chilly, and he sat on the cushion near the fire as the air warmed again. His legs didn't fold as easily as Cehmai's had, but if he shifted now and again, his feet didn't go numb. He found himself thinking fondly of Cehmai-the boy was easy to befriend. Otah-kvo had been like that, too.
Maati stretched and wondered again whether, if all this had been a song, he would have sung the hero's part or the villain's.
No ONE HAD EVER SEEN IDAAN'S REBELLIONS AS HUNGER. THA'1' HAD BEEN their fault. If her friends or her brothers transgressed against the etiquette of the court, consequences came upon them, shame or censure. But Idaan was the favored daughter. She might steal a rival girl's gown or arrive late to the temple and interrupt the priest. She could evade her chaperones or steal wine from the kitchens or dance with inappropriate men. She was Idaan Machi, and she could do as she saw fit, because she didn't matter. She was a woman. And if she'd never screamed at her father in the middle of his court that she was as much his child as Biitrah or Danat or Kaiin, it was because she feared in her bones that he would only agree, make some airy comment to dismiss the matter, and leave her more desperate than before.
Perhaps if once someone had taken her to task, had treated her as if her actions had the same weight as other people's, things would have ended differently.
Or perhaps folly is folly because you can't see where it moves from ambition into evil. Arguments that seem solid and powerful prove hollow once it's too late to turn back. Arguments like Why should it be right for them but wrong for me?
She haunted the Second Palace now, breathing in the emptiness that her eldest brother had left. The vaulted arches of stone and wood echoed her soft footsteps, and the sunlight that filtered though the stone shutters thickened the air to a golden twilight. Here was the bedchamber, bare even of the mattress he and his wife had slept upon. There, the workshop where he had labored on his enthusiasms, keeping engineers by his side sometimes late into the night or on into morning. The tables were empty now. Dust lay thick on them, ignored even by the servants until the time came for some new child of the Khaiem to take residence ... to live in this opulence and keep his ear pricked for the sound of his brother's hunting dogs.
She heard Adrah coming long before he stepped into the room. She recognized his gait by the sound of it, and didn't call. He was clever, she thought bitterly; if he wanted to find her, he could puzzle it out. Adrah Vaunyogi, bright-eyed and broad-shouldered, father of her children if all went well. Whatever well meant anymore.
"There you are," Adrah said. She could see his anger in the way he held his body.
"What have I done this time?" she demanded, her tone carrying a sarcasm that dismissed his concerns even before he spoke them. "Did your patrons want me to wear red on a day I chose yellow?"
The mention of his hackers, even as obliquely as that, made him stiffen and peer around, looking for slaves or servants who might overhear. Idaan laughed-a cruel, short sound.
"You look like a kitten with a bell on its tail," she said. "There's no one here but us. You needn't worry that someone will roll the rock off our little conspiracy. We're as safe here as anywhere."
Adrah strode over and crouched beside her all the same. He smelled of crushed violets and sage, and it struck Idaan that it had not been so long ago that the scent would have warmed her heart and brought a flush to her cheeks. His face was long and pretty-almost too pretty to be a man's. She had kissed those lips a thousand times, but now it seemed like the act of another woman-some entirely different Idaan Machi whose body and memory she had inherited when the first girl died. She smiled and raised her hands in a pose of formal query.
"Arc you mad?" Adrah demanded. "Don't speak about them. Not ever. If we're found out ..."
"Yes. You're right. I'm sorry," Idaan said. "I wasn't thinking."
""There are rumors you spent a day with Cchmai and the andat. You were seen.
"The rumors are true, and I meant to be seen. I can't see how my having a