weeping. Someday, he told himself, someday the best of these men and
women would be rewarded, the worst left behind. Only he didn't know how.
In his private rooms, the servants fluttered like moths. No schedules
were right, no plans were made. Orders from the Master of Tides
contradicted the instructions from the Master of Keys, and neither
allowed for what the guards and armsmen said they needed to do. Otah
built his own fire in the grate, lighting it from the stub of a candle,
and let raw chaos reign about him.
Danat found him there, looking into the fire. His son's eyes were wide,
but his shoulders hadn't yet sagged. Otah took a pose of welcome and
Danat crouched before him.
"What are you doing, Papa-kya," Danat said. "You're just sitting here?"
"I'm thinking," Otah said, aware as he did so how weak the words sounded.
"They need you. You have to gather the high utkhaiem. You have to tell
them what's going on."
He looked at his son. The strong face, the sincere eyes the same rich
brown as Kiyan's had been. He would have made a good emperor. Better
than Otah had. He took his boy's hand.
"The fleet is doomed," Otah said. "Galt is broken. These new poets,
wherever they are, no longer answer to the Empire. What would you have
me say?"
"That," Danat said. "If nothing else, say that. Say what everyone knows
is true. How can that be wrong?"
"Because I have nothing to say after it," Otah said. "I don't know what
to do. I don't have an answer."
"Then tell them that we're thinking of one," Danat said.
Otah sat silent, his hands on his knees, and let the fire in the grate
fill his eyes. Danat shook his shoulder with a sound that was part
frustration and part plea. When Otah couldn't find a response, Danat
stood, took a pose that ended an audience, and strode out. The young
man's impatience lingered in the air like incense.
There had been a time when Otah had been possessed of the certainty of
youth. He had held the fate of nations in his hands, and done what
needed doing. He had killed. Somewhere the years had pressed it out of
him. Danat would see the same complexity, futility, and sorrow, given
time. He was young. He wasn't tired yet. His world was still simple.
Servants came, and Otah turned them away. He considered going to his
desk, writing another of his letters to Kiyan, but the effort of it was
too much. He thought of Sinja, riding the swift autumn waves outside
Chaburi-Tan and waiting for aid that would never come. Would he know?
Were there Galts enough among his crew to guess what had happened?
The world was so large and so complex, it was almost impossible to
believe that it could collapse so quickly. Idaan had been right again.
All the problems that had plagued him were meaningless in the face of this.
Eiah. Maati. The people he had failed. They had taken the world from
him. Well, perhaps they'd have a better idea what to do with it. And if
a few hundred or a few thousand Galts died, there was nothing Otah could
do to save them. He was no poet. He could have been. One angry, rootless
boy's decision differently made, and everything would have been different.