the floating trays with their teapots and bowls from the small, bobbing
waves. Baarath slapped the water impatiently.
"You can look at naked girls later," he said. "This is important. If
Maati-cha's come back to help me catalog the library ..."
"He might quibble on `help you,'" Cehmai said, and might as well have
kept silent.
"... then it's clearly of critical importance to the Dai-kvo. I've heard
the rumors. I know the Vaunyogi were looking to sell the library to some
Westlands warden. That's why Maati was sent here in the first place."
Cehmai closed his eyes. Rumors and speculation had run wild, and perhaps
it would have been a kindness to correct Baarath. But Otah had asked him
to keep silent, and the letters from the Dai-kvo had encouraged this
strategy. If it were known what the Galts had done, what they had
intended to do, it would mean the destruction of their nation: cities
drowned, innocent men and women and children starved when a quiet word
heavy with threat might suffice instead. There was always recourse to
destruction. So long as one poet held one andat, they could find a path
to ruin. So instead of slaughtering countless innocents, Cehmai put up
with the excited, inaccurate speculation of his old friend and waited
for the days to grow longer and warmer.
"If the collection is split," Baraath went on, his voice dropping to a
rough whisper, "we might overlook the very thing that made the library
so important. You have to move your collection over to the library, or
terrible things might happen."
"Terrible things like what?"
"I don't know," Baraath said, his whisper turning peevish. "That's what
Maati-cha and I are trying to find out."
"Well, once you've gone through your collection and found nothing, the
two of you can come to the poet's house and look through mine."
"That would take years!"
"I'll make sure they're well kept until then," Cehmai said. "Have you
spoken with the Khai about his private collection?"
"Who'd want that? It's all copies of contracts and agreements from five
generations ago. Unless it's the most obscure etiquette ever to see
sunlight. Anyone who wants that, let them have it. You've got all the
good books. The philosophy, the grammars, the studies of the andat."
"It's a hard life you lead," Cehmai said. "So close and still, no."
"You are an arrogant prig," Baraath said. "Everyone knows it, but I'm
the only man in the city with the courage to say it to your face.
Arrogant and selfish and small-souled."
"Well, perhaps it's not too much to go over to the library. It isn't as
if it was that long a walk."
Baraath's face brightened for a moment, then, as the insincerity of the
comment came clear, squeezed as if he'd taken a bite of fresh lemon.
With a sound like an angry duck, he rose up and stalked from the baths
and into the fog.
"He's a terrible person," the andat said.
"I know. But he's a friend of mine."
"And terrible people need friends as much as good ones do," the andat