the walls-that the twice-damned Galts overlooked. Regardless, it's where
it all began. It's where we are going to take it all back."
3
The voyage returning Otah to the cities of the Khaiem took weeks to
prepare, and if the ships that had left Saraykeht all those months
before had looked like an invading fleet, the ones returning were a city
built on the water. The high-masted Galtic ships with their great
billowing sails dyed red and blue and gold took to the sea by the
dozens. Every great family of Galt seemed bent on sending a ship greater
than the others. The ships of the utkhaiem-lacquered and delicate and
low to the water-seemed small and awkward beside these, their newest
seafaring cousins. Birds circled above them, screaming confusion as if a
part of the coast itself had set out for foreign lands. The trees and
hills of Otah's onetime enemies fell away behind them. That first night,
the torches and lanterns made the sea appear as full of stars as the sky.
One of the small gifts the gods had granted Otah was a fondness for
travel by ship. The shifting of the deck under his feet, the vast scent
of the ocean, the call of the gulls were like visiting a place he had
once lived. He stood at the prow of the great Galtic ship given him by
the High Council for his journey home and looked out at the rising sun.
He had spent years in the eastern islands as a boy. He'd been a middling
fisherman, a better midwife's assistant, a good sailor. He had come
close to marrying an island woman, and still bore the first half of the
marriage tattoo on his breast. The ink had faded and spread over the
years as if he were a parchment dropped in water. With the slap of waves
against wood, the salt-laden air, the morning light dancing gold and
rose on the water, he remembered those days.
This late in the morning, he would already have cast his nets. His
fingers would have been numbed by the cold. He would have been eating
the traditional breakfast of fish paste and nuts from an earthenware
jar. The men he had known would be doing the same today, those who were
still alive. In another life, another world, he might be doing it still.
He had lived so many lives: half-starved street child; petty thief;
seafront laborer; fisherman; assistant midwife; courier; Khai; husband;
father; war leader; emperor. Put in a line that way, he could see how
another person might imagine his life to be an unending upward spiral,
but it didn't feel that way to him. He had done what he'd had to at the
time. One thing had led to another. A man without particular ambition
had been placed atop the world, and likewise the world had been placed
atop him. And against all probability, he found himself here, wearing
the richest robes in the cities, with a private cabin larger than some
boats he'd worked, and thinking fondly of fish paste and nuts.
Lost in thought, he heard the little ship's boat hail-a booming voice
speaking Galtic words-before he knew it was approaching. The watchman of
his own vessel replied, and then the landsman's chair descended. Otah
watched idly as a man in the colors of House Dasin was winched up, swung
over, and lowered to the deck. A knot of Otah's own clerks and servants
formed around the newcomer. Otah pulled his hands up into his sleeves
and made his way back.
The boy was a servant of some sort-the Galts had a system of gradation
that Otah hadn't bothered to memorize-with hair the color of beach sand
and a greenish tint to his face. Seeing Otah, the servant took a pose of
abject obeisance poorly.
"Most High," he said, his words heavily inflected, "Councilman Dasin
sends his regards. He and his wife extend the invitation to a dinner and
concert aboard the Avenger tomorrow evening."
The boy gulped and looked down. There had, no doubt, been a more formal
and flowery speech planned. Nausea led to brevity. Otah glanced at his
Master of Tides, a youngish woman with a face like a hatchet and a mind
for detail that would have served her in any trade. She took a pose that
deferred to Otah's judgment, gave permission, and offered to make excuse
all with a single gesture. Dasin's servant wouldn't have seen a third of
her meanings. Otah glanced over at the shining water. The sun's angle
had already shifted, the light already changed its colors and the colors
of the ocean that bore them. He allowed himself a small sigh.
Even here there would be no escape from it. Etiquette and court
politics, parties and private audiences, favors asked and given. There
was no end of it because of course there wasn't. No more than a farmer
could stop planting fields, a fisherman stop casting nets, a tradesman
close up warehouses and stalls and spend long days singing in teahouses
or soaking in baths.
"I should be pleased," he said. "Please convey my gratitude to Farrercha
and his family."
The boy bowed his thanks rather than make a formal pose, then, blushing,
adopted a pose of gratitude and retreated back to the landsman's chair.
