once-father's hand trembled as if uneased by the presence of genuine
feeling. He leaned hack into his black lacquer seat and motioned for a
servant to bring him a bowl of tea. At the front of the temple, the
priest chanted on.
When the last word was sung, the last chime struck, bearers came and
lifted her husband's body. The slow procession began, moving through the
streets to the pealing of hand bells and the wailing of flutes. In the
central square, the pyre was ready-great logs of pine stinking of oil
and within them a bed of hard, hot-burning coal from the mines. Biitrah
was lifted onto it and a shroud of tight metal links placed over him to
hide the sight when his skin peeled from his noble bones. It was her
place now to step forward and begin the conflagration. She moved slowly.
All eyes were on her, and she knew what they were thinking. Poor woman,
to have been left alone. Shallow sympathies that would have been
extended as readily to the wives of the Khai Machi's other sons, had
their men been under the metal blanket. And in those voices she heard
also the excitement, dread, and anticipation that these bloody paroxysms
carried. When the empty, insincere words of comfort were said, in the
same breath they would move on to speculations. Both of Biitrah's
brothers had vanished. Danat, it was said, had gone to the mountains
where he had a secret force at the ready, or to Lachi in the south to
gather allies, or to ruined Saraykeht to hire mercenaries, or to the
Dai-kvo to seek the aid of the poets and the andat. Or he was in the
temple, gathering his strength, or he was cowering in the basement of a
low town comfort house, too afraid to come to the streets. And every
story they told of him, they also told of Kaiin.
It had begun. At long last, after years of waiting, one of the men who
might one day be Khai Machi had made his move. The city waited for the
drama to unfold. This pyre was only the opening for them, the first
notes of some new song that would make this seem to be about something
honorable, comprehensible, and right.
Hiami took a pose of thanks and accepted a lit torch from the
firekeeper. She stepped to the oil-soaked wood. A dove fluttered past
her, landed briefly on her husband's chest, and then flew away again.
She felt herself smile to see it go. She touched the flame to the small
kindling and stepped back as the fire took. She waited there as long as
tradition required and then went back to the Second Palace. Let the
others watch the ashes. "Their song might be starting, but hers here had
ended.
Her servant girl was waiting for her at the entrance of the palace's
great hall. She held a pose of welcome that suggested there was some
news waiting for her. Hiami was tempted to ignore the nuance, to walk
through to her chambers and her fire and bed and the knotwork scarf that
was now nearly finished. But there were tear-streaks on the girl's
cheeks, and who was Hiami, after all, to treat a suffering child
unkindly? She stopped and took a pose that accepted the welcome before
shifting to one of query.
"Idaan Machi," the servant girl said. "She is waiting for you in the
summer garden."
Hiami shifted to a pose of thanks, straightened her sleeves, and walked
quietly down the palace halls. The sliding stone doors to the garden
were open, a breeze too cold to be comfortable moving through the hall.
And there, by an empty fountain surrounded by bare-limbed cherry trees,
sat her once-sister. If her formal robes were not the pale of mourning,
her countenance contradicted them: reddened eyes, paint and powder
washed away. She was a plain enough woman without them, and Hiami felt
sorry for her. It was one thing to expect the violence. It was another
to see it done.
She stepped forward, her hands in a pose of greeting. Idaan started to
her feet as if she'd been caught doing something illicit, but then she
took an answering pose. Hiami sat on the fountain's stone lip, and Idaan
lowered herself, sitting on the ground at her feet as a child might.
"Your things are packed," Idaan said.
"Yes. I'll leave tomorrow. It's weeks to "Ian-Sadar. It won't be so
hard, I think. One of my daughters is married there, and my brother is a
decent man. They'll treat me well while I make arrangements for my own
apartments."
"It isn't fair," Idaan said. "They shouldn't force you out like this.
You belong here."
"It's tradition," Hiami said with a pose of surrender. "Fairness has
nothing to do with it. My husband is dead. I will return to my father's
house, whoever's actually sitting in his chair these days."
"If you were a merchant, no one would require anything like that of you.
You could go where you pleased, and do what you wanted."
"True, but I'm not, am I? I was born to the utkhaiem. You were horn to a
Khai."
"And women," Idaan said. Hiami was surprised by the venom in the word.
"We were born women, so we'll never even have the freedoms our brothers do."
Hiami laughed. She couldn't help herself, it was all so ridiculous. She
took her once-sister's hand and leaned forward until their foreheads
almost touched. Idaan's tear-red eyes shifted to meet her gaze.
"I don't think the men in our families consider themselves unconstrained
by history," she said, and Idaan's expression twisted with chagrin.
"I wasn't thinking," she said. "I didn't mean that ... Gods ... I'm
sorry, Hiami-kya. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry ..."
Hiami opened her arms, and the girl fell into them, weeping. Hiami
rocked her slowly, cooing into her ear and stroking her hair as if she
were comforting a babe. And as she did, she looked around the gardens.
This would be the last time she saw them. "Thin tendrils of green were
rising from the soil. The trees were bare, but their bark had an
undertone of green. Soon it would be warm enough to turn on the fountains.
She felt her sorrow settle deep, an almost physical sensation. She
understood the tears of the young that were even now soaking her robes
at the shoulder. She would come to understand the tears of age in time.
They would be keeping her company. There was no need to hurry.
