echoed in their words. Liat closed her eyes, weariness dragging her like
rain-heavy robes.
"It's all happening again, isn't it?" she said. "It's all the things
we've suffered before, coming back at once. The Galts. Stone-Made-Soft
set free. Cehmai lost and mourning the way Heshai was that summer, after
Seedless killed the baby. And then us. You and I."
"1'ou and I, ending again," NMTaati said. "All of history pressed into
one season. It doesn't seem fair."
"I low is Cehmai?" she asked, turning the conversation to safer ground,
if only for a moment. "Has he been eating?"
"A little. Not enough."
"Does be know yet what happened? How Stone-Made-Soft slipped free?"
"No, but ... but he suspects. And I do, too."
Liat moved forward, sat beside Maati, took the bowl from his hands and
drank the wine. Her throat and chest warmed and relaxed. Maati took a
bottle from the floor.
"Not every poet is made for slaughter," Maati said as he tipped rice
wine clear as water into the howl. "There was a part of him that
rebelled at the prospect of turning the andat against the Galts. I know
he struggled with it, and he and I both believed he'd made his peace
with . 11 it.
"But now you think not?"
"Now I think perhaps he wasn't as certain as he told himself he was. He
may not even have known what he meant to do. It would take so little, in
a way. The decision of a moment, and then gone beyond retrieval. If he
regretted it in the next breath, it would already be too late. But it
can't he a coincidence, the Galts and Stone-Made-Soft."
Liat sipped now, just enough to maintain the warmth in her body but not
so much as to make her drunk. Maati drank directly from the bottle,
wiping it with his sleeve after.
""There's another explanation," she said. "The Galts could have done it."
"How? They can't unmake a binding."
`.. They could have bought him."
Nlaati shook his head, frowning. "Not Cehmai. There's not a man in the
world less likely to turn against the Khaiem."
"You're sure of that?"
"Yes. I'm sure," Nlaati said. "He was happy. He had his life and his
place in the world, and he was happy."
"So much the worse for him," Liat said. "At least we don't have that to
suffer, eh?"
"And now who sounds hitter?"
Liat chuckled and took a pose accepting the point that was made awkward
by the howl in one hand.
"How are things with Otah-kvo?" Maati asked.
"He's like the wind on legs," Liat said. "Ile wants to know everything
at once, control all of it, and I think he's driving the court half mad.
And ... don't say I said it, but it's almost as if he's enjoying it.
Everything's falling apart except him. If simple force of will can hold
a city together, I think Machi will he fine."