Otah hadn't known, when the great panoply of Khaiate ships had come with
himself at the front, what his relationship with Balasar Gice would be.
Perhaps Balasar had also been uneasy, but if so it had never shown. The
former general was an easy man to like, and the pair of them had
experienced things-the profound sorrow of commanders seeing their
miscalculations lead loyal men to the slaughter, the eggshell diplomacy
of a long winter in close quarters with men who had been enemies in
autumn, the weight that falls on the shoulders of someone who has
changed the face of the world. There were conversations, they
discovered, that only the two of them could have. And so they had become
at first diplomats, then friends, and now something deeper and more
melancholy. Fellow mourners, perhaps, at the sickbeds of their empires.
The night wore on, the moon rising through the clouds, the fire in its
grate flickering, dying down to embers before being fed fresh coal and
coming to life again. They talked and they laughed, traded jokes and
memories. Otah was aware, as he always was, of a distant twinge of guilt
at enjoying the company of a man who had killed so many innocents in his
war against the Khaiem and the andat. And as always, he tried to set the
guilt aside. It was better to forget the ruins of Nantani and the bodies
of the Dai-kvo and his poets, the corpses of Otah's own men scattered
like scythed wheat and the smell of book paste catching fire. It was
better, but it was difficult. He knew he would never wholly succeed.
He was more than half drunk when the conversation turned to his
unfinished letter, still on his desk.
"It's pathetic, I suppose," Otah said, "but it's the habit I've made."
"I don't think it's pathetic," Balasar said. "You're keeping faith with
her. With what she was to you, and what she still is. That's admirable."
"Tends toward the maudlin, actually," Otah said. "But I think she'd
forgive me that. I only wish she could write back. There were things
she'd understand in an instant that I doubt I'd ever have come to. If
she were here, she'd have found a way to win the vote."
"I can't see that," Balasar said ruefully.
Otah took a pose of correction that spilled a bit of the wine from his bowl.
"She had a different perspective," Otah said. "She was ... she ..."
Otah's mind shifted under him, struggling against the fog. There was
something. He'd just thought it, and now it was almost gone again.
Kiyan-kya, his beloved wife, with her fox-sharp face and her way of
smiling. Something about the ways that the world she'd seen were
different from his own experience. The way talking with her had been
like living twice...
"Otah?" Balasar said, and Otah realized it wasn't the first time.
"Forgive me," Otah said, suddenly short of breath. "Balasar-cha, I think
... will you excuse me? There's something I need to ..."
Otah put his wine bowl on the desk and walked to the door of his rooms.
The corridors of the suite were dark, only the lowest of servants still
awake, cleaning the carpets and polishing the latches. Eyes widened and
hands fluttered as Otah passed, but he ignored them. The scribes and
translators were housed in a separate building across a flagstone
square. Otah passed the dry fountain in its center before the thought