With a great shouting and the creak of wood and leather, the chair rose,
swung out over the water, and descended. Otah watched the boy vanish
over the rail, but didn't see him safely to the boat. The invitation was
a reminder of all that waited for him in his cabin below decks. Otah
took a long, deep breath, feeling the salt and the sunlight in his
lungs, and descended to the endless business of Empire.
Letters had arrived from Yalakeht outlining a conspiracy by three of the
high families of the utkhaiem still bitter from the war to claim
independence and name a Khai Yalakeht rather than acknowledge a Galtic
empress. Chaburi-Tan had suffered another attack by pirates. Though the
invaders had been driven off, it was becoming clear that the Westlands
mercenary company hired to protect the city was also in negotiation with
the raiders; the city's economy was on the edge of collapse.
There was some positive news from the palaces at Utani. Danat wrote that
the low farms around Pathai, Utani, and Lachi were all showing a good
crop, and the cattle plague they'd feared had come to nothing, so those
three cities, at least, wouldn't be starving for at least the next year.
Otah read until the servants brought his midday meal, then again for two
and a half hands. He slept after that in a suspended cot whose oiled
chains shifted with the rocking ship but never let out so much as a
whisper. He woke with the low sunlight of evening sloping in the cabin
window and the dull thunder of feet above him announcing the change of
watch as clearly as the drum and flute. He lay there for a moment, his
mind pleasantly emptied by his rest, then swung his legs over, dropped
to the deck, and composed two of the seven letters he would send ahead
of the massive, celebratory fleet.
WHEN, THE NEXT EVENING, HIS MASTER OF TIDES SENT TO REMIND HIM OF the
engagement he'd agreed to, Otah had indeed forgotten it. He allowed
servants to dress him in robes of emerald silk and cloth of gold, his
long, white hair to be bound back. His temples were anointed with oils
smelling of lavender and sandalwood. Decades now he had been Emperor or
else Khai Machi, and the exercise still struck him as ridiculous. He had
been slow to understand the value of ceremony and tradition. He still
wasn't entirely convinced.
The boat that bore him and his retinue across to the Dasins' ship, the
Avenger, was festooned with flowers and torches. Blossoms fell into the
water, floating there with the reflections of flame. Otah stood,
watching as the oarsmen pulled him toward the great warship. His footing
was as sure as a seaman's, and he was secretly proud of the fact. The
high members of the utkhaiem who had joined him-Auna Tiyan, Piyat Saya,
and old Adaut Kamau-all kept to their benches. The Avenger itself glowed
with candlelight, the effect lessened by the last remnant of the
glorious sunset behind it. When full darkness came, the ship would look
like something from a children's story. Otah tried to appreciate it for
what it would become.
The landsman's chair took each of them up in turn, Otah last out of
respect for his rank. The deck of the Avenger was as perfect and
controlled as any palace ballroom, any Khaiate garden, any high chamber
of the Galts. Chairs that seemed made of silver filigree and breath were
scattered over the fresh-scrubbed boards in patterns that looked both
careless and perfect. Musicians played reed organ and harp, and a small
chorus of singers sat in the rigging, as if the ship itself had joined
the song. Swinging down in the landsman's chair, Otah saw half-a-dozen
men he knew, including, his face upturned and amused, Balasar Gice.
Farrer Dasin stood with his wife Issandra and the young woman-the
girl-Ana. Otah let himself be drawn up from the chair by his servants,
and stepped forward to his hosts. Farrer stood stiff as cast iron, his
smile never reaching his eyes. Issandra's eyes still had the reddened
rims that Otah recalled, but there was also pleasure there. And her
daughter ...
Ana Dasin, the Galt who would one day be Empress of the Khaiem, reminded
Otah of a rabbit. Her huge, brown eyes and small mouth looked
perpetually startled. She wore a gown of blue as pale as a robin's egg
that didn't fit her complexion and a necklace of raw gold that did. She
would have seemed meek, except that there was something of her mother in
the line of her jaw and the set of her shoulders.
