"He's been up to the task," Kiyan said.
"Well, I've come to make things worse. We've just had a runner from the
city, Otah-cha. It appears you've murdered your father in his sleep.
Your brother Danat led a hunting party bent on bringing back your head
on a stick, but apparently you've killed him too. You're running out of
family, Otah-cha."
"Ah," Otah said, and then a moment later. "I think perhaps I should lie
down now."
They burned the Khai Machi and his son together in the yard outside the
temple. The head priest wore his hale robes, the hood pulled low over
his eyes in respect, and tended the flames. Thick, black smoke rose from
the pyre and vanished into the air high above the city. A~Iachi had
woken from its revels to find the world worse than when they'd begun,
and Cehmai saw it in every face he passed. A thousand of them at least
stood in the afternoon sun. Shock and sorrow, confusion and fear.
And excitement. In a few eyes among the utkhaicm, he saw the bright eyes
and sharp ears of men who smelled opportunity. Ile walked among them,
Stone-Made-Soft at his side, peering through the funereal throng for the
one familiar face. ldaan had to be there, but he could not find her.
The lower priests also passed through the crowds, singing dirges and
beating the dry notes of drums. Slaves in ceremonially torn robes passed
out tin cups of bittcrcd water. (,'China] ignored them. The burning
would go on through the night until the ashes of the men and the ashes
of the coal were indistinguishable. And then a week's mourning. And then
these men weeping or staring, grim or secretly pleased, would meet and
decide which of their number would have the honor of sitting on the dead
family's chair and leading the hunt for the man who had murdered his own
father. Cehmai found himself unable to care particularly who won or
lost, whether the upstart was caught or escaped. Somewhere among all
these mourners was the woman he'd come to love, in more pain than she
had ever been in since he'd known her. And he-he who could topple towers
at a whim and make mountains flow like floodwater-couldn't find her.
Instead, he found Maati in brown poet's robes standing on a raised
walkway that overlooked the mourning throng. 'T'hough they were on the
edge of the ceremony, Cehmai saw the pyre light reflecting in Maati's
fixed eyes. Cehmai almost didn't approach him, almost didn't speak.
'T'here was a darkness wrapped around the poet. But it was possible he
had been there from the ceremony's beginning. He might know where Idaan
was. Cehmai took a pose of greeting which Maati did not return.
"Maati-kvo?"
Maati looked over first at Cehmai, then Stone-Made-Soft, and then back
again at the fire. After a moment's pause, his face twisted in disgust.
"Not kvo. Never kvo. I haven't taught you anything, so don't address me
as a teacher. I was wrong. From the beginning, I was wrong."
"Otah was very convincing," Cehmai said. "No one thought he would-"
"Not about that. He didn't do this. Baarath ... Gods, why did it have to
be Baarath that saw it? Prancing, self-important, smug ..."
Maati fumbled with a sewn-leather wineskin and took a long deep, joyless
drink from it. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand, then held the