stepping through the sky doors when the platform's gone down. It would

happen more if there were people up there more often. Otah-kvo has a

plan for channeling the air from the forges up through the center of one

so it would he warm enough to use in the winter, but we've never figured

out how to make the change without bringing the whole thing down."

Nayiit shuddered, and Maati was willing to pretend it was the wind. He

put his arm on the boy's shoulder and steered him farther down the

street to a squat stone building with a copper roof gone as green as

trees with time. Inside, the air was warmed by braziers. Two old men

were playing tin-and-silver flutes while a young woman kept time on a

small drum and sang. Half a hundred bodies were seated at long wooden

tables or on benches. The place was rich with the smell of roast lamb

even though the windows were unshuttered; it was as if no one in Machi

would miss the chance for fresh air. Maati sympathized.

He and Nayiit took a bench in the hack, away from singers and song. The

serving boy was hardly as old as F,iah, but he knew his trade. It seemed

fewer than a dozen heartbeats before he brought them bowls of sweet wine

and a large worked-silver bowl filled with tender slivers of green:

spring peas fresh from the vines. Maati, hands full, nodded his thanks.

"And you've worked your whole life in House Kyaan, then?" Maati asked.

"What does Liat have you doing?"

"Since we've been traveling, I haven't been doing much at all. Before

that, I had been working the needle trades," Nayiit said as he tucked

one leg up under him. It made him sit taller. "The spinners, the dyers,

the tailors, and the sailmakers and all like that. They aren't as

profitable as they were in the days before Seedless was lost, but they

still make up a good deal of the business in Saraykeht."

"Habits," Maati said. "The cotton trade's always been in Saraykeht.

People don't like change, so it doesn't move away so quickly as it

might. Another generation and it'll all be scattered throughout the world."

"Not if I do my work," Nayiit said with a smile that showed he hadn't

taken offense.

"Fair point," Maati said. "I only mean that's what you have to work

against. It would be easier if there was still an andat in the city that

helped with the cotton trade the way Seedless did."

"You knew it, didn't you? Seedless, I mean."

"I was supposed to take him over," Maati said. "The way Cehmai took

Stone-Made-Soft from his master, I was to take Seedless from Heshai-kvo.

In a way, I was lucky. Seedless was flawed work. Dangerously flawed.

Brilliant, don't misunderstand. Heshai-kvo did brilliant work when he

bound Seedless, but he made the andat very clever and profoundly

involved with destroying the poet. They all want to be free-it's their

nature-but Seedless was more than that. He was vicious."

"You sound as though you were fond of it," Nayiit said, only halfteasing.

"We were friendly enough, in our fashion," Maati said. "We wouldn't have

been if things had gone by the I)ai-kvo's plan. If I'd become the poet

of Saraykeht, Seedless would have bent himself to destroying me just the

way he had to Ileshai-kvo."

"Have you ever tried to bind one of the andat?"

"Once. When Heshai died, I had the mad thought that I could somehow

retrieve Seedless. I had IIcshai-kvo's notes. Still have them, for that.

I even began the ceremonies, but it would never have worked. What I had

was too much like what Heshai had done. It would have failed, and I'd

have paid its price."

"And then I suppose I would never have been horn," Nayiit said.

"You would have," Nlaati said, solemnly. "Liat-kya didn't know she was

carrying you when she stopped me, but she was. I thought about it,

afterward. About binding another of the andat, I mean. I even spent part

of a winter once doing the basic work for one I called Returning

to-True. I don't know what I would have done with it, precisely. Unbent

things, I suppose. I'd have been brilliant repairing axles. But my mind

was too fuzzy. There were too many things I meant, and none of them

precisely enough."

The musicians ended their song and stood to a roar of approving voices

and bowls of wine bought by their admirers. One of the old men walked

through the house with a lacquer begging box in his hand. Maati fumbled

in his sleeve, came out with two lengths of copper, and tossed them into

the box with a satisfying click.

"And then, I also wasn't in the Dai-kvo's best graces," Maati continued.

"After Saraykeht ... Well, I suppose it's poor etiquette to let your

master die and the andat escape. I wasn't blamed outright, but it was

always hanging there. The memory of it."

"It can't have helped that you brought back a lover and a child," Nayiit

said.

"No, it didn't. But I was very young and very full of myself. It's not

easy, being told that you are of the handful of men in the world who

might be able to control one of the andat. "lends to create a sense of

being more than you are. I thought I could do anything. And maybe I

could have, but I tried to do everything, and that isn't the same." He

sighed and ate a pea pod. Its flesh was crisp and sweet and tasted of

spring. When he spoke again, he tried to make his voice light and

joking. "I didn't wind up doing a particularly good job of either endeavor."

"It seems to me you've done well enough," Nayiit said as he waved at the

serving boy for more wine. "You've made yourself a place in the court

here, you've been able to study in the libraries here, and from what

Mother says, you've found something no one else ever has. That alone is

more than most men manage in a lifetime."

"I suppose," Maati said. He wanted to go on, wanted to say that most men

had children, raised them up, watched them become women and men. He

wanted to tell this charming boy who stood now where Maati himself once

had that he regretted that he had not been able to enjoy those simple

pleasures. Instead, he took another handful of pea pods. He could tell

that Nayiit sensed his reservations, heard the longing in the brevity of

his reply. When the boy spoke, his tone was light.

"I've spent all my life-well, since I've been old enough to think of it

as really mine and not something Mother's let me borrow-with House

Kyaan. Running errands, delivering contracts. That's how I started, at

least. Mother always told me I had to do better than the other boys who

worked for the house because I was her son, and if people thought I was

getting favors because of it, they wouldn't respect her or me. She was

right. I can see that. At the time it all seemed monstrously unfair,

though."

"Do you like the work?" Maati asked.