seeming to actually heat it.
"Look," \laati said. "Let's put it aside for the day. We need to move
the library underground soon anyway. It's going to he too cold tip here
to do more than watch our fingers turn blue."
Cehmai nodded, then looked around at the disarray. Nlaati could read the
despair in his face.
"I'll put it hack together," MIaati said. ""Then a dozen slaves with
strong hacks, and I'll put it all together in the winter quarters in two
days' time."
"I should move the poet's house down too," Cehmai said. "I feel like I
haven't been there in weeks."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. The place seems too big without Stone-Made-Soft anyway. "loo
quiet. It reminds me of ... well, of everything."
Nlaati rose, his knees aching. His feet tingled with the pins and
needles that long motionlessness brought him these days. lie clapped his
hand on Cehmai's Shoulder.
"Meet me in three days," he said. "I'll have the hooks in order. We'll
start again fresh."
Cehmai took a pose of agreement, but he looked exhausted. Worn thin. The
younger poet began snuffing the lanterns as %Iaati walked back toward
his apartments, placing his feet carefully until normal feeling returned
to them. Stepping the wrong way and breaking his ankle would he just the
thing to make the winter even more miserable than it already promised to he.
The rooms in which he spent his summers were already bare. The fire
grate was empty of everything but old soot. The tapestries were gone,
the couches, the tables, the cabinets. Everything had been moved to the
lower city. Winter are the middle of things in the North. The snows
would come soon, blocking the doors and windows. The second-story snow
doors would open out for anyone who needed to travel into the world.
Below, in the warmth of the ground, all the citizens of Machi, and now
of Cetani too, would huddle and talk and fight and sing and play at
tiles and stones until winter lost its grip and the snows turned to
meltwater and washed the black-cobbled streets. Only the metalworkers
remained at the ground level, the green copper roofs of the forges free
of snow and ice, the plumes of coal smoke rising almost as high as the
towers all through the winter.
At least all through this winter. This one last winter before the Galts
came and butchered them all.
If only there was some other way to phrase the idea of removing.
Seedless's true name would have been better translated Removing-the-
Part-"That-Continues. Continuity was a fairly simple problem. The old
grammars had several ways to conceptualize continuance. It was removal ...
Nlaati reached the thin red doorway at the back of the rooms, and
started down the stairs. It was dark as night. Darker. He would need to
talk with the palace servant masters about seeing that lanterns were lit
here. With as many people as there were filling every available niche in
the tunnels and, from what he heard, the mines as well, it seemed
unlikely that no one could he spared to be sure there was a little light