want to be found, we might as well go home."
Eiah nodded. Her grip tightened for a moment, and she released his hand.
Her brow was furrowed with thought, but it was nothing she chose to
share. Don't leave me, he wanted to say. Don't go back to Otah and leave
me by myself. Or worse, with only 17anjit. In the end, he kept his silence.
His second foray into the city came in the middle of the afternoon. This
time they had set paths to follow, rough-drawn maps marked with each
pair's route, and Maati was going out with Danat. They would come back
three hands before sunset unless some significant discovery was made.
Maati accepted Otah's instructions without complaint, though the
resentment was still there.
The air was warmer now, and with the younger man's pace, Maati found
himself sweating. They moved down smaller streets this time, narrow
avenues that nature had not quite choked. The birds seemed to follow
them, though more likely it was only that there were birds everywhere.
There was no sign of Vanjit or Clarity-of-Sight, only raccoons and
foxes, mice and hunting cats, feral dogs on the banks and otters in the
canals. They were hardly a third of the way through the long, complex
loop set out for them when Maati called a halt. He sat on a stonework
bench, resting his head in his hands and waiting for his breath to slow.
Danat paced, frowning seriously at the brush.
It struck Maati that the boy was the same age Otah had been in
Saraykeht. Not as broad across the shoulders, but Otah had been Irani
Noygu and a seafront laborer then. Maati himself had been born four
years after the Emperor, hardly sixteen when he'd gone to study under
Heshai and Seedless. Younger than Ana Dasin was now. It was hard to
imagine ever having been that young.
"I meant to offer my congratulations to you," Maati said. "Ana-cha seems
a good woman."
Danat paused. The reflection of his father's rage warmed the boy's face,
but not more than that.
"I didn't think an alliance with Galt would please you."
"I didn't either," Maati said, "but I have enough experience with losing
to your father that I'm learning to be generous about it."
Danat almost started. Maati wondered what nerve he had touched, but
before he could ask, a flock of birds a more violent blue than anything
Maati had seen burst from a treetop down the avenue. They wheeled around
one another, black beaks and wet eyes and tiny tongues pink as a
fingertip. Maati closed his eyes, disturbed, and when he opened them,
Danat was kneeling before him. The boy's face was a webwork of tiny
lines like the cracked mud in a desert riverbed. Fine, dark whiskers
rose from Danat's pores. His eyelashes crashed together when he blinked,
interweaving or pressing one another apart like trees in a mudslide.
Maati closed his eyes again, pressing his palms to them. He could see
the tiny vessels in each eyelid, layer upon layer almost out to the skin.
"Maati-cha?"
"She's seen us," Maati said. "She knows I'm here."
In spite of the knowledge, it took Maati half a hand to find her. He
swept the horizon and from east to west and back again. He could see