"I know it," Otah said, his voice dark as wet slate. "Gods. You'd think

having total power over a city would give you more options, wouldn't you?"

Otah sipped the wine. It was rich and astringent and fragrant of late

summer, and it swirled in the bowl like a dark river. He felt old.

Fourteen years he'd spent trying to be what Machi needed him to

besteward, manager, ruler, half-god, fuel for the gossip and backbiting

of the court. Most of the time, he did well enough, but then something

like this would happen, and he would be sure again that the work was

beyond him.

"You could disband it," Sinja said. "It's not as though you need the

extra trade."

"It's not about getting more silver," Otah said.

"Then what's it about? You aren't actually planning to invade Cetani,

are you? Because I don't think that's a good idea."

Otah coughed out a laugh.

"It's about being ready," he said.

"Ready?"

"Every generation finds it harder to bind fresh andat. Every one that

slips away becomes more difficult to capture. It can't go on forever.

There will come a time that the poets fail, and we have to rely on

something else."

"So," Sinja said. "You're starting a militia so that someday, genera-

bons from now, when some Dai-kvo that hasn't been born yet doesn't

manage to keep up to the standards of his forebears-"

"There will also he generations of soldiers ready to keep the cities safe."

Sinja scratched his belly and nodded.

"You think I'm wrong?"

"Yes. I think you're wrong," Sinja said. "I think you saw Seedless

escape. I think you saw Saraykeht stiffer the loss. You know that the

Galts have ambitions, and that they've put their hands into the affairs

of the Khaiem more than once."

"That doesn't make me wrong," Otah said, unable to keep the sudden anger

from his voice. So many years had passed, and the memory of Saraykeht

had not dimmed. "You weren't there, Sinja-cha. You don't know how had it

was. "That's mine. And if it lets me see farther than the Dai-kvo or the

Khaiem-"

"It's possible to look at the horizon so hard you trip over your feet,"

Sinja said, unfazed by Otah's heat. "You aren't responsible for

everything tinder the sky."

But I am responsible for that, Utah thought. He had never confessed his

role in the fall of Saraykeht to Sinja, never told the story of the time

he had killed a helpless man, of sparing an enemy and saving a friend.

The danger and complexity and sorrow of that time had never entirely

left him, but he could not call it regret.

"You want to keep the future safe," Sinja said, breaking the silence,

"and I respect that. But you can't do it by shitting on the table right

now. Alienating the Dai-kvo gains you nothing."

"What would you do, Sinja? If you were in my place, what would you do?"

"Take as much gold as I could put on a fast cart, and live out my life

in a beach hut on Bakta. But then I'm not particularly reliable." He

drained his bowl and put it down on the table, porcelain clicking softly

on lacquered wood. "What you should do is send us west."

"But the men aren't ready-"

"They're near enough. Without real experience, these poor bastards would

protect you from a real army about as well as sending out all the

dancing girls you could find. And now that I've said it, girls might

even slow them down longer."

Utah coughed a mirthless laugh. Sinja leaned forward, his eyes calm and

steady.

"Put us in the Westlands as a mercenary company," he said. "It gives

real weight to it when you tell the Dai-kvo that you're just looking for

another way to make money if we're already walking away from our

neighboring cities. The men will get experience; I'll be able to make

contacts with other mercenaries, maybe even strike up alliances with

some of the Wardens. You can even found your military tradition. But

besides that, there are certain problems with training and arming men,

and then not giving them any outlet."

Otah looked up, meeting Sinja's grim expression.

"More trouble?" Otah asked.

"I've whipped the men involved and paid reparations," Sinja said, "but

if the Dai-kvo doesn't like you putting together a militia, the fine

people of Machi are getting impatient with having them. We're paying

them to play at soldiers while everybody else's taxes buy their food and

clothes."

Otah took a simple pose that acknowledged what Sinja said as truth.

"Where would you take them?"

"Annaster and Notting were on the edge of fighting last autumn.

Something about the Warden of Annaster's son getting killed in a hunt.

It's a long way south, but we're a small enough group to travel fast,

and the passes cleared early this year. Even if nothing comes of it,

there'll he keeps down there that want a garrison."

"How long before you could go?"

"I can have the men ready in two days if you'll send food carts out

after us. A week if I have to stay to make the arrangements for the

supplies."

Otah looked into Sinja's eyes. The years had whitened Sinja's temples

but had made him no easier to read.

"That seems fast," Otah said.

"It's already tinder way," Sinja replied, then seeing Otah's reaction,

shrugged. "It seemed likely."

"Two days, then," Otah said. Sinja smiled, stood, took a rough pose that

accepted the order, and turned to go. As he lifted the door's latch,

Otah spoke again. "Try not to get killed. Kiyan would take it amiss if I

sent you off to die."

The captain paused in the open door. What had happened between Kiyan and

Sinja-the Khai Machi's first and only wife and the captain of his

private armsmen-had found its resolution on a snow-covered field ten

years before. Sinja had done as Kiyan had asked him and the issue had

ended there. Otah found that the anger and feelings of betrayal had

thinned with time, leaving him more embarrassed than wrathful. That they

were two men who loved the same woman was understood and unspoken. It

wasn't comfortable ground for either of them.

"I'll keep breathing, Otah-cha. You do the same."

The door closed softly behind him, and Otah took another sip of wine. It

was fewer than a dozen breaths before a quiet scratching came at the