was lively and sorrowful at the same time. Sometimes voices would rise
up together in song or laughter. He turned Kiyan's words over in his
mind and noticed how empty they made him feel.
He'd been a fool to tell her, a fool to say anything. If he had only
kept his secrets secret, he could have made a life for himself based on
lies, and if the brothers he only knew as shadows and moments from a
halfrecalled childhood had ever discovered him, Kiyan and Old Mani and
anyone else unfortunate enough to know him might have been killed
without even knowing why.
Kiyan had not been wrong.
A gentle murmur of thunder came and went. Otah rose from his cot and
walked out. Amiit Foss kept late hours, and Otah found him sitting at a
fire grate, poking the crackling flames with a length of iron while he
joked over his shoulder with the five men and four women who lounged on
cushions and low chairs. He smiled when he saw Otah and called for a
howl of wine for him. The gathering looked so calm and felt so relaxed
that only someone in the gentleman's trade would have recognized it for
the business meeting that it was.
"Itani-cha is one of the couriers I mean to send north, if I can pry him
away from his love of sloth and comfort," Amiit said with a smile. The
others greeted him and made him welcome. Otah sat by the fire and
listened. There would be nothing said here that he was not permitted to
know. Amiit's introduction had established with the subtlety of a master
Otah's rank and the level of trust to be afforded him, and no one in the
room was so thick as to misunderstand him.
The news from the north was confusing. The two surviving sons of Machi
had vanished. Neither had appeared in the other cities of the Khaiem,
going to courts and looking for support as tradition would have them do.
Nor had the streets of Machi erupted in bloodshed as their bases of
power within the city vied for advantage. The best estimates were that
the old Khai wouldn't see another winter, and even some of the houses of
the utkhaiem seemed to be preparing to offer up their sons as the new
Khai should the succession fail to deliver a single living heir.
Something very quiet was happening, and House Siyanti-like everyone else
in the world-was aching with curiosity. Otah could hear it in their
voices, could see it in the way they held their wine. Even when the
conversation shifted to the glassblowers of Cetani and the collapse of
the planned summer fair in Amnat-Tan, all minds were drawn toward Machi.
He sipped his wine.
Going north was dangerous. He knew that, and still it didn't escape him
that the Khai Machi dying by inches was his father, that these men were
the brothers he knew only as vague memories. And because of these men,
he had lost everything again. If he was going to be haunted his whole
life by the city, perhaps he should at least see it. The only thing he
risked was his life.
At length, the conversation turned to less weighty matters andwithout a
word or shift in voice or manner-the meeting was ended. Otah spoke as
much as any, laughed as much, and sang as loudly when the pipe players
joined them. But when he stretched and turned to leave, Amiit Foss was