\Vell, this is going just as poorly as I expected, Otah thought.
"I have a wife, thank you," Otah said, his manner cool. But the envoy
had clearly reached the end of his patience. Hearing him stand, Otah
turned. The young man's face was flushed, his hands folded into the
sleeves of his brown poet's robes.
"And if you were a shopkeeper, having a single woman would be
admirable," the envoy said. "But as the Khai Machi, turning away every
woman who's offered to you is a pattern of insult. I can't be the first
one to point this out. From the time you took the chair, you've isolated
yourself from the rest of the Khaiem, the great houses of the utkhaiem,
the merchant houses. Everyone."
Otah ran through the thousand arguments and responses-the treaties and
trade agreements, the acceptance of servants and slaves, all of the ways
in which he'd tried to bind himself and Machi to the other cities. They
wouldn't convince the envoy or his master, the Dai-kvo. They wanted
blood-his blood flowing in the veins of some boy child whose mother had
come from south or east or west. They wanted to know that the Khai
Yalakeht or Pathai or 'Ian-Sadar might be able to hope for a grandson on
the black chair in Machi once Otah had died. His wife Kiyan was past the
age to bear another child, but men could get children on younger women.
For one of the Khaiem to have only two children, and both by the same
woman-and her a wayhouse keeper from Udun.. They wanted sons from him,
fathered on women who embodied wise political alliances. They wanted to
preserve tradition, and they had two empires and nine generations of the
Khaiate court life to back them. Despair settled on him like a thick
winter cloak.
There was nothing to be gained. He knew all the reasons for all the
choices he had made, and he could as easily explain them to a mine dog
as to this proud young man who'd traveled weeks for the privilege of
taking him to task. Otah sighed, turned, and took a deeply formal pose
of apology.
"I have distracted you from your task, Athai-cha. That was not my
intention. What was it again the Dai-kvo wished of me?"
The envoy pressed his lips bloodless. They both knew the answer to the
question, but Otah's feigned ignorance would force him to restate it.
And the simple fact that Otah's bed habits were not mentioned would make
his point for him. Etiquette was a terrible game.
"The militia you have formed," the envoy said. ""I'he Dai-kvo would know
your intention in creating it."
"I intend to send it to the Westlands. I intend it to take contracts
with whatever forces there are acting in the best interests of all the
cities of the Khaiem. I will he pleased to draft a letter saying so."
Otah smiled. The young poet's eyes flickered. As insults went, this was
mild enough. Eventually, the poet's hands rose in a pose of gratitude.
""There is one other thing, Most High," the envoy said. "If you take any
aggressive act against the interests of another of the Khaiem, the
Dal-kvo will recall Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft. If you take arms against
them, he will allow the Khaiem to use their poets against you and your
city."