if the task they had set themselves was simply sucking the life out of
them both.
"It's too late," Kiyan said. "With the time it would take to get the
mules, put them to yoke, and plow the fields, we'd be harvesting
snowdrifts."
"Is there something else we could plant?" Liat asked. "Something we have
time to grow before winter? Potatoes? Turnips?"
"I don't know," Kiyan said. "How long does it take to grow turnips this
far North?"
Liar closed her eyes. Two educated, serious, competent women should be
able to run a city. Should be able to shoulder the burden of the world
and forget that one stood to lose a husband, the other a son. Should be
able to ignore the constant fear that soldiers of a Galtic army might
appear any day on the horizon prepared to destroy the city. It should he
within their power, and yet they were blocked by idiot questions like
whether turnips take longer to grow than potatoes. She took a deep
breath and slowly let it out, willing the tension in her jaw to lessen,
the pain behind her eyes to recede.
"I'll find out," Ifiat said. "But will you give the order to the mills?
They won't he happy to stop their work."
"I'll give them the option of loaning the Khai their animals or pulling
the plows themselves," Kiyan said. "If we have to spend the winter
grinding wheat for our bread, it's a small price for not starving."
"It's going to he a thin spring regardless," Liat said.
Kiyan took the papers that Liat had drawn up. She didn't speak, but the
set of her mouth agreed.
"We'll do our best," Kiyan said.
The banquet had gone splendidly. The women of the utkhaiem- wives and
mothers, daughters and aunts-had heard Kiyan's words and taken to them
as if she were a priest before the faithful. Liat had seen the light in
their eyes, the sense of hope. For all their fine robes and lives of
court scandal and gossip, each of these women was as grateful as Liat
had been for the chance of something to do.
The food and fuel, Kiyan had kept for herself. Other people had been
tasked with seeing to the wool, to arranging the movement of the summer
belongings into the storage of the high towers, the preparation of the
lower city-the tunnels below Machi. Liat had volunteered to act as
Kiyan's messenger and go-between in the management of the farms and
crops, gathering the food that would see them through the winter. Being
the lover of a poet-even a poet who had never bound one of the
andat-apparently lent her enough status in court to make her
interesting. And as the rumors began to spread that Cehmai and Maati
were keeping long hours together in the library and the poet's house,
that they were preparing a fresh binding, Liat found herself more and
more in demand. In recent days it had even begun to interfere with her work.
She had let herself spend time in lush gardens and high-domed dining
halls, telling what stories she knew of Nlaati's work and intentionswhat
parts of it he'd said would be safe to tell. The women were so hungry
for good news, for hope, that Liat couldn't refuse them. After telling