felt her face flush, her hands ball into fists. She heard him groan from
the next room, heard his robes shushing against the stone floor. The bed
creaked.
A lifetime, married to him. There wouldn't be a moment in the years that
followed that would not be poisoned. He would never forgive her, and she
would never fail to hate him. They would go to their graves, each with
teeth sunk in the other's neck.
They were perfect for each other.
Idaan walked silently to the window, took down the blue silk and put up
the red.
THE ARMSMEN GAVE HIM ENOUGH WATER TO LIVE, THOUGH NOT SO MUCH AS to
slake his thirst. Almost enough food to live as well, though not quite.
He had no clothing but the rags he'd worn when he'd come back to Machi
and the cloak that Maati had brought. When dawn was coming near and the
previous day's heat had gone from the tower, he would be huddling in
that cloth. Through the day, sun heated the great tower, and that heat
rose. And as it rose, it grew. In his stone cage, Otah lay sweating as
if he'd been working at hard labor, his throat dry and his head pounding.
The towers of Machi, Otah had decided, were the stupidest buildings in
the world. Too cold in winter, too hot in summer, unpleasant to use,
exhausting to climb. They existed only to show that they could exist.
More and more of the time, his mind was in disarray; hunger and boredom,
the stifling heat and the growing presentiment of his own death
conspired to change the nature of time. Otah felt outside it all, apart
from the world and adrift. He had always been in this room; the memories
from before were like stories he'd heard told. He would always be in
this room unless he wriggled out the window and into the cool, open air.
Twice already he had dreamed that he'd leapt from the tower. Both times,
he woke in a panic. It was that as much as anything that kept him from
taking the one control left to him. When despair washed through him, he
remembered the dream of falling, with its shrill regret. He didn't want
to die. His ribs were showing, he was almost nauseated with thirst, his
mind would not slow down or be quiet. He was going to be put to death,
and he did not want to die.
The thought that his suffering saved Kiyan had ceased to comfort him.
Part of him was glad that he had not known how wretched his father's
treatment of him would be. He might have faltered. At least now he could
not run. He would lose-he had lost, and badly-but he could not run. Mai
sat on her chair-the tall, thin one with legs of woven cane that she'd
had in their island hut. When she spoke, it was in the soft liquid
sounds of her native language and too fast for Otah to follow. He
struggled, but when he croaked out that he couldn't understand her, his
own voice woke him until he drifted away again into nothing, troubled
only by the conviction that he could hear rats chewing through the stone.
The shriek woke him completely. He sat upright, his arms trembling. The
room was real again, unoccupied by visions. Outside the great door, he
heard someone shout, and then something heavy pounded once against the
door, shaking it visibly. Otah rose. There were voices-new ones. After
so many days, he knew the armsmen by their rhythms and the timbre of