THE (tlpq-4) (8 page)

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