He kissed her eyes, his lips soft as a girl's. His voice was calm and
implacable and hard as stone. When she heard it, she knew he had been
thinking himself down the same pathways and had come to the same place.
"No, love. It's too late. It was too late as soon as your brother died.
We have started, and there's no ending it now except to win through or die."
They stayed still in each others' embrace. If all went well, she would
die an old woman in this man's arms, or he would die in hers. While
their sons killed one another. And there had been a time not half a year
ago she'd thought the prize worth winning.
"I should go," she murmured. "I have to attend to my father. There's
some dignitary just come to the city that I'm to smile at."
"Have you heard of the others? Kaiin and Danat?"
"Nothing," Idaan said. "They've vanished. Gone to ground."
"And the other one? Otah?"
Idaan pulled back, straightening the sleeves of her robes as she spoke.
"Otah's a story that the utkhaiem tell to make the song more
interesting. He's likely not even alive any longer. Or if he is, he's
wise enough to have no part of this."
"Are you certain of that?"
"Of course not," she said. "But what else can I give you?"
They spoke little after that. Adrah walked with her through the gardens
of the Second Palace and then out to the street. Idaan made her way to
her rooms and sent for the slave boy who repainted her face. The sun
hadn't moved the width of two hands together before she strode again
though the high palaces, her face cool and perfect as a player's mask.
The formal poses of respect and deference greeted and steadied her. She
was Idaan Machi, daughter of the Khai and wife, though none knew it yet,
of the man who would take his place. She forced confidence into her
spine, and the men and women around her reacted as if it were real.
Which, she supposed, meant that it was. And that the sorrow and darkness
they could not see were false.
When she entered the council chambers, her father greeted her with a
silent pose of welcome. He looked ill, his skin gray and his mouth
pinched by the pain in his belly. The delicate lanterns of worked iron
and silver made the wood-sheathed walls glow, and the cushions that
lined the floor were thick and soft as pillows. The men who sat on
them-yes, men, all of them-made their obeisances to her, but her father
motioned her closer. She walked to his side and knelt.
"There is someone I wish you to meet," her father said, gesturing to an
awkward man in the brown robes of a poet. "The I)ai-kvo has sent him.
Maati Vaupathai has come to study in our library."
Fear flushed her mouth with the taste of metal, but she simpered and
took a pose of welcome as if the words had meant nothing. Her mind
raced, ticking through ways that the Dal-kvo could have discovered her,
or Adrah, or the Galts. The poet replied to her gesture with a formal
pose of gratitude, and she took the opportunity to look at him more
closely. The body was soft as a scholar's, the lines of his face round
as dough, but there was a darkness to his eyes that had nothing to do
with color or light. She felt certain he was someone worth fearing.