"He's an idiot," Kiyan said. "He's a self-aggrandizing, half-blind idiot who can't think two thoughts in a straight line."
Liat took a pose that asked the question.
"My husband," Kiyan said, color coming at last to her cheeks. "He's sent us another whole city."
Cctani, nearest neighbor of Machi, had emptied itself. The couriers had arrived just before the fastest carts. The dust that Liat had mistaken for an army was only the first wave of tens of thousands of men and women-their stores of grains, their chickens and ducks and goats, whatever small precious things they could not bring themselves to leave behind. Otah's letter explained that they were in need of shelter, that Machi should do its best for them. The tone of the words was apologetic, but only for someone who knew the man well. Only to women like themselves. Kiyan held Liat's arm as if for support as they walked together to the bridge outside the city where they awaited her.
The man who stood at the middle point in the bridge wore an elegant robe-black silk shot with yellow-that was only slightly disarrayed by his travels. Servants and armsmen of Machi parted for Kiyan, allowing her passage onto the bridge's western end. Liat tried to disengage, but Kiyan's grip didn't lessen, and so they walked out together. On seeing them, the man took a pose of greeting appropriate for a man of lower rank to the wife of a more prestigious man. This was not the Khai Cetani, then, but some member of the Cetani utkhaiem.
"I have been sent to speak to the first wife of the Khai Machi," he said.
"I am the Khai's only wife," Kiyan said.
tic took this odd information in stride, turning his attention wholly to Kiyan. Liat felt awkward and out of place, and oddly quite protective of the woman at her side.
"Kiyan-cha," the man said. "I am Kamath Vauamnat, voice of House Vauamnat. The Khai Cetani has sent us here at your husband's invitation. The army of Galt is still some days behind us, but it is coming. Our city . . ."
Something changed in the courtier's face. It was unlike anything Liat had seen before, except perhaps an actor who in the midst of declaiming some epic has forgotten the words. The mask and distance of etiquette failed, and the words he spoke became genuine.
"Our city's gone. We have what we're carrying. We need your help."
Only Liat was near enough to Kiyan to hear the tiny sigh that escaped before she spoke.
"How could I refuse you?" she said. "I am utterly unprepared, but if you will bring your people across the bridge and make them ready, I will find them places here."
The man took a pose of gratitude, and Kiyan turned hack, Liat still at her side, and walked back to the hank where her people waited.
"We'll need something like shelter for these people," Kiyan said, under her breath. "Someplace we can keep them out of the rain until we can find ... someplace."
""They won't all fit," Ifiat said. "We can put them in the tunnels, but then there's no place for all of us to go when winter comes. "There's too many of them, and they can't have carried enough food to see them through until spring. And we're stretched thin as it is."
"We'll stretch thinner," Kiyan said.
The rest of the day was a single long emergency, events and needs and decisions coming in waves and overlapping each other like the scales of a snake. Liat found herself at the large and growing camp that was forming as the refugees of Cetani reached the bridge. "Thankfully, the bridge was only the width of eight men walking abreast, and it kept the flow of humanity and cattle and carts to a speed that was almost manageable. Liat only had to school herself not to look across the water to the larger, shapeless mass of people still waiting to cross. Liat motioned them to different places, the ones too frail or ill to survive another night in the open, the ones robust enough that they might he put to work. 'T'here were old men, children, babes hanging in their mothers' exhausted arms.
Liat felt as if she were being asked to engineer a new city of tents and cook fires. They came in the hundreds. In the thousands. Night had fallen before the last man crossed, and Liat could see fires on the far side, camps made by those who'd given tip hope of crossing today. Liat sat on the smooth stone rail at the bridge's end and let the aches in her feet and back and legs complain to her. It had been an excruciating day, and the work was far from ended. But at least the refugees were in tents sent out from Machi, safe from the cold. The food carts of Machi had also come out from the city, making their way through the crowds with garlic sausages and honeyed almonds and bowls of noodles and beef. There were even songs. Over the constant frigid rushing of the water, there was the sound of flutes and drums and voices. The temptation to close her eyes was unbearable, and yet. And yet.