Midday came and went, and the sun began its slow fall to the west. Storm clouds rose, white and soft and taller than mountains, but the rain stayed out over the sea. The daylight moon hung in the blue sky to the north. Otah didn't think of Balasar or Idaan, ChaburiTan or the andat. When at last he paused to eat, he felt worn thin enough to see through. He tried to consider Balasar's analysis, but ended by staring at the plate of lemon fish and rice as if it were enthralling.
Because he had been hoping for a moment's peace, he'd chosen to eat his little meal in one of the low halls at the back of the palace. The stone floor and simple, unadorned plaster walls made it seem more like the common room of a small wayhouse than the center of empire. That was part of its appeal. The shutters were open on the garden behind it: crawling lavender, starfall rose, mint, and, without warning, Danat, in a formally cut robe of deep blue hot with yellow, blood running from his nose to cover his mouth and chin. Otah put down the bowl.
Danat stalked into the hall and halfway across it before he noticed that a table was occupied. He hesitated, then took a pose of greeting. The fingers of his right hand were scarlet where he had tried to stanch the flow and failed. Otah didn't recall having stood. His expression must have been alarmed, because Danat smiled and shook his head.
"It's not bad," he said. "Just messy. I didn't want to come through the larger halls."
"What happened?"
"I have met my rival," Danat said. "Hanchat Dor."
"There's blood? There's blood between you?"
"No," Danat said. "Well, technically yes, I suppose. But no."
He lowered himself to sit at the table where Otah's food lay abandoned. There was a carafe of water and a porcelain bowl. As Otah sat, his boy wet one of his sleeves and set about wiping the blood from around his grin. Otah's first violent impulses to protect his son and punish his assailant were disarmed by that smile. Not conquered, but disarmed.
"He and Ana-cha were haunting the path between the palaces and the poet's house, just before the pond," Danat said. "We had words. He took some exception to our demand that Ana-cha apologize. He suggested that I should feel honored to have breathed the same air as his darling chipmunk. Seriously, Papa. `Darling chipmunk."'
"It might be a Galtic endearment," he said, trying to match his son's light tone.
Danat waved the thought away. It would be no more dignified, Otah admitted to himself, because a whole culture said it. Danat went on.
"I said that my business wasn't with him, but with Ana-cha. He began declaiming something in rhymed verse about him and his love being one flesh. Ana-cha told him to stop, but he only started bellowing it."
"How did Ana-cha react?"
Danat's grin widened. Blood had pinked his teeth.
"She seemed a bit embarrassed. I began speaking to her as if he weren't there. And ..."
Danat shrugged.
"He hit you?"
"I may have goaded him," Danat said. "A little."
Otah sat back, stunned. Danat raised his hands to a pose appropriate to the announcement of victory in a game. Otah let himself smile too, but there was a touch of melancholy behind it. His son was no longer the ill, fragile child he'd known. That boy was gone. In his place was a young man with the same instinct to rough-and-tumble as any number of young men. The same as Otah had suffered once himself. It was so easy to forget.
"I had the palace armsmen throw him in a cell," Danat said. "I've set a guard on him in case anyone decides to defend my abused dignity by killing him."
"Yes, that would complicate things," Otah agreed.
"Ana followed the whole way shrieking, but she was as angry at Hanchat-cha as at me. Once I get to looking a bit less like an apprentice showfighter's first night, I'm sending an invitation to Ana-cha for a formal dinner at which we can further discuss her poor treatment of our hospitality. And then I'm going to meet my new lover."
"Your new lover?"
"Shija Radaani has offered to play the role. I think she was flattered to be asked. Issandra-cha is adamant that nothing makes a man worth having like another woman smiling at him."
"Issandra-cha is a dangerous woman," Otah said.
"She is," Danat agreed.
They laughed together for a moment. Otah was the first to sober.
"Will it work, do you think?" he asked. "Can it be done?"
"Can I win Ana's heart and make her want what she's professed before everyone of power in two empires that she hates?" Danat said. Saying it that way, he sounded like his mother. "I don't know. And I can't say what I feel about the way it's happening. I'm plotting against her. Her own mother is plotting against her. I feel that I ought to disapprove. That it isn't honest. And yet ..."