"You think so? Certainly you knew him better than I. I can't think he
would have thought well of me," the Khai said. Then, "Did you go back?
After you took your robes? Did you go to see you parents?"
"My father was very old when I went to the school," Maati said. "He died
before I completed my training. We did not know each other."
"So you have never had a family."
"I have, most high," Maati said, fighting to keep the tightness in his
chest from changing the tone of his voice. "A lover and a son. I had a
family once."
"But no longer. They died?"
"They live. Only not with me."
The Khai considered him, bloodshot eyes blinking slowly. With his thin,
wrinkled skin, he reminded Maati of a very old turtle or else a very
young bird. The Khai's gaze softened, his brows tilting in understanding
and sorrow.
"It is never easy for fathers," the Khai said. "Perhaps if the world had
needed less from us."
Maati waited a long moment until he trusted his voice.
"Perhaps, most high."
The Khai exhaled a breath of gray, his gaze trapped by the smoke.
"It isn't the world I knew when I was young," the old man said.
"Everything changed when Saraykeht fell."
"The Khai Saraykeht has a poet," Maati said. "He has the power of the
andat."
"It took the Dai-kvo eight years and six failed bindings," the Khai
said. "And every time word came of another failure, I could see it in
the faces of the court. The utkhaiem may put on proud faces, but I've
seen the fear that swims under that ice. And you were there. You said so
in the audience when I greeted you."
"Yes, most high."
"But you didn't say everything you knew," the Khai said. "Did you?"
The yellowed eyes fixed on Maati. The intelligence in them was
unnerving. Maati felt himself squirming, and wondering what had happened
to the melancholy dying man he'd been speaking with only moments before.
"I ... that is ..."
"There were rumors that the poet's death was more than an angry east
island girl's revenge. The Galts were mentioned."
"And Eddensea," Maati said. "And Eymond. There was no end of accusation,
most high. Some even believed what they charged. When the cotton trade
collapsed, a great number of people lost a great amount of money. And
prestige."
"They lost more than that," the Khai said, leaning forward and stabbing
at the air with the stem of his pipe. "The money, the trade. The
standing among the cities. They don't signify. Saraykeht was the death
of certainty. They lost the conviction that the Khaiem would hold the
world at bay, that war would never come to Saraykeht. And we lost it
here too."
"If you say so, most high."
"The priests say that something touched by chaos is never made whole,"