it as Maati himself was. Afterward, a servant girl led him to his
apartments within the palaces. Night was already falling as he closed
the door, truly alone for the first time in weeks. The journey from his
home in the Dai-kvo's village wasn't the half-season's trek he would
have had from Saraykeht, but it was enough, and Maati didn't enjoy the
constant companionship of strangers on the road.
A fire had been lit in the grate, and warm tea and cakes of honeyed
almonds waited for him at a lacquered table. He lowered himself into the
chair, rested his feet, and closed his eyes. Being here, in this place,
had a sense of unreality to it. To have been entrusted with anything of
importance was a surprise after his loss of status. The thought stung,
but he forced himself to turn in toward it. He had lost a great deal of
the Dai-kvo's trust between his failure in Saraykeht and his refusal to
disavow Liat, the girl who had once loved Otah-kvo but left both him and
the fallen city to be with Maati, when it became clear she was bearing
his child. If there had been time between the two, perhaps it might have
been different. One scandal on the heels of the other, though, had been
too much. Or so he told himself. It was what he wanted to believe.
A scratch at the door roused him from his bitter reminiscences. He
straightened his robes and ran a hand through his hair before he spoke.
"Come in."
The door slid open and a young man of perhaps twenty summers wearing the
brown robes of a poet stepped in and took a pose of greeting. Maati
returned it as he considered Cehmai Tyan, poet of Mach]. The broad
shoulders, the open face. Here, Maati thought, is what I should have
been. A talented boy poet who studied under a master while young enough
to have his mind molded to the right shape. And when the time came, he
had taken that burden on himself for the sake of his city. As I should
have done.
"I only just heard you'd arrived," Cehmai Tyan said. "I left orders at
the main road, but apparently they don't think as much of me as they
pretend."
There was a light humor in his voice and manner. As if this were a game,
as if he were a person whom anyone in Machi-or in the worldcould truly
treat with less than total respect. He held the power to soften stone-it
was the concept, the essential idea, that Manat I)oru had translated
into a human form all those generations ago. This widefaced, handsome
boy could collapse every bridge, level every mountain. The great towers
of Machi could turn to a river of stone, fast-flowing and dense as
quicksilver, which would lay the city to ruin at his order. And he made
light of being ignored as if he were junior clerk in some harbormaster's
house. Maati couldn't tell if it was an affectation or if the poet was
really so utterly naive.
"The Khai left orders as well," Maati said.
"Ah, well. Nothing to be done about that, then. I trust everything is
acceptable with your apartments?"
"I ... I really don't know. I haven't really looked around yet. 'Ibo
busy sitting on something that doesn't move, I suppose. I close my eyes,
and I feel like I'm still jouncing around on the back of a cart."