dangerous to exist? That he wants them destroyed? What he said about
killing the poet ... I don't know what to think of that."
"If burning the library is really one of his demands, then maybe," Kiyan
said. "I can't think he'd want the hooks and scrolls burned if he hoped
to hind more andat of his own."
Otah nodded, and lay hack, his gaze turned toward the ceiling above him,
dark as a moonless sky.
"I'm not sure he's wrong," Otah said.
Wordless, she drew his mouth to hers, guided his hands. Ile would have
thought himself too tired for the physical act of love, but she proved
him wrong. Afterward, she lay at his side, her fingertips tracing the
ink that had been worked into his skin when he had been an eastern
islander leading one of his previous lives. He slept deeply and with a
feeling of peace utterly unjustified by the situation.
He woke alone, called in the servants who bathed and dressed a Khai. Or,
however briefly, an Emperor. Black robes, shot with red. "Thick-woven
wool layered with waxed silk. Robes of colors chosen for war and
designed for cold. He took himself up through the great galleries,
rising toward the surface and the light, being seen by the utkhaiem of
both NIachi and Cetani, by the common laborers hurrying to throw vast
cartfuls of rubble into the minor entrances to the underground, by the
merchants and couriers. The food sellers and beggars. The city.
The sky was white and gray, vast and empty as a blank page. Crows
commented to one another, their voices dispassionate and considering as
low-town judges. High above, the towers of Machi loomed, and smoke rose
from the sky doors-the sign that men were up there in the thin, distant
air burning coal and wood to warm their hands, preparing for the battle.
Otah stood on the steps of his palace, the hitter cold numbing his
cheeks and biting at his nose and ears, the world smelling of smoke and
the threat of snow. Distant and yet clear, like the voice of a ghost,
hells began to ring in the towers and great yellow banners unfurled like
the last, desperate unfallen leaves of the vast stone trees.
The Galts had come.
SNOW FELL GENTLY THAT MORNING, DRIFTING DOWN FROM THE SHEET OF clouds
above them in small, hard flakes. Balasar stood on the ridgeline of the
hills south of the city. Frost had formed on the fold of his leather
cloak, and the snow that landed on his shoulders didn't melt. Before
him, the stone towers rose, seeming closer than they were, more real
than the snow-grayed mountains behind them. No enemy army had marched
out to meet him, no party of utkhaiem marred the thin white blanket,
still little more than ankle-deep, that separated Balasar from Machi.
Behind him, his men were gathered around the steam wagons, pressed
around the furnace grates that Balasar had ordered opened. The medics
were already busy with men suffering from the cold. The captains and
masters of arms were seeing that every clump of men was armed and
armored. Balasar had been sure to mention the warm baths beneath Machi,
the food supplies laid in those tunnels-enough, he assumed, to keep two
cities alive for the winter.
Smoke rose from the tops of the towers and from the city itself. Banners