Maati gestured helplessly at the air. He had spent so many hours thinking about what it could mean, about what it could bring about and bring hack. All the andat lost over the course of generations that had been thought beyond recapture might still he hound if only the men binding them could learn from their errors, adjust their work as Heshai had done after the fact. Softness. Water-Moving-Down. 't'hinking-in- Words. All the spirits cataloged in the histories, the work of poets who had made the Empire great. Perhaps they were not past redemption.
He looked at Athai, but the young man's eyes were unfocused and distant.
"May I see your work, Maatikvo?" he asked, and the barely suppressed excitement in his voice almost brought Maati to like him for the moment. "Together, the three men stepped to Maati's worktable. 'T'hree men, and one other that was something else.
Chapter 2
Liat Chokavi had never seen seawater as green as the bays near AmnatTan. The seafront at Saraykeht had always taken its color from the sky-gray, blue, white, yellow, crimson, pink. The water in the far North was different entirely; green as grass and numbing cold. She could no more see the fish and seafloor here than read pages from a closed hook. These waters kept their secrets.
A low fog lay on the hay; the white and gray towers of the low town seemed to float upon it. In the far distance, the deep blue spire of the Khai AmnatTan's palace seemed almost to glow, a lantern like a star fallen to earth. Even the sailors, she noticed, would pause for a moment at their work and admire it. It was the great wonder of Amnat-'Ian, second only to the towers of Machi as the signature of the winter cities. It would take them days more to reach it; the ports and low towns were a good distance downriver of the city itself.
The wind smelled of smoke now-the scent of the low town coming across the water, adding to the smells of salt and fish, crab and unwashed humanity. They would reach port by midday. She turned and went down the steps to their cabin.
Nayilt swung gently in his hammock, his eyes closed, snoring lightly. Liat sat on the crate that held their belongings and considered her son; the long face, the unkempt hair, the delicate hands folded on his belly. He had made an attempt at growing a heard in their time in Yalakeht, but it had come in so poorly he'd shaved it off with a razor and cold seawater. Her heart ached, listening to him sleep. The workings of House Kyaan weren't so complex that it could not run without her immediate presence, but she had never meant to keep Nayiit so long from home and the family he had only recently begun.
The news had reached Saraykeht last summer-almost a year ago now. It had hardly been more than a confluence of rumors-a Galtic ship in Nantani slipping away before its cargo had arrived, a scandal at the [)a[-kvo's village, inquiries discreetly made about a poet. And still, as her couriers arrived at the compound, Liat had felt unease growing in her. "There were few enough people who knew as she did that the house she ran had been founded to keep watch on the duplicity of the Gaits. Fewer still knew of the books she kept, as her mentor Amat Kyaan had before her, tracking the actions and strategies of the Galtic houses among the Khaiem, and it was a secret she meant to keep. So when tales of a missing poet began to dovetail too neatly with stories of Galtic intrigue in Nantani, there was no one whom she trusted the task to more than herself. She had been in Saraykeht for ten years. She decided to leave again the day that Nayiit's son Tai took his first steps.
Looking back, she wondered why it had been so easy for Nayiit to come with her. He and his wife were happy, she'd thought. The baby boy was delightful, and the work of the house engaging. When he had made the offer, she had hidden her pleasure at the thought and made only slight objections. The truth was that the years they had spent on the road when Nayiit had been a child-the time between her break with Maati Vaupathai and her return to the arms of Saraykeht-held a powerful nostalgia for her. Alone in the world with only a son barely halfway to manhood, she had expected struggle and pain and the emptiness that she had always thought must accompany a woman without a man.
The truth had been a surprise. Certainly the emptiness and struggle and pain had attended their travels. She and Nayiit had spent nights huddling under waxed-cloth tarps while chill rain pattered around them. They had eaten cheap food from low-town firekeepers. She had learned again all she'd known as a girl of how to mend a robe or a boot. And she had discovered a competence she had never believed herself to possess. Before that, she had always had a lover by whom to judge herself. With a son, she found herself stronger, smarter, more complete than she had dared pretend.
The journey to Nantani had been a chance for her to relive that, one last time. Her son was a man now, with a child of his own. There wouldn't be many more travels, just the two of them. So she had put aside any doubts, welcomed him, and set off to discover what she could about Riaan Vaudathat, son of a high family of the Nantani utkhaiem and missing poet. She had expected the work to take a season, no more. They would be back in the compound of House Kyaan in time to spend the autumn haggling over contracts and shipping prices.