protect my city."
"I understand, most high."
"You do not, Maati-cha. The spring roses are starting to bloom, and I
will not see high summer. Neither of us has the luxury of time."
THE GATHERING WAS ALL THAT CEHMAI HAD HOPED FOR, AND LESS. SPRING
breezes washed the pavilion with the scent of fresh flowers. Kilns set
along the edges roared behind the music of reed organ, flute, and drum.
Overhead, the stars shone like gems strewn on dark velvet. The long
months of winter had given musicians time to compose and practice new
songs, and the youth of the high families week after weary week to tire
of the cold and dark and the terrible constriction that deep winter
brought to those with no business to conduct on the snow.
Cehmai laughed and clapped time with the music and danced. Women and
girls caught his eye, and he, theirs. The heat of youth did where
heavier robes would otherwise have been called for, and the draw of body
to body filled the air with something stronger than the perfume of
flowers. Even the impending death of the Khai lent an air of license.
Momentous things were happening, the world's order was changing, and
they were young enough to find the thought romantic.
And yet he could not enjoy it.
A young man in an eagle's mask pressed a bowl of hot wine into his hand,
and spun away into the dance. Cehmai grinned, sipped at it, and faded
back to the edge of the pavilion. In the shadows behind the kilns,
Stone-Made-Soft stood motionless. Cehmai sat beside it, put the bowl on
the grass, and watched the revelry. Two young men had doffed their robes
entirely and were sprinting around the wide grounds in nothing but their
masks and long scarves trailing from their necks. The andat shifted like
the first shudder of a landslide, then was still again. When it spoke,
its voice was so soft that they would not be heard by the others.
"It wouldn't he the first time the Dai-kvo had lied."
"Or the first time I'd wondered why," Cehmai said. "It's his to decide
what to say and to whom."
"And yours?"
"And mine to satisfy my curiosity. You heard what he said to the
overseer in the mines. If he truly didn't want me to know, he would have
lied better. Maati-kvo is looking into more than the library, and that's
certain."
The andat sighed. Stone-blade-Soft had no more need of breath than did a
mountainside. The exhalation could only be a comment. Cehmai felt the
subject of their conversation changing even before the andat spoke.
"She's come."
And there, dressed black as rooks and pale as mourning, Idaan Machi
moved among the dancers. Her mask hid only part of her face and not her
identity. Wrapped as he was by the darkness, she did not see him. Cehmai
felt a lightening in his breast as he watched her move through the
crowd, greeting friends and looking, he thought, for something or
perhaps someone among them. She was not beautiful-well painted, but any
number of the girls and women were more nearly perfect. She was not the
most graceful, or the best spoken, or any of the hundred things that
Cehmai thought of when he tried to explain to himself why this girl
should fascinate him. The closest he could come was that she was
interesting, and none of the others were.
"It won't end well," the andat murmured.
"It hasn't begun," Cehmai said. "How can something end when it hasn't
even started?"
Stone-blade-Soft sighed again, and Cehmai rose, tugging at his robes to
smooth their lines. The music had paused and someone in the crowd
laughed long and high.
"Come back when you've finished and we'll carry on our conversation,"
the andat said.
Cchmai ignored the patience in its voice and strode forward, back into
the light. The reed organ struck a chord just as he reached Idaan's
side. He brushed her arm, and she turned-first annoyed and then
surprised and then, he thought, pleased.
"Idaan-cha," he said, the exaggerated formality acting as its opposite
without taking him quite into the intimacy that the kya suffix would
have suggested. "I'd almost thought you wouldn't be joining us."
"I almost wasn't," she said. "I hadn't thought you'd be here."
The organ set a beat, and the drums picked it up; the dance was
beginning again. Cehmai held out a hand and, after a pause that took a
thousand years and lasted perhaps a breath, Idaan took it. The music
began in earnest, and Cehmai spun her, took her under his arm, and was
turned by her. It was a wild tune, rich and fast with a rhythm like a
racing heart. Around him the others were grinning, though not at him.
Idaan laughed, and he laughed with her. The paving stones beneath them
seemed to echo hack the song, and the sky above them received it.
As they turned to face each other, he could see the flush in Idaan's
check, and felt the same blood in his own, and then the music whirled
them off again.
In the center of the frenzy, someone took Cehmai's elbow from behind,
and something round and hard was pressed into his hands. A man's voice
whispered urgently in his ear.
"Hold this."
Cehmai faltered, confused, and the moment was gone. He was suddenly
standing alone in a throng of people, holding an empty bowl-a thread of
wine wetting the rim-while Adrah Vaunyogi took Idaan Machi through the
steps and turns of the dance. The pair shifted away from him, left him
behind. Cehmai felt the flush in his cheek brighten. He turned and
walked through the shifting bodies, handing the bowl to a servant as he
left.
"He is her lover," the andat said. "Everyone knows it."
"I don't," Cehmai said.
"I just told you."
"You tell me things all the time; it doesn't mean I agree to them."
"This thing you have in mind," Stone-Made-Soft said. "You shouldn't do it."
Cehmai looked up into the calm gray eyes set in the wide, placid face.
He felt his own head lift in defiance, even as he knew the words were
truth. It was stupid and mean and petty. Adrah Vaunyogi wasn't even
entirely in the wrong. There was a perspective by which the little
humiliation Cehmai had been dealt was a small price for flirting so
openly with another man's love.
