his reply. When the boy spoke, his tone was light.
"I've spent all my life-well, since I've been old enough to think of it
as really mine and not something Mother's let me borrow-with House
Kyaan. Running errands, delivering contracts. That's how I started, at
least. Mother always told me I had to do better than the other boys who
worked for the house because I was her son, and if people thought I was
getting favors because of it, they wouldn't respect her or me. She was
right. I can see that. At the time it all seemed monstrously unfair,
though."
"Do you like the work?" Maati asked.
The girl with the drum began tapping a low tattoo, her voice droning in
a lament. Maati shifted to look at Nayiit. The boy's gaze was fixed on
the singer, his expression melancholy. The urge to put his hand to
Nayiit's shoulder, to offer some comfort, however powerless, moved
through Maati and faded. He sat still and quiet as the chant rose, the
anguish in the singer's voice growing until the air of the teahouse
hummed with it, and then it faded into despair. The man with the lacquer
box came past again, but Maati didn't put in any copper this time.
"You and Mother. You're lovers again?"
"I suppose so," Maati said, surprised to feel a blush in his cheeks. "It
happens sometimes."
"What happens when you're called away to the Dai-kvo?"
"Are we walking the same path a second time, you mean? We're waiting to
hear two things from the Dal-kvo-whether he thinks my speculations about
avoiding the price of a failed binding are worth looking into and
whether to act against Galt. Either one puts me someplace away from
Liat. But we aren't who we were then. I don't pretend that we can be.
And anyway, I have all the habits of being without her. I've missed her
for more years than I spent in her company."
I have missed you, he thought but didn't say. I have missed you, and
it's too late now for anything more than awkward conversations and late
nights getting drunk together. Nothing will ever make that right.
"Do you regret that?" Nayiit asked. "If you could go hack and do things
again, would you want to love her less? Would you want to have gone to
the Dai-kvo and been able to leave that ... that longing behind you?"
"I don't know what you mean."
Nayiit looked up.
"I would hate her, if I were you. I would think she'd taken my chance to
be what I was supposed to be, to do what I could have done. "There you
were, a poet, and favored enough that you were expected to hold the
andat, and because of her you fell into disfavor. Because of her, and
because of me." Nayiit's jaw clenched, his eyes only a half shade darker
than the pale brown of his mother's staring at something that wasn't
there, his attention turned inward. "I don't know how you stand the
sight of us."
"It wasn't like that," Maati said. "It was never like that. If it were
all mine again, I would have followed her."
The words struck the boy hard. His gaze lost its focus; his mouth
tightened like that of a man in pain.