like honey in sunlight.
But instead of slipping back into bed and sending out a servant for new
apples, old cheese, and sugared almonds, he'd strapped on his boots and
gone out to meet his obligations. His horse plodded along, flies buzzed
about his face, and the path turned away from the ore chute and looked
back toward the city.
There would be celebrations from now until Idaan's wedding to Adrah
Vaunyogi. Between those two joys-the finished succession and the
marriage of the high families-there would also be the preparations for
the Khai Machi's final ceremony. And, despite everything Maati-kvo had
done, likely the execution of Otah Machi in there as well. With as many
rituals and ceremonies as the city faced, they'd be lucky to get any
real work done before winter.
The yipping of the mine dogs brought him back to himself, and he
realized he'd been half-dozing for the last few switchbacks. He rubbed
his eyes with the heel of his palm. He would have to pull himself
together when they began working in earnest. It would help, he told
himself, to have some particular problem to set his mind to instead of
the tedium of travel. Thankfully, Stone-Made-Soft wasn't resisting him
today. The effort it would have taken to force the unwilling andat to do
as it was told could have pushed the day from merely unpleasant to awful.
They reached the mouth of the mine and were greeted by several workers
and minor functionaries. Cehmai dismounted and walked Unsteadily to the
wide table that had been set up for their consultations. His legs and
back and head ached. When the drawings and notes were laid out before
him, it took effort to turn his attention to them. His mind wandered off
to Idaan or his own discomfort or the mental windstorm that was the andat.
"We would like to join these two passages," the overseer was saying, his
fingers tracing lines on the maps. Cehmai had seen hundreds of sets of
plans like this, and his mind picked up the markings and translated them
into holes dug through the living rock of the mountain only slightly
less easily than usual. "The vein seems richest here and then here. Our
concern is-"
"My concern," the engineer broke in, "is not bringing half the mountain
down on us while we do it."
The structure of tunnels that honeycombed the mountain wasn't the most
complicated Cehmai had ever seen, but neither was it simple. The mines
around Machi were capable of a complexity difficult in the rest of the
world, mostly because he himself was not in the rest of the world, and
mines in the Westlands and Galt weren't interested in paying the Khai
Mach] for his services. The engineer made his casewhere the stone would
support the tunnels and where it would not. The overseer made his
counter-case-pointing out where the ores seemed richest. The decision
was left to him.
The servants gave them bowls of honeyed beef and sausages that tasted of
smoke and black pepper; a tart, sweet paste made from last year's
berries; and salted Hatbrcad. Cehmai ate and drank and looked at the
maps and drawings. Fie kept remembering the curve of Idaan's mouth, the
feeling of her hips against his own. He remembered her tears, her