wasn't a wise thing for him just now.
"Who are Liat and Nayiit?"
"My lover. Our son," Maati said. "I called out for them, did I? When I
had the fever?"
Cehmai nodded.
"I do that often," Maati said. "Only not usually aloud."
There were four great roads that connected the cities of the Khaiem, one
named for each of the cardinal directions. The North Road that linked
Cetani, Machi, and Amnat-Ian was not the worst, in part because there
was no traffic in the winter, when the snows let men make a road
wherever desire took them. Also the stones were damaged more by the
cycle of thaw and frost that troubled the north only in spring and
autumn. In high summer, it rarely froze, and for a third of the year it
did not thaw. The West Road-far from the sea and not so far south as to
keep the winters warm-required the most repair.
"They'll have crews of indentured slaves and laborers out in shifts,"
the old man in the cart beside Otah said, raising a finger as if his
oratory was on par with the High Emperor's, back when there had been an
empire. "They start at one end, reset the stones until they reach the
other, and begin again. It never ends."
Otah glanced across the cart at the young woman nursing her babe and
rolled his eyes. She smiled and shrugged so slightly that their orator
didn't notice the movement. The cart lurched down into and up from
another wide hole where the stones had shattered and not yet been replaced.
"I have walked them all," the old man said, "though they've worn me more
than I've worn them. Oh yes, much more than I've worn them."
He cackled, as he always seemed to when he made this observation. The
little caravan-four carts hauled by old horses-was still six days from
Cetani. Otah wondered whether his own legs were rested enough that he
could start walking again.
He had bought an old laborer's robe of blue-gray wool from a rag shop,
chopped his hair to change its shape, and let his thin beard start to
grow in. Once his whiskers had been long enough to braid, but the east
islanders he'd lived with had laughed at him and pretended to mistake
him for a woman. After Cetani, it would take another twenty days to
reach the docks outside Amnat-tan. And then, if he could find a fishing
boat that would take him on, he would be among those men again, singing
songs in a tongue he hadn't tried out in years, explaining again, either
with the truth or outrageous stories, why his marriage mark was only
half done.
He would die there-on the islands or on the sea-under whatever new name
he chose for himself. Itani Noygu was gone. He had died in Machi.
Another life was behind him, and the prospect of beginning again, alone
in a foreign land, tired him more than the walking.
"Now, southern wood's too soft to really build with. The winters are too
warm to really harden them. Up here there's trees that would blunt a
dozen axes before they fell," the old man said.
"You know everything, don't you grandfather?" Otah said. If his
annoyance was in his voice, the old man noticed nothing, because he