alone on the dark path.
"It's difficult for you, isn't it?" she said. "Being a part of the court
and yet not. Being among the most honored men in the city, and yet not
of Machi."
"I bear it. You've been drinking."
"I have. But I know who I am and where I am. I know what I'm doing."
"What are you doing, Idaan-kya?"
"Poets can't take wives, can they?"
"We don't, no. There's not often room in our lives for a family."
"And lovers?"
Cehmai felt his breath coming faster and willed it to slow. An echo of
amusement in the back of his mind was not his own thought. He ignored it.
"Poets take lovers," he said.
She stepped nearer again, not touching, not speaking. There was no chill
to the air now. There was no darkness. Cehmai's senses were as fresh and
bright and clear as midday, his mind as focused as the first day he'd
controlled the andat. Idaan took his hand and slowly, deliberately, drew
it through the folds of her robes until it cupped her breast.
"You ... you have a lover, Idaan-kya. Adrah ..."
"Do you want me to sleep here tonight?"
"Yes, Idaan. I do."
"And I want that too."
He struggled to think, but his skin felt as though he was basking in
some hidden sun. There seemed to be some sound in his ears that he
couldn't place that drove away everything but his fingertips and the
cold-stippled flesh beneath them.
"I don't understand why you're doing this," he said.
Her lips parted, and she moved half an inch back. His hand pressed
against her skin, his eyes were locked on hers. Fear sang through him
that she would take another step back, that his fingers would only
remember this moment, that this chance would pass. She saw it in his
face, she must have, because she smiled, calm and knowing and sure of
herself, like something from a dream.
"Do you care?" she asked.
"No," he said, half-surprised at the answer. "No, I truly don't."
THE CARAVAN LEFT THE LOW TOWN BEFORE DAWN, CARTWHEELS RATTLING on the
old stone paving, oxen snorting white in the cold, and the voices of
carters and merchants light with the anticipation of journey's end. The
weeks of travel were past. By midday, they would cross the bridge over
the Tidat and enter Machi. The companionship of the roadalready somewhat
strained by differences in political opinions and some unfortunate words
spoken by one of the carters early in the journeywould break apart, and
each of them would be about his own business again. Otah walked with his
hands in his sleeves and his heart divided between dread and
anticipation. Irani Noygu was going to Machi on the business of his
house-the satchel of letters at his side proved that. There was nothing
he carried with him that would suggest anything else. He had come away
from this city as a child so long ago he had only shreds of memory left
of it. A scent of musk, a stone corridor, bathing in a copper tub when