THE (tlpq-4) (18 page)

longer than the others, that her eyes followed Eiah more hungrily.

When the horse and cart had gone far enough that even the dust from the

hooves and wheels was invisible, they turned back to the business at

hand. Until midday, they scraped soot and a decade's fallen leaves out

from the shell of one of the gutted buildings. Irit found the bones of

some forgotten boy who had been caught in that long-cooled fire, and

they held a brief ceremony in remembrance of the slaughtered poets and

student boys in whose path they all traveled. Vanjit especially was

sober and pale as Maati finished his words and committed the bones to a

fresh-made, hotter blaze that would, he hoped, return the old bones to

their proper ash.

As they made their way back from the pyre, he made a point to walk at

her side. Her olive skin and well-deep eyes reminded him of his first

lover, Liat. The mother of the child who should have been his own. Even

before she spoke, his breast ached like a once-broken arm presaging a

shift of weather.

"I was thinking of my brother," Vanjit said. "He was near that boy's

age. Not highborn, of course. They didn't take normal people here then,

did they?"

"No," Maati said. "Nor women, for that."

"It's a strange thought. It already seems like home to me. Like I've

always been here," the girl said, then shifted her weight, her shoulders

turning a degree toward Maati even as they walked side by side. "You've

always known Eiah-cha, haven't you?"

"As long as she's known anything," Maati said with a chuckle. "Possibly

a bit longer. I was living in Machi for years and years before the war."

"She must be very important to you."

"She's been my salvation, in her way. Without her, none of us would be

here."

"You would have found a way," Vanjit said. Her voice was odd, a degree

harder than Maati had expected. Or perhaps he had imagined it, because

when she went on, there was no particular bite to the words. "You're

clever and wise enough, and I'm sure there are more people in places of

influence that would have given you aid, if you'd asked."

"Perhaps," Maati said. "But I knew from the first I could trust Eiah.

That carries quite a bit of weight. Without trust, I don't know if I

would have hit on the idea of coming here. Before, I always kept to

places I could leave easily."

"She said that you wouldn't let her bind the first andat," Vanjit said.

"One of us has to succeed before you'll let her make the attempt."

"That's so," Maati agreed, a moment's discomfort passing through him. He

didn't want to explain the thinking behind that decision. When Vanjit

went on, it was happily not in that direction.

"She's shown me some of the work she's done. She's working from the same

books that I am, you know."

"Yes," Maati said. "That was a good thought, using sources from the

Westlands. The more things we can use that weren't part of how the old

poets thought, the better off we are."

Maati described Cehmai's suggestion of making an andat and withdrawing

its influence as a strategy of Eiah, pleased to have steered the

conversation to safe waters. Vanjit listened, her full attention upon

him. Ashti Beg and Irit, walking before them, paused. If Vanjit hadn't

hesitated, Maati thought he might not have noticed until he bumped into

them.

"Small Kae is making soup for dinner," Irit said. "If you have time to

help her ..."

"Maati-kvo's much too busy for that," Vanjit said.

When Ashti Beg spoke, her voice was dry as sand.

"Irit-cha might not have been speaking to him."

Vanjit's spine stiffened, and then, with a laugh, relaxed. She smiled at

all of them as she took a contrite pose, accepting the correction. Irit

reached out and placed her hand on Vanjit's shoulder as a sister might.

"I'm so proud of you," Irit said, grinning. "I'm just so happy and proud."

"So are we all," Ashti Beg said. Maati smiled, but the sense that

something had happened sat at the back of his mind. As the four of them

walked to the kitchens-the air growing rich with the salt-and-fat scent

of pork and the dark, earthy scent of boiled lentils-Maati reviewed what

each of them had said, the tones of voice, the angles at which they had

held themselves. Small Kae assigned tasks to all of them except Maati,

and he waited for a time, listening to the simple banter and the crack

of knives against wood. When he took his leave, he was troubled.

He was not so far removed from his boyhood that he had forgotten what

jealousy felt like. He'd suffered it himself in these same halls and

rooms. One boy or another was always in favor, and the others wishing

that they were. Walking through the bare gardens, Maati wondered whether

he had allowed the same thing to happen. Vanjit was certainly the center

of all their work and activity. Had Ashti Beg and Irit interrupted their

conversation from an urge to take his attention, or at least deny it to her?

And then there was some question of Vanjit's heart.

The truth was that Eiah had been right. For all the hope and attention

placed upon her, the project of the school was not truly Vanjit and

Clarity-of-Sight. It would be Eiah and Wounded. Vanjit had seen it. It

couldn't be pleasant, knowing she was taking the lead not for her own

sake but to blaze the trail for another. He would speak to her. He would

have to speak with her. Reassure her.

After the last of the lentil soup had been sopped up by the final crust

of bread, Maati took Vanjit aside. It didn't go as he had expected.

"It isn't that Eiah-cha's work is more important," Maati said, his hands

in a pose meant to convey a gentle authority. "You are taking the

greater risk, and the role of the first of the poets of a new age. It's

only that there are certain benefits that Eiah-cha brings because of her

position at court. Once those aren't needed any longer, you see-"

Vanjit kissed him. Maati sat back. The girl's smile was broad, genuine,

and oddly pitying. Her hands took a pose that offered correction.

"Ah, Maati-kvo. You think it matters that Eiah is more important than I am?"

