built the house to do. I have decades of books and ledgers. I've made

note of every contract they've made in the summer cities. I know every

ship that sails past, what her captain's name is, and half the time,

what cargo she carries. I know, Maati. I've seen them scheming. I've

even blocked them a time or two."

""They had hands in the succession here too. They were backing the

woman, Otah-kvo's sister. Anything you want to say about Galt, he'll

half-believe before he's heard it. But how is the Dai-kvo part of it?"

""They won't do it without the Uai-kvo," Liat said. "He has to say it's

the right thing, or they won't do it."

"Who won't do what?" Nlaati said, impatience growing in his voice.

""I'he poets," Liat said. ""They have to kill the Galts. And they have

to do it now."

O'IAII PRESENTED THE MEETING AS A LUNCHEON, A SOCIAL GATHERING OF old

friends. He chose a balcony high in the palace looking out over the wide

air to the south. The city lay below them, streets paved in black stone,

tile and metal roofs pointing sharply at the sky. The towers rose above,

only sun and clouds hanging higher. The wind was thick with the green,

permeating scent of spring and the darker, acrid forge smoke. Between

them, the low stone table was covered with plates-bread and cheese and

salt olives, honeyed almonds and lemon trout and a sweetbread topped

with sliced oranges. The gods alone knew where the kitchen had found a

fresh orange.

Yet of all those present none of them ate.

Maati had made the introductions. Liat and Nayiit and Otah and Kiyan.

The young man, Liat's son, had taken all the appropriate poses, said all

the right phrases, and then taken position standing behind his mother

like a bodyguard. Maati leaned against the stone banister, the sky at

his hack. Otah-formal, uneased, and feeling more the Khai Machi than

ever under the anxious gaze of woman who had been his lover in his

youth-took a pose of query, and Liat shared the news that changed the

world forever: the Galts had a poet of their own.

"His name is Riaan Vaudathat," Liat said. "He was the fourth son of a

high family in the courts of Nantani. Ills father sent him to the school

when he was five."

"This was well after our time," Nlaati said to Otah. "Neither of us

would have known him. Not from there."

"He was accepted by the Dai-kvo and taken to the village to be trained,"

Liat said. ""That was eight years ago. He was talented, well liked, and

respected. The Dai-kvo chose him to study for the binding of a fresh andat."

Kiyan, sitting at Otah's side, leaned forward in a pose of query. "Don't

all the poets train to hold andat?"

"We all try our hands at preparing a binding," Maati said. "We all study

enough to know how it works and what it is. But only a few apply the

knowledge. If the Dai-kvo thinks you have the temperament to take on one

that's already hound, he'll send you there to study and prepare yourself

to take over control when the poet grows too old. If you're bright and

talented, he'll set you to working through a fresh binding. It can take

years to be ready. Your work is read by other poets and the Daikvo, and

attacked, and torn apart and redone perhaps a dozen times. Perhaps more."

"Because of the consequences of failing?" Kiyan asked. Maati nodded.

"Riaan was one of the best," Liat said. "And then three years ago, he

was sent hack to Nantani. To his family. Fallen from favor. No one knew

why, he just appeared one day with a letter for his father, and after

that he was living in apartments in the Vaudathat holdings. It was a

small scandal. And it wasn't the last of them. Riaan was sending letters

every week hack to the Dai-kvo. Asking to be taken back, everyone

supposed. He drank too much, and sometimes fought in the streets. By the

end, he was practically living in the comfort houses by the seafront.

The story was that he'd bet he could bed every whore in the city in a

summer. His family never spoke of it, but they lost standing in the

court. "There were rumors of father and son fighting, not just arguing,

but taking up arms.

"And then, one night, he disappeared. Vanished. His family said that

he'd been summoned on secret business. The Dai-kvo had a mission for

him, and he'd gone the same day the letter had come. But there wasn't a

courier who'd admit to carrying any letter like it."

"They might not have said it," Otah said. "They call it the gentleman's

trade for a reason."

,,we thought of that," Nayiit replied. He had a strong voice; not loud,

but powerful. "Later, when we went to the Dai-kvo, I took a list of the

couriers who'd come to Nantani in the right weeks. None of them had been

to the I)ai-kvo's village at the right time. The Dai-kvo wouldn't speak

to me. But of the men who would, none believed that Riaan had been sent

for."

Otah could still think of several objections to that, but he held them

hack, gesturing instead for Liat to go on.

"No one connected the disappearance with a Galtic merchant ship that

left that night with half her cargo still waiting to he loaded," Liat

said. "Except me, and I wouldn't have if I hadn't made it my business to

track all things Galtic."

"You think he was on that ship?" Otah said.

"I'm certain of it."

"Why?" he asked.

"The wealth of coincidences," Liat said. "The captain-Arnau Fentin-was

the second brother of a family on the Galtic High Council. A servant in

the Vaudathat household saw Riaan's father burning papers. Letters, he

said. And in a foreign script."

"Any trade cipher could look like a foreign script," Otah said, but Liat

wouldn't be stopped.

"The ship had been hound for Chaburi-"Ian and then Bakta. But it headed

west instead-hack to Galt."

"Or Eddensea, or Eymond."

"Otah-kya," Kiyan said, her voice gentle, "let her finish."

Ile saw Liat's gaze flicker toward her, and her hands take a pose of

thanks. He leaned hack, his palms flat on his thighs, and silently

nodded for Liat to continue.

"There were stories of Riaan having met a new woman in the weeks before

he left. That was what his family thought, at least. He'd spent several

evenings every week at a comfort house whose hack wall was shared with

the compound of House Fentin. The captain's family. I have statements

that confirm all of this."

"I went to the comfort house myself," Nayiit said. "I asked after the

lady Riaan had described. "There wasn't anyone like her."