the force of personality that

made it easy to forget. The years had weathered his face, grooves at the

corners of his eyes and mouth that spoke as much of laughter as sorrow.

They had met a decade and a half ago in the snow-covered square that had

been the site of the last battle in the war between Galt and the Khaiem.

A war that they had both lost.

The years since had seen his status in his homeland collapse and then

slowly be rebuilt. He wasn't a member of the convocation, much less the

High Council, but he was still a man of power within Galt. When he sat

forward, elbows resting on his knees, Otah could imagine him beside a

campfire, working through the final details of the next morning's attack.

"Otah," the former general said, falling into his native tongue, "what

is your plan if the vote fails?"

Otah leaned back in his chair.

"I don't see why it should," Otah said. "All respect, but what Sterile

did, she did to both of us. Galt is in just as much trouble as the

cities of the Khaiem. Your men can't father children. Our women can't

bear them. We've gone almost fifteen years without children. The farms

are starting to feel the loss. The armies. The trades."

"I know all that," Balasar said, but Otah pressed on.

"Both of our nations are going to fall. They've been falling, but we're

coming close to the last chance to repair it. We might be able to

weather a single lost generation, but if there isn't another after that,

Galt will become Eymond's back gardens, and the Khaiem will be eaten by

whoever can get to us first. You know that Eymond is only waiting for

your army to age into weakness."

"And I know there are other peoples who weren't cursed," Balasar said.

"Eymond, certainly. And the Westlands. Bakta. Obar State."

"And there are a handful of half-bred children from matches like those

in the coastal cities," Otah said. "They're born to high families that

can afford them and hoarded away like treasure. And there are others

whose blood was mixed. Some have borne. Might that be enough, do you think?"

Balasar's smile was thin.

"It isn't," he said. "They won't suffice. Children can't be rarer than

silk and lapis. So few might as well be none. And why should Eymond or

Eddensea or the Westlands send their sons here to make families, when

they can wait a few more years and take what they want from a nation of

geriatrics? If the Khaiem and the Galts don't become one, we'll both be

forgotten. Our land will be taken, our cities will be occupied, and you

and I will spend our last years picking wild berries and stealing eggs

out of nests, because there won't be farm hands enough to keep us in bread."

"That was my thought as well," Otah said.

"So, no fallback position, eh?"

"None," Otah said. "It was raw hell getting the utkhaiem to agree to the

proposal I've brought. I take it the vote is going to fail?"

"The vote is going to fail," Balasar said.

Otah sat forward, his face cradled in his palms. The slight, acrid smell

of old ink on his fingers only made the darkness behind his closed lids

deeper.

Five months before, he had wrestled the last of the language in his

proposed treaty with Galt into shape. A hundred translators from the

high families and great trading houses had offered comment and

correction, and small wars had been fought in the halls and meeting

rooms of his palace at Utani, sometimes resulting in actual blows. Once,

memorably, a chair had been thrown and the chief overseer of House

Siyanti had suffered a broken finger.

Otah had set forth with an entourage of hundreds-court servants, guards,

representatives of every interest from Machi in the far, frozen north to

the island city of Chaburi-Tan, where ice was a novelty. The ships had

poured into the harbor flying brightly dyed sails and more banners and

good-luck pennants than the world had ever seen. For weeks and months,

Otah had made his arguments to any man of any power in the bizarre,

fluid government of his old enemy. And now, this.

"Can I ask why?" he said, his eyes still closed.

"Pride," Balasar said. Otah heard the sympathy in the softness of his

voice. "No matter how prettily you put it, you're talking about putting

our daughters in bed under your sons."

"And rather than that, they'll let everything die?" Otah said, looking

up at last. Balasar's gaze didn't waver. When the old Galt spoke, it was

with a sense of reason and consideration that might almost have made a

listener forget that he was one of the men he spoke of.

"You don't understand the depth to which these people have been damaged.

Every man on that council was hurt by you in a profound, personal way.