Otah raised her hand to his lips. Gently, she caressed his cheek. Ile
drew her close, folding his arms around her, feeling the warmth of her
body against him, smelling the familiar scent of her hair, and willing
the moment to not end. If only the future could never come.
Kiyan sensed it in the tension of his spine, the fierceness of his
embrace. Something. She did not speak, but only breathed, softening
against him with every exhalation, and in time he felt himself beginning
to relax with her. One of the lanterns, burning the last of its oil,
dimmed, spat, and went out. The smoke touched the air with a smell of
endings.
"I missed you," she said. "Every night, I went to bed thinking you might
not come hack. I kept telling the children over and over that things
would he fine, that you'd he home soon. And I was sick. I was sick with it."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't. Don't apologize. Don't be sorry. Just know it. Just know we
wanted you hack. Not the Khai and not the emperor. You. Remember that
you are a good man and I love you."
Ile raised her chin and kissed her, wondering how she knew so well the
way to fill him with joy without asking him to abandon his sorrow.
"It's Nlaati's now," Otah whispered. "If he can bind Seedless before the
spring thaw, this will all he over."
I Ic felt an odd relaxation in her body, as if by saying the thing, he'd
freed her from some secret effort she'd been making.
"And if he can't?" she asked. "If it's all going to fall apart anyway,
can we run? You and me and the children? If I take them and go, are you
going to come with us, or stay here and fight?"
Ile kissed her again. She rested her hands against his shoulders,
leaning into him. Otah didn't answer, and he knew from the sound of her
breath that she understood.
"11: WE TAKE 'I'I I I: NI'ANCE of MOVEMENT'-ANNAY IN NI 'RAT AND THE
SYMBOL set you worked up for the senses of continuance," Nlaati
said, "I think then we'll have something we can work with."
Cehmai's eves were bloodshot, his hair wild from another long evening of
combing frustrated fingers through it. Around them, the lamplight shone
on a bedlam of paper. The library would have seemed a rat's nest to any
but the two of them: books laid open; scrolls unfurled and weighted by
other scrolls which were themselves unfurled; loose pages of a dozen
codices stacked together. The mass of information and inference, grammar
and poetry and history would have been overwhelming, \laati thought, to
anyone who didn't know how profoundly little it was. Cchnlai ran his
fingertips down the notes \laati had made and shook his head.
"It's still the same," he said. "Nurat is modified by the fourth case of
a(/at, and then it's exactly the same logical structure as the one
Fleshai used."
"No, it isn't," \laati said, slapping the table with an open palm. "It's
differ r ut. "
Cchmai took a long, slow breath, raising his hands palms-out. It wasn't
a formal gesture, but \laati understood it all the same. They were both
worn raw. I Ic sat hack in his chair, feeling the knots in his back and