Seasons of War

described. There wasn’t anyone like her.’
    ‘It was a clumsy lie,’ Liat said. ‘All of it from beginning to end. And, Itani, it’s the Galts .’
    Whether she had used his old, assumed name in error or as a ploy to make him recall the days of his youth, the effect was the same. Otah drew a deep breath, and felt a sick weight descend to his belly as he exhaled. He had spent so many years wary of the schemes of Galt that her evidence, thin as it was, almost had the power to convince him. He felt the gazes of the others upon him. Maati leaned forward in his seat, fingers knotted together in his lap. Kiyan’s rueful half-smile was sympathetic and considering both. The silence stretched.
    ‘Is there any reason to think he would have . . . done this?’ Otah asked. ‘The poet. Why would he agree to this?’
    Liat turned and nodded to her son. The man licked his lips before he spoke.
    ‘I went to the Dai-kvo’s village,’ Nayiit said. ‘My mother, of course, couldn’t. There were stories that Riaan had suffered a fever the winter before he was sent away. A serious one. Apparently he came close to death. Afterward, his skin peeled like he’d been too long in the sun. They say it changed him. He became more prone to anger. He wouldn’t think before he acted or spoke. The Dai-kvo sat with him for weeks, training him like he was fresh from the school. It did no good. Riaan wasn’t the man he’d been when the Dai-kvo accepted him. So . . .’
    ‘So the Dai-kvo sent him away in disgrace for something that wasn’t his fault,’ Otah said.
    ‘No, not at first,’ Nayiit said. ‘The Dai-kvo only told him that he wasn’t to continue with his binding. That it was too great a risk. They say Riaan took it poorly. There were fights and drunken rants. One man said Riaan snuck a woman into the village to share his bed, but I never heard anyone confirm that. Whatever the details, the Dai-kvo lost patience. He sent him away.’
    ‘You learned quite a lot,’ Otah said. ‘I’d have thought the poets would be closer with their disgraces.’
    ‘Once Riaan left, it wasn’t their disgrace. It was his,’ Nayiit said. ‘And they knew I had come from Nantani. I traded stories for stories. It wasn’t hard.’
    ‘The Dai-kvo wouldn’t meet with us,’ Liat said. ‘I sent five petitions, and for two of them his secretaries didn’t even bother to send refusals. It’s why we came here.’
    ‘Because you wanted me to make this argument? I’m not in the Dai-kvo’s best graces myself just now. He seems to think I blame the Galts when I cough,’ Otah said. ‘Maati might be the better man to make the case.’
    Maati took a pose that disagreed.
    ‘I would hardly be considered disinterested,’ Maati said. His words were calm and controlled despite their depth. ‘I may have done some interesting work, but no one will have forgotten that I defied the last Dai-kvo by not abandoning these precise two people.’
    The rest of the thought hung in the air, just beyond speech. She abandoned me . It was true enough. Liat had taken the child and made her own way in the world. She had never answered Maati’s letters until now, when she had need of him. There was something almost like shame in Liat’s downcast eyes. Nayiit shifted his weight, as if to interpose himself between the two of them - between his mother and the man who had wanted badly to be his father and had been denied.
    ‘We could also ask Cehmai,’ Kiyan said. ‘He’s a poet of enough prestige and ability to hold Stone-Made-Soft, and his reputation hasn’t been compromised.’
    ‘That might be wise,’ Otah said, grabbing for the chance to take the conversation away from the complexities of the past. ‘But let’s go over the evidence you have, Liat-cha. All of it. From the start.’
    It took the better part of the day. Otah listened to the full story; he read the statements of the missing poet’s slaves and servants, the contracts broken by the fleeing Galtic trade ship, the logs of couriers whose whereabouts Nayiit had compiled. Whatever objections he raised, Liat countered. He could see the fatigue in her face and hear the impatience in her voice. This matter was important to her. Important enough to bring her here. That she had come was proof enough of her conviction, if not of the truth of her claim. The girl he had known had been clever enough, competent enough, and still had been used as a stone in other people’s games. Perhaps he was harsh in