bag on Amiit Foss' desk. Most were for trading houses in Machi, though
there were four that were to go to members of the utkhaiem. Otah turned
the packet in his hands. Behind him, one of the apprentices said
something softly and another giggled.
"You have time to reconsider," Amiit said. "You could go back to her on
your knees. If the letters wait another day, there's little lost. And
she might relent."
Otah tucked the letters into their pouch and slipped it into his sleeve.
"An old lover of mine once told me that everything I'd ever won, I won
by leaving," Otah said.
"The island girl?"
"Did I mention her last night?"
"At length," Amiit said, chuckling. "That particular quotation came up
twice, as I recall. There might have been a third time too. I couldn't
really say."
"I'm sorry to hear that. I hope I didn't tell you all my secrets," Otah
said, making a joke of his sudden unease. He didn't recall saying
anything about Maj, and it occurred to him exactly how dangerous that
night had been.
"If you had, I'd make it a point to forget them," Amiit said. "Nothing a
drunk man says on the day his woman leaves him should be held against
him. It's poor form. And this is, after all, a gentleman's trade, ne?"
Otah took a pose of agreement.
"I'll report what I find when I get back," he said, unnecessarily.
"Assuming I haven't frozen to death on the roads."
"Be careful up there, Itani. Things are uncertain when there's the scent
of a new Khai in the wind. It's interesting, and it's important, but
it's not always safe."
Otah shifted to a pose of thanks, to which his supervisor replied in
kind, his face so pleasantly unreadable that Otah genuinely didn't know
how deep the warning ran.
When Maati considered the mines-something he had rarely had occasion to
do-he had pictured great holes going deep into the earth. He had not
imagined the branchings and contortions of passages where miners
struggled to follow veins of ore, the stench of dust and damp, the yelps
and howls of the dogs that pulled the flatbottomed sledges filled with
gravel, or the darkness. He held his lantern low, as did the others
around him. 't'here was no call to raise it. Nothing more would be seen,
and the prospect of breaking it against the stone overhead was unpleasant.
""There can be places where the air goes bad, too," Cehmai said as they
turned another twisting corner. "They take birds with them because they
die first."
"What happens then?" Maati asked. "If the birds die?"
"It depends on how valuable the ore is," the young poet said. "Abandon
the mine, or try to blow out the had air. Or use slaves. There are men
whose indentures allow that."
Two servants followed at a distance, their own torches glowing. Maati
had the sense that they would all, himself included, have been better
pleased to spend the day in the palaces. All but the andat.