The andat's thick hands took a formal position of disagreement.
"We have always been playing the same game, you and I. If you were
someone else at the start, it's your problem."
They never started speaking until the game's end was a forgone
conclusion. That Stone-Made-Soft was willing to speak was as much a sign
that this particular battle was drawing to its end as the silence in
Cehmai's mind. But the last piece had not yet been pushed when a
pounding came on the door.
"I know you're in there! Wake up!"
Cehmai sighed at the familiar voice and rose. The andat brooded over the
board, searching, the poet knew, for some way to win a lost game. He
clapped a hand on the andat's shoulder as he passed by it toward the door.
"I won't have it," the stout, red-checked man said when the opened door
revealed him. He wore brilliant blue robes shot with rich yellow and a
copper tore of office. Not for the first time, Cehmai thought Baarath
would have been better placed in life as the overseer of a merchant
house or farm than within the utkhaiem. "You poets think that because
you have the andat, you have everything. Well, I've come to tell you it
isn't so."
Cehmai took a pose of welcome and stepped back, allowing the man in.
"I've been expecting you, Baarath. I don't suppose you've brought any
food with you?"
"You have servants for that," Baarath said, striding into the wide room,
taking in the shelves of books and scrolls and maps with his customary
moment of lust. The andat looked up at him with its queer, slow smile,
and then turned back to the board.
"I don't like having strange people wandering though my library,"
Baarath said.
"Well, let's hope our friend from the Dai-kvo won't be strange."
"You are an annoying, contrary man. He's going to come in here and root
through the place. Some of those volumes are very old, you know. They
won't stand mishandling."
"Perhaps you should make copies of them."
"I am making copies. But it's not a fast process, you know. It takes a
great deal of time and patience. You can't just grab some half-trained
scribes off the street corners and set them to copying the great hooks
of the Empire."
"You also can't do the whole job by yourself, Baarath. No matter how
much you want to."
The librarian scowled at him, but there was a playfulness in the man's
eyes. The andat shifted a white marker forward and the noise in Cehmai's
head murmured. It had been a good move.
"You hold an abstract thought in human form and make it play tricks, and
you tell me what's not possible? Please. I've come to offer a trade. If
you'll-"
"Wait," Cehmai said.
"If you'll just-"
"Baarath, you can be quiet or you can leave. I have to finish this."
Stone-Made-Soft sighed as Cehmai took his seat again. The white stone