"I offered to take him away. I didn't want him fighting to he the Khai
any more than you did. I wouldn't have put him in danger, and he would
never have hurt I)anat. IIe would never have hurt your boy. Ide wouldn't
have hurt anyone. It's your mewling half-dead son that's caused this. If
he'd been able to fight off a cough, Otah would never have kept Nayiit
from the brand. Nayiit would never have fought, never have hurt rin
hods' children. Ile was ... he was ..."
The tears came again. She couldn't say what would have come. She
couldn't say that Danat and Nayiit would never have come to face one
another as custom demanded. perhaps in the years ahead the gods would
have pitted them against each other. If the world was what it had been.
If things hadn't changed. Sobs as violent as sickness racked her, and
she found Kiyan's arms around her, her own fists full of the soft wool
of the woman's robe, her screams echoing as if by will alone she could
pull the stones down and bury then all.
Time changed its nature. The sorrow and rage and the physical ache of
her heart went on forever and only a moment. The only measure was that
the candles had burned a quarter of their length before the fit passed,
and exhaustion reclaimed her again. She was embarrassed to see the damp
spot she had left on Kiyan's shoulder, but when she tried to smooth it
away, Kiyan only took her hand, lacing their fingers together like
half-grown girls trading gossip at a dance. Liat allowed it.
"Thu know you can stay here," Kiyan said.
"You know I can't."
"I only meant you'd be welcome," Kiyan said. "Then a moment later, "What
will you do when the thaw comes?"
"Go south," Liat said. "Go to Saraykeht. See what's left. I may still
have a grandson. I can hope it. And better that he not lose a father and
grandmother both."
"Navilt was a good man," Kiyan said.
"He was nothing of the sort. He was a charming bastard who fled his own
family and slept with half the women between here and Saraykeht. But I
loved him."
"lie died saving my son," Kiyan said. "He's a hero."
"That doesn't help me."
"I know it," Kiyan said, and with a distant surprise, Liat found herself
smiling.
"Aren't you going to tell me it will pass?" Liat asked.
"Will it?"
The tunnels below Nlachi had their own weather-a system of warm winds
and cold; dry and damp. Sometimes, if no one was speaking, if there were
no words to say, Liat could hear it like a breath. Like a long, low,
endless exhalation.
"I will never stop missing him," Liat said. "I want him back."
Kiyan nodded, and sat there with her, keeping the vigil for another
night as outside autumn fell into winter and winter crawled toward
spring. The world slowly changing.
"I UNI)ERSTANI) YOUR SON HAS FALLEN ILL?"
Otah's first impulse, unthinking as a reflex, was to deny it. Balasar