THE (tlpq-4) (14 page)

raised in conversation came through the air as if the one were part of

the other. Maati found himself disoriented for a moment, as if he'd

walked down a familiar street only to find it opening upon some unknown

city. He walked forward slowly, drawn in by the voices as if they were

music. There was Ashti Beg's dry voice, Large Kae's laughter. As he drew

nearer, the pauses between the louder voices were filled with the softer

voices of Vanjit and Irit. The first words he made out were Eiah's.

"Yes," she said, "but how would you fit that into a grammatic structure

that doesn't already include it? Or am I talking in a circle?"

"I think you may be," Small Kae replied. "Maati-kvo said that binding an

andat involves all kinds of inclusions. I don't see why this one would

be any different."

There was a pause, a sound that might have been the ghost of a sigh.

"Add it to the list," Eiah said as Maati turned through a well-lit

doorway and into the room.

"What list?" he asked.

There was a moment's silence, and then uproar. The circle of chairs was

abandoned, and Maati found himself the subject of a half-dozen embraces.

The dread and anger and despair that had dogged his steps lightened if

it didn't vanish. He let Vanjit lead him to an empty chair, and the

others gathered around him, their eyes bright, their smiles genuine. It

was like coming home. When Eiah returned to his question, he had

forgotten it. It took a moment to understand what she was saying.

"It's a list of questions for you," she said. "After we came and put the

place more or less to rights, we started ... well, we started holding

class without you."

"It wasn't really the same," Small Kae said with an apologetic pose. "We

only didn't want to forget what we'd learned. We were only talking about

it."

"After a few nights it became clear we were going to need some way to

keep track of the parts that needed clarifying. It's become rather a

long list. And some of the questions ..."

Maati took a pose that dismissed her concerns, somewhat hampered by the

bowl of curried rice in his hand.

"It's a good thought," he said. "I would have recommended it myself, if

I'd been thinking clearly. Bring me the list tonight, and perhaps we can

start going over it in the morning. If you are all prepared to begin

working in earnest?"

The roar of agreement drowned out his laughter. Only Eiah didn't join

in. Her smile was soft, almost sad, and she took no pose to explain it.

Instead, she poured a bowl of water for him.

"Is Cehmai-kvo here?" Large Kae asked.

Maati took a bite of the rice, chewing slowly, letting the spices burn

his tongue a little before answering.

"I didn't find him," Maati said. "There was a message, but it was

outof-date. I searched as long as there seemed some chance of finding

him, but there was no sign. I left word where I could, and it may very

well reach him. He might join us at any time. My job is to have you all

prepared in case he does."

It was kinder than the truth. If Maati's failure had been only that he

hadn't found help, it left them the hope that help might still arrive.

It was no great lie to give them an image of the future in which

something good might come. And it was easier for him if he didn't have

to say he'd been refused. Only Eiah knew; he could hear it in her

silence. She would follow his lead.

Maati's mule was seen to, his things hauled into the room they had

prepared for him, and a bath drawn in a wide copper tub set before a

fire grate. It reminded him of nothing so much as his days living in

court, servants available at any moment to cater to his needs. It was

strange to recall that he had lived that way once. It seemed both very

recent and very long ago. And also, the slaves and servants that had

driven the life in the palaces of Machi hadn't been women he knew and

cared for. Slipping into the warm water, feeling his travel-abused

joints ache just a degree less, letting his eyes rest, Maati wondered

what it would have been like to receive so much female attention when

he'd been younger. There would have been a time when the simple sensual

pleasures of food and a warm bath might have suggested something more

sexual. It might still, if bone-deep weariness hadn't held him.

But no, that wasn't true. He wasn't dead to lust, but it had been years

since it had carried the urgency that he remembered from his youth. He

wondered if that wasn't part of why women had been barred from the

school and the village of the Dai-kvo. Would any poet have been able to

focus on a binding if half his mind was on a woman his body was aching

for? Or perhaps there was something in that mind-set itself that would

affect the binding. So much of the andat was a reflection of the poet

who bound it, it would be easy to imagine andat fashioned by younger

poets in the forms of wantons and whores. Apart from the profoundly

undignified nature of such a binding, it might actually make holding the

andat more difficult as decades passed and a man's fires burned less

brightly. He wondered if there was an analogy with women.

The scratch at the door brought him back. He'd half fallen asleep there

in the water. He rose awkwardly, reaching for his robe and trying not to

spill so much water that it flowed into the fire grate and killed the

flames.

"Yes, yes," he called as he fastened the robe's ties. "I'm not drowned

yet. Come in."

Eiah stepped through the doorway. There was something in her arms, held

close to her. Between the unsteady light of the fire and his own

age-blunted sight, he couldn't tell more than it looked like a book.

Maati took a pose of welcome, his sleeves water-stuck to his arms.

"Should I come back later?" she asked.

"No, of course not," Maati said, pulling a chair toward the fire for

her. "I was only washing the road off of me. Is this the famed list?"

"Part of it is," she said as she sat. She was wearing a physician's robe

of deep green and gold. "Part of it's something else."

