as he did to the two he had now, how he would have stood watching his

boys grow tip when he knew he would have to send them away or else watch

them slaughter one another over which of them would take his own place

here on this soft, sleepless bed and fear in turn for his own sons.

The night candle ate through its marks as he listened to the internal

voice nattering in his mind, gnawing at half a thousand worries both

justified and inane. The trade agreements with tJdun weren't in place

yet. Perhaps something really was the matter with Eiah. He didn't know

how long stone buildings stood; nothing stands forever, so it only made

sense that someday the palaces would fall. And the towers. The towers

reached so high it seemed that low clouds would touch them; what would

he do if they fell? But the night was passing and he had to sleep. If he

didn't the morning would be worse. He should talk with Maati, find out

how things had gone between him and the Dai-kvo's envoy. Perhaps a dinner.

And on, and on, and on. When he gave tip, slipping from the bed softly

to let Kiyan, at least, sleep, the night candle was past its

threequarter mark. Utah walked to the apartment's main doors on bare,

chilled feet and found his keeper in the hall outside dozing. He was a

young man, likely the son of some favored servant or slave of Utah's own

father, given the honor of sitting alone in the darkness, bored and

cold. Utah considered the boy's soft face, as peaceful in sleep as a

corpse's, and walked silently past him and into the dim hallways of the

palace.

His night walks had been growing more frequent in recent months.

Sometimes twice in a week, Utah found himself wandering in the darkness,

sleep a stranger to him. He avoided the places where he might encounter

another person, jealously keeping the time to himself. 'lbnight, he took

a lantern and walked down the long stairways to the ground, and then on

down, to the tunnels and underground streets into which the city

retreated in the deep, hone-breaking cold of winter. With spring come,

Utah found the palace beneath the palace empty and silent. The smell of

old torches, long gone dark, still lingered in the air, and Utah

imagined the corridors and galleries of the city descending forever into

the earth. Dark archways and domed sleeping chambers cut from stone that

had never seen daylight, narrow stairways leading endlessly down like a

thing from a children's song.

He didn't consider where he intended to go until he reached his father's

crypt and found himself unsurprised to be there. The dark stone seemed

to wrap itself in shadows, words of ancient language cut deep into the

walls. An ornate pedestal held the pale urn, a dead flower. And beneath

it, three small boxes-the remains of Biitrah, Danat, Kaiin. Otah's

brothers, dead in the struggle to become the new Khai Nlachi. Lives cut

short for the honor of having a pedestal of their own someday, deep in

the darkness.

Utah sat on the bare floor, the lantern at his side, and contemplated

the man he'd never known or loved whose place he had taken. Here was how

his own end would look. An urn, a tomb, high honors and reverence for

hones and ashes. And between the chill floor and the pale urn, perhaps

another thirty summers. Perhaps forty. Years of ceremony and

negotiation, late nights and early mornings and little else.

But when the time came, at least his crypt would be only his own. Danat,

brotherless, wouldn't be called upon to kill or die in the succession.

't'here would be no second sons left to kill the other for the black

chair. It seemed a thin solace, having given so much of himself to

achieve something that a merchant's son could have had for free.

It would have been easier if he'd never been anything but this. A man

horn into the Khaiem who had never stepped outside wouldn't carry the

memories of fishing in the eastern islands, of eating at the wayhouses

outside Yalakeht, of being free. If he could have forgotten it all,

becoming the man he was supposed to be might have been easier. Instead

he was driven to follow his own judgment, raise a militia, take only one

wife, raise only one son. "I'hat his experience told him that he was

right didn't make bearing the world's disapproval as easy as he'd hoped.

The lantern flame guttered and spat. Otah shook his head, uncertain now

how long he had been lost in his reverie. When he stood, his left leg

had gone numb from being pressed too long against the bare stone. He

took up the lantern and walked-moving slowly and carefully to protect

his numbed foot-back toward the stairways that would return him to the

surface and the day. By the time he regained the great halls, feeling

had returned. The sky peeked through the windows, a pale gray preparing

itself to blue. Voices echoed and the palaces woke, and the grand,

stately beast that was the court of Machi stirred and stretched.

His apartments, when he reached them, were a flurry of activity. A knot

of servants and members of the utkhaiem gabbled like peahens, Kiyan in

their center listening with a seriousness and sympathy that only he knew

masked amusement. Her hand was on the shoulder of the body servant whom

Otah had passed, the peace of sleep banished and anxiety in its place.

"Gentlemen," Otah said, letting his voice boom, calling their attention

to him. "Is there something amiss?"

To a man, they adopted poses of obeisance and welcome. Otah responded

automatically now, as he did half a hundred times every day.

"Most High," a thin-voiced man said-his Master of 'T'ides. "We came to

prepare you and found your bed empty."

Otah looked at Kiyan, whose single raised brow told them that empty had

only meant empty of him, and that she'd have been quite pleased to keep

sleeping.

"I was walking," he said.

"We may not have the time to prepare you for the audience with the envoy

from Tan-Sadar," the Master of 'rides said.

"Put him off," Otah said, walking through the knot of people to the door

of his apartments. "Reschedule everything you have for me today."

The Master of'I'ides gaped like a trout in air. Otah paused, his hands

in a query that asked if the words bore repeating. The Master of Tides

adopted an acknowledging pose.

"The rest of you," he said, "I would like breakfast served in my

apartments here. And send for my children."

"Eiah-cha's tutors . . ." one of the others began, but Otah looked at

the man and he seemed to forget what he'd been saying.

"I will be taking the day with my family," Otah said.

"You will start rumors, Most High," another said. "They'll say the boy's

cough has grown worse again."

"And I would like black tea with the meal," Otah said. "In fact, bring