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He leaned back now, his head tilted like a dog hearing an unfaatory pose Amat sipped her tea, but it was still too hot She put the bowl on the table
"With the andat lost, I&039; investment in a combers hall I&039;ve found ten -Open was still the andat in Saraykeht They&039;re willing to act as foremen The initial outlay and the first contracts are difficult I have people whoto invest if I can find space They&039;re worried that my relationship with my last employer ended poorly Rent me the space, and I can address both issues at once"
"But, Amat "
"I lost," she said "I know it You know it I did what I could do, and it got past me Now I can either press the suit forward despite it all, raise what suspicions against Galt I can in the quarters ill listen to me at the cost of what credibility I have left, or else I can do this Recreate anize the city, bind the wounds that can be bound Forge connections between people who think they&039;re rivals But I can&039;t do both I can&039;t have people saying I&039; toeach other for the last three generations shake hands"
Marchat Wilsin&039;s eyebrows rose She watched hiuilt and horror, the betrayals and threats fell away for a ive that they had been at their best It made Amat&039;s heart feel bruised, but she kept it out of her face as he kept his feelings from his The lantern flame spat, shuddered, and stood back to true
"It won&039;t work," he said at last "They&039;ll hold to all their traditional prejudices and alliances They&039;ll find ways to bite each other while they&039;re shaking hands Making them all feel loyal to each other and to the city? In the Westlands or Galt or the islands, youthe Khaiem? It&039;s doomed"
"I&039;ll accept failure when I&039;ve failed," Amat said
"Just remember I warned you What&039;s your offer for the warehouses?"
"Sixty lengths of silver a year and five hundredths of the profit"
"That&039;s insultingly low, and you know it"
"You haven&039;t figured in that it will keepthe world what the Galtic Council atteainst his poet That by itself is a fair price, but we should keep up appearances, don&039;t you think?"
He thought about it The tiny upturn of his lips, the barest of smiles, told her what she wanted to know
"And you really think you canraw cotton for its seeds isn&039;t a pleasant job"
"I have a steady strea to retire from one less pleasant than that," she said "I think the two concerns ork quite nicely together"
"And if I agree to this," Marchat said, his voice suddenly softer, the ga out froive iveness," she said "We&039;re the servants of e have to do That&039;s all"
"I can live with that answer All right, then I&039;ll have Epani draw up contracts Should we take them to that whorehouse of yours?"
"Yes," Amat said "That will do nicely Thank you, Marchat-cha"
"It&039;s the least I could do," he said and drank at last fro tea at his elbow "And also likely the ine ht off Galtic business doesn&039;t have quite the same subtlety you find with the Khaiem"
"It&039;s because your culture hasn&039;t finished licking off its caul," Amat said "Once you&039;ve had a thousand years of Es may be different"
Marchat&039;s expression soured and he poured himself more tea Amat pushed her oard hi teapot clinked against the porcelain
"There will be a war," Amat said at last "Between your people and mine Eventually, there will be a war"
"Galt&039;s a strange place It&039;s so long since I&039;ve been there, I don&039;t knoell I&039;ll fit once I&039;eneration, we&039;ve almost doubled our farmlands There are places that rival the cities of the Khaiem, if you&039;ll believe that Only we do it with ruthlessness and bloody-minded determination You&039;d have to be there, really, to understand it It isn&039;t what you people have here"
A an answer to her question Marchat sighed; a long, slow sound
"Yes, someday Someday there will be a war, but not in our lifetiment and thanks Marchat toyed with his teabowl
"Ao, there&039;s a letter I wrote you When it looked like the suit was going to go to the Khai and sweet hell was going to rain down on Galt in general and me in particular I want you to have it"
His face was as legible as a boy&039;s Amat wondered at how he could be so closed and careful with business and so clumsy with his own heart and hers If she let it continue, he&039;d be offering her work in Galt next And a part of her, despite it all, would be sorry to refuse
"Keep it for now," she said "I&039;ll take it froently,the words not an insult, but a moment of shared sorrow There were, after all, ten thousand things that had been lost in this And each one of them real, even this
