The young man, Liat's son, had taken all the appropriate poses, said all
the right phrases, and then taken position standing behind his mother
like a bodyguard. Maati leaned against the stone banister, the sky at
his hack. Otah-formal, uneased, and feeling more the Khai Machi than
ever under the anxious gaze of woman who had been his lover in his
youth-took a pose of query, and Liat shared the news that changed the
world forever: the Galts had a poet of their own.
"His name is Riaan Vaudathat," Liat said. "He was the fourth son of a
high family in the courts of Nantani. Ills father sent him to the school
when he was five."
"This was well after our time," Nlaati said to Otah. "Neither of us
would have known him. Not from there."
"He was accepted by the Dai-kvo and taken to the village to be trained,"
Liat said. ""That was eight years ago. He was talented, well liked, and
respected. The Dai-kvo chose him to study for the binding of a fresh andat."
Kiyan, sitting at Otah's side, leaned forward in a pose of query. "Don't
all the poets train to hold andat?"
"We all try our hands at preparing a binding," Maati said. "We all study
enough to know how it works and what it is. But only a few apply the
knowledge. If the Dai-kvo thinks you have the temperament to take on one
that's already hound, he'll send you there to study and prepare yourself
to take over control when the poet grows too old. If you're bright and
talented, he'll set you to working through a fresh binding. It can take
years to be ready. Your work is read by other poets and the Daikvo, and
attacked, and torn apart and redone perhaps a dozen times. Perhaps more."
"Because of the consequences of failing?" Kiyan asked. Maati nodded.
"Riaan was one of the best," Liat said. "And then three years ago, he
was sent hack to Nantani. To his family. Fallen from favor. No one knew
why, he just appeared one day with a letter for his father, and after
that he was living in apartments in the Vaudathat holdings. It was a
small scandal. And it wasn't the last of them. Riaan was sending letters
every week hack to the Dai-kvo. Asking to be taken back, everyone
supposed. He drank too much, and sometimes fought in the streets. By the
end, he was practically living in the comfort houses by the seafront.
The story was that he'd bet he could bed every whore in the city in a
summer. His family never spoke of it, but they lost standing in the
court. "There were rumors of father and son fighting, not just arguing,
but taking up arms.
"And then, one night, he disappeared. Vanished. His family said that
he'd been summoned on secret business. The Dai-kvo had a mission for
him, and he'd gone the same day the letter had come. But there wasn't a
courier who'd admit to carrying any letter like it."
"They might not have said it," Otah said. "They call it the gentleman's
trade for a reason."
,,we thought of that," Nayiit replied. He had a strong voice; not loud,
but powerful. "Later, when we went to the Dai-kvo, I took a list of the
couriers who'd come to Nantani in the right weeks. None of them had been
to the I)ai-kvo's village at the right time. The Dai-kvo wouldn't speak
to me. But of the men who would, none believed that Riaan had been sent