Seasons of War

her, end it. Or if you don’t trust her. As you see fit. People come together and they part. It’s what we do. But the boy. You can’t leave the boy. That isn’t fair.’
    ‘It’s what Maati-cha did to us.’
    ‘No,’ Liat said, giving his hand the smallest pressure, and then releasing it. ‘We left him.’
    Nayiit turned to her slowly, his hands folding into a pose that asked confirmation. It was as if the words were too dangerous to speak.
    ‘I left him,’ Liat said. ‘I took you when you were still a babe, and I was the one to leave him.’
    She saw a moment’s shock in his expression, gone as fast as it had come. His face went grave, his hands as still as stones. As still as a man bending his will to keep them still.
    ‘Why?’ he asked. His voice was low and thready.
    ‘Oh, love. It was so long ago. I was someone else, then,’ she said, and knew as she said it that it wasn’t enough. ‘I did because he was only half there. And because I couldn’t see to all of his needs and all of yours and have no one there to look after me.’
    ‘It was better without him?’
    ‘I thought it would be. I thought I was cutting my losses. And then, later, when I wasn’t so certain anymore, I convinced myself it had been the right thing, just so I could tell myself I hadn’t been wrong.’
    He was shaken, though he tried to cover it. She knew him too well to be fooled.
    ‘He wasn’t there, Nayiit. But he never left you.’
    And part of me never left him, she thought. What would the world have been if I had chosen otherwise? Where would we all be now if that part of him and of me had been enough? Still in that little hut in the low town near the Dai-kvo? Would they all have lived together in the library these past years as Maati had?
    Those other, ghostlike people made a pretty dream, but then there would have been no one to hear of the Galts and the missing poet, no one to travel to Nantani. And little Tai would not have been born, and she would never have seen Amat Kyaan again. Someone else would have been with the old woman when she died - someone else or no one. And Liat would never have taken House Kyaan, would never have proven herself competent to the world and to her own satisfaction.
    It was too much. The changes, the differences were too great to think of as good or as bad. The world they had now was too much itself, good and evil too tightly woven to wish for some other path. And still it would be wrong to say she found herself without regrets.
    ‘Maati loves you,’ she said, softly. ‘You should see him. I won’t interfere again. But first, you should go tend to your guest. Smooth things over.’
    Nayiit nodded, and then a moment later, he smiled. It was the same charming smile she’d known when she was a girl and it had been on different lips. Nayiit would charm the girl, say something sweet and funny, and the pain would be forgotten for a time. He was his father’s son. Son of the Khai Machi. Eldest son, and doomed to the fratricidal struggle of succession that stained every city in each generation. She wondered how far Otah would go to avoid that, to keep his boy safe from her schemes. That conversation had to come, and soon. Perhaps it would be best if she took it to the Khai herself, if she stopped waiting for him to find a right moment.
    Nayiit took a querying pose, and Liat shook herself. She waved his concern away.
    ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I’ve come all this way back to have my own bed to myself, and I’m still not in it. I’m too old to sleep in a lover’s arms. They twitch and snore and keep me awake all night.’
    ‘They do, don’t they?’ Nayiit said. ‘Does it get better, do you think? With enough time, would you be so accustomed to it, you’d sleep through?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Liat said. ‘I’ve never made the attempt.’
    ‘Like mother, like son, I suppose,’ Nayiit said as he rose. He bent and kissed the crown of her head before he retreated back into the shadows.
    Like mother, like son.
    Liat pulled her robe tighter and sat near the fire, as if touched by a sudden chill.

7
    T he jeweler was a small man, squat but broad. To his credit, he seemed truly ill at ease. It took courage, Otah thought as he listened, to bring a matter such as this before a Khai. He wondered how many others had seen something of the sort and looked away. Any merchant has to expect some losses from theft. And after all, she was the daughter of the Khai . . .
    When it was