sure no text had survived, and then, satisfied, turned to his cot. The

day before him would be long.

As he lay in the darkness, half asleep, he felt the ghosts again. The

men he had left in the desert. The men still alive whom he would leave

in the field. Riaan, hooks cradled in his arms. Balasar's sacrifices

filled the pavilion, and their presence and expectation comforted him

until a small voice came from the hack of his mind.

Kya, it said. Sinja-kya, he called him. Sinja-cha would have been the

proper form, wouldn't it? Kya is used for a lover or a brother. Why

would Riaan have thought of Sinja as a brother?

And then, as if Eustin were seated beside the cot, his voice whispered,

Seemed like he might he trying to keep the poor bastard from saying

something.

LIAT WALKED THROUGH DARKNESS BETWEEN THE KHAI'S PALACES AND THE library

where Maati, she hoped, was still awake and waiting for her. She felt

like a washrag wrung out, soaked, and wrung out again. It was seven days

now since Stone-Made-Soft had escaped, and she'd spent the time either

meeting with the Khai Machi or waiting to do so. Long days spent in the

gilded halls and corridors of the palaces were, she found, more tiring

than travel. Her back ached, her legs were sore, and she couldn't even

think what she had done to earn the pain. Sitting shouldn't carry such a

price. If she'd lifted something heavy, there would at least be a reason....

The city seemed darker now than when she'd arrived. It might be only her

imagination, but there seemed fewer lanterns lit on the paths, fewer

torches at the doorways. The windows of the palaces that shone with

light seemed dimmed. No slaves sang in the gardens, the mem hers of the

utkhaiem that she saw throughout her day all shared a tension that she

understood too well.

Candles flickered behind Maati's closed shutters, a thin line of light

where the wooden frames had warped over the years. Liat found herself

more grateful than she had expected to be as she took the last steps

down the path that led to his door.

Nlaati sat on the low couch, a bowl of wine cradled in his fingers. A

bottle less than half full sat on the floor at his feet. He smiled as

she let herself in, but she saw at once that something wasn't well. She

took a pose of query, and he looked away.

"hlaati-kya?"

"I've had a letter from the Dai-kvo," hlaati said. "The timing of all

this isn't what I'd hoped, you know. I've spent years puttering through

the library here, looking for nothing in particular, and only stumbled

on my little insight now. Just when the Galts have gotten out of hand.

And now Cehmai. And ... forgive me, love, and you. And our boy."

"I don't understand," Liat said. "'['he I)ai-kvo. What did he say?"

"Ile said that I should come." Maati sighed. "There's nothing in the

letter about the Galts or the missing poet. "There's nothing about

StoneMade-Soft, of course. The courier won't be there with that sorry

news for days yet. It's only about me. It's the thing I'd always hoped

for. It's my absolution, Liat-kya. I have been out of favor since before

Nayiit was horn. After I took Otah's cause in the succession, they

almost forbade me from wearing the robes, you know. The old Dai-kvo made

it very clear he didn't consider me a poet."

Liat leaned against the cool stone wall. Her pains were forgotten. She

watched Maati raise his brows, shake his head. His lips shifted as if he

were having some silent conversation to which she was only half welcome.

A familiar heaviness touched her heart.

"You must have hoped for this," she said.

"[)reamed of it, when I dared to. I'm welcomed back with honor and

dignity. I'm saved."

""That's a hitter tone for a saved man," she said.

"I've only just met you again. I've only just started to know Nayiit.

And Otah-kvo's in need. And the Galts are stirring trouble again. My

shining hour has come to call me away from everyone who actually matters."

"You can't refuse the I)ai-kvo," Liat said softly. "You have to go."

"Do I?"

The air between them grew still. Half a hundred other conversations

echoed in their words. Liat closed her eyes, weariness dragging her like

rain-heavy robes.

"It's all happening again, isn't it?" she said. "It's all the things

we've suffered before, coming back at once. The Galts. Stone-Made-Soft

set free. Cehmai lost and mourning the way Heshai was that summer, after

Seedless killed the baby. And then us. You and I."

"1'ou and I, ending again," NMTaati said. "All of history pressed into

one season. It doesn't seem fair."

"I low is Cehmai?" she asked, turning the conversation to safer ground,

if only for a moment. "Has he been eating?"

"A little. Not enough."

"Does be know yet what happened? How Stone-Made-Soft slipped free?"

"No, but ... but he suspects. And I do, too."

Liat moved forward, sat beside Maati, took the bowl from his hands and

drank the wine. Her throat and chest warmed and relaxed. Maati took a

bottle from the floor.

"Not every poet is made for slaughter," Maati said as he tipped rice

wine clear as water into the howl. "There was a part of him that

rebelled at the prospect of turning the andat against the Galts. I know

he struggled with it, and he and I both believed he'd made his peace

with . 11 it.

"But now you think not?"

"Now I think perhaps he wasn't as certain as he told himself he was. He

may not even have known what he meant to do. It would take so little, in

a way. The decision of a moment, and then gone beyond retrieval. If he

regretted it in the next breath, it would already be too late. But it

can't he a coincidence, the Galts and Stone-Made-Soft."

Liat sipped now, just enough to maintain the warmth in her body but not

so much as to make her drunk. Maati drank directly from the bottle,

wiping it with his sleeve after.

""There's another explanation," she said. "The Galts could have done it."

"How? They can't unmake a binding."

`.. They could have bought him."

Nlaati shook his head, frowning. "Not Cehmai. There's not a man in the

world less likely to turn against the Khaiem."

"You're sure of that?"

"Yes. I'm sure," Nlaati said. "He was happy. He had his life and his

place in the world, and he was happy."