child to live in darkness and planning for his death.

There had been a time Otah had been young and sure enough of himself to

kill. He had taken the life of a good man because they both had known

the price that would have to be paid if he lived. He had been able to do

that.

But he had seen forty-eight summers now. There were likely fewer seasons

before him than there were behind. He'd fathered three children and

raised two. He could no longer hold himself apart from the world. It was

his to see that the city was a place that Danat and Eiah and children

like them could live safe and cared for until they too grew old and

uncertain.

He looked at the swirl of red at the bottom of his bowl. Too much wine,

and too much memory. It was making him maudlin. He stopped at his

private chambers and allowed the servants to switch his robes to

something less formal. Kiyan lay on a couch, her eyes closed, her breath

deep and regular. Otah didn't wake her, only slid one of the books from

his bedside table into the sleeve of his robe and kissed her temple as

he left.

The physician's assistant was seated outside Danat's door. The man took

a pose of greeting. Otah responded in kind and then nodded to the closed

door.

"Is he asleep?" he whispered.

"He's been waiting for you."

Otah slipped into the room. Candles flickered above two great iron

statues that flanked the bed-hunting cats with the wings of hawks. Soot

darkened their wings from a day spent in the fire grates, and they

radiated the warmth that kept the cool night breeze at bay. Danat sat up

in his bed, pulling aside the netting.

"Papa-kya!" he said. He didn't cough, didn't sound frail. It was a good

day, then. Otah felt a tightness he had not known he carried loosen its

grip on his heart. He pulled his robes up around his knees and sat on

his son's bed. "Did you bring it?" Danat asked.

Otah drew the book from his sleeve, and the boy's face lit so bright, he

might have almost read by him.

"Now, you lie back," Otah said. "I've come to help you sleep, not keep

you up all night."

I)anat plopped down onto his pillow, looking like the farthest thing

from sleep. Otah opened the book, turning through the ancient pages

until he found his place.

"In the sixteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Adani Bch, there came

to court a boy whose blood was half Bakta, his skin the color of soot,

and his mind as clever as any man who has ever lived...."

"THIS IS SPRING?" NAYIIT SAID AS THEY WALKED. THE WIND HAD BLOWN away

even the constant scent of forge smoke, and brought in a mild chill.

Mild, at least, to Maati. Nayiit wore woolen robes, thick enough that

they had hardly rippled. Maati's own were made for summer, and pressed

against him, leaving, he was sure, no doubt to the shape of his legs and

belly. He wished he'd thought to wear something heavier too.

"It's always like this," Maati said. "There's one last death throe, and

then the heat will come on. Still nothing like the summer cities, even

at its worst. I remember in Saraykeht, I had a trail of sweat down my

hack for weeks at a time."

"We call that pleasantly warm," Nayiit said, and Maati chuckled.

In truth, the chill, moonless night was hardly anything to him now. For

over a decade, he'd lived through the bone-cracking cold of Machi

winters. He'd seen snowdrifts so high that even the second-story doors

couldn't be opened. He'd been out on days so cold the men coated their

faces with thick-rendered fat to keep their skin from freezing. "There

was no way to describe those brief, bitter days to someone who had never

seen them. So instead, he told Nayiit of the life below ground, the

tunnels of Machi, the bathhouses hidden deep below the surface, the

streets and apartments and warehouses, the glitter of winter dew turning

to frost on the stone of the higher passages. He spoke of the choirs who

took the long, empty weeks to compose new songs and practice old

ones-weeks spent in the flickering, buttery light of oil lamps

surrounded by music.

"I'm amazed people don't stay down there," Nayiit said as they turned a

corner and left the white and silver paths of the palaces behind for the

black-cobbled streets of the city proper. "It sounds like one huge, warm

bed."

"It has its pleasures," Maati agreed. "But people get thirsty for

sunlight. As soon as they can stand it, people start making treks up to

the streets. "They'll go up and lie naked on an ice sheet sometimes just

to drink in a little more light. And the river freezes, so the children

will go skating on it. There's only about seven weeks when no one comes

up. Here. This street. There's a sweet wine they serve at this place

that's like nothing you've ever tasted."

It was less awkward than he'd expected, spending the evening with

Nayiit. The first time the boy had come to the library alone-tentative

and uncertain-Maati had been acutely aware of Liat's absence. She had

always been there, even in the ancient days before they had parted.

Maati knew how to speak with Liat whether she was alone or with their

son, and Nlaati had discovered quickly how much he'd relied upon her to

mediate between him and the boy. The silences had been awkward, the

conversations forced. Nlaati had said something of how pleased he was

that Nayiit had come to Machi and felt in the end that he'd only managed

to embarrass them both.

It was going to the teahouses and bathhouses and epics that let them

speak at last. Once there was a hit of shared experience, a toehold,

Maati was able to make conversation, and Nayiit was an expert listener

to stories. For several nights in a row, Maati found himself telling

tales of the Dai-kvo and the school, the history of Machi and the perils

he had faced years ago when he'd been sent to hunt Otah-kvo down. In the

telling, he discovered that, to his profound surprise, his life had been

interesting.

The platform rested at the base of one of the lower towers, chains thick

as a man's arm clanking against it and against the stone as they rose up

into the sky like smoke. Nayiit paused to stare up at it, and Maati

followed his gaze. The looming, inhuman bulk of the tower, and beyond it

the full moon hanging like a lantern of rice paper in the black sky.

"Does anyone ever fall from up there?" Nayiit asked.

"Once every year or so," Maati said. "There's winter storage up there,

so there are laborers carrying things in the early spring and middle

autumn. There are accidents. And the utkhaiem will hold dances at the

tops of them sometimes. They say wine gets you drunk faster at the top,

but I don't know if that's true. Then sometimes men kill themselves by