THE

with my luck to have a stray boar stumble into us at the wrong moment."

The captain didn't wait for Otah's approval. The men shifted, Idaan and

Danat with them. Only Otah stayed. As if she saw him there, Eiah took a

querying pose.

"You may die from this," he said.

"I'm aware of it," she said. "It doesn't matter. I have to try. And I

think you have to let me."

"I do," Otah agreed. Smiling, she looked young.

"I love you too, Papa-kya."

"May I sit with you?" he asked. "I don't want to distract you, but it

would be a favor."

He brushed the back of her hand with his fingertips. She took him by the

sleeve of his robe and pulled him down to sit beside her. The fingers of

her left hand laced with his right. For a moment, the only sounds were

the gentle lapping of the river against the stone, the diminished hush

of torch fire, the cooing of owls. Eiah leaned forward, her fingertips

on the first tablet. Otah let go, and both of her hands caressed the

wax. She began to chant.

The words were only words. He recognized a few of them, some phrases.

Her voice went out on the cool night air as she moved slowly across each

of the shattered tablets. When she reached the end, she went back to the

begi

Though there were no walls or cliffs to sound against, her voice began

first to resonate and then to echo.

30

Maati traveled through the darkness alone. The sense of unreality was

profound. He had refused Otah Machi, Emperor of the Khaiem. He had

refused Otah-kvo. For years, perhaps a lifetime, he had admired Otah or

else despised him. Maati had broken the world twice, once in Otah's

service, and now, through Vanjit, in opposition to him. But this once,

Otah had been wrong, and he had been right, and Otah had acknowledged it.

How strange that such a small moment should bring him such a profound

sense of peace. His body itself felt lighter, his shoulders more nearly

square. To his immense surprise, he realized he had shed a burden he'd

been carrying unaware for most of his life.

Maati traveled through the darkness of Udun alone, because he had chosen to.

The brown vines and bare branches stirred in a soft breeze. The flutter

of wings came from all around him, from nowhere. The air was cold enough

to make his breath steam, and the voice of the river was a constant

hush. With each step, some new detail of his path would come clear: an

axe consumed by rust, a door still hanging from rotten leather hinges,

the green-glowing eyes of some small predator. Cracks appeared in the

paving stones, ru

the city rather than revealing the decay already there.

He and Vanjit carried a history together. They had known each other, had

helped each other. She would see that it was the andat's intervention

that had turned him against her. The palaces of the Khai Udun grew

taller and taller without ever seeming to come close until, it seemed

between one breath and the next, he stepped into a grand courtyard. Moss

and lichen had almost obscured the swirling design of white and red and

gold stones. Maati paused, his lantern held over his head.

Once, it would have been a breathtaking testament to power and ingenuity

and overwhelming confidence. Columns rose into the black air. Statues of

women and men and beasts towered over the entranceway, the bronze lost

under green and gray. He walked alone into a welcoming chamber too vast

for his lantern to penetrate. There was no ceiling, no walls. The river

was silent here. Far above, wings fluttered in still air.

Maati took a deep breath-dust and rot and, after a decade and a half of

utter ruin, still the faint scent of smoke. It smelled like the corpse

of history.

He walked forward over parquet of ebony and oak, the pattern ruined and

pieces pried up by water and time. He expected his footsteps to echo,

but no sound he made returned to him.

A light glimmered high up and to his left. Maati stopped. He lowered his

lantern and raised it again. The glimmer didn't shift. Not a reflection,

then. Maati angled toward it.

A great stone stairway swept up in the gloom, a single candle burning at

its top. Maati made his way slowly enough to keep from tiring. The hall

that opened before him was not as numbingly huge as the first chamber;

Maati could make out the ceiling, and that the walls existed. And far

down it, another light.

The carpets underfoot had rotted to scraps years before. The shattered

glass and fallen crystal might have been the damage of the elements or

of the city's fall. The next flight of stairs-equally grand and equally

arduous-could only have been a testament to that first violence, long

ago. A human skull rested at the center of every step, shadows moving in

the sockets as Maati passed them. He hoped the Galts had left the grim

markers, but he didn't believe it.

Here, Vanjit was saying, each of these is a life the soldiers of Galt

ended. They were her justification. Her honor guard.

He should have guessed where the candles were leading him. The grand

double doors of the Khai's audience chamber stood closed, but light

leaked through at the seams. After so long in the dark, he halfexpected

them to open onto a fire.

In its day, the chamber must have inspired awe. In its way, it still

did. The arches, the angles of the walls, the thin ironwork as delicate

as lace that held a hundred burning candles-everything was designed to

draw the eyes to the dais, the black lacquer chair, and then out a wide,

unshuttered window that reached from ceiling to floor. The Khai would

have sat there, his city arrayed out behind him like a cloak. Now the

cloak was only darkness, and in the black chair, Clarity-of-Sight cooed.

"I didn't think you'd come," Vanjit said from the shadows behind him.

Maati startled and turned.

Exhaustion and hunger had thi

back, but what few locks had escaped the bond hung limp and lank,

framing her pale face.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Fear of justice," Vanjit said.

She stepped out into the candlelight. Her robes were silken rags,

scavenged from some noble wardrobe, fourteen years a ruin. Her head was

bowed beneath an invisible weight and she moved like an old woman bent

with the pain for years. She had become Udun. The war, the damage, the

ruin. It was her. The baby-the inhuman thing shaped like a baby-shrieked

with joy and clapped its tiny hands. Vanjit shuddered.