palaces of the Khai Udun on a balcony of bricks enameled the color of
gold. At this distance, she was smaller than a grain of sand, and he saw
her perfectly. Her hair was loose, her robe ripped at the sleeve. The
andat was on her hip, its black, hungry eyes on his own. Vanjit nodded
and put the andat down. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, she took a
pose of greeting. Maati returned it.
"Where? Where is she?" Danat asked. Maati ignored him.
Vanjit shifted her hands and her body into a pose that was both a rebuke
and an accusation. Maati hesitated. He had imagined a thousand scenarios
for this meeting, but they had all involved the words he would speak,
and what she would say in return. His first impulse now was toward
apology, but something in the back of his mind resisted. Her face was a
mask of self-righteous anger, and, to his surprise, he recognized the
expression as one he himself had worn in a thousand fantasies. In his
dreams, he had been facing Otah, and Otah had been the one to beg
forgiveness.
Like a voice speaking in his ear, he knew why his hands would not take
an apologetic pose. She is here to see you abased. Do it now, and you
have nothing left to offer her. Maati pulled his shoulders back, lifted
his chin, and took a pose that requested an audience. Its nuances didn't
claim his superiority as a teacher to a student but neither did they
cede it. Vanjit's eyes narrowed. Maati waited, his breath short and
anxiety plucking at him.
Vanjit took a pose appropriate to a superior granting a servant or slave
an indulgence. Maati didn't correct her, but neither did he respond.
Vanjit looked down as if the andat had cried out or perhaps spoken, then
shifted her hands and her body to a pose of formal invitation
appropriate for an evening's meal. Only then did Maati accept, shifting
afterward to a pose of query. Vanjit indicated the balcony on which she
stood, and then made a gesture that implied either intimacy or solitude.
Meet me here. In my territory and on my terms. Come alone.
Maati moved to an accepting pose, smiling to himself as much as to the
girl in the palaces. With a physical sensation like that of a gnat
flying into his eye, Maati's vision blurred back to merely human acuity.
He turned his attention back to Danat.
The boy looked half-frantic. He held his blade as if prepared for an
attack, his gaze darting from tree to wall as if he could see the things
that Maati had seen. The moons that passed around the wandering stars,
the infinitesimal animals that made their home in a drop of rain, or the
girl on her high balcony halfway across the city. Maati had no doubt she
was still watching them.
"Come along, then," he said. "We're done here."
"You saw her," Danat said.
"I did."
"Where is she? What did she want?"
"She's at the palaces, and there's no point in rushing over there like a
man on fire. She can see everything, and she knows to watch. We could no
more take her by surprise than fly."
Maati took a deep breath and turned back along the path they'd just