shaking her head. Instead, she pressed her fingers into the fine-grained

wood of the table and tried to will her frustration into it. Kiyan,

seated across from her, was saying something in a reasonable, measured

tone that entirely missed her point. Liat took a pose that asked

permission to speak, and then didn't wait for Kiyan to answer her.

"It isn't the men," Liat said. "He could have taken twice what he did,

and we'd be able to do what's needed. It's that he took all the horses."

Kiyan's fox-sharp face tightened. Her dark eyes flickered down toward

the maps and diagrams spread out between them. The farmlands and low

towns that surrounded Machi were listed with the weight of grain and

neat and vegetables that had come from each in the last five years.

Liat's small, neat script covered paper after paper, black ink on the

butter-yellow pages noting acres to be harvested and plowed, the number

of hands and hooves required by each.

The breeze from the unshuttered windows lifted the pages but didn't

disarray them, like invisible fingers checking the corners for some

particular mark.

"Show me again," Kiyan said, and the weariness in her voice was almost

enough to disarm Liat's annoyance. Almost, but not entirely. With a

sigh, she stood. The line behind her eyes throbbed.

"'T'his is the number of horses we'd need to plow the eastern farmsteads

here and here and here," Liat said, tapping the maps as she did so. "We

have half that number. We can get up to nearly the right level if we

take the mules from the wheat mills."

Kiyan looked over the numbers, her fingertips touching the sums and

moving on. I ler gaze was focused, a single vertical line between her brows.

"How short is the second planting now?" Kiyan asked.

"The west and south are nearly complete, but they started late. The

eastern farmsteads ... not more than a quarter."

Kiyan leaned back. Otah's wife looked nearly as worn as Liat felt. The

gray in her hair seemed more pronounced, her flesh paler and thinner.

Liat fund herself wondering if Kiyan had made a practice of painting her

face and dyeing her hair that, in the crisis, she had let fall away, or

if the task they had set themselves was simply sucking the life out of

them both.

"It's too late," Kiyan said. "With the time it would take to get the

mules, put them to yoke, and plow the fields, we'd be harvesting

snowdrifts."

"Is there something else we could plant?" Liat asked. "Something we have

time to grow before winter? Potatoes? Turnips?"

"I don't know," Kiyan said. "How long does it take to grow turnips this

far North?"

Liar closed her eyes. Two educated, serious, competent women should be

able to run a city. Should be able to shoulder the burden of the world

and forget that one stood to lose a husband, the other a son. Should be

able to ignore the constant fear that soldiers of a Galtic army might

appear any day on the horizon prepared to destroy the city. It should he

within their power, and yet they were blocked by idiot questions like

whether turnips take longer to grow than potatoes. She took a deep

breath and slowly let it out, willing the tension in her jaw to lessen,

the pain behind her eyes to recede.

"I'll find out," Ifiat said. "But will you give the order to the mills?

They won't he happy to stop their work."

"I'll give them the option of loaning the Khai their animals or pulling

the plows themselves," Kiyan said. "If we have to spend the winter

grinding wheat for our bread, it's a small price for not starving."

"It's going to he a thin spring regardless," Liat said.

Kiyan took the papers that Liat had drawn up. She didn't speak, but the

set of her mouth agreed.

"We'll do our best," Kiyan said.

The banquet had gone splendidly. The women of the utkhaiem- wives and

mothers, daughters and aunts-had heard Kiyan's words and taken to them

as if she were a priest before the faithful. Liat had seen the light in

their eyes, the sense of hope. For all their fine robes and lives of

court scandal and gossip, each of these women was as grateful as Liat

had been for the chance of something to do.

The food and fuel, Kiyan had kept for herself. Other people had been

tasked with seeing to the wool, to arranging the movement of the summer

belongings into the storage of the high towers, the preparation of the

lower city-the tunnels below Machi. Liat had volunteered to act as

Kiyan's messenger and go-between in the management of the farms and

crops, gathering the food that would see them through the winter. Being

the lover of a poet-even a poet who had never bound one of the

andat-apparently lent her enough status in court to make her

interesting. And as the rumors began to spread that Cehmai and Maati

were keeping long hours together in the library and the poet's house,

that they were preparing a fresh binding, Liat found herself more and

more in demand. In recent days it had even begun to interfere with her work.

She had let herself spend time in lush gardens and high-domed dining

halls, telling what stories she knew of Nlaati's work and intentionswhat

parts of it he'd said would be safe to tell. The women were so hungry

for good news, for hope, that Liat couldn't refuse them. After telling

the stories often enough, even she began to take hope from them herself.

But tea and sweet bread and gossip took time, and they took attention,

and she had let it go too far. The second wheat crop would be short, and

no amount of pleasant high-city chatter now would fill bellies in the

spring. Assuming they lived. If the Galts appeared tomorrow, it would

hardly matter what she'd done or failed to do.

"There's going to be enough food," Kiyan said softly. "We may wind up

killing more of the livestock and eating the grain ourselves, but even

if half the crop failed, we'd have enough to see us through to the early

harvest."

"Still," Liat said. "It would have been good to have more."

Kiyan took a pose that both agreed with Liat and dismissed the matter.

Liat responded with one appropriate for taking leave of a superior. It

was a nuance that seemed to trouble Kiyan, because she leaned forward,

her fingertips touching Liat's arm.

"Are you well?" Kiyan asked.

"Fine," Liat said. "It's just my head has been tender. It's often like

that when the Khai Saraykeht changes the tax laws again or the cotton

crops fail. It fades when the troubles pass."

Kiyan nodded, but didn't pull hack her hand.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Kiyan asked.