And yet.
The andat nodded slowly and turned to consider the dancers. It was easy
enough to pick out Idaan and Adrah. They were too far for Cehmai to be
sure, but he liked to think she was frowning. It hardly mattered. Cehmai
focused on Adrah's movements-his feet, shifting in time with the drums
while Idaan danced to the flutes. He doubled his attention, feeling it
through his own body and also the constant storm at the hack of his
mind. In that instant he was both of them-a single being with two bodies
and a permanent struggle at the heart. And then, at just the moment when
Adrah's foot came hack to catch his weight, Cehmai reached out. The
paving stone gave way, the smooth stone suddenly soft as mud, and Adrah
stumbled backward and fell, landing on his rear, legs splayed. Cehmai
waited a moment for the stone to flow back nearer to smooth, then let
his consciousness return to its usual state. The storm that was
Stone-Made-Soft was louder, more present in his mind, like the proud
flesh where a thorn has scratched skin. And like a scratch, Cehmai knew
it would subside.
"We should go," Cehmai said, "before I'm tempted to do something childish."
The andat didn't answer, and Cehmai led the way through the nightdark
gardens. The music floated in the distance and then faded. Far from the
kilns and dancing, the night was cold-not freezing, but near it. But the
stars were brighter, and the moon glowed: a rim of silver that made the
starless thumbprint darker by contrast. They passed by the temple and
the counting house, the bathhouse and base of the great tower. The andat
turned down a side path then, and paused when Cehmai did not follow.
Stone-Made-Soft took a pose of query.
"Is this not where you were going?" it asked.
Cehmai considered, and then smiled.
"I suppose it is," he said, and followed the captive spirit down the
curving pathway and up the wide, shallow steps that led to the library.
The great stone doors were barred from within, but Cehmai followed the
thin gravel path at the side of the building, keeping close to the wall.
The windows of Baarath's apartments glowed with more than a night
candle's light. Even with the night half gone, he was awake. The door
slave was an ancient man, and Cehmai had to shake him by the shoulder
before he woke, retreated into the apartments, and returned to lead them in.
The apartments smelled of old wine, and the sandalwood resin that
Baarath burned in his brazier. The tables and couches were covered with
books and scrolls, and no cushion had escaped from some ink stain.
Baarath, dressed in deep red robes thick as tapestry, rose from his desk
and took a pose of welcome. His copper tore of office was lying
discarded on the floor at his feet.
"Cehmai-cha, to what do I owe this honor?"
Cehmai frowned. "Are you angry with me?" he asked.
"Of course not, great poet. How could a poor man of books dare to feel
angry with a personage like yourself?"
"Gods," Cehmai said as he shifted a pile of papers from a wide chair. "I
don't know, Baarath-kya. Do tell me."
"Kya? Oh, you are too familiar with me, great poet. I would not suggest
so deep a friendship as that with a man so humble as myself."
"You're right," Cehmai said, sitting. "I was trying to flatter you. Did
it work?"
"You should have brought wine," the stout man said, taking his own seat.
The false graciousness was gone, and a sour impatience in its place.
"And come at an hour when living men could talk business. Isn't it late
for you to be wandering around like a dazed rabbit?"
"There was a gathering at the rose pavilion. I was just going back to my
apartments and I noticed the lights burning."
Baarath made a sound between a snort and a cough. Stone-MadeSoft gazed
placidly at the marble walls, thoughtful as a lumberman judging the best
way to fell a tree. Cehmai frowned at him, and the andat replied with a
gesture more eloquent than any pose. Don't blame me. He's your friend,
not mine.
"I wanted to ask how things were proceeding with Maati Vaupathai,"
Cehmai said.
"About time someone took an interest in that annoying, feckless idiot.
I've met cows with more sense than he has."
"Not proceeding well, then?"
"Who can tell? Weeks, it's been. He's only here about half the morning,
and then he's off dining with the dregs of the court, taking meetings
with trading houses, and loafing about in the low towns. If I were the
Dai-kvo, I'd pull that man back home and set him to plowing fields. I've
eaten hens that were better scholars."
"Cows and hens. He'll be a whole farmyard soon," Cehmai said, but his
mind was elsewhere. "What does he study when he is here?"
"Nothing in particular. He picks up whatever strikes him and spends a
day with it, and then comes hack the next for something totally
unrelated. I haven't told him about the Khai's private archives, and he
hasn't bothered to ask. I was sure, you know, when he first came, that
he was after something in the private archives. But now it's like the
library itself might as well not exist."
"Perhaps there is some pattern in what he's looking at. A common thread
that places them all together."
"You mean maybe poor old Baarath is too simple to see the picture when
it's being painted for him? I doubt it. I know this place better than
any man alive. I've even made my own shelving system. I have read more
of these books and seen more of their relationships than anyone. When I
tell you he's wandering about like tree fluff on a breezy day, it's
because he is."
Cehmai tried to feel surprise, and failed. The library was only an
excuse. The Dai-kvo had sent Maati Vaupathai to examine the death of
Biitrah Machi. That was clear. Why he would choose to do so, was not. It
wasn't the poets' business to take sides in the succession, only to work
with-and sometimes cool the ambitions of-whichever son sur vived. The
Khaiem administered the city, accepted the glory and tribute, passed
judgment. The poets kept the cities from ever going to war one against
the other, and fueled the industries that brought wealth from the