"After the war, perhaps Give it to me then"
DREAMING, OTAH found himself in a public place, part street corner, part bathhouse, part warehouse People milled about, at ease, their conversations a pleasant li as if alive, but still dead In the logic of sleep, that fleeting gli for breath, Otah sat up, his eyes open and confused by the darkness Only as his heart slowed and his breath grew steady, did the creaking of the ship and rocking of waves remind him where he was He pressed his palhts appeared Below him, Maj murmured in her sleep
The cabin was tiny - too short to stand fully upright and hardly long enough to hang two hammocks one above the other If he put his arainst the oiled wood of each wall There was no room for a brazier, so they slept in their robes Carefully, he lifted hi the sleeper, left the close, nightmare-haunted coffin for the deck and the reeted hia moment of solitude The moment&039;s conversation, the shared drink, the coarse joke - they were a sood will of the men to whom he had entrusted his fate It was over quickly, and he could retreat to a quiet place by the rail and look out toward an invisible horizon where haze blurred the distinction between sea and sky Otah sat, resting his arms on the ood, and waited for the wisps of dreaht As he expected he would for so of watch at the half candle brought another handful of lances and concern that Otah had seen during his first nights on deck were gone The uessed the night candle had nearly reached its three quarters ht sea soht also have been staring at the dark ripples and broken low in theup the blue and the cold She looked at the landless expanse of water with an almost proprietary air, unimpressed by vastness Otah watched her find hih Otah knew that at least one of the sailors on watch spoke Nippu, no one tried to speak with her Maj lowered herself to the deck beside his crossed, her pale eyes almost colorless
"The dreament
"If we had hand loo real Is unreal things that eat you"
"I&039;ll be fine," he said
"You are homesick I know I see it"
"I suppose," Otah said "And I wonder noe did the right thing"
"You think no?"
Otah turned his gaze back to the water Soain into the darkness, too quickly for Otah to see what shape it was
"Not really," he said "That&039;s to say I think we did the best that we could But that doing that thing was right "
"Killing hi hihtbothers o back - make other choice - do you?"
"No No, I&039;d do the sa in cities," Maj said "Is better for you to leave"
Otah disagreed but said nothing The night moved on It was another week at least before they would reach Quian, southernmost of the eastern islands The hold, filled noith the fine cloths and ropes of Saraykeht, the spices and metalworks of the cities of the Khaiem, would trade first for pearls and shells, the pelts of strange island animals, and the pluin taking on fish and dried fruits, trees and salt ti - weeks away still and ten island ports at least - would they reach as far north as Nippu
Years of work on the seafront, all the gifts and assistance Maati had given hi he had, he had poured into two seasons of travel He wondered what he would do, once he reached Nippu, once Maj was ho nightmare with only the space where a child should have been at her side
He could work on ships, he thought He knew enough already to take on the si decks He ht at least make his way back to the cities of the Khaiemor perhaps not The world was full of possibility, because he had nothing and no one The unreal crowded in on him, as Maj had said, because he had abandoned the real
"You think of her," Maj said
"What? Ah, Liat? No, not really Not just now"
"You leave her behind, the girl you love You are angry because of her and the boy"
A prick of annoyance troubled hih
"It hurt me that they did what they did, and I miss him I miss them But "
"But it also frees you," Maj said "It is for o to the cities I think I aoodforTo lose everything is not the worst can happen"
"It&039;s starting again, fro," Otah said
"Is exactly this," Maj agreed, then abetter"
The still-hidden sun lightened water and sky as they watched it in silence The milky, lacework haze burned off as the fire rose fro, tra so long without , and Maj brushed her robes and stood also As the work of the day entered its full activity, he descended behind her into the darkness of their cabin where he hoped he ht cheat his conscience of a few hours&039; sleep His thoughts still turned on the empty, open future before hi to the fact that it had fallen