their places. The air was thick.
"Sir," Eustin whispered, "I think it might he best if we stepped out,
left him to-"
"No," Balasar said. "Watch this. It's the last time it's ever going to
happen."
lr,ustin nodded curtly and turned with what seemed physical strain to
look ahead. Riaan had risen, standing where the cushion had been, or
perhaps he was floating. Or perhaps he was sitting just as he had been.
Something had happened to the nature of the space between them. And
then, like seven flutes moving from chaos to harmony, the world itself
chimed, a note as deep as oceans and pure as dawn. Balasar felt his
heart grow light for a moment, a profound joy filling him that had
nothing to do with triumph, and there, standing before the seated poet,
was a naked man, bald as a baby, with eyes white as salt.
The blast pressed Balasar back against the wall. His ears rang, and
Eustin's voice seemed to come from a great distance.
"Riaan, sir!"
Balasar fought to focus his eyes. Riaan was still seated where he had
been, but his shoulders were slumped, his head bowed is if in sleep.
Balasar walked over to him, the sound of his own footsteps lost in his
half-deafened state. It was like floating.
He was breathing. The poet breathed.
"Did it work, sir?" Eustin yelled from half a mile away or else there at
his shoulder. "Does that mean it worked?"
9
"What is he to do?" hlaati asked and then sipped his tea. It was just
slightly overhrewed, a bitter aftertaste haunting the back of his mouth.
Or perhaps it was only that he'd drunk too much the night before,
sitting up with his son until the full moon set and the eastern sky
began to lighten. \laati had seen Nayiit hack to the boy's apartments,
and then, too tired to sleep, wandered to the poet's house where Cehmai
was just risen for breakfast. He'd sent the servants back to the
kitchens to bring a second meal, and while they waited, Cehmai shared
what he had-thin butter pastry, blackberries still just slightly
underripe, overhrewed tea. Everything tasted of early summer. Already
the morning had broken the chill of the previous night.
"Really, he's been good to the woman. I Ie's acknowledged the babe, he's
married her. But if he doesn't love her, what's he to do? Love's not
something you can command."
"Not usually," Stone-Made-Soft said, and smiled wide enough to bare its
too-even white marble teeth. It wasn't a human mouth.
"I don't know," Cehmai said, ignoring the andat. "Really, you and I are
probably the two worst men in the city to ask about things like that.
I've never been in the position to have a wife. All the women I've been
with knew that this old bastard came before anything."
Stone-blade-Soft smiled placidly. Nlaati had the uncomfortable sense
that it was accepting a compliment.
"But you can see his dilemma," Nlaati said.
Outside, beyond the carefully sculpted oaks that kept the poet's house