and everyone knew it. There was no point in pretending the world was
something it wasn't. Otah took a pose that accepted the advice and
promised his best effort.
In point of fact, Idaan was waiting in his rooms when he returned from
his breakfast and the morning of audiences that he could not postpone.
She wore a borrowed robe of blue silk as dark as a twilight sky. Her
arms and shoulders were thicker than the robe allowed, the fabric
straining. Her hair was pulled back in a gray tail as thick as a mane.
She did not smile.
"Idaan-cha," he said.
"Brother," she replied.
He sat across from her. Her long face was cool and unreadable. She
touched the papers and scrolls on the low table between them. The scents
of cedar and apples should have made the room more comfortable.
"I'm not done," she said. "But I doubt a year and ten clerks would be
enough to do a truly thorough job. With just the pair of us, and you off
half the time at court, we can't really hope for more than a weighted
guess."
"Then we should get to work," he said. "I'll have them bring us food and-"
"Before that," Idaan said. "Before that, there's something we should
discuss. Alone."
Otah considered her eyes. They were the same black-brown as his own. Her
jaw was softer, her mouth pale and lined. He could still see the girl
she had been, whom he had drawn up from the deepest cells beneath Machi
and given freedom where she'd expected slavery or death.
"I'll send the servants away," he said. She took a pose that offered thanks.
When he returned, she was pacing before the windows, her hands clasped
behind her. The soft leather soles of her boots whispered against the
wood. The city spread below them, and then the sea.
"I never thought about them," she said. "The andat? I never gave them
half a thought when I was young. Stone-Made-Soft was something halfway
between a trained hunting cat and another courtier in a world full of
them. But they could destroy everything, couldn't they? If a poet bound
something like Steam or Fog, all that ocean could vanish in a moment,
couldn't it?"
"I suppose," Otah agreed.
"I would have controlled it. Stone-Made-Soft, I mean. And Cehmai. If all
the things I'd planned had happened as I planned them, I would have had
the command of that power."
"Your husband would have," he said. Otah had ordered her husband
executed. Adrah Vaunyogi's body had hung from the ruins of his family's
palace, food for the crows. Idaan smiled.
"My husband," she said, her voice warm and amused. "Even worse."
She shook herself and turned back to the table. Her thick fingers
plucked out a clerk's writing tablet. Otah could see letters carved into
the wax.
"I've made a list of those people who seem most likely," she said. "I
have a dozen, and I could give you a dozen more if you'd like it.
They've all traveled extensively in the past four years. They've all had