But tea and sweet bread and gossip took time, and they took attention,
and she had let it go too far. The second wheat crop would be short, and
no amount of pleasant high-city chatter now would fill bellies in the
spring. Assuming they lived. If the Galts appeared tomorrow, it would
hardly matter what she'd done or failed to do.
"There's going to be enough food," Kiyan said softly. "We may wind up
killing more of the livestock and eating the grain ourselves, but even
if half the crop failed, we'd have enough to see us through to the early
harvest."
"Still," Liat said. "It would have been good to have more."
Kiyan took a pose that both agreed with Liat and dismissed the matter.
Liat responded with one appropriate for taking leave of a superior. It
was a nuance that seemed to trouble Kiyan, because she leaned forward,
her fingertips touching Liat's arm.
"Are you well?" Kiyan asked.
"Fine," Liat said. "It's just my head has been tender. It's often like
that when the Khai Saraykeht changes the tax laws again or the cotton
crops fail. It fades when the troubles pass."
Kiyan nodded, but didn't pull hack her hand.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" Kiyan asked.
"Tell me that Otah's come hack with Nayiit, the Galts all conquered and
the world hack the way it was."
"Yes," Kiyan said. Her eyes lost their focus and her hand slipped hack
to her side of the table. Liat regretted being so glib, regretted
letting the moment's compassion fade. "Yes, it would be pretty to think so.
Liat took her leave. The palaces were alive with servants and slaves,
the messengers of the merchant houses and the utkhaiem keeping the life
of the court active. Liat walked through the wide halls with their
distant tiled ceilings and down staircases of marble wide enough for
twenty men to walk abreast. Sweet perfumes filled the air, though their
scents brought her no comfort. The world was as bright as it had been
before she'd come to Machi, the voices lifted in song as merry and
sweet. It was only a trick of her mind that dulled the colors and broke
the harmonics. It was only the thought of her boy lying dead in some
green and distant field and the dull pain behind her eyes.
When she reached the physicians, she found the man she sought speaking
with Eiah. A young man lay naked on the wide slate table beside the
pair. His face was pale and damp with sweat; his eyes were closed. His
nearer leg was purple with bruises and gashed at the side. The
physician-a man no older than Liat, but bald apart from a long gray
fringe of hair-was gesturing at the young man's leg, and Eiah was
leaning in toward him, as if the words were water she was thirsty for.
Liat walked to them softly, partly from the pain in her head, partly
from the hope of overhearing their discussion without changing it.
"There's a fever in the flesh," the physician said. "That's to be
expected. But the muscle."
Eiah considered the leg, more fascinated, Liat noticed, with the raw
wounds than with the man's flaccid sex.
"It's stretched," Eiah said. "So there's still a connection to stretch