The last of the servants and counselors took their places, and the crowd
fell silent. The Khai Machi walked out, as graceful as a dying man could
be. His robes were lush and full, and served to do little more than show
how wasted his frame had become. Otah could see the rouge on his sunken
cheeks, trying to give the appearance of vigor long since gone.
Whisperers fanned out from the dais and into the crowd. The Khai took a
pose of welcome appropriate to the opening of a ritual judgment. Utah
rose to his knees.
"I am told that you are my son, Utah Machi, whom I gave over to the
poets' school."
The whisperers echoed it through the hall. It was his moment to speak
now, and he found his heart was so full of humiliation and fear and
anger that he had nothing to say. He raised his hands and took a pose of
greeting-a casual one that would have been appropriate for a peasant son
to his father. "There was a murmur among the utkhaiem.
"I am further told that you were once offered the poet's robes, and you
refused that honor."
Otah tried to rise, but the most the chain allowed was a low stoop. He
cleared his throat and spoke, pushing the words out clear enough to be
heard in the farthest gallery.
"That is true. I was a child, most high. And I was angry."
"And I hear that you have come to my city and killed my eldest child.
Biitrah Machi is dead by your hand."
"That is not true, father," Utah said. "I won't say that no man has ever
died by my hand, but I didn't kill I3iitrah. I have no wish or intention
to become the Khai Machi."
"Then why have you come here?" the Khai shouted, rising to his feet. His
face was twisted in rage, his fists trembled. In all his travels, Otah
had never seen the Khai of any city look more like a man. Otah felt
something like pity through his humiliation and rage, and it let him
speak more softly when he spoke again.
"I heard that my father was dying."
It seemed that the murmur of the crowds would never end. It rolled like
waves against the seashore. Otah knelt again; the awkward stooping hurt
his neck and hack, and there was no point trying to maintain dignity
here. They waited, he and his father, staring at each other across the
space. Otah tried to feel some bond, some kinship that would bridge this
gap, but there was nothing. The Khai Machi was his father by an accident
of birth, and nothing more.
He saw the old man's eyes flicker, as if unsure of himself. He couldn't
have always been this way-the Khaiem were inhumanly studied in ritual
and grace. It was the mark of their calling. Otah wondered what his
father had been when he was young and strong. He wondered what he would
have been like as a man among his children.
The Khai raised a hand, and the crowd's susurrus tapered down to
silence. Otah did not move.
"You have stepped outside tradition," he said. "Whether you took a hand
against my son is a question that has already gathered an array of
opinion. It is something I must think on.