At length, Idaan's sobs grew shallower and less frequent. The girl
pulled back, smiling sheepishly and wiping her eyes with the back of her
hand.
"I hadn't thought it would be this had," Idaan said softly. "I knew it
would be hard, but this is ... How did they do it?"
"Who, dear?"
"All of them. All through the generations. How did they bring themselves
to kill each other?"
"I think," Hiami said, her words seeming to come from the new sorrow
within her and not from the self she had known, "that in order to become
one of the Khaiem, you have to stop being able to love. So perhaps
Biitrah's tragedy isn't the worst that could have happened."
Idaan hadn't followed the thought. She took a pose of query.
"Winning this game may be worse than losing it, at least for the sort of
man he was. He loved the world too much. Seeing that love taken from him
would have been had. Seeing him carry the deaths of his brothers with
him ... and he wouldn't have been able to go slogging through the mines.
He would have hated that. He would have been a very poor Khai Maehi."
"I don't think I love the world that way," Idaan said.
"You don't, Idaan-kya," Hiami said. "And just now I don't either. But I
will try to. I will try to love things the way he did."
They sat a while longer, speaking of things less treacherous. In the
end, they parted as if it were just another absence before them, as if
there would be another meeting on another day. A more appropriate
farewell would have ended with them both in tears again.
The leave-taking ceremony before the Khai was more formal, but the
emptiness of it kept it from unbalancing her composure. He sent her back
to her family with gifts and letters of gratitude, and assured her that
she would always have a place in his heart so long as it beat. Only when
he enjoined her not to think ill of her fallen husband for his weakness
did her sorrow threaten to shift to rage, but she held it down. They
were only words, spoken at all such events. They were no more about
Biitrah than the protestations of loyalty she now recited were about
this hollow-hearted man in his black lacquer seat.
After the ceremony, she went around the palaces, conducting more
personal farewells with the people whom she'd come to know and care for
in Nlachi, and just as dark fell, she even slipped out into the streets
of the city to press a few lengths of silver or small jewelry into the
hands of a select few friends who were not of the utkhaiem. There were
tears and insincere promises to follow her or to one day bring her hack.
Hiam] accepted all these little sorrows with perfect grace. Little
sorrows were, after all, only little.
She lay sleepless that last night in the bed that had seen all her
nights since she had first come to the north, that had borne the doubled
weight of her and her husband, witnessed the birth of their children and
her present mourning, and she tried to think kindly of the bed, the
palace, the city and its people. She set her teeth against her tears and
tried to love the world. In the morning, she would take a flatboat down
the 'Fidat, slaves and servants to carry her things, and leave behind
forever the bed of the Second Palace where people did everything but die
gently and old in their sleep.
Maati took a pose that requested clarification. In another context, it
would have risked annoying the messenger, but this time the servant of
the Dai-kvo seemed to be expecting a certain level of disbelief. Without
hesitation, he repeated his words.
"The Dai-kvo requests Maati Vaupathai come immediately to his private
chambers."
It was widely understood in the shining village of the Dai-kvo that
Maati Vaupathai was, if not a failure, certainly an embarrassment. Over
the years he had spent in the writing rooms and lecture halls, walking
the broad, clean streets, and huddled with others around the kilns of
the firekeepers, Maati had grown used to the fact that he would never be
entirely accepted by those who surrounded him; it had been eight years
since the Dai-kvo had deigned to speak to him directly. Maati closed the
brown leather book he had been studying and slipped it into his sleeve.
He took a pose that accepted the message and announced his readiness.
The white-robed messenger turned smartly and led the way.
The village that was home to the [)a]-kvo and the poets was always
beautiful. Now in the middle spring, flowers and ivies scented the air
and threatened to overflow the well-tended gardens and planters, but no
stray grass rose between the paving stones. The gentle choir of wind
chimes filled the air. The high, thin waterfall that fell beside the
palaces shone silver, and the towers and garrets-carved from the
mountain face itself-were unstained even by the birds that roosted in
the eaves. Men spent lifetimes, Nlaati knew, keeping the village
immaculate and as impressive as a Khai on his scat. The village and
palaces seemed as grand as the great bowl of sky above them. His years
living among the men of the village-only men, no women were
permitted-had never entirely robbed Nlaati of his awe at the place. He
struggled now to hold himself tall, to appear as calm and self-possessed
as a man summoned to the Dai-kvo regularly. As he passed through the
archways that led to the palace, he saw several messengers and more than
a few of the brown-robed poets pause to look at him.
He was not the only one who found his presence there strange.
The servant led him through the private gardens to the modest apartments
of the most powerful man in the world. Maati recalled the last time he
had been there-the insults and recriminations, the Daikvo's scorching
sarcasm, and his own certainty and pride crumbling around him like sugar
castles left out in the rain. Maati shook himself. There was no reason
for the I)ai-kvo to have called him back to repeat the indignities of
the past.
There are always the indignities of the future, the soft voice that had
become Maati's muse said from a corner of his mind. Never assume you can
survive the future because you've survived the past. Everyone thinks
that, and they've all been wrong eventually.
The servant stopped before the elm-and-oak-inlaid door that led, Maati
remembered, to a meeting chamber. He scratched it twice to announce
them, then opened the door and motioned Maati in. Maati breathed deeply