more by the cycle of thaw and frost that troubled the north only in spring and autumn. In high summer, it rarely froze, and for a third of the year it did not thaw. The West Road-far from the sea and not so far south as to keep the winters warm-required the most repair.
"They'll have crews of indentured slaves and laborers out in shifts," the old man in the cart beside Otah said, raising a finger as if his oratory was on par with the High Emperor's, back when there had been an empire. "They start at one end, reset the stones until they reach the other, and begin again. It never ends."
Otah glanced across the cart at the young woman nursing her babe and rolled his eyes. She smiled and shrugged so slightly that their orator didn't notice the movement. The cart lurched down into and up from another wide hole where the stones had shattered and not yet been replaced.
"I have walked them all," the old man said, "though they've worn me more than I've worn them. Oh yes, much more than I've worn them."
He cackled, as he always seemed to when he made this observation. The little caravan-four carts hauled by old horses-was still six days from Cetani. Otah wondered whether his own legs were rested enough that he could start walking again.
He had bought an old laborer's robe of blue-gray wool from a rag shop, chopped his hair to change its shape, and let his thin beard start to grow in. Once his whiskers had been long enough to braid, but the east islanders he'd lived with had laughed at him and pretended to mistake him for a woman. After Cetani, it would take another twenty days to reach the docks outside Amnat-tan. And then, if he could find a fishing boat that would take him on, he would be among those men again, singing songs in a tongue he hadn't tried out in years, explaining again, either with the truth or outrageous stories, why his marriage mark was only half done.
He would die there-on the islands or on the sea-under whatever new name he chose for himself. Itani Noygu was gone. He had died in Machi. Another life was behind him, and the prospect of beginning again, alone in a foreign land, tired him more than the walking.
"Now, southern wood's too soft to really build with. The winters are too warm to really harden them. Up here there's trees that would blunt a dozen axes before they fell," the old man said.
"You know everything, don't you grandfather?" Otah said. If his annoyance was in his voice, the old man noticed nothing, because he cackled again.
"It's because I've been everywhere and done everything," the old man said. "I even helped hunt down the Khai Amnat-Tan's older brother when they had their last succession. "There were a dozen of us, and it was the dead of winter. Your piss would freeze before it touched ground. Oh, eh ..."
The old man took a pose of apology to the young woman and her babe, and Otah swung himself out of the cart. It wasn't a story he cared to hear. The road wound through a valley, high pine forest on either side, the air sharp and fragrant with the resin. It was beautiful, and he pictured it thick with snow, the image coming so clear that he wondered whether he might once have seen it that way. When the clatter of hooves came from the west, he forced himself again to relax his shoulders and look as curious and excited as the others. Twice before, couriers on fast horses had passed the 'van, laden with news, Otah knew, of the search for him.
It had taken an effort of will not to run as fast as he could after he had been discovered, but the search was for a false courier either plotting murder or fleeing like a rabbit. No one would pay attention to a plodding laborer off to stay with his sister's family in a low town outside Cetani. And yet, as the horses approached, tension grew in his breast. He prepared himself for the shock if one of the riders had a familiar face.
There were three this time-utkhaiem to judge by their robes and the quality of their mounts-and none of them men he knew. They didn't slow for the 'van, but the armsmen of the 'van, the drivers, the dozen hangers-on like himself all shouted at