correction.
Nayiit leaned forward and took up a length of iron, prodding the burning
logs. Sparks rose and vanished like fireflies.
"I haven't been able to see him," Nayiit said. " WN'e've been here weeks
now, and he hasn't come to speak with me. And every time I go to the
library he's gone or he's with you. I think you're trying to keep us
from each other."
Liat raised her eyebrows and ran her tongue across the inside of her
teeth, weighing the coppery taste that sprang to her mouth, thinking
what it meant. She coughed.
"You aren't wrong," she said at last. "I'm not ready for it. Maati's not
who he was back then."
"So instead of letting us face each other and see what it is we see,
you've decided to start up an affair with him and take all his time and
attention?" "There was no rancor in his voice, only sadness and
amusement. "It doesn't seem the path of wisdom, Mother."
"Well, not when you say it that way," Liat said. "I was thinking of it
as coming to know him again before the conflict began. I did love him,
you know."
"And now?"
"And still. I still love him, in my fashion," Liat said, her voice
rueful. "I know I'm not what he wants. I'm not the person he wants me to
be, and I doubt I ever have been, truly. But we enjoy each other. "There
are things we can say to each other that no one else would understand.
They weren't there, and we were. And he's such a little boy. He's
carried so much and been so disappointed, and there's still the
possibility in him of this ... JOY. I can't explain it."
"If I ask you as a favor, will you let me know him as well? We may not
actually fight like pit dogs if you let us in the same room together.
And if there's conflict at all, it's between us. Not you."
Liat opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head. She sighed.
"Of course," she said. "Of course, I'm sorry. I've been an old hen, and
I'm sorry for it, but ... I know it's not a trade. We aren't
negotiating, not really. But Nayiit-kya, you can't say you haven't been
with a woman since we've cone here. You didn't choose to go south, even
when I asked you to. Sweet, is it so had at home?"
"Bad?" he said, speaking slowly. As if tasting the word. "I don't know.
No. Not bad. Only not good. And yes, I know I haven't been keeping to my
own bed. Do you think my darling wife has been keeping to hers?"
Liat's mind turned, searching for words, making sense as best she could
of what he had asked and what he had meant by it. It was true enough
that Tai had come into the world at an odd time, but he was a first
child, and wombs weren't made to he certain. She rushed through her
memory, looking for signs she might have missed, suggestions back in
their lives in Saraykeht that would have pointed at some venomous
question, and slowly she began, if not to understand, then at least to
guess.
"You think he isn't yours," she said. "You think Tai is another man's
child."