down at the end half-dead and too tired to dream."
"It doesn't sound pleasant," Otah said.
"I did a lot of good," Idaan said. "You wouldn't guess it, but I
organized a constabulary through half of the low towns in the north. I
was actually a judge for a few years, if you'll picture that. I found
that meting out justice wasn't something I felt suited for, but I kept a
few murderers and rapists from making a habit of it. I made a few places
safer. I wasn't utterly ineffective, even though half the time I was too
tired to focus my eyes.
"And you think I'm doing the same thing?" Otah said. "You don't
understand what it is to be an emperor. All respect for whatever you did
after Machi, but I have hundreds of thousands of people relying upon me.
The politics of empire aren't like a few low towns organizing to keep
the local thugs in line."
"You also have a thousand servants," she said. "Dozens of high fami lies
who would do your bidding just for the status that comes from being
asked. Tell me, why did you go to Galt yourself? You have men and women
who'd have been ambassador for you."
"It needed me," Otah said. "If it had been someone lower, it wouldn't
have carried the weight."
"Ah, I see," she said. She sounded less than persuaded.
"Besides which, I don't have anything to feel guilt over."
"You broke the world," she said. "You ordered Maati and Cehmai to bind
that andat, and when it went feral on them and shredded every womb in
the cities, my own included, you threw your poets into the wind. Men who
trusted you and sacrificed for you. You became the heroic figure that
bound the cities together, and they became outcasts."
"Is that how you see it?"
Idaan put her bowl down softly on the stone table. Her black eyes held
his. She had a long face. Northern, like his own. He remembered that of
all the children of the old Khai Machi, he and Idaan had shared a mother.
"It doesn't matter how I see it," she said. "My opinion doesn't make the
world. Or unmake it. All that matters is what it actually is. So, tell
me, Most High, am I right?"
Otah shook his head and rose, leaving his tea bowl beside hers.
"You don't know me, Idaan-cha. We've spoken to each other fewer times
than I have fingers. I don't think you're in a position to judge my
motives."
"Yours, no," she said. "But I've made the mistakes you're making now.
And I know why I did."
"We aren't the same person."
She smiled now, her gaze cast down and her hands in a pose that accepted
correction and apologized for her transgression without making it clear
what transgression she meant.
"Of course not," she said. "I'll stay through tomorrow, Most High. In
case you come to a decision that I might be able to aid you with."
Otah left with the uncomfortable impression that his sister pitied him.
He made his way back to his apartments, ate half of the meal the
servants brought him, and refused the singers and musicians whose only