Sinja, stunned, overfilled one of the wine bowls, the red pooling on his table like spilled blood. Idaan hoisted a single eyebrow.
"He wrote to you before?" she said.
"It was years ago," Otah said. "I had a letter. A single letter. Maati said he was looking for a way to recapture the andat. He wanted my help. I sent a message back refusing."
"All apologies, Most High," Sinja said. He hadn't bothered to wipe up the spilled wine. "Why is this the first I'm hearing of it?"
"It came at a bad time," Otah said. "Kiyan was dying. It was hopeless. The andat are gone, and there's no force in the world that can bring them safely back."
"You're sure of that?" Idaan asked. "Because Maaticha didn't think it was hopeless. The man is many things, but he isn't dim."
"It hardly matters," Sinja said. "Just the word that this is happening, and that-may all the gods keep it from happening you knew he was thinking of it. That you've known for years ..."
"It's a dream!" Otah shouted. "Maati was dreaming, that's all. He wants something back that's gone beyond his reach. Well, so do I. Anyone who has lived as long as we have knows that longing, and we know how useless it is. What's gone is gone, and we can't have it back. So what would you have had me do? Send the message back with an assassin? Announce to the world that Maati Vaupathai was out, trying to bind the andat, so they should all send invading armies at their first convenience?"
"Why didn't you?" Idaan asked. "Send the assassin, I mean. The invading armies, I understand. For that, why did you let them go at the end of the war?"
"I am not in the mood, Idaan-cha, to be questioned by a woman who killed my father, schemed to place the blame on me, and is only breathing air now because I chose to let her. I understand that you would have happily opened their throats."
"Not Cehmai's," she said softly. "But then I know why I wouldn't have done it. It doesn't follow that I should know why you didn't. The two aren't the same."
Otah rocked back in his chair. His face was hot. Their gazes locked, and he saw her nod. Idaan took a pose that expressed both understanding and contrition while unmasking the question.
"That isn't true," she said. "Thinking for a moment, I suppose they are.
Otah took the bowl Sinja held out to him. The wine was unwatered, rich and astringent. He drank it dry. Sinja looked nervous.
"There's nothing I can do about any of this tonight," Otah said. "I'm tired. I'm going to bed. If I decide it needs talking of further, it'll be another time."
He rose, taking a pose that ended an audience, then feeling a moment's shame, shifted to one that was merely a farewell.
"Otah-cha," Sinja said. "One last thing. I'm sorry, but you left standing orders. If she came back, I was supposed to kill her."
"For plotting to take my chair and conspiring with the Galts," Otah said. "Well. Idaan-cha? Are you hoping to become Emperor?"
"I wouldn't take your place as a favor," she said.
Otah nodded.
"Find apartments for her," he said. "Lift the death order. The girl we sent out in the snow might as well have died. And the man who sent her, for that. We are, all of us, different people now."
Otah walked back to his rooms alone. The palace wasn't quiet or still. Perhaps it never wholly was. But the buzzing fury of the day had given way to a slower pace. Fewer servants made their way down the halls. The members of the high families who had business here had largely gone back to their own palaces, walking stone paths chipped by the spurs and boot nails of Galtic soldiers, passing through arches whose gold and silver adornments had been hacked off by Galtic axes. They went to palaces where the highest men and women of Galt had come as guests, eating beef soup and white bread and fruit tarts. Sipping tea and wine and water and working, some of them at least, to build a common future.
And Idaan had come to warn him against Maati.
He slept poorly and woke tired. The Master of Tides attended him as he was bathed and dressed. The day was full from dawn to nightfall. Sixteen audiences had been requested, falling almost equally between members of the utkhaiem and the Galts. Three of the Galtic houses had left letters strongly implying that they had daughters who might be pressed to serve should Ana Dasin refuse. One of the priests at the temple had left a request to preach against the recalcitrance of women who failed to offer up sex. Two of the trading houses had made it clear that they wished to be released from shipping contracts to ChaburiTan. The Master of Tides droned and listed and laid out the form of another painful, endless, wasted day. When the stars came out again, Otah knew he would feel like a wrung towel and all the great problems he faced would still be unsolved.