"It's what Maati-cha did to us."
"No," Liat said, giving his hand the smallest pressure, and then
releasing it. "We left him."
Nayiit turned to her slowly, his hands folding into a pose that asked
confirmation. It was as if the words were too dangerous to speak.
"I left him," Liat said. "I took you when you were still a babe, and I
was the one to leave him."
She saw a moment's shock in his expression, gone as fast as it had come.
His face went grave, his hands as still as stones. As still as a man
bending his will to keep them still.
"Why?" he asked. His voice was low and thready.
"Oh, love. It was so long ago. I was someone else, then," she said, and
knew as she said it that it wasn't enough. "I did because he was only
half there. And because I couldn't see to all of his needs and all of
yours and have no one there to look after me."
"It was better without him?"
"I thought it would be. I thought I was cutting my losses. And then,
later, when I wasn't so certain anymore, I convinced myself it had been
the right thing, just so I could tell myself I hadn't been wrong."
lie was shaken, though he tried to cover it. She knew him too well to be
fooled.
"tic wasn't there, Nayiit. But he never left you."
And part of me never left him, she thought. What would the world have
been if I had chosen otherwise? Where would we all be now if that part
of him and of me had been enough? Still in that little hut in the low
town near the I)ai-kvo? Would they all have lived together in the
library these past years as Nlaati had?
"Those other, ghostlike people made a pretty dream, but then there would
have been no one to hear of the Galts and the missing poet, no one to
travel to Nantani. And little Tai would not have been horn, and she
would never have seen Amat Kyaan again. Someone else would have been
with the old woman when she died-someone else or no one. And Liat would
never have taken House Kyaan, would never have proven herself competent
to the world and to her own satisfaction.
It was too much. The changes, the differences were too great to think of
as good or as bad. The world they had now was too much itself, good and
evil too tightly woven to wish for some other path. And still it would
be wrong to say she found herself without regrets.
"Maati loves you," she said, softly. "You should see him. I won't
interfere again. But first, VOL] should go tend to your guest. Smooth
things over.
Nayiit nodded, and then a moment later, he smiled. It was the same
charming smile she'd known when she was a girl and it had been on
different lips. Nayiit would charm the girl, say something sweet and
funny, and the pain would be forgotten for a time. He was his father's
son. Son of the Khai Machi. Eldest son, and doomed to the fratricidal
struggle of succession that stained every city in each generation. She
wondered how far Utah would go to avoid that, to keep his boy safe from
her schemes. 't'hat conversation had to come, and soon. Perhaps it would