it. Another few steps and they'd he pointing at each other and yelling

about which of them wanted to create the 'T'hird Enr pire. The truth was

that he had ruled hlachi these last fourteen years only by necessity.

The prospect of uniting the cities of the Khaiem under his rule was

about as enticing as scraping his skin off with a rock.

The audience was a private one, in a small room lined with richly carved

hlackwood, lit by candles that smelled like rich earth and vanilla, and

set well away from the corridors and open gardens where servants and

members of the utkhaiem might unintentionally overhear them. This wasn't

business he cared to have shared over the dances and dinners of the

court. Otah rose from his chair and walked to the window, forcing his

temper back down. He opened the shutters, and the city stretched out

before him, grand towers of stone stretching up toward the sky, and

beyond them the wide plain to the south, green with the first crops of

the spring. He pressed his frustration back into yoke.

"I didn't mean that," he said. "I know that the Dai-kvo doesn't intend

to dictate to me. Or any of the Khaiem. I appreciate your concern, but

the creation of the guard isn't a threat. It's hardly an army, you know.

A few hundred men trained up to maybe half the level of a Westlands

garrison could hardly topple the world."

"We are concerned for the stability of all the cities," the envoy said.

"When one of the Khaiem begins to study war, it puts all the others on

edge."

"It's hardly studying war to hand a few men knives and remind them which

end's the handle."

"It's more than any of the Khaiem have done in the past hundred years.

And you must see that you haven't made it your policy to ally yourself

with ... well, with anyone."

\Vell, this is going just as poorly as I expected, Otah thought.

"I have a wife, thank you," Otah said, his manner cool. But the envoy

had clearly reached the end of his patience. Hearing him stand, Otah

turned. The young man's face was flushed, his hands folded into the

sleeves of his brown poet's robes.

"And if you were a shopkeeper, having a single woman would be

admirable," the envoy said. "But as the Khai Machi, turning away every

woman who's offered to you is a pattern of insult. I can't be the first

one to point this out. From the time you took the chair, you've isolated

yourself from the rest of the Khaiem, the great houses of the utkhaiem,

the merchant houses. Everyone."

Otah ran through the thousand arguments and responses-the treaties and

trade agreements, the acceptance of servants and slaves, all of the ways

in which he'd tried to bind himself and Machi to the other cities. They

wouldn't convince the envoy or his master, the Dai-kvo. They wanted

blood-his blood flowing in the veins of some boy child whose mother had

come from south or east or west. They wanted to know that the Khai

Yalakeht or Pathai or 'Ian-Sadar might be able to hope for a grandson on

the black chair in Machi once Otah had died. His wife Kiyan was past the

age to bear another child, but men could get children on younger women.

For one of the Khaiem to have only two children, and both by the same

woman-and her a wayhouse keeper from Udun.. They wanted sons from him,

fathered on women who embodied wise political alliances. They wanted to

preserve tradition, and they had two empires and nine generations of the

Khaiate court life to back them. Despair settled on him like a thick

winter cloak.

There was nothing to be gained. He knew all the reasons for all the

choices he had made, and he could as easily explain them to a mine dog

as to this proud young man who'd traveled weeks for the privilege of

taking him to task. Otah sighed, turned, and took a deeply formal pose

of apology.

"I have distracted you from your task, Athai-cha. That was not my

intention. What was it again the Dai-kvo wished of me?"

The envoy pressed his lips bloodless. They both knew the answer to the

question, but Otah's feigned ignorance would force him to restate it.

And the simple fact that Otah's bed habits were not mentioned would make

his point for him. Etiquette was a terrible game.

"The militia you have formed," the envoy said. ""I'he Dai-kvo would know

your intention in creating it."

"I intend to send it to the Westlands. I intend it to take contracts

with whatever forces there are acting in the best interests of all the

cities of the Khaiem. I will he pleased to draft a letter saying so."

Otah smiled. The young poet's eyes flickered. As insults went, this was

mild enough. Eventually, the poet's hands rose in a pose of gratitude.

""There is one other thing, Most High," the envoy said. "If you take any

aggressive act against the interests of another of the Khaiem, the

Dal-kvo will recall Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft. If you take arms against

them, he will allow the Khaiem to use their poets against you and your

city."

"Yes," Otah said. "I understood that when I heard you'd come. I am not

acting against the Khaiem, but thank you for your time, Athai-cha. I

will have a letter sewn and sealed for you by morning."

After the envoy had left, Otah sank into a chair and pressed the heels

of his hands to his temples. Around him, the palace was quiet. He

counted fifty breaths, then rose again, closed and latched the door, and

turned hack to the apparently empty room.

"Well?" he asked, and one of the panels in the corner swung open,

exposing a tiny hidden chamber brilliantly designed for eavesdropping.

The man who sat in the listener's chair seemed both at ease and out of

place. At ease because it was Sinja's nature to take the world lightly,

and out of place because his suntanned skin and rough, stained leathers

made him seem like a gardener on a chair of deep red velvet and silver

pins fit for the head of a merchant house or a member of the utkhaiem.

He rose and closed the panel behind him.

"He seems a decent man," Sinja said. "I wouldn't want him on my side of

a fight, though. Overconfident."

"I'm hoping it won't come to that," Otah said.

"For a man who's convinced the world he's bent on war, you're a bit

squeamish about violence."

Otah chuckled.

"I think sending the Dai-kvo his messenger's head might not be the most

convincing argument for my commitment to peace," he said.

"Excellent point," Sinja agreed as he poured himself a bowl of wine.

"But then you are training men to fight. It's a hard thing to preach

peace and stability and also pay men to think what's the best way to

disembowel someone with a spear."