awfully easily. Do you think they talk about it, the two of them? About
what she can do to you or for you to win your support? Having the poet's
oath protecting you would be a powerful thing. And if you protect her,
you protect them. You can't suggest anything evil of the Vaunyogi now
without drawing her into it."
"She isn't like that!"
Cehmai gathered his will, but before he could turn it on the andat,
before he pushed the rage and the anger and the hurt into a force that
would make the beast be quiet, Stone-Made-Soft smiled, leaned forward,
and gently kissed Cehmai's forehead. In all the years he'd held it,
Cehmai had never seen the andat do anything of the sort.
"No," it said. "She isn't. She's in terrible trouble, and she needs you
to save her if you can. If she can be saved. And she trusts you.
Standing with her is the only thing you could do and still he a decent man."
Cehmai glared at the wide face, the slow, calm eyes, searching for a
shred of sarcasm. 'T'here was none.
"Why are you trying to confuse me?" he asked.
The andat turned to look out the window and stood as still as a statue.
Cehmai waited, but it didn't shift, even to look at him. The rooms
darkened and Cehmai lit lemon candles to keep the insects away. His mind
was divided into a hundred different thoughts, each of them powerful and
convincing and no two fitting together.
When at last he went up to his bed, he couldn't sleep. The blankets
still smelled of her, of the two of them. Of love and sleep. Cehmai
wrapped the sheets around himself and willed his mind to quiet, but the
whirl of thoughts didn't allow rest. Idaan loved him. She had had her
own father killed. Maati had been right, all this time. It was his duty
to tell what he knew, but he couldn't. It was possible-she might have
tricked him all along. He felt as cracked as river ice when a stone had
been dropped through it, jagged fissures cut through him in all
directions. "Where was no center of peace within him.
And yet he must have drifted off, because the storm pulled him awake.
Cehmai stumbled out of bed, pulling down half his netting with a soft
ripping sound. He crawled to the corridor almost before he understood
that the pitching and moaning, the shrieking and the nausea were all in
the private space behind his eyes. It had never been so powerful.
He fell as he went to the front of the house, harking his knee against
the wall. The thick carpets were sickening to touch, the fibers seeming
to writhe tinder his fingers like dry worms. Stone-Made-Soft sat at the
gaming table. The white marble, the black basalt. A single white stone
was shifted out of its beginning line.
"Not now," Cehmai croaked.
"Now," the andat said, its voice loud and low and undeniable.
The room pitched and spun. Cehmai dragged himself to the table and tried
to focus on the pieces. The game was simple enough. He'd played it a
thousand times. He shifted a black stone forward. He felt he was still
half dreaming. The stone he'd moved was Idaan. Stone-MadeSoft's reply
moved a token that was both its fourth column and also Otah Machi.
Groggy with sleep and distress and annoyance and the an gry pressure of