doubt you would have been driven to humiliate me if I hadn't done the
same to you."
Her gaze shifted back to him. Whatever she had expected of him, it
hadn't been this.
"I went to the wives of the councillors. There was very little time, and
I thought they would have greater sway than the children. Perhaps they
did. But I traded you as a trinket and didn't even think to ask you your
thoughts and feelings. That should have been beneath me."
"I'm a woman," Ana said, her tone managing to be both dismissive and a
challenge. I'm a woman, and we've always been traded, married off
shifted as the tokens of power and alliance. Otah smiled, surprised to
find himself possessed by genuine sorrow.
"Yes," he said. "You are. And with my sister, my wife, my daughter ...
of all the men in the world, I should have known what that meant, and I
forgot. I was in such a hurry to fix all the things I've done poorly
that I did this poorly too."
She was frowning at him again as she had once before, on the journey to
Saraykeht. He might have begun speaking in the language of birds or
belching stones, to judge by her expression. He chuckled.
"It was not my intention to treat you with disrespect, Ana-cha. That I
did so shames me. I accept your apology, and I hope that you will accept
mine.
"I won't marry him," she said.
Otah drank the rest of his tea and set the empty bowl mouth-down on the
lacquer tray.
"My son, you mean," Otah said. "You'll stay with this other man.
Hanchat? No matter what the price or who's called on to pay it, no man
deserves even your consideration? If it destroys your country and mine
both, it would still be just."
"I ... I don't ..." the girl said. "That isn't. .
"I know. I understand. I'll say this. Danat is a good man. Better than I
was at his age. But what you choose is entirely yours," Otah said. "If
we've established anything, you and I, it's that."
"Not his?"
"Danat's decision is whether he'll marry you," Otah said with a smile.
"Not the same thing at all."
He meant to leave her there. It seemed the right moment, and there was
nothing more he could think to say. As he bent forward, preparing to
rise, Ana spoke again.
"Your wife was a wayhouse keeper. You didn't put her aside. You never
took a second wife. It was an insult to the whole body of the utkhaiem."
"It was," Otah said and stood with a grunt. There had been a time he
could sit or stand in silence. "But I didn't marry her for the effect it
had on other people. I did it because she was Kiyan, and there wasn't
anyone else like her in the world."
"How can you ask Danat to obey tradition when you've broken it?" she
demanded.
Otah considered her. She seemed angry again, but it seemed as much on
Danat's behalf as her own.