Danat, at his father's side, was unrecognizable. The ill, coughing boy confined to his bed had grown into a hale young man with intelligent eyes and his father's distant, considering demeanor. The others Maati had either seen recently enough that they held no disturbing sense of change or were strangers to him.
They had all come. Large Kae and Small Kae and Eiah, but to his discomfort also Idaan Machi, sitting on a bench with a bowl of wine in her hand and her face as expressionless as the dead. A Galtic girl sat apart, her head held high, sightless and proud to cover the disgust and horror she must feel at all Maati had done. Ashti Beg sat at her side, another victim of Vanjit's malice. After all that had happened, after all his many failures of judgment, seeing her among his arrayed enemies was still wrenching.
Otah's armsmen cleared the wayhouse. The conversation that should have taken place in the finest of meeting rooms in the high palaces instead found its place in a third-rate wayhouse, free of ceremony or ritual or even well-brewed tea. Maati felt himself trembling. He had the powerful physical memory of being a boy at the school, holding himself still and waiting for Tahi-kvo's lacquer rod to split his skin.
"Maati Vaupathai," the Emperor said.
"Most High," Maati replied, crossing his arms.
"I suppose I should start by asking why I shouldn't have you killed where you stand."
Eiah, beside him, twitched as if wasp-stung. Maati stared at his old friend, his old enemy, and all the conciliatory words that he had imagined in the last day vanished like a snuffed candle. There was rage in Otah's stance, and Maati found himself more than matching it.
"How dare you?" Maati said, his voice little more than a hiss. "How dare you? I thought, coming here, I would at least be treated with respect. I thought at the very least, that. And instead you stand me up like a common thief in a low-town courtroom and have me defend my life? Justify my right to breathe to the man who killed my son?"
"Nayiit has nothing to do with this," Otah said. "Sinja Ajutani, to contrast, died because of you. Every Galt who has starved since you exacted this sick, petty revenge is dead because of you. Every-"
"Nayiit has everything to do with this. Your sick love of all things Galtic has everything to do with it. Your disloyalty to the women you claim to rule. Your perfect calm in making me an outcast living in gutters for something you were just as guilty of. You are a hypocrite and a liar in everything you've done. I owe you nothing, Otahkvo. Nothing!"
Otah was shouting something, but Maati's ears were rushing with blood and raw anger. He saw the armsmen shift forward, blades at the ready, but Maati was far past caring. Every injustice, every slight, every cupful of pent-up outrage spilled out, all made worse by the fact that Otah-self-righteous, entitled, and arrogant-was so busy shouting back that he wasn't hearing a word of what Maati was saying.
When he noticed through his rage that a third voice had entered the fray, he couldn't say how long it had been going.
"I said stop!" the Galt shouted again. "Stop it! Both of you!"
Maati turned to the girl, a sneer on his lip, but he was having a hard time catching his breath. Otah also was now silent, his imperial face flushed bright red. Maati felt the urge to offer up an obscene gesture, but he restrained himself. The girl stood in the space between the two, her hands outstretched. Danat stepped to her side. If anything, her anger appeared as high as either of her elders', but she was able to speak coherently.
"Gods," she said. "Is this really what we've been doing? Someone please tell me that the world is on its knees over something more than two old men chewing over quarrels from their boyhood."
"This is much, much more than that," Otah said. His voice, though severe, had lost some of its certainty.
"I wouldn't know from listening to that display," Idaan said. "Ana-cha has more sense than you on this, brother. Listen to her."
Otah had calmed down enough to look merely peeved. Maati held his fist to his chest, but his heart was slowing to its usual pace. Nothing had happened. He was fine. Otah, across from him, took a pose appropriate to the beginning of a short break in a negotiation. His jaw was tight and his stance only civil. Maati replied with one that accepted the proposal. He wanted to sit at Eiah's side, to talk with her about what to do next and how to go about it. It would have been a provocation, though, so instead, Maati retreated to the door leading out into the cold, black courtyard and the clean night air.
It had been a mistake. Otah was too proud and self-centered to help them. He was too wrapped up in anger that the world hadn't followed his one and only holy and anointed plan. They should have gone on to Utani, found someone in the utkhaiem who would support them. Or they should have gone after Vanjit themselves.