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December 23, 2017 - January 2, 2018
The comfort house of Amat Kyaan glowed in the night as the others of its species did—music and voices, the laughter of whores and the cursing of men at the tables. The wealth of the city poured through places like this in a tiny city in itself, given over entirely to pleasure and money.
His demeanor when he sat on the second stair, stretching out his legs and smiling, was the same as ever—amused and scheming and untrustworthy and sad. But perhaps there was something else, an underlying energy that Maati didn’t understand.
“Away,” Seedless said. “In his torture box. The same as always, I suppose.”
“Possibility is a wide field, dear. Can’t is a word for small imaginations.”
He kicked off the blankets, desperate for some sense of freedom. But the little brazier wasn’t equal to its work, and the cold soon brought him swimming back up into his full mind.
“Why would anyone ask forgiveness for something they’d done that was right?
The dread in his belly had suffused through his body, through the world, and disconnected him from everything. He felt like a puppet, pulled by invisible strings.
“Saraykeht is a city, Maati. It’s roads and walls and people and warehouses and statues. It doesn’t know you. It doesn’t love you. It’s me who does that. I love you. Please, Maati, do not do this.”
In the gray of winter fog, the streets were like memories
“I think we’re past things like forgiveness,” she said. “We’re the servants of what we have to do. That’s all.”
Maj seemed almost to glow in the moonlight, her skin picking up the blue and the cold.
“If we had hand loom, you should weave,” she said. “Put your mind to something real. Is unreal things that eat you.”
“Killing him,” Maj said. “Call it what it is. Not that thing. Killing him. Hiding names give them power.”
“That killing him was right . . . bothers me. At night, it bothers me.” “And if you can go back—make other choice—do you?” “No. No, I’d do the same. And that disturbs me, too.”
All this worry I make. And is nothing. To lose everything is not the worst can happen.” “It’s starting again, from nothing, with nothing,” Otah said. “Is exactly this,” Maj agreed, then a moment later. “Starting again, and doing better.”
