teahouse servant juggling food for a full table. Otah took one without
pausing, and Idaan squatted on the boards at Ana's feet and pressed
another into the girl's hands. Otah went on with other little stories-
Kiyan's balancing the combined populations of Machi and Cetani with
Balasar Gice's crippled army in the wake of the war. Her refusal to
allow servants to bathe her. The story of when the representative of
Eddensea had mistaken something she'd said and thought she'd invited him
to bed with her.
Danat arrived out of the darkness, drawn by their voices. Idaan gave him
the last bowl, and he sat at Otah's side, then shifted, then shifted
again until his back rested against Ana's shin. He added stories of his
own. His mother's sharp tongue and wayhouse keeper's vocabulary, the
songs she'd sung, all the scraps and moments that built up a boy's
memory of his mother. It was beautiful to listen to. It wasn't something
Otah himself had ever had.
In the end, Ana let Danat lead her back to her shelter, leaving Otah and
his sister alone by the black and cooling kiln. The armsmen had prepared
sleeping tents for them, but Idaan seemed content to sit up drinking
watered wine in the cold night air, and Otah found himself pleased
enough to join her.
"I don't suppose you'd care to explain to your poor idiot brother what
happened today?" he said at length.
"You haven't put it together?" Idaan said. "This Vanjit creature has
destroyed the only home Ana-cha had to go to. She's had to look long and
hard at what her life could be in the place she's found herself,
crippled in a foreign land, and it shook her."
"She's in love with Danat?"
"Of course she is," Idaan said. "It would have happened in half the time
if you and her mother hadn't insisted on it. I think that's more
frightening for her than the poet killing her nation."
"I don't know what you mean," he said.
"She's spent her life watching her mother linked with her father," Idaan
said. "There are only so many years you can soak in the regrets of
others before you start to think that all the world's that way."
"I had the impression that Farrer-cha loved his wife deeply," Otah said.
"And I had it that there's more than a husband to make a marriage,"
Idaan said. "It isn't her mother she fears being, it's Farrer-cha. She's
afraid of having her love merely tolerated. I spent most of the day
talking about Cehmai. I told her that if she really wanted to know what
spending a life with Danat would be like, she should see what sort of
man you were. If she wanted to know how Danat would see her, to find how
you saw your wife."
Otah laughed, and he thought he saw the darkness around Idaan shift as
if she had smiled.
"I'm sorry I didn't have the chance to know her," Idaan said. "She
sounds like a good woman."
"She was," Otah said. "I miss her."
"I know you do," Idaan said. "And now Ana-cha knows it too."
"Does it matter?" Otah said. "All the hopes I had for building Galt and