distracting here as in his rooms. Three times on the walk here, his
sleeves heavy with paper and books, he'd been grabbed by some masked
reveler and kissed. Twice, bowls of sweet wine had been forced into his
hand. The palaces were a riot of dancing and song, and despite his best
intentions, the memory of those three kisses drew his attention. It
would be sweet to go out, to lose himself in that crowd, to find some
woman willing to dance with him, and to take comfort in her body and her
breath. It had been years since he had let himself be so young as that.
He turned himself to his puzzle. Danat, the man destined to be Khai
Machi, had seemed the most likely to have engineered the rumors of
Otah's return. Certainly he had gained the most. Kahn Machi, whose death
had already given Maati three kisses, was the other possibility. Until
he dug in. He had asked the servants and the slaves of each household
every question he could think of. No, none of them recalled any
consultations with a man who matched the assassin's description. No,
neither man had sent word or instruction since Maati's own arrival. He'd
asked their social enemies what they knew or guessed or speculated on.
Kahn Machi had been a weak-lunged man, pale of face and watery of eye.
He'd had a penchant for sleeping with servant girls, but hadn't even
gotten a child on one-likely because he was infertile. Danat was a bully
and a sneak, a man whose oaths meant nothing to him-and the killing of
noble, scholarly Kaiin showed that. Danat's triumph was the best of all
possible outcomes or else the worst.
Searching for conspiracy in court gossip was like looking for raindrops
in a thunderstorm. Everyone he spoke to seemed to have four or five
suggestions of what might have happened, and of those, each half
contradicted the other. By far, the most common assumption was that Otah
had been the essential villain in all of it.
Nlaati had diagrammed the relationships of Danat and Kaiin with each of
the high families-Kamau, Daikani, Radaani and a dozen more. Then with
the great trading houses, with mistresses and rumored mistresses and the
teahouses they liked best. At one point he'd even listed which horses
each preferred to ride. The sad truth was that despite all these facts,
all these words scribbled onto papers, referenced and checked, nothing
pointed to either man as the author of Biitrah's death, the attempt on
Maati's own life, or the slaughter of the assassin. He was either too
dimwitted to see the pattern before him, it was too well hidden, or he
was looking in the wrong place. Clearly neither man had been present in
the city to direct the last two attacks, and there seemed to be no
supporters in Machi who had managed the plans for them.
Nor was there any reason to attack him. Nlaati had been on the verge of
exposing Otah-kvo. That was in everyone's best interest, barring Otah's.
Maati closed his eyes, sighed, then opened them again, gathered up the
pages of his notes and laid them out again, as if seeing them in a
different pattern might spark something.
Drunken song burst from the side room to his left, and Baarath, li
brarian of Machi, stumbled in, grinning. His face was flushed, and he
smelled of wine and something stronger. He threw open his arms and
strode unevenly to Maati, embracing him like a brother.