"Otah-kvo, I admire your conquests, but . .
"She wanted a child. From me. But it never took. Almost three years, and
she bled with the moon the whole time. I heard that after I left, she
took up with a fisherman from it tribe to the north and had a baby girl."
"I see," Maati said, and there was something in his voice. A brightness.
"Thank you, Otah-kvo."
"I missed you as well. I wish we had had more time. Or other circumstances."
"As do I. But it isn't ours to choose. Shall we do this thing?"
"I don't suppose I could shave first?" Otah asked, touching his chin.
"I don't see how," Maati said, rising. "But perhaps we can get you some
better robes."
Otah didn't mean to laugh; it simply came out of him. And then Maati was
laughing as well, and the birds startled around them, lifting up into
the sky. Otah rose and took a pose of respect appropriate to the closing
of a meeting. Maati responded in kind, and they walked together to the
door. Maati slid it open, and Otah looked to see whether there was a gap
in the men, a chance to dodge them and sprint out to the streets. He
might as well have looked for a stone cloud. The armsmen seemed to have
doubled in number, and two already had hare blades at the ready. The
young poet-the one Maati said wasn't his student-was there among them,
his expression serious and concerned. Maati spoke as if the bulky men
and their weapons weren't there.
"Cehmai-cha," he said. "Good that you're here. I would like to introduce
you to my old friend, Otah, the sixth son of the Khai Machi. Otahkvo,
this is Cchmai Tyan and that small mountain in the back is the andat
Stone-Made-Soft which he controls. Cehmai assumed you were an assassin
come to finish me off."
"I'm not," Otah said with a levity that seemed at odds with his
situation, but which felt perfectly natural. "But I understand the
misconception. It's the heard. I'm usually better shaved."
Cehmai opened his mouth, closed it, and then took a formal pose of
welcome. Maati turned to the armsmen.
"Chain him," he said.
EVEN AT THE HEIGHT OF MORNING, THE WIVES' QUARTERS OF THE HIGH palace
were filled with the small somber activity of a street market starting
to close at twilight. In the course of his life, the Khai Machi had
taken eleven women as wives. Some had become friends, lovers,
companions. Others had been little more than permanent guests in his
house, sent as a means of assuring favor as one might send a good
hunting dog or a talented slave. Idaan had heard that there were several
of them with whom he had never shared a bed. It had been Biitrah's wife,
Hiami, who'd told her that, trying to explain to a young girl that the
Khaiem had a different relationship to their women than other men had,
that it was traditional. It hadn't worked. Even the words the older
woman had used-your father chooser not to-had proven her point that this
was a comfort house with high ceilings, grand halls, and only a single
client.
But now that was changing, not in character, but in the particulars. The
succession would have the same effect on the eight wives who remained,