"It was a clumsy lie," Liat said. "All of it from beginning to end. And,

Itani, it's the Galts."

Whether she had used his old, assumed name in error or as a ploy to make

him recall the days of his youth, the effect was the same. Otah drew a

deep breath, and felt a sick weight descend to his belly as he exhaled.

He had spent so many years wary of the schemes of Galt that her

evidence, thin as it was, almost had the power to convince him. He felt

the gazes of the others upon him. Mlaati leaned forward in his seat,

fingers knotted together in his lap. Kiyan's rueful half-smile was

sympathetic and considering both. The silence stretched.

"Is there any reason to think he would have ... done this?" Otah asked.

""I'he poet. Why would he agree to this?"

Liat turned and nodded to her son. The man licked his lips before he spoke.

"I went to the I)ai-kvo's village," Nayiit said. "My mother, of course,

couldn't. "There were stories that Riaan had suffered a fever the winter

before he was sent away. A serious one. Apparently he came close to

death. Afterward, his skin peeled like he'd been too long in the sun.

They say it changed him. He became more prone to anger. He wouldn't

think before he acted or spoke. The Dai-kvo sat with him for weeks,

training him like he was fresh from the school. It did no good. Riaan

wasn't the man he'd been when the I)ai-kvo accepted him. So ..."

"So the Dai-kvo sent him away in disgrace for something that wasn't his

fault," Otah said.

"No, not at first," Nayiit said. "The Dal-kvo only told him that he

wasn't to continue with his binding. That it was too great a risk. They

say Riaan took it poorly. There were fights and drunken rants. One man

said Riaan snuck a woman into the village to share his bed, but I never

heard anyone confirm that. Whatever the details, the Dai-kvo lost

patience. He sent him away."

"You learned quite a lot," Otah said. "I'd have thought the poets would

he closer with their disgraces."

"Once Riaan left, it wasn't their disgrace. It was his," Nayiit said.

"And they knew I had come from Nantani. I traded stories for stories. It

wasn't hard."

"The Dai-kvo wouldn't meet with us," Liat said. "I sent five petitions,

and two of them his secretaries didn't even bother to send refusals.

It's why we came here."

"Because you wanted me to make this argument? I'm not in the Daikvo's

best graces myself just now. He seems to think I blame the Galts when I

cough," Otah said. "Maati might be the better man to make the case.

Maati took a pose that disagreed.

"I would hardly be considered disinterested," Maati said. His words were

calm and controlled despite their depth. "I may have done some

interesting work, but no one will have forgotten that I defied the last

Dai-kvo by not abandoning these precise two people."

The rest of the thought hung in the air, just beyond speech. She

abandoned me. It was true enough. Liat had taken the child and made her

own way in the world. She had never answered Nlaati's letters until now,

when she had need of him. There was something almost like shame in

Liat's downcast eyes. Nayiit shifted his weight, as if to interpose

himself between the two of them-between his mother and the man who had

wanted badly to be his father and had been denied.

"We could also ask Cehmai," Kiyan said. "Ile's a poet of enough prestige

and ability to hold Stone-blade-Soft, and his reputation hasn't been

compromised."

"That might be wise," Otah said, grabbing for the chance to take the

conversation away from the complexities of the past. "But let's go over

the evidence you have, Liat-cha. All of it. From the start."

It took the better part of the day. Otah listened to the full story; he

read the statements of the missing poet's slaves and servants, the

contracts broken by the fleeing Galtic trade ship, the logs of couriers

whose whereabouts Nayiit had compiled. Whatever objections he raised,

Liat countered. He could see the fatigue in her face and hear the

impatience in her voice. This matter was important to her. Important

enough to bring her here. That she had come was proof enough of her

conviction, if not of the truth of her claim. The girl he had known had

been clever enough, competent enough, and still had been used as a stone

in other people's games. Perhaps he was harsh in still thinking of her

in that light. The years had changed him. They certainly could have

changed her as well.

And, as the sun shifted slowly toward the western peaks, Otah found his

heart growing heavy. The case she made was not complete, but it was

evocative as a monster tale told to children. Galt might well have taken

in this mad poet. "There was no way to know what they might do with him,

or what he might do with their help. The histories of the Empire

murmured in the back of Otah's mind: wars fought with the power of gods,

the nature of space itself broken, and the greatest empire the world had

ever known laid waste. And yes, if all Liat suspected proved true, it

might happen again.

But if they acted on their fears, if the Dai-kvo mandated the use of the

andat to remove the possibility of a Galtic poet, thousands would die

who knew nothing of the plots that had brought down their doom. Children

not old enough to speak, men and women who led simple, honest lives.

Galt would be made a wasteland to rival the ruins of the Empire. Otah

wondered how certain they would all have to be in order to take that

step. How certain or else how frightened.

"Let me sit with this," he said at last, nodding to Liat and her son.

"I'll have apartments cleared for you. You'll stay here at the palaces."

"There may not be much time," Maati said softly.

"I know it," Otah said. "Tomorrow I'll decide what to do. If Cehmai's

the right bearer, we can do this all again with him in the room. And

then ... and then we'll sec what shape the world's taken and do whatever

needs doing."

Liat took a pose of gratitude, and a heartbeat later Nayiit mirrored

her. Otah waved the gestures away. He was too tired for ceremony. Too

troubled.

When Maati and the two visitors had left, Otah rose and stood beside

Kiyan at the railing, looking out over the city as it fell into its

early, sudden twilight. Plumes of smoke rose from among the green copper

roofs of the forges. The great stone towers thrust toward the sky as if

they supported the deepening blue. Kiyan tossed an almond out into the

wide air, and a black-winged bird swooped down to catch it before it

reached the distant ground. Otah touched her shoulder; she turned to him

smiling as if half-surprised to find him there.