Pirnat's overseer thought it worth the risk. It would be like sitting in
a child's garden during a mud fight, but it had to be done. Just
thinking of it made him tired.
"You could tell them I'd nearly won," the andat said. "Say you were too
shaken to appear."
"Yes, because my life would be so much better if they were all afraid of
turning into a second Saraykeht."
"I'm only saying that you have options," the andat replied, smiling into
the fire.
The poet's house was set apart from the palaces of the Khai and the
compounds of the utkhaiem. It was a broad, low building with thick stone
walls nestled behind a small and artificial wood of sculpted oaks. The
snows of winter had been reduced to gray-white mounds and frozen pools
in the deep shadows where sunlight would not touch them. Cehmai and the
andat strode west, toward the palaces and the Great "rower, tallest of
all the inhuman buildings of Machi. It was a relief to walk along
streets in sunlight rather than the deep network of tunnels to which the
city resorted when the drifts were too high to allow even the snow doors
to open. Brief days, and cold profound enough to crack stone, were the
hallmarks of the Machi winter. The terrible urge to he out in the
gardens and streets marked her spring. The men and women Cehmai passed
were all dressed in warm robes, but their faces were bare and their
heads uncovered. The pair paused by a firekeeper at his kiln. A singing
slave stood near enough to warm her hands at the fire as she filled the
air with traditional songs. The palaces of the Khai loomed before
them-huge and gray with roofs pitched sharp as axe blades-and the city
and the daylight stood at their backs, tempting as sugar ghosts on
Candles Night.
"It isn't too late," the andat murmured. "Manat Doru used to do it all
the time. He'd send a note to the Khai claiming that the weight of
holding me was too heavy, and that he required his rest. We would go
down to a little teahouse by the river that had sweetcakes that they
cooked in oil and covered with sugar so fine it hung in the air if you
blew on it."
"You're lying to me," Cehmai said.
"No," the andat said. "No, it's truth. It made the Khai quite angry
sometimes, but what was he to do?"
The singing slave smiled and took a pose of greeting to them that Cehmai
returned.
"We could stop by the spring gardens that Idaan frequents. If she were
free she might be persuaded to join us," the andat said.
"And why would the daughter of the Khai tempt me more than sweetcakes?"
"She's well-read and quick in her mind," the andat said, as if the
question had been genuine. "You find her pleasant to look at, I know.
And her demeanor is often just slightly inappropriate. If memory serves,
that might outweigh even sweetcakes."
Cehmai shifted his weight from foot to foot, then, with a commanding
gesture, stopped a servant boy. The boy, seeing who he was, fell into a
pose of greeting so formal it approached obeisance.