"Amat Kyaan would have understood," she said. "I won't tell Nayiit about this. If anyone asks, I'll deny it unless I hear differently from you."
""I'hank you, Liatcha."
She stepped back. Otah felt a terrible weariness bearing him down, but forced a charming smile. She shook her head.
""Thank you, Most High."
"I don't think I've done anything worth thanking me."
"You let my son live," Liat said. "That was one of the decisions you had to make, wasn't it?"
She took his silence as an answer, smiled again, and left him alone. Otah poured the last of the wine from carafe to howl, and then watched the light die in the west as he finished it; watched the stars come out, and the full moon rise. With every day, the light lasted longer. It would not always. High summer would come, and even when the days were at their warmest, when the trees and vines grew heavy with fruit, the nights would already have started their slow expansion. He wondered whether Danat would get to play outside in the autumn, whether the boy would be able to spend a long afternoon lying in the sunlight before the snows came and drove them all down to the tunnels. He was raising a child to live in darkness and planning for his death.
There had been a time Otah had been young and sure enough of himself to kill. He had taken the life of a good man because they both had known the price that would have to be paid if he lived. He had been able to do that.
But he had seen forty-eight summers now. There were likely fewer seasons before him than there were behind. He'd fathered three children and raised two. He could no longer hold himself apart from the world. It was his to see that the city was a place that Danat and Eiah and children like them could live safe and cared for until they too grew old and uncertain.
He looked at the swirl of red at the bottom of his bowl. Too much wine, and too much memory. It was making him maudlin. He stopped at his private chambers and allowed the servants to switch his robes to something less formal. Kiyan lay on a couch, her eyes closed, her breath deep and regular. Otah didn't wake her, only slid one of the books from his bedside table into the sleeve of his robe and kissed her temple as he left.
The physician's assistant was seated outside Danat's door. The man took a pose of greeting. Otah responded in kind and then nodded to the closed door.
"Is he asleep?" he whispered.
"He's been waiting for you."
Otah slipped into the room. Candles flickered above two great iron statues that flanked the bed-hunting cats with the wings of hawks. Soot darkened their wings from a day spent in the fire grates, and they radiated the warmth that kept the cool night breeze at bay. Danat sat up in his bed, pulling aside the netting.
"Papa-kya!" he said. He didn't cough, didn't sound frail. It was a good day, then. Otah felt a tightness he had not known he carried loosen its grip on his heart. He pulled his robes up around his knees and sat on his son's bed. "Did you bring it?" Danat asked.
Otah drew the book from his sleeve, and the boy's face lit so bright, he might have almost read by him.
"Now, you lie back," Otah said. "I've come to help you sleep, not keep you up all night."
I)anat plopped down onto his pillow, looking like the farthest thing from sleep. Otah opened the book, turning through the ancient pages until he found his place.
"In the sixteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Adani Bch, there came to court a boy whose blood was half Bakta, his skin the color of soot, and his mind as clever as any man who has ever lived...."
"THIS IS SPRING?" NAYIIT SAID AS THEY WALKED. THE WIND HAD BLOWN away even the constant scent of forge smoke, and brought in a mild chill. Mild, at least, to Maati. Nayiit wore woolen robes, thick enough that they had hardly rippled. Maati's own were made for summer, and pressed against him, leaving, he was sure, no doubt to the shape of his legs and belly. He wished he'd thought to wear something heavier too.
"It's always like this," Maati said. "There's one last death throe, and then the heat will come on. Still nothing like the summer cities, even at its worst. I remember in Saraykeht, I had a trail of sweat down my hack for weeks at a time."
"We call that pleasantly warm," Nayiit said, and Maati chuckled.
In truth, the chill, moonless night was hardly anything to him now. For over a decade, he'd lived through the bone-cracking cold of Machi winters. He'd seen snowdrifts so high that even the second-story doors couldn't be opened. He'd been out on days so cold the men coated their faces with thick-rendered fat to keep their skin from freezing. "There was no way to describe those brief, bitter days to someone who had never seen them. So instead, he told Nayiit of the life below ground, the tunnels of Machi, the bathhouses hidden deep below the surface, the streets and apartments and warehouses, the glitter of winter dew turning to frost on the stone of the higher passages. He spoke of the choirs who took the long, empty weeks to compose new songs and practice old ones-weeks spent in the flickering, buttery light of oil lamps surrounded by music.