"Where is he now?"
"They brought him to the poet's house when they heard who had sent him.
I've had him put in a courtyard in the Fourth Palace. A walled one, with
armsmen to keep him there. If this is a fresh assassin ..
"Then he'll answer more questions than the last one can," Maati said.
""Take me there."
As they left, Maati saw Baarath swoop down on the hooks and scrolls like
a mother reunited with her babe. Maati knew that they would all he
hidden in obscure drawers and shelves by the time he came hack. Some, he
would likely never see again.
The sun was moving toward the mountain peaks in the west, early evening
descending on the valley. They walked together down the white gravel
path that led to the Fourth Palace, looking, Maati was sure, like
nothing so much as a teacher and his student in their matching brown
poet's robes. Except that Cehmai was the man who held the andat, and
Maati was only a scholar. They didn't speak, but Maati felt a knot of
excitement and apprehension tightening in him.
At the palace's great hall, a servant met them with a pose of formal
welcome that couldn't hide the brightness in her eyes. At a gesture, she
led them down a wide corridor and then up a flight of stairs to a
gallery that looked down into the courtyard. Maati forced himself to
breathe deeply as he stepped to the edge and looked down, Cehmai at his
side.
The space was modest, but lush. Thin vines rose along one wall and part
of another. Two small, sculpted maple trees stood, one at either end of
a long, low stone bench. It looked like a painting-the perfectly
balanced garden, with the laborer in his ill-cut robes the only thing
out of place. A breeze stirred the branches of the trees with a sound
equal parts flowing water and dry pages turning. Maati stepped hack. His
throat was tight, but his head felt perfectly clear. So this was how it
would happen. Very well.
Cehmai was frowning down warily at Otah-kvo. Maati put his hand on the
young man's shoulder.
"I have to speak with him," Maati said. "Alone."
"You don't think he's a threat?"
"It doesn't matter. I still need to speak with him."
"Maati-kvo, please take one of the armsmen. Even if you keep him at the
far end of the yard, you can ..."
Maati took a pose that refused this, and saw something shift in the
young man's eyes. Respect, Maati thought. He thinks I'm being brave. How
odd that I was that young once.
"Take me there," Maati said.
OTAH SAT IN THE GARDEN, HIS BACK AND NECK TIGHT FROM RIDING AND from
fear, and remembered being young in the summer cities. In one of the low
towns outside Saraykeht, there had been a rock at the edge of a cliff
that jutted out over the water so that, when the tide was just right, a
boy of thirteen summers might step out to its edge and peer past his
toes at the ocean below him and feel like a bird. There had been a hand
of them-the homeless young scraping by on pity and small laborwho had