the surprisingly complex work of taking an army-even one as improvised

and unformed as his own-apart. And afterward, he'd discovered that Kiyan

was still as much in demand now tending the things she'd set in motion

as when he had been gone.

Men and women of all classes seemed to have need of her time and

attention, coordinating the stores of food and the arrangements of the

refugees and the movements of goods and trade that had once been the

business of the merchant houses, and had become the work of a few

coordinating minds. Kiyan had become the hand that moved Machi, that

pushed it into line, that tucked its children into warm beds and kept it

from eating all the best food and leaving nothing for tomorrow. It

consumed her days.

And the utkhaicm and the high trading families had all wanted a moment

of his day, to congratulate or express thanks or wheedle some favor in

light of the changed circumstances of the world. To be here, in the warm

light of candles, Kiyan's hand in his, her gaze on him, seemed like a

dream badly wished for. And yet, now that he had it, he found himself

troubled and unable to relax. She squeezed his hand.

"How bad was it?" she asked, and he knew what she meant. The battles.

The Dai-kvo. The war.

Otah began to say something witty, something glib. The words got lost on

the way to his lips. For long moment, silence was all he could manage.

"It was terrible," he said. "There were so many of them."

"The Galts?"

"'l'he dead. "Theirs. Ours. I've never seen anything like it, Kiyan-

kya. I've read the histories and I've heard the epics sung, and it's not

the same. They were young. And ... and they looked like they were

sleeping. I lowever badly they'd died, in the end, I kept thinking

they'd wake up and speak or call for help or scream. I think about all

the men I led out there. The ones who would have lived if we hadn't done

this."

"We didn't choose this, love. The Galts haven't given anyone much

choice. The men who went with you would have died out there in the

field, or here when the city fell. Would one have been better?"

"I suppose not. The other ways it could have gone might be just as had,

but the way it did happen, they died from following me. From doing what

I asked."

To his surprise, Kiyan chuckled low and mirthless.

"That's why he calls you Emperor, isn't it," Kiyan said, and Otah took a

pose of query. "The Khai Cetani. It's from gratitude. If you're the

leader of the age, then it stops being his burden. Everything you're

suffering, you've saved him."

Otah looked at his hands, rubbing his palms together with a long, dry

sound. His throat felt tight, and something deep in his chest ached with

the suspicion that she was right. When he had asked the man to abandon

his city and take the role of follower, he had also been asking for the

right to choose whatever happened after. And the responsibility for it.

For a moment, he was on the chill, gray field of the dead, and walking

the cold, lifeless ruin where poets had once conspired to hind thoughts

themselves. He remembered the Dal-kvo's dead eyes, looking at nothing.

The bodies, the Galts' and his own both, and the voices calling him Emperor.

"I'm sorry," Kiyan said, and he could tell from her voice that she knew

how inadequate the words were. He pulled his mind hack to his soft-lit

room, the scent of the candles, the touch of this long-beloved hand.

"They've lived with it," he said. "Galt and Eddensea and the Westlands.

It's always been like this for them. War and battle. We'll learn."

"I don't think I'm looking forward to that."

Otah raised her hand to his lips. Gently, she caressed his cheek. Ile

drew her close, folding his arms around her, feeling the warmth of her

body against him, smelling the familiar scent of her hair, and willing

the moment to not end. If only the future could never come.

Kiyan sensed it in the tension of his spine, the fierceness of his

embrace. Something. She did not speak, but only breathed, softening

against him with every exhalation, and in time he felt himself beginning

to relax with her. One of the lanterns, burning the last of its oil,

dimmed, spat, and went out. The smoke touched the air with a smell of

endings.

"I missed you," she said. "Every night, I went to bed thinking you might

not come hack. I kept telling the children over and over that things

would he fine, that you'd he home soon. And I was sick. I was sick with it."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't. Don't apologize. Don't be sorry. Just know it. Just know we

wanted you hack. Not the Khai and not the emperor. You. Remember that

you are a good man and I love you."

Ile raised her chin and kissed her, wondering how she knew so well the

way to fill him with joy without asking him to abandon his sorrow.

"It's Nlaati's now," Otah whispered. "If he can bind Seedless before the

spring thaw, this will all he over."

I Ic felt an odd relaxation in her body, as if by saying the thing, he'd

freed her from some secret effort she'd been making.

"And if he can't?" she asked. "If it's all going to fall apart anyway,

can we run? You and me and the children? If I take them and go, are you

going to come with us, or stay here and fight?"

Ile kissed her again. She rested her hands against his shoulders,

leaning into him. Otah didn't answer, and he knew from the sound of her

breath that she understood.

"11: WE TAKE 'I'I I I: NI'ANCE of MOVEMENT'-ANNAY IN NI 'RAT AND THE

SYMBOL set you worked up for the senses of continuance," Nlaati

said, "I think then we'll have something we can work with."

Cehmai's eves were bloodshot, his hair wild from another long evening of

combing frustrated fingers through it. Around them, the lamplight shone

on a bedlam of paper. The library would have seemed a rat's nest to any

but the two of them: books laid open; scrolls unfurled and weighted by

other scrolls which were themselves unfurled; loose pages of a dozen

codices stacked together. The mass of information and inference, grammar

and poetry and history would have been overwhelming, \laati thought, to

anyone who didn't know how profoundly little it was. Cchnlai ran his

fingertips down the notes \laati had made and shook his head.

"It's still the same," he said. "Nurat is modified by the fourth case of

a(/at, and then it's exactly the same logical structure as the one

Fleshai used."

"No, it isn't," \laati said, slapping the table with an open palm. "It's

differ r ut. "