The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(44)

"There are a hundred things that are more certain," Otah said. "He may manage it, but the chances are that he won't. Meantime, I know for certain of three ... four other things that are happening that could unmake the cities of the Khaiem. I don't have time to play in might be."

He'd meant to turn at the end of his pronouncement and walk from the rooms. Her voice was cutting.

"So instead, you'll wait until is?" Idaan said. "Or is it only that you have too many apples in the air, and you're only a middling juggler?"

"I'm not in the mood to be-"

"Dressed down by a woman who's only breathing because you've chosen to let her? Listen to yourself. You sound like the villain from some children's bedtime story."

"Idaan-cha," he said, and then found that he had nothing to follow it.

"I've come to tell you that your old friend and enemy is harnessing gods, and not for your benefit. It's the most threatening thing I can imagine happening. And what's your response? You knew. You've known for years. What's more, knowing now that he's redoubling his efforts, you can't be bothered even to consider the question until you've cleared your sheet of audiences? I've held a thousand opinions of you over the years, brother, but I never thought you were stupid."

Otah felt rage bloom in his chest, rising like a fiery wave, only to die with the woman's next words.

"It's the guilt, isn't it?" she said. When he didn't answer at once, she nodded to herself. "You aren't the only one that's done this, you know."

"Been Emperor? Are there others?"

"Betrayed the people you loved," she said. "Come. Sit down. I still have a little tea."

Almost to his surprise, Otah walked forward, sitting on a divan while the former exile poured pale green tea into two carved bone bowls.

"After you set me free, I spent years without sleeping through a full night. I'd dream of the people I'd ... the people I was responsible for. Our father. Adrah. Danat. You never knew Danat, did you?"

"I named my son for him," Otah said. Idaan smiled, but there was a sorrow in her eyes.

"He'd have liked that, I think. Here. Choose a bowl. I'll drink first if you'd like. I don't mind."

Otah drank. It was overbrewed and sweetened with honey; sweet and bitter. Idaan sipped at hers.

"After you sent me away, there was a time I went about the business of living with what I'd done by working myself like a war slave," she said. "Sunrise to dark, I did whatever it was I was doing until I could fall 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."