makes me feel better is when I can do it with you. Isn't that strange?"
Cchmai rode tip the wide track, switchbacking up the side of the
mountain. The ore chute ran straight from the mine halfway up the
mountain's face to the carter's base at its foot. When the path turned
toward it, Cchmai considered the broad beams and pillars that held the
chute smooth and even down the rough mountainside. When they turned
away, he looked south to where the towers of Machi stood like reeds in
the noonday sun. His head ached.
"We do appreciate your coming, Cehmai-cha," the mine's engineer said
again. "With the new Khai come home, we thought everyone would put
business off for a few days."
Cchmai didn't bother taking a pose accepting the thanks as he had the
first few times. Repetition had made it clear that the gratitude was
less than wholly sincere. He only nodded and angled his horse around the
next bend, swinging around to a view of the ore chute.
There were six of them; Cchmai and Stone-blade-Soft, the mine's
engineer, the overseer with the diagrams and contracts in a leather
satchel on his hip, and two servants to carry the water and food.
Normally there would have been twice as many people. Cehmai wondered how
many miners would he in the tunnels, then found he didn't particularly
care, and returned to contemplating the ore chute and his headache.
They had left before dawn, trekking to the Raadani mines. It had been
arranged weeks before, and business and money carried a momentum that
even stone didn't. A landslide might overrun a city, but it only went
down. Something had to have tremendous power to propel something as
tired and heavy as he felt up the mountainside. Something in the back of
his mind twitched at the thought-attention shifting of its own accord
like an extra limb moving without his willing it.
"Stop," Cehmai snapped.
The overseer and engineer hesitated for a moment before Cehmai
understood their confusion.
"Not you," he said and gestured to Stone-Made-Soft. "Him. He was judging
what it would take to start a landslide."
"Only as an exercise," the andat said, its low voice sounding both hurt
and insincere. "I wasn't going to do it."
The engineer looked up the slope with an expression that suggested
Cehmai might not hear any more false thanks. Cehmai felt a spark of
vindictive pleasure at the man's unease and saw Stone-Made-Soft's lips
thin so slightly that no other man alive would have recognized the smile.
Idaan had spent the first night of the festival with him, weeping and
laughing, taking comfort and coupling until they had both fallen asleep
in the middle of their pillow talk. The night candle had hardly burned
down a full quarter mark when the servant had come, tapping on his door
to wake him. He'd risen for the trek to the mines, and Idaan- alone in
his bed-had turned, wrapping his bedclothes about her naked body, and
watched him as if afraid he would tell her to leave. By the time he had
found fresh robes, her eyelids had closed again and her breath was deep
and slow. He'd paused for a moment, considering her sleeping face. With
the paint worn off and the calm of sleep, she looked younger. Her lips,