the war?"
"I am not in the mood, Idaan-cha, to be questioned by a woman who killed
my father, schemed to place the blame on me, and is only breathing air
now because I chose to let her. I understand that you would have happily
opened their throats."
"Not Cehmai's," she said softly. "But then I know why I wouldn't have
done it. It doesn't follow that I should know why you didn't. The two
aren't the same."
Otah rocked back in his chair. His face was hot. Their gazes locked, and
he saw her nod. Idaan took a pose that expressed both understanding and
contrition while unmasking the question.
"That isn't true," she said. "Thinking for a moment, I suppose they are.
Otah took the bowl Sinja held out to him. The wine was unwatered, rich
and astringent. He drank it dry. Sinja looked nervous.
"There's nothing I can do about any of this tonight," Otah said. "I'm
tired. I'm going to bed. If I decide it needs talking of further, it'll
be another time."
He rose, taking a pose that ended an audience, then feeling a moment's
shame, shifted to one that was merely a farewell.
"Otah-cha," Sinja said. "One last thing. I'm sorry, but you left
standing orders. If she came back, I was supposed to kill her."
"For plotting to take my chair and conspiring with the Galts," Otah
said. "Well. Idaan-cha? Are you hoping to become Emperor?"
"I wouldn't take your place as a favor," she said.
Otah nodded.
"Find apartments for her," he said. "Lift the death order. The girl we
sent out in the snow might as well have died. And the man who sent her,
for that. We are, all of us, different people now."
Otah walked back to his rooms alone. The palace wasn't quiet or still.
Perhaps it never wholly was. But the buzzing fury of the day had given
way to a slower pace. Fewer servants made their way down the halls. The
members of the high families who had business here had largely gone back
to their own palaces, walking stone paths chipped by the spurs and boot
nails of Galtic soldiers, passing through arches whose gold and silver
adornments had been hacked off by Galtic axes. They went to palaces
where the highest men and women of Galt had come as guests, eating beef
soup and white bread and fruit tarts. Sipping tea and wine and water and
working, some of them at least, to build a common future.
And Idaan had come to warn him against Maati.
He slept poorly and woke tired. The Master of Tides attended him as he
was bathed and dressed. The day was full from dawn to nightfall. Sixteen
audiences had been requested, falling almost equally between members of
the utkhaiem and the Galts. Three of the Galtic houses had left letters
strongly implying that they had daughters who might be pressed to serve
should Ana Dasin refuse. One of the priests at the temple had left a
request to preach against the recalcitrance of women who failed to offer
up sex. Two of the trading houses had made it clear that they wished to
be released from shipping contracts to Chaburi-Tan. The Master of Tides
droned and listed and laid out the form of another painful, endless,