"I know you love her, Danat-kya. I love her too, and I don't want to
think this of her either, but-"
"I don't mean she didn't back Maati," Danat said. "We don't know that
she did, but at least that part's plausible. I'm only saying that this
blindness isn't her work."
His voice wasn't loud or strident. He seemed less like a man fighting an
unpalatable truth than a builder pointing out a weakness in an archway's
design. Otah took a pose that invited him to elaborate.
"Eiah hates your plan," Danat said. "She even came to me a few times to
argue that I should refuse it."
"I didn't know that."
"I didn't tell you," Danat said, his hands taking a pose that
apologized, though his voice held no regret. "I couldn't see that it
would make things between the two of you any better. But my point is
that her arguments were never against Galts. She couldn't stand to see a
generation of our own women ignored. Their pain was what she lived in.
When you started allowing the import of bed slaves as ... well ..."
"Brood mares," Otah said. "I do remember her saying that."
"Well, that," Danat agreed. "Eiah took that as saying that none of the
women here mattered. That she didn't matter. If the problems of the
Empire could be solved by hauling in wombs that would bear, then all
that was important to you about women was the children they could yield."
"But if there's no children, there can't be-"
Danat shifted forward in his seat, putting his palm over Otah's mouth.
The boy's eyes were dark, his mouth set in the half-smile Kiyan had
often worn.
"You need to listen to me, Papa-kya. I'm not telling you that she's
right. I'm not telling you she's wrong, for that. I'm telling you Eiah
loves people and she hates pain. If she's been backing Uncle Maati, it's
to take away the pain, not to ..."
Danat gestured at the shutters, and by implication at the world on the
other side of them. The logs in the grate popped and the song of a
single cricket, perhaps the last one alive before the coming winter,
sang counterpoint to the ticking clock. Otah rubbed his chin, his mind
turning his son's words over like a jeweler considering a gem.
"She may be part of this," Danat said. "I think you're right to find
her. But the poet we want? It isn't her."
"I wish I could be certain of that," Otah said.
"Well, start with not being certain that she is," Danat said. "The world
will carry you the rest of the way, if I'm right."
Otah smiled and put his hand on his son's head.
"When did you become wise?" Otah asked.
"It's only what you'd have said, if you weren't busy feeling responsible
for all of it," Danat said. "You're a good man, Papa-kya. And we're
doing what we can in unprecedented times."
Otah let his hand fall to his side. Danat smiled. The cricket, wherever
it was, went silent.
"Go," Danat said. "Sleep. We've got a long ride tomorrow, and I'm
exhausted."