"The coal?"

Otah took a confirming pose.

"'l'hey aren't built for forge coal," he said. "And the men we're

facing? "They're soldiers, not smiths and ironmongers. "Where's no

reason for them to look too closely at what they raid out of your

stocks. Especially when they're pushing to get to Machi before the

winter comes. If we leave them mixed coal, it'll burn too hot. The seams

of their metalwork will soften, if the grates don't simply melt out from

underneath."

"And so they have to come on foot or by horse?"

Otah remembered the twisted metal from the I)ai-kvo's village and

allowed himself a smile.

"When those wagons break, it's more than only stopping. "They'll lose

men just from that, and if we play it well, we can use the confusion to

make things worse for them. And there's the other thing. They know we're

going to lose. They have the strength, and we're unprepared. The only

time we've faced them head-on, we were slaughtered. They know that we

can't effectively fight them."

""IThat's a weakness?" the Khai Cetani asked.

"l'es. It keeps them from paying attention. To them, it's already over.

Everything's certain but the details. That something else might happen

isn't likely to occur to them. Why should it?"

The Khai Cetani looked into the fire. "I'he flames seemed to glitter in

his dark eyes. When he spoke, his voice was grim.

"'They've made all the same mistakes we did."

Otah considered that for a moment before nodding.

""I'he Galts understand war," he said. "They're the best teachers I

have. And so I'll do to them what they did to us."

"And to do that, you would have rne-Khai of my own cityabandon Cetani to

follow your lead?"

"Yes," Otah said.

The Khai sat in silence for a long time, then rose. The rustle of his

robes as he walked to the window was the only sound. Otah waited as the

man looked out over the city. Over Cetani, the city for which this man

had killed his brothers, for which he had given up his name. Otah felt

the tension in his own hack and neck. Ile was asking this man to abandon

everything, to walk away from the only role he had played in his life.

Cetani would fall. It would be sacked. Even if everything went

perfectly, there might he nothing to rebuild. And what would a Khai he

if there was no city left him?

Many years before, Otah had asked another man to do the right thing,

even though it would cost him his honor and prestige and the only place

he had in the world. Heshai-kvo had refused, and he had died for the

decision.

"Most High," Otah began, but the Khai Cetani held up a hand to stop him

without even so much as looking back. Otah could see it in the man's

shoulders in the moment the decision was made; they lifted as if a

burden had been taken from him.

18

Even the winter she had passed in Yalakeht had not prepared Liat for the

fickleness of seasons in the North. Each day now was noticeably shorter

than the one before, and even when the afternoons were warm, the sun

pressing down benignly on her face, the nights were suddenly hitter. In

the gardens, the leaves all lost their green at once, as if by

conspiracy. It was unlike the near-imperceptible changes in the summer

cities. In Saraykeht, autumn was a slow, lingering thing; the warmth of

the world made a long good-bye. Things came faster here, and Liat found

the pace disturbing. She was a woman of the South, and abrupt change

uneased her.

For instance, she thought as she sipped smoky tea in her apartments, she

still imagined herself a businesswoman of Saraykeht. Had anyone asked of

her work, she would have spoken of the combing rooms, the warehouses. I

lad anyone asked of her home, she would have described the seafront of

Saraykeht, the scent of the ocean, the babble of a hundred languages.

She would have pictured the brick-built house she'd taken over when Amat

Kyaan had died, and the little bedroom with its window half-choked with

vines. She hadn't seen that city in over a year, and wouldn't go back

now before the spring at best.

At best.

At worst, Saraykeht itself might be gone. Or she might not live to see

summer again.

The city in which she now passed her days was suffering from change as

well. Small shrines with images of the vanished andat had begun to

appear in the niches between buildings, as if a few flowers and candles

could coax them back. The temples had been filled every day by men and

women who might not have sat before a priest in years. The beggars

singing with boxes at their feet all chose songs about redemption and

the return of things lost.

She sipped her tea. It was no longer hot enough to scald her lips, but

it felt good drinking it. It warmed her throat like wine, only without

the casing in her muscles or the softness in her mind. The morning

before her was full-coordinating the movement of food and fuel into the

tunnels below Machi, the raising of stores into the high towers where

they would wait out the cold of winter. "There wasn't time for dark

thoughts. And yet the darkness came whether she courted it or not.

She looked up at the sound of the door. Nayiit stepped in. The nights

were not so long or so cold as to keep him in his rooms. Liat put down

her howl.

"Good morning, Mother," he said as he sat on a cushion beside the fire.

"You're up early."

"Not particularly," Liat said.

"No?" Nayiit said, and then smiled the disarming, rueful smile that

would always and forever mark him as the son of Otah Machi. "No, I

suppose not. May I?"

Liat gestured her permission, and Nayiit poured himself a howl of the

tea. He looked tired, and it was more than a night spent in teahouses

and the baths. Something had changed while he'd been gone. She had

thought at first that it was only exhaustion. When she'd found him

asleep on Nlaati's floor, he had been half-dead from his time on the

road and visibly thinner. But since then he'd rested and eaten, and

still there was something behind his eyes. An echo of her own bleak

thoughts, perhaps.

"I failed him," Nayiit said. Liat blinked and sat back in her chair.

Nayiit tilted his head. "It's what you were wondering, ne? What's been

eating the boy? Why can't he sleep anymore? I failed the Khai. I had his

good opinion. There was a time that he valued my counsel and listened to

me, even when I had unpleasant things to say. And then I failed him. And

he sent me away."