entirely and were sprinting around the wide grounds in nothing but their
masks and long scarves trailing from their necks. The andat shifted like
the first shudder of a landslide, then was still again. When it spoke,
its voice was so soft that they would not be heard by the others.
"It wouldn't he the first time the Dai-kvo had lied."
"Or the first time I'd wondered why," Cehmai said. "It's his to decide
what to say and to whom."
"And yours?"
"And mine to satisfy my curiosity. You heard what he said to the
overseer in the mines. If he truly didn't want me to know, he would have
lied better. Maati-kvo is looking into more than the library, and that's
certain."
The andat sighed. Stone-blade-Soft had no more need of breath than did a
mountainside. The exhalation could only be a comment. Cehmai felt the
subject of their conversation changing even before the andat spoke.
"She's come."
And there, dressed black as rooks and pale as mourning, Idaan Machi
moved among the dancers. Her mask hid only part of her face and not her
identity. Wrapped as he was by the darkness, she did not see him. Cehmai
felt a lightening in his breast as he watched her move through the
crowd, greeting friends and looking, he thought, for something or
perhaps someone among them. She was not beautiful-well painted, but any
number of the girls and women were more nearly perfect. She was not the
most graceful, or the best spoken, or any of the hundred things that
Cehmai thought of when he tried to explain to himself why this girl
should fascinate him. The closest he could come was that she was
interesting, and none of the others were.
"It won't end well," the andat murmured.
"It hasn't begun," Cehmai said. "How can something end when it hasn't
even started?"
Stone-blade-Soft sighed again, and Cehmai rose, tugging at his robes to
smooth their lines. The music had paused and someone in the crowd
laughed long and high.
"Come back when you've finished and we'll carry on our conversation,"
the andat said.
Cchmai ignored the patience in its voice and strode forward, back into
the light. The reed organ struck a chord just as he reached Idaan's
side. He brushed her arm, and she turned-first annoyed and then
surprised and then, he thought, pleased.
"Idaan-cha," he said, the exaggerated formality acting as its opposite
without taking him quite into the intimacy that the kya suffix would
have suggested. "I'd almost thought you wouldn't be joining us."
"I almost wasn't," she said. "I hadn't thought you'd be here."
The organ set a beat, and the drums picked it up; the dance was
beginning again. Cehmai held out a hand and, after a pause that took a
thousand years and lasted perhaps a breath, Idaan took it. The music
began in earnest, and Cehmai spun her, took her under his arm, and was
turned by her. It was a wild tune, rich and fast with a rhythm like a
racing heart. Around him the others were grinning, though not at him.