The servant made his obeisance and retreated. Otah took a pose of
greeting appropriate to close family, and Idaan tilted her head like a
dog hearing an unfamiliar sound.
"I had intended to meet you when you came into the city. I didn't know
you were planning a festival."
"I wasn't," Otah said, sitting beside her. The fountain clucked and
burbled. "Traveling quietly seems beyond me these days."
"It was all as subtle as a rockslide," Idaan agreed. "But there's some
good in it. The louder you are, the less people are looking at me."
"You've found something then?" Otah asked.
"I have," Idaan said.
"What have you learned?"
A different voice answered from the darkness of the alcove at Idaan's
side. A woman's voice.
"Everything," it said.
Otah rose to his feet. The woman who emerged was young: not more than
forty summers and the white in her hair still barely more than an
accent. She wore robes as simple as Idaan's but held herself with a
mixture of angry pride and uncertainty that Otah had become familiar
with. Her pupils were gray and sightless, but her eyes were the almond
shape that marked her as a citizen of the Empire. This was a victim of
the new poet, but she was no Galt.
"Idaan-cha knows everything," the blind woman said again, "because I
told it to her."
Idaan took the woman's hand and stood. When she spoke, it was to her
companion.
"This is my brother, the Emperor," Idaan said, then turned to him.
"Otah-cha, this is Ashti Beg."
20
When before Maati had considered death, it had been in terms of what
needed to be done. Before he died, he had to master the grammars of the
Dai-kvo, or find his son again, or most recently see his errors with
Sterile made right. It was never the end itself that drew his attention.
He had reduced his mortality to the finish line of a race. This and this
and this done, and afterward, dying would be like rest at the end of a
long day.
With Eiah's pronouncement, his view shifted. No list of accomplishments
could forgive the prospect of his own extinction. Maati found himself
looking at the backs of his hands, the cracked skin, the dark blotches
of age. He was becoming aware of time in a way he never had. There was
some number of days he would see, some number of nights, and then
nothing. It had always been true. He was no more or less a mortal being
because his blood was slowing. Everything born, dies. He had known that.
He only hadn't quite understood. It changed everything.
It also changed nothing. They traveled slowly, keeping to lesserknown
roads and away from the larger low towns. Often Eiah would call the
day's halt with the sun still five hands above the horizon because they
had found a convenient wayhouse or a farm willing to board them for the
night. The prospect of letting Maati sleep in cold air was apparently