destroyed, lands made barren, mountains leveled and the sea pulled up

over them like a blanket. And you're feeling sorry for yourself that you

had to wring a bird's neck as a boy? How can anyone have feelings that

delicate and that numbed both at the same time?"

"It's your move," Cehmai said.

Stone-Made-Soft sighed theatrically-it had no need for breath, so every

sigh it made was a comment-and turned back toward the game. It was

essentially over. The andat had lost again as it always did, but they

played to the last move, finishing the ritual humiliation once again.

"We're off to the North," Cehmai said as he put the stones hack into

their trays. ""There's a new vein the Radaani want to explore, but I'm

not convinced it's possible. Their engineers are swearing that the

structure won't collapse, but those mountains are getting near lacework."

"Eight generations is a long time," Maati agreed. "Even without help,

the mines would have become a maze by now."

"I fear the day an earthquake comes," Cehmai said as he stood and

stretched. "One shake, and half these mountains will fold up flat, I'd

swear it."

`°I'hen I suppose we'd have to spend months digging up the bodies,"

Maati said.

"Not really," the andat said. Its voice was placid again, now that the

game was ended. "If we make it soft enough, the bodies will float up

through it. If stone is water, almost anything floats. We could have a

whole field of stone flat as a lake, with mine dogs and men popping up

out of it like bubbles."

"What a pleasant thought," Cehmai said, gently sarcastic. "And here I

was wondering why we weren't invited to more dinners. And you,

Maati-kvo? What's your day?"

"More work in the library," Maati said. "I want the place in order. If

the Dai-kvo calls for me ..."

"He will," Cehmai said. "You can count on that."

"If he does, I want the place left in order. A sane order that someone

else could make sense of. Baarath had the thing put together like a

puzzle. 'look me three years just to make sense of it, and even then

some of it I just went through book by book and made my own

classifications."

"Well, he had a different opinion than yours," Cehmai said. "He wanted

the library to be a place to bury secrets, not display them. It was how

he made himself feel as if he mattered. I don't suppose I can blame him

too much for that."

"I suppose not," Maati agreed.

The three of them walked along the wooded path that led to the palaces

of the Khai. The stone towers of Machi rose high above the city, bright

with the light of morning, and the smoke of the forges plumed up from

the metalworkers' district in the south. Maati kept company with Cehmai

and Stone-Made-Soft as far as the compound of House Radaani, where a

litter and donkeys were waiting. They took poses of farewell, even the

andat, and Maati sat on the steps of the compound to watch them lumber

away to the North.

In the days since he, Otah, and Liat had broken the news to Cehmai,

Maati had found himself less and less able to do his work. The familiar

stacks and shelves and galleries of the library were uncomforting. The

songs of the singing slaves in the gardens seemed to pull at him when he

caught a phrase of their melodies. He found himself seeking out food

when he wasn't hungry, wine when he had no thirst. He walked the streets

of the city and the paths of the palaces more than he had in living

memory, and even when his knees ached, he found himself tinconsciously

rising to pace the rooms of his apartments. Restless. He had become

restless.

In part it was the knowledge that Liat and Nayiit were in the city, in

the palaces even. At any time, he could seek them out, invite them to

eat with him or talk with him. Nayiit, whom he had not known since the

boy was shorter than little Danat was now. Liat, whose breath and body

he had once said he would never he whole without. They were here at last.

In part it was the anticipation of a courier from the Dai-kvo, whether

about his own work or Liat's case against the Galts. And of the two, he

found the Galtic issue the lesser. Liat's argument was enough to

convince him that they did have a rogue poet, but the chances that he

would bind a new andat seemed remote. There in the middle of Galt

without references, without the Dai-kvo or his fellow poets to work

through the fine points of the binding, the most likely thing was that

the man would try, fail, and die badly. It was a problem that would

solve itself. And if the Dai-kvo took Liat's view and turned the andat

loose against Galt, the chances of tragedy coming to the cities of the

Khaiem was even less.

No, his unease came more from the prospect of his own success. He had

lived so long as a failure that the prospect of success disturbed him.

He knew that his heart should have been singing. He should have been

drunk with pride.

And yet he found himself waking in the night, knotted with anger. In the

darkness of his room, he would wake with the night candle over half

burned, and stare at the netting above his bed as it shifted in barely

felt drafts. The targets of his rage seemed to shift; one night he might

wake with a list of the wrongs done him by Liat, the next with the

conviction that he had suffered insult at the hands of Otah or the

I)ai-kvo. With the coming of dawn, the fit would pass, insubstantial as

a dream, the complaints that had haunted him in darkness thin as

cheesecloth in the light.

And still, he was restless.

He made his way slowly through the palaces and out to the city itself.

The black-cobbled streets were alive with people. Carts of vegetables

and early berries wound from the low towns toward the markets in the

center of the city. Lambs on rough hemp leads trotted in ignorance

toward the butchers' stalls. And wherever he went, a path was made for

him, people took poses of respect and welcome and he returned them by

habit. He paused at a cart and bought a meal of hot peppered beef and

sweet onions wrapped in waxed paper. The young man running the cart

refused to accept his lengths of copper. Another small amenity granted

to the other poet of Machi. Maati took a pose of thanks as best he could

with one hand full of the food.

The towers of Machi seemed to touch the lowest clouds. It had been years

since Maati had gone up one of the great towers. He remembered the

platform swaying, its great arm-thick chains clanking against the stones

as he rose. That far above the city, he had felt he was looking out from

a mountain peak-the valley spread below so vast he'd imagined he could

almost see the ocean. Not remotely truth, but what it felt like all the

same. Looking at the towers now, he remembered what Cehmai had said. If