storehouse beneath the underground palaces of the Sava, but Otah had
overruled them. The risk of a few quiet hours walking abandoned
corridors was less, he judged, than the risk of going quietly mad
waiting in the same sunless room day after day. Sinja had convinced him
to take an armsman as guard when he went.
Otah had expected the darkness and the quiet-wide halls empty, water
troughs dry-hut the beauty he stumbled on took him by stirprise. Here a
wide square of stone smooth as beach sand, delicate pillars spiraling
tip from it like bolts of twisting silk made from stone. And down
another corridor, a bathhouse left dry for the winter but rich with the
scent of cedar and pine resin.
Even when lie returned to the storehouse and the voices and faces he
knew, lie found his mind lingering in the dark corridors and galleries,
unsure whether the images of the spaces lit with the white shadowless
light of a thousand candles were imagination or memory.
A sharp rapping brought him back to himself, and the door of his private
office swung open. Amiit and Sinja walked in, already half into a
conversation. Sinja's expression was mildly annoyed. Amiit, Otah
thought, seemed worried.
"It would only make things worse," Amiit said.
"We'd earn more time. And it isn't as if they'd accuse Otah-cha here of
it. They think he's dead."
"'T'hen they'll accuse him of it once they find he's alive," Amiit said
and turned to Otah. "Sinja wants to assassinate the head of a high
family in order to slow the work of the council."
"We won't do that," Otah said. "My hands aren't particularly bloodied
yet, and I'd like to keep it that way-"
"It isn't as though people are going to believe it," Sinja said. "If
you're going to carry the blame you may as well get the advantages from
doing the thing."
"It'll be easier to convince them of my innocence later if I'm actually
innocent of something," Otah said, "hut there may be other roads that
come to the same place. Is there something else that would slow the
council and doesn't involve putting holes in someone?"
Sinja frowned, his eyes shifting as if he were reading text written in
the air. He half-smiled.
"Perhaps. Let me look into that."
With a pose that ended his conversation, Sinja left. Amiit sighed and
lowered himself into one of the chairs.
"What news?" Amiit asked.
"Kamau and Vaunani are talking about merging their forces," Otah said.
"Most of the talks seem to involve someone hitting someone or throwing a
knife. The Loiya, Bentani, and (:oirah have all been quietly, and so far
as I can tell, independently, backing the Vaunyogi."
"And they all have contracts with Galt," Amiit said. "What about the
others?"
"Of the families we know? None have come out against them. And none for,
or at least not openly."
"There should be more fighting," Amiit said. "There should be struggles