negates the opposite, achieves the same effect, and has something that
isn't so slippery to hold."
Maati considered, then nodded.
"That's good," he said. "That's very good. And it's why I need you."
Cehmai smiled out at the waving green field, then glanced at the house
and looked down.
"You'll stay the night?" Cehmai said.
Maati took a pose that accepted the invitation. He kept his trepidation
at the thought of sleeping under Idaan's roof out of his stance and
expression. It would have been too much to hope for that Cehmai would
drop everything in his life and take to the road at once. And still,
Maati had hoped for it....
Inside the thick stone walls of the farmhouse, the air was cooler and
rich with the scent of dog and old curry. The afternoon faded slowly,
the sun lingering in the treetops to the west, its light thick and
golden and softened by Maati's failing eyes. Cicadas set up a choir. He
sat on a low stone porch, watching everything and nothing.
Maati had known quite well that Idaan and Cehmai had been lovers once,
even while Idaan had been married to another man and arranging the
deaths of her family. Cehmai's betrayal of her had been the key that
brought her down, that lifted Otah into the role of Khai Machi, and from
there to Emperor. Cehmai had, in his fashion, created the world as it
was with the decision to expose his lover's crimes.
Maati had thought the man mad for still harboring feelings for the
woman; she was a murderer and a traitor to her city and her family. He'd
thought him mad twice over for wanting to find her again after the andat
had vanished from the world and the poets had fallen from grace. She
would, he had expected, kill Cehmai on sight.
And yet.
As a boy, Maati had taken another man's lover as his own, and Otah had
forgiven it. In gratitude or something like it, Maati had devoted
himself to proving Otah's innocence and helped to bring Idaan's crimes
to light. Seedless, the first andat Maati had known, had betrayed both
the poet Heshai who had bound him and the Galtic house that had backed
the andat's cruel scheme. And the woman-what had her name been?whose
child died. Seedless had betrayed everyone, but had asked only Maati to
forgive him.
The accrued weight of decades pressed upon him as the sun caught in the
western branches. Dead children, war, betrayal, loss. And here, in this
small nameless farm days' travel from even a low town of notable size,
two lovers who had become enemies were lovers again. It made him angry,
and his anger made him sad.
As the first stars appeared, pale ghost lights in the deepening blue
before sunset, Idaan emerged from the house. With her leather gear gone,
she looked less like a thing from a monster tale. She was a woman, only
a woman. And growing old. It was only when she met his gaze that he felt
a chill. He had seen her eyes set in a younger face, and the darkness in
them had shifted, but it had not been unmade.
"There's food," she said.