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effect.
    The letters went out, each sewn with silk thread and stamped with Otah's
    imperial seal, and no word came back. He attended the ceremonies and
    meals, the entertainments and committee meetings, his eyes straining for
    some hint of change like a snow fox waiting for the thaw. It was only on
    the morning of the third day, just as he was preparing to send a fresh
    wave of appeals to the daughters of the families of power, that his
    visitor was announced.
     
    She was perhaps ten years younger than Otah, with hair the gray of dry
    slate pulled back from an intimidating, well-painted face. The reddening
    at her eyelids seemed more likely to be a constant feature than a sign
    of recent weeping. Otah rose from the garden bench and took a pose of
    welcome simple enough for anyone with even rudimentary training to
    recognize. His guest replied appropriately and waited for him to invite
    her to sit in the chair across from him.
     
    "We haven't met," the woman said in her native language. "Not formally."
     
    "But I know your husband," Otah said. He had met with all the members of
    the High Council many times. Farrer Dasin was among the
    longest-standing, though not by any means the most powerful. His wife
    Issandra had been no more than a polite smile and another face among
    hundreds until now. Otah considered her raised brows and downcast eyes,
    the set of her mouth and her shoulders. There had been a time when he'd
    lived by knowing how to interpret such small indications. Perhaps he
    still did.
     
    "I found your letter quite moving," she said. "Several of us did."
     
    "I am gratified," Otah said, not certain it was quite the correct word.
     
    "Fatter and I have talked about your treaty. The massive shipment of
    Galtic women to your cities as bed servants to your men, and then
    hauling back a crop of your excess male population for whatever girls
    escaped. It isn't a popular scheme."
     
    The brutality of her tone was a gambit, a test. Otah refused to rise to it.
     
    "Those aren't the terms I put in the treaty," he said. "I believe I used
    the term wife rather than bed servant, for example. I understand that
    the men of Galt might find it difficult. It is, however, needed."
     
    He spread his hands, as if in apology. She met his gaze with the bare
    intellect of a master merchant.
     
    "Yes, it is," she said. "Majesty, I am in a position to deliver a
    decisive majority in both the High Council and the convocation. It will
    cost me all the favors I'm owed, and I have been accruing them for
    thirty years. It will likely take me another thirty to pay back the debt
    I'm going into for you.
     
    Otah smiled and waited. The cold blue eyes glittered for a moment.
     
    "You might offer your thanks," she said.
     
    "Forgive me," Otah said. "I didn't think you'd finished speaking. I
    didn't want to interrupt."
     
    The woman nodded, sat back a degree, and folded her hands in her lap. A
    wasp hummed through the air to hover between them before it darted away
    into the foliage. He watched her weigh strategies and decide at last on
    the blunt and straightforward.
     
    "You have a son, I understand?" Issandra Dasin said.
     
    "I do," Otah said.
     
    "Only one."
     
    It was, of course, what he had expected. He had made no provision for
    Danat's role in the text of the treaty itself, but alliances among the
    Khaiem had always taken the form of marriages. His son's future had
    always been a tile in this game, and now that tile was in play.
     
    "Only one," he agreed.
     
    "As it happens, I have a daughter. Ana was three years old when the doom
    came. She's eighteen now, and ..."
     
    She frowned. It was the most surprising thing she'd done since her
    arrival. The stone face shifted; the eyes he could not imagine weeping
    glistened with unspilled tears. Otah was shocked to have misjudged her
    so badly.
     
    "She's never held a baby, you know," the woman said. "Hardly ever seen
    one. At her age, you couldn't pull me out of the nursery with