trilling of pipes and the laughter of girls drunk with flirtation. She
remembered it all from the days after Saraykeht had fallen. There was
only so long that the shock of losing the andat could restrain the
festivals of youth.
The young are blind and stupid, she'd said, and their breasts don't sag.
It's the nearest thing they've got to a blessing.
Maati had chuckled and tried to take her hand, but she couldn't stand
the touch. She'd seen the surprise in his expression, and the hurt. That
was when she'd told him. She'd said it lightly, acidly, fueled by her
anger and her despair. She had been too wrapped up in herself to pay
attention to Nlaati's shock and horror. It was only later, when he'd
excused himself and she was walking alone in the dim paths at the edge
of the dance, that she understood she'd as much as accused him of
sending Nayiit to his death.
She had gone by Maati's apartments that night and again the next day,
but he had gone and no one seemed to know where. By the time she found
him, he had spoken with Otah and Nayiit. He accepted her apology, he
cradled her while they both confessed their fears, but the damage had
been done. He was as haunted as she was, and there was nothing to be
done about it.
Liat realized she'd almost reached the ground, startled to have come so
far so quickly. Her mind, she supposed, had been elsewhere.
Mach) in the height of summer might almost have been a Southern city.
The sun made its slow, stately way across the sky. The nights had grown
so short, she could fall asleep with a glow still bright over the
mountains to the west and wake in daylight, unrested. The streets were
full of vendors at their carts selling fresh honey bread almost too hot
to eat or sausages with blackened skins or bits of lamb over rice with a
red sauce spicy enough to burn her tongue. Merchants passed over the
black-cobbled streets, wagon wheels clattering. Beggars sang before
their lacquered boxes. Firekeepers tended their kilns and saw to the
small business of the tradesmen-accepting taxes, witnessing contracts,
and a hundred other small duties. Liat pulled her hands into her sleeves
and walked without knowing her destination.
It might only have been her imagination that there were fewer men in the
streets. Surely there were still laborers and warehouse guards and
smiths at their forges. The force marching to the west could account for
no more than one man in fifteen. The sense that Machi had become a city
of women and old men and boys could only be her mind playing tricks. And
still, there was something hollow about the city. A sense of loss and of
uncertainty. The city itself seemed to know that the world had changed,
and held its breath in dread anticipation, waiting to see whether this
transformed reality had a place for Machi in it.
She found herself back at her apartments-feet sore, back achingbefore
the sun had touched the peaks to the west. As she approached her door, a
young man rose from the step. For a moment, her mind tricked her into
thinking Nayiit had returned. But no, this boy was too thin through the
shoulders, his hair too long, his robes the black of a palace servant.
He took a pose of greeting as she approached, and Liat made a brief