be. Who else would benefit? I was stupid."
"Forgive me, N,laati-kvo. But no one did benefit."
"One of them did," he said, gesturing out at the mourners. "One of them is going to he the new Khai. He'll tell you what to do, and you'll do it. He'll live in the high palaces, and everyone else in the city will lick his ass if he tells them to. That's what it's all about. Who has to lick whose ass. And there's blood enough to fill a river answering that." He took another long pull from the wineskin, then dropped it idly to the ground at his feet. "I hate all of them."
"So do I," Stone-Made-Soft said, his tone light and conversational.
"You're drunk, Maati-kvo."
"Not half enough. Here, look at this. You know what this is?"
Cehmai glanced at the object Maati had pulled from his sleeve.
"A book."
"This is my teacher's masterwork. Heshai-kvo, poet of Saraykeht. The Dai-kvo sent me to him when I was hardly younger than you are now. I was going to study under him, take control of Seedless. Removing-the-Part-ihat-Continues. We called him Seedless. This is Heshai-kvo's examination of everything he'd done wrong. Every improvement he could have made to his binding, if he'd had it to do over again. It's brilliant."
"But it can't work, can it?" Cehmai said. "It would he too close...."
"Of course not, it's a refinement of his work, not how to bind Seedless again. It's a record of his failure. I)o you understand what I'm saving?"
Cchmai grasped for a right answer to the question and ended with honesty.
"No," he said.
"Heshai-kvo was a drunkard. He was a failure. He was haunted his whole life by the woman he loved and the child he lost, and every measure of the hatred he had for himself was in his binding. I Ic imagined the andat as the perfect man and implicit in that was the disdain he imagined such a man would feel looking at him. But Heshai was strong enough to look his mistake in the face. He was strong enough to sit with it and catalog it and understand. And the I)ai-kvo sent me to him. Because he thought we could he the same. tic thought I would understand him well enough to stand in his place."
"Nlaati-kvo, I'm sorry. Have you seen Idaan?"
"Well," Maati said, ignoring the question as he swayed slightly and frowned at the crowd. "I can face my stupidities just as well as he did. The I)ai-kvo wants to know who killed Biitrah? I'll find out. He can tell me it's too late and he can tell me to come home, but he can't make me stop looking. Whoever gets that chair ... whoever gets it ..."
Maati frowned, confused for a moment, and a sudden racking sob shook him. He leaned forward. Cehmai moved to him, certain for a moment that Maati was about to pitch off the walkway and down to the distant ground, but instead the older poet gathered himself and took a pose of apology.
"I'm ... making an ass of myself," he said. "You were saying something."
Cehmai was torn for a moment. He could see the red that lined Maati's eyes, could smell the sick reek of distilled wine on his breath and something deeper-some drug mixed with the wine. Someone needed to see Maati back to his apartments, needed to see that he was cared for. On another night, Cehmai would have done it.
"Idaan," he said. "She must have been here. They're burning her brother and her father. She had to attend the ceremony."
"She did." Nlaati agreed. "I saw her."
"Where's she gone?"
"With her man, I think. He was there beside her," Maati said. "I don't know where they went."
"Are you going to he all right, Maati-kvo?"
Nlaati seemed to think about this, then nodded once and turned hack to watch the pyre burning. The brown leather hook had fallen to the ground by the wineskin, and the andat retrieved it and put it back in Maati's sleeve. As they walked away, Cehmai took a pose of query.
"I didn't think he'd want to lose it," the andat said.
"So that was a favor to him?" Cehmai said. Stone-Made-Soft didn't reply. They walked toward the women's quarters and Idaan's apartments. If she was not there, he would go to the Vaunyogi's palace. He would say he was there to offer condolences to Idaan-cha. That it was his duty as poet and representative of the Dai-kvo to offer condolences to Idaan Machi on this most sorrowful of