women and children passed on their various errands, the gabble of voices
like a brook over stones. A beggar sang, his lacquered begging box on
the stone floor before him. Maati saw a waterseller's cart, and another
vendor selling waxpaper cones of rice and fish. It was almost like a
street, almost like a wide pavilion with a canopy of stone.
"Your rooms?" Kiyan asked. "Or would you rather have something to eat
first? There's not much fresh this deep into winter, but I've found a
woman who makes a hot barley soup that's simply lovely."
"Actually ... could I meet the child?"
Kiyan's smile seemed to have a light of its own.
"Can you imagine a world where I said no?" she asked.
She nodded to a branching in the wide hall, and led him west, deeper
into the underground. The change was subtle, moving from the public
space of the street to the private tunnels beneath the palaces. There
were gates, it was true, but they were open. There were armsmen here and
there, but only a few of them. And yet soon all the people they passed
wore the robes of servants or slaves of the Khai, and they had entered
the Khai's private domain. Kiyan stopped at a thin oak door, pulled it
open and gestured him to follow her up the staircase it revealed.
The nursery was high above the tunnel-world. The air was kept warm by a
roaring fire in a stone grate, but the light was from the sun. The
nurse, a young girl, no more than sixteen summers, sat dozing in her
chair while the baby cooed and gurgled to itself. Maati stepped to the
edge of the crib, and the child quieted, staring up at him with
distrustful eyes, and then breaking into a wide toothless grin.
"She's only just started sleeping through the night," Kiyan said,
speaking softly to keep from waking her servant. "And there were two
weeks of colic that were close to hell. I don't know what we'd have done
with her if it hadn't been for the nurses. She's been doing better now.
We've named her Eiah."
She reached down, scooped up her daughter, and settled her in her arms.
It was a movement so natural as to seem inevitable. Maati remembered
having done it himself, many years ago, in a very different place. Kiyan
seemed almost to know his mind.
" "Iani-kya said that if things went as you'd expected with the Daikvo
you were thinking of seeking out your son. Nayiit?"
"Nayiit," Maati agreed. "I sent letters to the places I knew to send
them, but I haven't heard hack yet. I may not. But I'll be here, in one
place. If he and his mother want to find me, it won't be difficult."
"I'm sorry," Kiyan said. "Not that it will be easy for them, only that ..."
Maati only shook his head. In Kiyan's arms, the tiny girl with deep
brown eyes grasped at air and gurgled, unaware, he knew, of all the
blood and pain and betrayal that had gone into bringing her here.
"She's beautiful," he said.
"BE REASONABLE!"
Cehmai lay back in his bath. Beside him, Stone-Made-Soft had put its
feet into the warm water and was gazing placidly out into the thick
salt-scented steam that rose from the water and filled the bathhouse.
Against the far wall, a group of young women was rising from the pool