The older man named Kaiin, and the younger man and woman Danat, in the
same moment, the syllables grinding against each other in the warm, damp
air, and they immediately fell to debate. Kaiin was a master negotiator;
Danat was better thought of by the utkhaiem. Kaiin was prone to fits of
temper, Danat to weeks of sloth. Each man, to hear it, was a paragon of
virtue and little better than a street thug. Otah listened, interjected
comments, asked questions crafted to keep the conversation alive and on
its course. His mind was hardly there.
When at last he made his excuses, the three debaters hardly paused in
their wrangle. Otah dried himself by a brazier and collected his
robes-laundered now, smelling of cedar oil and warm from the kiln. The
streets were fuller than when he had gone into the bathhouse. The sun
would fall early, disappearing behind the peaks to the west long before
the sky grew dark, but it still hovered two hands above the mountainous
horizon.
Otah walked without knowing where he was walking to. The black cobbles
and tall houses seemed familiar and exotic at the same time. The towers
rose into the sky, glowing in the sunlight. At the intersection of three
large streets, Otah found a courtyard with a great stone archway inlaid
with wood and metal sigils of chaos and order. Harsh forge smoke from
the east mixed with the greasy scent of a cart seller's roasting duck
and, for a moment, Otah was possessed by the memory of being a child no
more than four summers old. The smoke scent wove with the taste of
honeybread nearly too hot to eat, the clear open view of the valley and
mountains from the top of the towers, and a woman's skin-mother or
sister or servant. There was no way to know.
It was a ghost memory, strong and certain as stone, but without a place
in his life. Something had happened, once, that tied all these senses
together, but it was gone and he would never have it. He was upstart and
traitor. Poisoner and villain. None of it was true, but it made for an
interesting story to tell in the teahouses and meeting rooms-a variation
on the theme of fratricide that the Khaiem replayed in every generation.
A deep fatigue pressed into him. He had been an innocent to think that
he might be forgotten, that Otah Machi might escape the venomous
speculation of the traders and merchants, high families and low
townsmen. There was no use for truth when spectacle was at issue. And
there was nothing in the city that could matter less than the
halfrecalled memories of a courier's abandoned childhood. The life he'd
built mattered less than ashes to these people. His death would be a
relief to them.
He returned to House Nan just as the stars began to glimmer in the deep
northern sky. There was fresh bread and pepper-baked lamb, distilled
rice wine and cold water. The other men who were to share his room
joined him at the table, and they laughed and joked, traded information
and gossip from across the world. Otah slid back comfortably into Itani
Noygu, and his smiles came more easily as the night wore on, though a
cold core remained in his breast. It was only just before he went to
crawl into his cot that he found the steward, recovered his pouch of
letters, and prepared himself.