watching as the oarsmen pulled him toward the great warship. His footing
was as sure as a seaman's, and he was secretly proud of the fact. The
high members of the utkhaiem who had joined him-Auna Tiyan, Piyat Saya,
and old Adaut Kamau-all kept to their benches. The Avenger itself glowed
with candlelight, the effect lessened by the last remnant of the
glorious sunset behind it. When full darkness came, the ship would look
like something from a children's story. Otah tried to appreciate it for
what it would become.
The landsman's chair took each of them up in turn, Otah last out of
respect for his rank. The deck of the Avenger was as perfect and
controlled as any palace ballroom, any Khaiate garden, any high chamber
of the Galts. Chairs that seemed made of silver filigree and breath were
scattered over the fresh-scrubbed boards in patterns that looked both
careless and perfect. Musicians played reed organ and harp, and a small
chorus of singers sat in the rigging, as if the ship itself had joined
the song. Swinging down in the landsman's chair, Otah saw half-a-dozen
men he knew, including, his face upturned and amused, Balasar Gice.
Farrer Dasin stood with his wife Issandra and the young woman-the
girl-Ana. Otah let himself be drawn up from the chair by his servants,
and stepped forward to his hosts. Farrer stood stiff as cast iron, his
smile never reaching his eyes. Issandra's eyes still had the reddened
rims that Otah recalled, but there was also pleasure there. And her
daughter ...
Ana Dasin, the Galt who would one day be Empress of the Khaiem, reminded
Otah of a rabbit. Her huge, brown eyes and small mouth looked
perpetually startled. She wore a gown of blue as pale as a robin's egg
that didn't fit her complexion and a necklace of raw gold that did. She
would have seemed meek, except that there was something of her mother in
the line of her jaw and the set of her shoulders.
All he knew of her had come from court gossip, Balasar Gice's comments,
and the trade of formal documents that had flowed by the crate once the
agreements were made. It was difficult to believe that this was the girl
who had beaten her own tutor at numbers or written a private book of
etiquette that had been the scandal of its season. She was said to have
ridden horses from the age of four; she was said to have insulted the
son of an ambassador from Eddensea to his face and gone on to make her
case so clearly that the insulted boy had offered apology. She had
climbed out windows on ropes made from stripped tapestry, had climbed
the walls of the palaces of Acton dressed as an urchin boy, had broken
the hearts of men twice her age. Or, again, perhaps she had not. He had
heard a great deal about her, and knew nothing he could count as truth.
It was to her he made his first greeting.
"Ana-cha," he said. "I hope I find you well."
"Thank you, Most High," she said, her voice so soft, Otah halfwondered
whether he'd understood. "And you also."
"Emperor," Farrer Dasin said in his own language.
"Councilman Dasin," Otah said. "You are kind to invite me."
Farrer's nod made it clear that he would have preferred not to. The
singers above them reached the end of one song, paused, and launched