The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(59)



The Comfort House Empire, she'd called it the last time they'd spoken. And her father, her father, the Procurer King. She said it, and she spat.

Thinking of it stung.

A flock of gulls wheeled below him and to the south. Lemon rice and river trout rested warm on his fingers and in his mouth. When he was alone, he still ate like a laborer.

He wondered if he had been wrong. Perhaps in the approach he had taken, trying to find women capable of bearing children for the cities. Perhaps in speaking to Eiah about it in the terms he'd used. Perhaps in failing to accept her criticism, in speaking harshly. Eiah had accused him of turning his back on the women whom Sterile had wounded because they were inconvenient. Eiah was one of those women, and the injury she'd suffered was as deep as any of his own. Deeper.

It might, he supposed, have been enough to turn her against him. She had always been close to Maati. She had spent long evenings at the library of Machi, where Maati had made his home. She had known Nayiit, the man that Otah had fathered and Maati had called son. In the many years that he had struggled with being merely the Khai Machi, Eiah had made a friend and an uncle of Maati Vaupathai. There was little reason to believe that she would withhold her loyalty from Maati now.

The wheeling gulls landed, leaving the sky to itself. The fleet had long passed the horizon, and Otah wished he had some magical glass that would let him see it still. It was a short enough voyage to Chaburi-Tan. Shorter if the pirates and raiders came out to confront them. He wished Sinja had stayed behind. In the failing light, the gaudy sunset turning to gray, he wanted his old friend back and was only half-startled to realize he meant Maati as much as Sinja.

A servant emerged from the darkened arches at the pavilion's edge and came forward. Otah knew the news he carried before he spoke. Idaan Machi had answered his summons and awaited at his pleasure. Otah ordered that she be brought to him. Her and more food.

Do what needs doing, Sinja said from his memory.

He heard her soft footsteps and didn't turn around. His belly was knotted, and the fish before him smelled suddenly unpleasant. Idaan walked past him and stood at the edge of the pavilion, looking down the height of the tower. Her outer robe was dark, the hem fluttering as if she were about to fall or take flight. When she turned back to him, her expression was mild.

"Lovely view," she said. "But still nothing beside Machi. Do you miss the towers?"

"No," Otah said. "Not really. They're too cold to use in the winter, too hot in the summer, and the tracks they use to haul things up the side have to be replaced every fifth year. They're the best example I know of doing a thing just to show it's possible."

Idaan lowered herself to a cushion opposite him. The fading glow of western clouds silhouetted her.

"True enough," she said. "Still. I miss them."

She considered the bowls of food before them, then took a scoop of rice and fish on two curled fingers. Otah smiled. His sister chewed appreciatively and took a pose that opened a negotiation.

"Yes," he agreed. "There's something I want from you."

Idaan nodded, but didn't speak. Otah squinted out into the wide air above Saraykeht.

"There's too much," he said. "Even turning everything I can manage over to Sinja and Danat and Ashua Radaani, there's too much."

"Too much to allow for what?" She knew, he thought, what was coming.

"Too much for me to leave," he said. "Being Emperor is like being the most honored slave in the world. I can do anything, except that I can't. I can go anywhere, except that I mustn't."

"It sounds awful."

"Don't laugh. I'm not saying I'd rather be lifting crates at the seafront, but senior overseer of a courier service? Something with a few dozen chests of silver lengths and a favorite teahouse."

"Fewer meetings like this one," Idaan suggested.

"That," Otah said. "Gods yes, that."

Idaan scooped up another mouthful of rice, chewed slowly, and let her dark eyes play across his face. He didn't know what she saw there. After a swallow of water and a small sigh, she spoke.

"You want me to find Eiah," she said.

"You know what Maati looks like," he said. "You have the experience of living among low towns and hiding who you are. You understand poets as well as anyone alive, I'd guess."

"And I know what I'm looking for," she said, her voice light and conversational. "Anyone else, and you'd have to bring them into your confidence. Explain what you wanted to know and why. Well, Sinja-cha perhaps, but you've sent him off the other direction."

This is madness, Otah thought but didn't say. She is a killer. She was born without a conscience. However she may seem now, she slaughtered her brothers and the father she loved. She's got the eyes of a pit hound and the heart of a butcher.

"Will you do it?" he said aloud.

Idaan didn't answer at once. A gust of wind pushed at her sleeve and drew a lock of gray hair out behind her like a banner from the mast of a fighting ship. Otah's hands ached, and he forced his fists to open by an act of will.

"Maati hunted me once," she said, hardly louder than the wind. "It only seems fair to return the favor."

Otah closed his eyes. Perhaps it was an empty task. Eiah might very well have nothing to do with Maati's schemes. She might truly be working with some low-town physician, hoping through her own hard work to atone for her father's misdeeds. For his misdeeds. When he looked up, his sister was considering him with hooded eyes.

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