She wiped her eyes with the cloth of her sleeve.
"Hurry," she said, pressing the word out to the distant men. Get the Dal-kvo, retrieve the poets and their books, and come back to me. Before they find you, come back to me.
The sun had traveled the width of two hands together before she stepped out onto the platform and signaled the men far below her to bring her down. The chains clattered and the platform lurched, but Liat only held the rail and waited for it to steady in its descent. She knew she would not fall. That would have been too easy.
She had done a poor job of telling Maati. Perhaps she'd assumed Nayiit would already have told him. Perhaps she'd been trying to punish Maati for beginning it all. It had been the next night, and she had accepted Maati's invitation to dinner in the high pavilion. Goose in honey lacquer, almonds with cinnamon and raisin sauce, rice wine. Not far away, a dance had begun-silk streamers and the glow of torches, the trilling of pipes and the laughter of girls drunk with flirtation. She remembered it all from the days after Saraykeht had fallen. There was only so long that the shock of losing the andat could restrain the festivals of youth.
The young are blind and stupid, she'd said, and their breasts don't sag. It's the nearest thing they've got to a blessing.
Maati had chuckled and tried to take her hand, but she couldn't stand the touch. She'd seen the surprise in his expression, and the hurt. That was when she'd told him. She'd said it lightly, acidly, fueled by her anger and her despair. She had been too wrapped up in herself to pay attention to Nlaati's shock and horror. It was only later, when he'd excused himself and she was walking alone in the dim paths at the edge of the dance, that she understood she'd as much as accused him of sending Nayiit to his death.
She had gone by Maati's apartments that night and again the next day, but he had gone and no one seemed to know where. By the time she found him, he had spoken with Otah and Nayiit. He accepted her apology, he cradled her while they both confessed their fears, but the damage had been done. He was as haunted as she was, and there was nothing to be done about it.
Liat realized she'd almost reached the ground, startled to have come so far so quickly. Her mind, she supposed, had been elsewhere.
Mach) in the height of summer might almost have been a Southern city. The sun made its slow, stately way across the sky. The nights had grown so short, she could fall asleep with a glow still bright over the mountains to the west and wake in daylight, unrested. The streets were full of vendors at their carts selling fresh honey bread almost too hot to eat or sausages with blackened skins or bits of lamb over rice with a red sauce spicy enough to burn her tongue. Merchants passed over the black-cobbled streets, wagon wheels clattering. Beggars sang before their lacquered boxes. Firekeepers tended their kilns and saw to the small business of the tradesmen-accepting taxes, witnessing contracts, and a hundred other small duties. Liat pulled her hands into her sleeves and walked without knowing her destination.
It might only have been her imagination that there were fewer men in the streets. Surely there were still laborers and warehouse guards and smiths at their forges. The force marching to the west could account for no more than one man in fifteen. The sense that Machi had become a city of women and old men and boys could only be her mind playing tricks. And still, there was something hollow about the city. A sense of loss and of uncertainty. The city itself seemed to know that the world had changed, and held its breath in dread anticipation, waiting to see whether this transformed reality had a place for Machi in it.
She found herself back at her apartments-feet sore, back achingbefore the sun had touched the peaks to the west. As she approached her door, a young man rose from the step. For a moment, her mind tricked her into thinking Nayiit had returned. But no, this boy was too thin through the shoulders, his hair too long, his robes the black of a palace servant. He took a pose of greeting as she approached, and Liat made a brief response.
"Liat Chokavi?"
"Yes."
"Kiyan Machi, first wife of the Khai Machi, extends her invitation. If you would he so kind, I will take you to her."
"Now?" Liat asked, but of course it was now. She waved away the question even before the servant boy could recover from the surprise of being asked in so sharp a tone. When he turned, spine straight and stiff with indignation, she followed him.
They found Otah's wife standing on a balcony overlooking a great hall. Her robes were delicate pink and yellow, and they suited her skin. Her head was turned down, looking at the wide fountain that took up the hall below, the sprays of water reaching up almost to the high domed ceiling above. The servant boy took a pose of obeisance before her, and she replied with one that both thanked and dismissed him. Her greeting of Liat was only a nod and a smile, and then Kiyan's attention turned back to the fountain.