All he knew of her had come from court gossip, Balasar Gice's comments,
and the trade of formal documents that had flowed by the crate once the
agreements were made. It was difficult to believe that this was the girl
who had beaten her own tutor at numbers or written a private book of
etiquette that had been the scandal of its season. She was said to have
ridden horses from the age of four; she was said to have insulted the
son of an ambassador from Eddensea to his face and gone on to make her
case so clearly that the insulted boy had offered apology. She had
climbed out windows on ropes made from stripped tapestry, had climbed
the walls of the palaces of Acton dressed as an urchin boy, had broken
the hearts of men twice her age. Or, again, perhaps she had not. He had
heard a great deal about her, and knew nothing he could count as truth.
It was to her he made his first greeting.
"Ana-cha," he said. "I hope I find you well."
"Thank you, Most High," she said, her voice so soft, Otah halfwondered
whether he'd understood. "And you also."
"Emperor," Farrer Dasin said in his own language.
"Councilman Dasin," Otah said. "You are kind to invite me."
Farrer's nod made it clear that he would have preferred not to. The
singers above them reached the end of one song, paused, and launched
into another. Issandra stepped forward smiling and rested her hand on
Otah's arm.
"Forgive my husband," she said. "He was never fond of shipboard life.
And he spent seven years as a sailor."
"I hadn't known that," Otah said.
"Fighting Eymond," the councilman said. "Sank twelve of their ships.
Burned their harbor at Cathir."
Otah smiled and nodded. He wondered how his own history as a fisherman
would be received if he shared it now. He chose to leave the subject behind.
"The weather is treating us gently," Otah said. "We will be in Saraykeht
before summer's end."
He could see in all their faces that it had been the wrong thing. The
father's jaw tightened, his nostrils flared. The mother's smile lost its
sharp corners and her eyes grew sad. Ana looked away.
"Come see what they've done with the kitchens, Most High," Issandra
said. "It's really quite remarkable."
After a short tour of the ship, Issandra released him, and Otah made his
way to the dais that was intended for him. Other guests arrived from
Galtic ships and the utkhaiem, each new person greeting the councilman
and his family, and then coming to Otah. He had expected to see a
division among them: the Galts resentful and full of barely controlled
rage much like Fatter Dasin, and Otah's own people pleased at the
prospects that his treaty opened for them. Instead, he saw as the guests
came and went, as the banquet was served, as priests of Galt intoned
their celebratory rites, that opinions were more varied and more complex.
At the opening ceremony, the divisions were clear. Here, the robes of
the Khaiem, there the tunics and gowns of the Galts. But very quickly,
the people on the deck began to shift. Small groups fell into
discussion, often no more than two or three people. Otah's practiced eye
could pick out the testing smile and almost flirtatious laughter of men
on the verge of negotiation. And as the evening progressed-candles
burning down and being replaced, slow courses of wine and fish and meat
and pastry making their way from the very cleverly built kitchens to the
gently shifting deck-as many Galts as utkhaiem had the glint in their
eyes that spoke of sensed opportunity. Larger groups formed and broke
apart, the proportions of their two nations seeming almost even. Otah
felt as if he'd stirred a muddy pool and was now seeing the first
outlines of the new forms that it might take.
And yet, some groups were unmoved. Two clusters of Galts never budged or
admitted in anyone wearing robes, but also a fair-sized clot of people
of the cities of the Khaiem sat near the far rail, their backs to the
celebration, their conversation almost pointedly relying on court poses
too subtle for foreigners to follow.
Women, Otah noted. The people of his nation whose anger was clearest in
their bodies and speech tended to be women. He thought of Eiah, and cool
melancholy touched his heart. Trafficking in wombs, she would have
called it. To her, this agreement would be the clearest and most nearly
final statement that what mattered about the women of the cities-about
his own daughter-was whether they could bear. He could hear her voice
saying it, could see the pain in the way she held her chin. He murmured
his counterarguments, as if she were there, as if she could hear him.
It wasn't a turning away, only an acknowledgment of what they all knew.
The woman of the Khaiem were just as clever, just as strong, just as
important as they had ever been. The brokering of marriage-and yes,
specifically marriage bent on producing children-was no more an attack
on Eiah and her generation than building city militias or hiring
mercenary companies or any of the other things he had done to hold the
cities safe had been.
It sounded patronizing, even to him.
There had to be some way, he thought, to honor and respect the pain and
the loss that they had suffered without forfeiting the future. He