He didn't consider where he intended to go until he reached his father's
crypt and found himself unsurprised to be there. The dark stone seemed
to wrap itself in shadows, words of ancient language cut deep into the
walls. An ornate pedestal held the pale urn, a dead flower. And beneath
it, three small boxes-the remains of Biitrah, Danat, Kaiin. Otah's
brothers, dead in the struggle to become the new Khai Nlachi. Lives cut
short for the honor of having a pedestal of their own someday, deep in
the darkness.
Utah sat on the bare floor, the lantern at his side, and contemplated
the man he'd never known or loved whose place he had taken. Here was how
his own end would look. An urn, a tomb, high honors and reverence for
hones and ashes. And between the chill floor and the pale urn, perhaps
another thirty summers. Perhaps forty. Years of ceremony and
negotiation, late nights and early mornings and little else.
But when the time came, at least his crypt would be only his own. Danat,
brotherless, wouldn't be called upon to kill or die in the succession.
't'here would be no second sons left to kill the other for the black
chair. It seemed a thin solace, having given so much of himself to
achieve something that a merchant's son could have had for free.
It would have been easier if he'd never been anything but this. A man
horn into the Khaiem who had never stepped outside wouldn't carry the
memories of fishing in the eastern islands, of eating at the wayhouses
outside Yalakeht, of being free. If he could have forgotten it all,
becoming the man he was supposed to be might have been easier. Instead
he was driven to follow his own judgment, raise a militia, take only one
wife, raise only one son. "I'hat his experience told him that he was
right didn't make bearing the world's disapproval as easy as he'd hoped.
The lantern flame guttered and spat. Otah shook his head, uncertain now
how long he had been lost in his reverie. When he stood, his left leg
had gone numb from being pressed too long against the bare stone. He
took up the lantern and walked-moving slowly and carefully to protect
his numbed foot-back toward the stairways that would return him to the
surface and the day. By the time he regained the great halls, feeling
had returned. The sky peeked through the windows, a pale gray preparing
itself to blue. Voices echoed and the palaces woke, and the grand,
stately beast that was the court of Machi stirred and stretched.
His apartments, when he reached them, were a flurry of activity. A knot
of servants and members of the utkhaiem gabbled like peahens, Kiyan in
their center listening with a seriousness and sympathy that only he knew
masked amusement. Her hand was on the shoulder of the body servant whom
Otah had passed, the peace of sleep banished and anxiety in its place.
"Gentlemen," Otah said, letting his voice boom, calling their attention
to him. "Is there something amiss?"
To a man, they adopted poses of obeisance and welcome. Otah responded
automatically now, as he did half a hundred times every day.
"Most High," a thin-voiced man said-his Master of 'T'ides. "We came to
prepare you and found your bed empty."
Otah looked at Kiyan, whose single raised brow told them that empty had
only meant empty of him, and that she'd have been quite pleased to keep