"`And quietly, one foot sliding behind the other, for the parapet was

too narrow to walk along, the half-Bakta boy went from his own prison

chamber around to the bars of the Empress's cell."' Utah paused, letting

the half-Bakta boy hang in the air outside the prison tower. And this

time I)anat failed to object. I lis eyes were closed, his breathing

heavy and regular. Utah sat for a moment, watching his boy sleep, then

closed the hook, tucked it in its place by the door, and put out the

lantern. [)gnat murmured and snuggled more deeply into his blankets as

Utah carefully opened the door and stepped out into the tunnel.

The physician set to watch over I)anat took a pose of obeisance to Otah,

and Otah replied with one of thanks before walking to the North, and to

the broad spiral stairway that led tip to the higher chambers of the

underground palace or else down to Otah's own rooms and the women's

quarters. Small brass lanterns filled the air with their warmth and the

scent of oil. The walls were lighter than sandstone and shone brighter

than the Hanes seemed to warrant. At the stairway, he hesitated.

Above him, Nlachi was beginning its descent into the other city, washing

down into the rooms and corridors reserved for the deep, long winter

that was almost upon them. The bathhouses far above had emptied their

pipes, shunting the water from their kilns down to lower pools. The

towers were being filled with goods of summer, the great platforms

crawling tip their tracks in the unforgiving stone, and then down again.

In the wide, vaulted corridors that would become the main roads and

public squares of the winter, beggars sang and food carts filled the air

with rich, warm scents: beef soup and peppered pork, fish on hot rice,

almond milk and honey cakes. The men and women pulling the carts would

he calling, luring the curious and the hungry and the almost-hungry.

Only, of course, they wouldn't he there this winter. Food was no longer

an item available for trade. It was being rationed out by the utkhaiem

and by the exquisite mechanisms that Kiyan had put in place. The men and

women of Cetani had been housed there or in the mines along the plain

even before Otah and his army had returned with the news that the Galts

had been turned back. Now, with the quarters being shared, there were

two and sometimes three families sharing the space meant for one.

There was a part of him that wanted badly to take the stairs leading up,

to go out of the palaces, and into the webwork of passages and tunnels

one layered upon another that were his city. He knew it was an illusion

to think that seeing things would improve them, make them easier to

control and make right. But it was a powerful illusion.

Ile sighed and took the descending stairs. ']'he women's

quartersdesigned to accommodate a Khai's dozen or more wives-had been

changed over to smaller, more private rooms by the addition of a few

planks of wood and tapestries taken from the palaces above. The utkhaiem

of Cetani-husbands and wives together-found some accommodations there.

It had seemed an obvious choice, and Kiyan had never particularly made

use of her rooms there. And still it seemed odd to have people so close.

Late in the night, he could sometimes hear the voices of people passing by.

The great blue and gold doors to his private apartments stood closed,

two guards on either side. Otah noticed as he accepted their salutes how

quickly he had come to think of these men as guards where before they

had only been servants. "Their duties were no different, their robes

just the same. It wasn't the world that had changed. It was him.

I IC found Kiyan sitting at a low table, combing her hair with a

widetoothed comb. Wordless, he took it from her, sitting beside and

behind her, and did the little task himself. Her hair was coarser than

it had been once, and so shot with white that it seemed almost as much

silver as black. I le saw the subtle curve in the shape of her cheek as

she smiled.

"I heard the Khai Cetani speaking today," she said.

"Really?"

"l le was in one of the teahouses. And, honestly, not one of the best ones.

"I won't ask what you were doing in a third-rate tea house," Otah said,

and Kiyan chuckled.

"Nothing more scandalous than listening to the Khai," she said. "But

that might be enough. Ile thinks quite highly of you."

"Oh gods," Otah said. "Did the term come up again?"

"Yes, the word emperor figured highly in the conversation. He seems to

think the sun shines brighter when you tell it to."

"Ile seems to forget that first battle where I got everyone killed. And

that I didn't manage to keep the [)ai-kvo from being slaughtered."

"Ile doesn't forget. But lie does say you were the only man who tried to

stop the Galts, who banded cities together instead of letting them fall

one at a time, and in the end the only man who put them to flight."

"He should stop that," Utah said, and sighed. "Ile seemed so reasonable

when I first met him. Who'd have guessed he was so easily wooed."

"He may not he wrong, you know. We'll need to do something when this is

over. An emperor or a way to choose new families to act as Khaiem. A

I)ai-kvo. That would have to be ylaati or Cehmai, wouldn't it:'

It was how all the conversations went now-how to rebuild, how to remake.

The polite fiction that the poets were sure to succeed was the tissue

that seemed to hold people together, and Utah couldn't bring himself to

break it now.

"I suppose so," Utah said. "It'll be a life's work, though. Perhaps

more. It was getting hard enough finding andat that could still be hound

before this. We've lost so much now, going hack will be harder than it

was at the first. If we have a new I)ai-kvo, he won't have time for

am-thing more than that."

"An emperor, then. One man protecting all the cities. With the poets

answering to him. liven just one poet with one andat would he enough. It

would protect us."

"I recommend someone else do it. I've decided on a beach hut on Bakta,"

Utah said, trying to make it a joke. I Ic saw Kivan's expression. "It's

too far ahead to think about now, love. Let it pass, and we'll solve it

later if it still needs solving."

Kiyan turned and took his hand. The days since he'd come home hadn't

allowed them time together, not as they had had before the war. First,

when he and his men had marched across the bridge to trumpets and drums

and dancing, it had been a mad festival. 't'hey had cone out to meet

him. I Ic had embraced her, and Eiah, and little [)gnat whom he had

danced around until they were both dizzy. Otah had found himself whirled

from one pavilion to the next, balancing the giddy joy of survival with