"No?" Nayiit said, and then smiled the disarming, rueful smile that
would always and forever mark him as the son of Otah Machi. "No, I
suppose not. May I?"
Liat gestured her permission, and Nayiit poured himself a howl of the
tea. He looked tired, and it was more than a night spent in teahouses
and the baths. Something had changed while he'd been gone. She had
thought at first that it was only exhaustion. When she'd found him
asleep on Nlaati's floor, he had been half-dead from his time on the
road and visibly thinner. But since then he'd rested and eaten, and
still there was something behind his eyes. An echo of her own bleak
thoughts, perhaps.
"I failed him," Nayiit said. Liat blinked and sat back in her chair.
Nayiit tilted his head. "It's what you were wondering, ne? What's been
eating the boy? Why can't he sleep anymore? I failed the Khai. I had his
good opinion. There was a time that he valued my counsel and listened to
me, even when I had unpleasant things to say. And then I failed him. And
he sent me away."
"You didn't fail-"
"I did. Mother, I love you, and I know that you'd move the stars for me
if you could, but I failed. Your son can fail," Nayiit said. He put down
his bowl with a sharp click, and Liat wondered if perhaps he was still
just a bit tipsy from his night's revelry. Drink sometimes made her
maudlin too. "I'm not a good man, Mother. I'm not. I have left my wife
and my child. I have slept with half the women I've met since we left
home. I lost the Khai's trust-"
"Nayiit-"
"I killed those men."
I Iis face was still as stone, but a tear crept from the corner of his
eye. Liat slid down from her scat to kneel on the floor beside him. She
put her hand on his, but Nayiit didn't move.
"I called the retreat," he said. "I saw them fighting, and the Galts
were everywhere. They were all around us. All I could think was that
they needed to get away. I was calling signals. I knew how to call the
retreat, and I did it. And they died. Every man that fell because we ran
is someone I killed. And he knew it. The Khai. He knew it, and it's why
he sent me hack here."
""l'hat battle was doomed from the start," Liat said. ""I'hey
outnumbered you; they were veterans. Your men were exhausted laborers
and huntsmen. If what happened out there is anyone's fault, it's Otah's."
"You don't understand," he said. His voice wasn't angry, only tired. "I
want to be a good man. And I'm not. For a time, I thought I was. I
thought I coin(! be. I was wrong."
I,iat felt a thickness at the back of her throat. She forced a smile,
half-rose, and kissed him on the top of his head, where the hones hadn't
yet grown closed the first time she'd held him.
""Then do better," she said. "As long as you're alive, the next thing
you do can be a good one, ne? Besides which, of course you're a good
man. Only good men worry about whether they're bad."
Nayiit chuckled. The darkness slid hack to the place it had been. Not