"I didn't ... I wouldn't put it that way."

"Let me. Eiah is more important than I am. I'm first because I'm the

scout. That's all. But if I do well, if I can make this binding work,

then she will have your permission. And then we can do anything. That's

all I want."

Maati ran a hand through his hair. He found that none of the words he

had practiced fit the moment. Vanjit seemed to understand his silence.

When she went on, her voice was low and gentle.

"There's a difference between why you came to this place and why we

have," she said. "Your father sent you here in hopes of glory. He hoped

that you would rise through the ranks of all the boys and be sent to the

Daikvo and become a poet. It isn't like that for me. I don't want to be

a poet. Did you understand that?"

Maati took a pose that expressed both an acceptance of correction and a

query. Vanjit responded with one appropriate to thanking someone of

higher status.

"I had the dream again," Vanjit said. "I've been having it every night,

almost. He's in me. And he's shifting and moving and I can hear his

heart beating."

"I'm sorry," Maati said.

"No, Maati-kvo, that's just it. I wake up, and I'm not sad any longer.

It was only hard when I thought it would never come. Now, I wake up, and

I'm happy all day long. I can feel him getting close. He'll be here.

What is being a poet beside that?"

Nayiit, he thought.

Maati didn't expect the tears, they simply welled up in his eyes. The

pain in his breast was so sudden and sharp, he almost mistook the sorrow

for illness. She put her hand on his, her expression anxious. He forced

himself to smile.

"You're quite right," he said. "Quite right. Come along now. The bowls

are all washed, and it's time we got to work."

He made his way to the hall they had set aside for classes. His heart

was both heavy and light: heavy with the renewed sorrow of his boy's

death, light at Vanjit's reaction to him. She had known Eiah's work to

be of greater importance, and had already made her peace with her own

lesser role. He wondered whether, in her place and at her age, he would

have been able to do the same. He doubted it.

That evening, his lecture was particularly short, and the conversation

after it was lively and pointed and thoughtful. In the days that

followed, Maati abandoned his formal teaching entirely, instead leading

discussion after discussion, analysis after analysis. Together, they

tore Vanjit's binding of Clarity-of-Sight apart, and together they

rebuilt it. Each time, Maati thought it was stronger, the images and

resonances of it more appropriate to one another, the grammar that

formed it more precise.

It was difficult to call the process to a halt, but in the end, it was

Vanjit and Vanjit alone who would make the attempt. They might help her

and advise her, but he allocated two full weeks in which the binding was

hers and hers alone.

Low clouds came in the morning Eiah returned. They scudded in from the

north on a wind cold as winter. Maati knew it wouldn't take. There were

weeks of heat and sun to come before the seasons changed. And yet, there

was a part of Maati's mind that couldn't help seeing the shift as an

omen. And a positive one, he told himself. Change, the movement of the

seasons, the proper order of the world: those were what he tried to see

in the low, gray roof of the sky. Not the presentiment of barren winter.

"The news is strange," Eiah said as they unloaded her cart. Boxes of

salt pork and raw flour, canisters of spice and hard cheese. "The Galts

have fallen on Saraykeht like they owned it, but something didn't go

well. I can't tell if my brother thought the girl was too ugly or she

fell into a fit when she was presented, but something went badly. What I

heard was early and muddled. I'll know better next time I go."

"Anything that hurts him helps us," Maati said. "So whatever it was,

it's good."

"That was my thought," Eiah said, but her voice was somber. When he took

a pose of query, she didn't answer it.

"How have things progressed here?" she asked instead.

"Well. Very well. I think Vanjit is ready."

Eiah stopped, wiping her sleeve across her forehead. She looked old. How

many summers had she seen? Thirty? Thirty-one? Her eyes were deeper than

thirty summers.

"When?" she asked.

"We were only waiting for you to come back," he said. Then, trying for

levity, "You've brought the wine and food for a celebration. So

tomorrow, we'll do something worth celebrating."

Or else something to mourn, he thought but did not say.

9

"By everything holy, don't tell Balasar," Sinja said. "He can't know

about this."

"Why?" Idaan asked, sitting on the edge of the soldier's bed. "What

would he do?"

"I don't know," Sinja said. "Something bloody and extreme. And effective."

"Stop," Otah said. "Just stop. I have to think."

But sitting there, head resting in his hands, clarity of mind wasn't

coming to him easily. Idaan's story-her travels in the north after her

exile, Cehmai's appearance on her doorstep, their rekindled love, and

Maati's break with his fellow poet and then his return-had the feel of

an old poem, if not the careful structure. If he hadn't had the pirates

or Ana or her father or his own son or the conspiracy between Yalakeht

and Obar State, or the incursions from the Westlands, he might have

enjoyed the tale for its own sake.

But she hadn't brought it to him as a story. It was a threat.

"What role has Cehmai taken in this?" he asked.

"None. He wanted nothing to do with it. Or with my coming here, for

that. I've left him to look after things until I've paid my debt to you.

Then I'll be going home."

"Is it working?" Otah said at length. "Idaan-cha, did Maati say anything

to suggest it was working?"

His sister took a pose of negation that held a sense of uncertainty.

"He came to Cehmai for help," Sinja said. "That means at least that he

thinks he needs help."

"And Cehmai didn't agree to it," Idaan said. "He isn't helping. But he

also doesn't want to see Maati hung. He cut Maati off before he told me