Maati settled himself on the tub's wide lip and took a pose that

expressed curiosity and surprise. Eiah handed him a scroll, and he

unfurled it. The questions were all written in a large hand, clearly,

and each with a small passage to give some context. He read three of

them. Two were simple enough, but the third was more interesting. It

touched on the difficulties of generating new directionals, and the

possibility of encasing absolute structures within relative ones. It

gave the grammar an odd feeling, as if it were suggesting that fire was

hot rather than asserting it.

It was interesting.

"Are they all like this?" he asked.

"The questions? Some of them, yes," Eiah said. "Vanjit's especially were

beyond anything we could find a plausible answer for."

Maati pursed his lips and nodded. An absolute made relative. What would

that do? He found himself smiling without knowing at first what he was

smiling about.

"I think," he said, "leaving you to your own company may have been the

best thing I've done."

The firelight caught Eiah's answering smile.

"I wasn't going to say so," she said. "It's been fascinating. At first,

it was as if we were sneaking pies from the kitchens. Everyone wanted to

do the thing, but it seemed ... wrong? I don't know if that's the word.

It seemed like something we shouldn't do, and more tempting because of

it. And then once we started talking with each other, it was like being

on a loose cart. We couldn't stop or even slow down. Half the time I

didn't know if we were going down the wrong road, but ..."

She shrugged, nodding at the scroll in his hands.

"Well, even if you were, some of this may be quite useful."

"I'd hoped so," Eiah said. "And that brings me to something else. I

found some books at court. I brought them."

Maati blinked, the scroll forgotten in his hands.

"Books? They weren't all burned?" he said.

"Not that sort. These aren't ours," she said. "They're Westlands'. Books

from physicians. Here."

She took back the scroll and put a small, cloth-bound book in his hand.

One of the sticks in the fire grate broke, sending out embers like

fireflies. Maati leaned forward.

The script was small and cramped, the ink pale. It would have been

difficult in sunlight; by fire and candle, it might as well not have

been written. Frustrated, Maati turned the pages and an eye stared back

at him from the paper. He turned back and went more slowly. All the

diagrams were of eyes, some ripped from their sockets, some pierced by

careful blades. Comments accompanied each orb, laying, he assumed, its

secrets open.

"Sight," Eiah said. "The author is called Arran, but it was more likely

written by dozens of people who all used the same name. The wardens in

the north had a period four or five generations ago when there was some

brilliant work done. We ignored it, of course, because it wasn't by us.

But these are very, very good. Arran was brilliant."

"Whether he existed or not," Maati said. He meant it as a joke.

"Whether he existed or not," Eiah agreed with perfect seriousness. "I've

been working with these. And with Vanjit. We have a draft. You should

look at it."

Maati handed her back the book and she pulled a sheaf of papers from her

sleeve. Maati found himself almost hesitant to accept them. Vanjit, and

her dreamed baby. Vanjit, who had lost so much in the war. He didn't

want to see any of his students pay the price of a failed binding, but

especially not her.

He took the papers. Eiah waited. He opened them.

The binding was an outline, but it was well-considered. The sections and

relationships sketched in with commentary detailing what would go in

each, often with two or three notes of possible approaches. The andat

would be Clarity-of-Sight, and it would be based in the medical

knowledge of Westlands physicians and the women's grammar that Maati and

Eiah had been creating. Even if some Second Empire poet had managed to

hold the andat before, this approach, these descriptions and

sensibilities, was likely to be wholly different. Wholly new.

"Why Vanjit?" he asked. "Why not Ashti Beg or Small Kae?"

"You think she isn't ready?"

"I ... I wouldn't go so far as that," Maati said. "It's only that she's

young, and she's had a harder life than some. I wonder whether ..."

"None of us are perfect, Maati-kya," Eiah said. "We have to work with

the people we have. Vanjit is clever and determined."

"You think she can manage it? Bind this andat?"

"I think she has the best hope of any of us. Except possibly me."

Maati sighed, nodding as much to himself as to her. Dread thickened his

throat.

"Let me look at this," he said. "Let me think about it."

Eiah took a pose that accepted his command. Maati looked down again.

"Why didn't he come?" Eiah asked.

"Because," Maati began, and then found he wasn't able to answer as

easily as he'd thought. He folded the papers and began to tuck them into

his sleeve, remembered how wet the cloth was, and tossed them instead

onto his low, wood-framed bed. "Because he didn't want to," he said at last.

"And my aunt?"

"I don't know," Maati said. "I thought for a time that she might take my

side. She didn't seem pleased with how they were living. Or, no. That's

not right. She seemed to care more than he did about how they would live

in the future. But he wouldn't have any of it."

"He's given up," Eiah said.

Maati recalled the man's face, the lines and weariness. The authenticity

of his smile. When they'd first met, Cehmai had been little more than a

boy, younger than Eiah was now. This was what the world had done to that

boy. What it had done to them all.

"He has," Maati said.

"Then we'll do without him," Eiah said.

"Yes," Maati said, hoisting himself up. "Yes we will, but if you'll

forgive me, Eiah-kya, I think the day's worn me thin. A little rest, and

we'll begin fresh tomorrow. And where's that list of questions? Ah,

thank you. I'll look over all of this, and we'll decide where best to go

from here, eh?"

She took his hand, squeezing his knuckles gently.

"It's good to have you back," she said.