"You'll see him home safe."
"Of course."
Maati nodded. It was an empty promise, and they both knew it. Otah
smoothed a palm over llaati's thinning hair, squeezed his palm one last
time, and stood. He was moved to speak, but he couldn't find any words
that would say what he meant. Instead he turned and softly walked away.
His servants and attendants waited just outside the garden, attentive as
puppies whose mother has left them. Otah waved them away, as he always
had. And as he might not do again. The Master of Tides brought the
ledger that outlined the rest of his day, and the day after, and was
suddenly perfectly blank after that. In two days, he would he traveling
with what militia he could, and there was no point planning past that.
As the man spoke, Otah gently took the book from him, closed it, and
handed it hack. The Master of rides went silent, and no one followed
Otah when he walked away.
He strode through the palaces, ignoring the poses of obeisance and
respect that bloomed wherever he went. He didn't have time for the forms
and rituals. He didn't have time to respect the traditions he was about
to put his life in danger to protect. He wasn't entirely sure what that
said about him. He took the wide, marble stairs two at a time, rising up
from the lower palace toward his personal apartments. When he arrived,
Kivan wasn't there. Ile paced the rooms, plucking at the papers on the
wide table he'd had brought for him. Maps and histories and lists of
names. Numbers of men and of wagons and routes. It looked like a nest
for rats: the piled hooks, the scattered notes. It was vaguely
ridiculous, he thought as he read over the names of the houses and
families who had sworn him support. He was no more a general than he was
a tinsmith, and still, here he was, the man stuck with the job.
He didn't recall picking up the map. And yet there it was, in his hands.
His eyes traced the paths he and his men might take. He and the men
Maati had called disposable. It wasn't the first time he'd wished
Sinja-cha were still in the city, if only to have the dispassionate eye
of a man who had actually fought in the field. Otah was an amateur at
war. He had the impression that it was a poor field for amateurs. He
traded the map for the lists of men and studied it again as if there
were a cipher hidden in it. He didn't notice when Kiyan and Eiah
arrived. When he looked up from his papers, they were simply there.
His wife was calm and collected, though he could see the strain in the
thinness of her lips and the tightness of her jaw. Her hair was grayer
now than the image of her in his mind. Her face seemed older. For a
moment, he was hack in the wayhouse she'd taken over from her father,
years ago in ildun. He was in her common room, listening to a flute
player fumble through old tunes that everyone knew, and wondering if the
lovely fox-faced woman serving the wine had meant to touch his hand when
she poured. From such small things are lives constructed. Something of
his thought must have shown in his face, because her fea tures softened
and something near a blush touched her cheeks as Eiah lowered herself to
a couch and collapsed. He noticed that her usual array of rings and
jewels were gone; but for the quality of her robe, she could have been a