THE

protected her, there was no reason to call upon her blood.

She stopped at the bronze statue of Shian Sho. The last emperor gazed

out wistfully over the sea, or perhaps back through the ages to a time

when his name had been important. Eiah pulled her robe tight around

herself and squatted at his metalwork feet, waiting for the firekeeper

and his steamcart. In daytime, she would have walked the streets north

and uphill to the palaces, but the seafront wasn't the worst part of

Saraykeht. It was safer to wait.

To the west, the soft quarter was lit in its nightly festival. To the

east, the bathhouses, the great stone warehouses, rarely more than

half-filled now. Beyond that, the cohort houses of the laborers were

darker, but far from unpeopled. Eiah heard a man's laugh from one

direction, a woman's voice lifted in drunken song from another. The

ships that filled the seafront docks stood silent, their masts like

winter trees, and the ocean beyond them gray with a low mist.

There was a beauty in it, and a familiarity. Eiah had made her studies

in places like this, whatever city she'd been in. She'd sewn closed the

flesh of whores and thieves as often as soothed the coughs and pains of

the utkhaiem in their perfumed palaces. It was a decision she'd made

early in her career, not to be a court physician, not to care only for

the powerful. Her father had approved, and even, she thought, been proud

of the decision. For all their differences-and there were many-it was

one reason she loved him.

The steamcart appeared first as a sound: the rough clatter of iron-bound

wheels against the bricks of the street, the chuff of the boiler, the

low rumble of the kiln. And then, as Eiah stood and shook the dirt and

grime from her robe, it turned into the wide street they called the

Nantan and came down toward the statue. In the light of the kiln, she

saw seven or perhaps eight figures clinging to the cart's side. The

firekeeper himself sat on the top, guiding the cart with a series of

levers and pedals that made the most ornate loom seem simple. Eiah

stepped forward as the cart trundled past, took one of the leather

grips, and hoisted herself up to the cart's side ru

others.

"Two coppers," the firekeeper said without looking at her.

Eiah dug in her sleeve with her free hand, came out with two lengths of

copper, and tossed them into the lacquer box at the firekeeper's feet.

The man nodded rather than take any more-complex pose. His hands and

eyes were occupied. The breeze shifted, a waft of smoke and thick steam

washing her in its scent, and the cart lurched, shuddered, and turned

again to the north along its constant route. Eiah sighed and made

herself comfortable. It would take her almost the time for the moon to

move the width of her hand before she stepped down at the pathway that

led to the palaces. In the meantime, she watched the night city pass by her.

The streets nearest the seafront alternated between the high roofs of

warehouses and the low of the tradesmen's shops. In the right season,

the clack of looms would have filled the air, even this late at night.

The streets converged on wide squares where the litter of the week's

market still fouled the street: cheeses dropped to the cobbles and trod

into mush, soiled cabbages and yams, even a ski

to sell and not worth hauling away. One of the men on the far side of

the steamcart stepped down, shifting the balance slightly. Eiah watched

as his red-brown cloak passed into darkness.

There had been a time, she knew, when the streets had been safe to walk

down, even alone. There had been a time beggars with their boxes would

have been on the corners, filling the night with plaintive, amateur

song. She had never seen it, never heard it. It was a story she knew,

Old Saraykeht from long ago. She knew it like she knew Bakta, where she

had never been, and the courts of the Second Empire, gone from the world

for hundreds of years. It was a story. Once upon a time there was a city

by the sea, and it lived in prosperity and i

The steamcart passed into the compounds of the merchant houses, three,

four, five stories tall. They were almost palaces in themselves. There

were more lights here, more voices. Lanterns hung from ropes at the

crossroads, spilling buttery light on the bricks. Three more of Eiah's

fellows stepped down from the cart. Two stepped on, dropping their

copper lengths into the firekeeper's box. They didn't speak, didn't

acknowledge one another. She shifted her hands on the leather grip. The

palaces of the utkhaiem would be coming soon. And her apartments, and

bed, and sleep. The kiln roared when the firekeeper opened it and poured

in another spade's worth of coal.

The servants met her at the gateway that separated the palaces from the

city, the smooth brick streets from the crushed marble pathways. The air

smelled different here, coal smoke and the rich, fetid stink of humanity

displaced by incense and perfume. Eiah felt relieved to be back, and

then guilty for her relief. She answered their poses of greeting and

obeisance with one of acknowledgment. She was no longer her work. Among

these high towers and palaces, she was and would always be her father's

daughter.

"Eiah-cha," the most senior of the servants said, his hands in a pose of

ritual offering, "may we escort you to your rooms?"

"No," she said. "Food first. Then rest."

Eiah suffered them to take her satchel, but refused the sable cloak they

offered against the night air. It really wasn't that cold.

"Is there word from my father?" she asked as they walked along the wide,

empty paths.

"No, Eiah-cha," the servant replied. "Nor from your brother. There have

been no couriers today."

Eiah kept her pleasure at the news from her expression.

The palaces of Saraykeht had suffered less under their brief Galtic

occupation than many others had. Nantani had been nearly ruined. Udun

had been razed and never rebuilt. In Saraykeht, it was clear where

statues had once been and were gone, where jewels had been set into the

goldwork around the doorways and been wrenched out, but all the

buildings except the Khai's palace and the library still stood. The

utkhaiem of the city hadn't restored the damage or covered it over. Like

a woman assaulted but with unbroken spirit, Saraykeht wore her scars

without shame. Of all the cities of the Khaiem, she was the least

devastated, the strongest, and the most arrogant in her will to survive.

Eiah thought she might love the city just a little, even as it made her sad.

A singing slave occupied the garden outside Eiah's apartments. Eiah left

the shutters open so that the songs could come through more clearly. A

fire burned in the grate and candles glowed in glass towers. A Galtic