THE (tlpq-4) (28 page)

cities, and he threw open the shutters, letting in what cold there was.

He didn't notice that Danat was there until the boy spoke.

"Father."

Otah turned. Danat stood in the doorway that led to the inner chambers.

He wore the same robe that he had before, but the cloth sagged like an

unmade bed. Danat's eyes were rimmed with red.

"Danat-kya," Otah said. "What's happened?"

"I've done as you said. Shija and I went to the rose pavilion. Just the

two of us. I ... spoke with her. I broke things off."

"Ah," Otah said. He walked back from the open windows and sat on a couch

before the fire. Danat came forward, his eyes glittering with unfallen

tears.

"This is my fault, Papa-kya. In a different world, I might have ... I

have been careless with her. I've hurt her."

Was I ever as young as this? Otah thought, and immediately pressed it

away. Even if the question was fair, it was unkind. He held out his

hand, and his son-his tall, thick-shouldered son-sat beside him, curled

into Otah's shoulder the way he had as a boy. Danat sobbed once.

"I only ... I know you and Issandra-cha were relying on me and . .

Otah hushed the boy.

"You've taken a willing girl to bed," Otah said. "You aren't who she

hoped you might be, and so she's disappointed. Yes?"

Danat nodded.

"There are worse things." Otah saw again the darkness of Idaan's eyes.

He was sending the woman behind those eyes after his Eiah, his little

girl. The ghost of nausea touched him and he stroked Danat's hair.

"People have done worse."

14

Maati frowned at the papers before him. A small fire crackled in the

brazier on his desk, and he was more than half-tempted to drop the pages

onto the flames. Eiah, sitting across from him, looked no more pleased.

"You're right," he said. "We're moving backward."

"What's happened?" Eiah asked, though she knew as well as he did.

The few weeks that had passed since Vanjit's successful binding had only

grown more difficult. To start, the other students excepting Eiah were

more distracted. The mewling and cries of the andat disrupted any

conversation. Its awkward crawling seemed capable of entrancing them for

a full morning. Perhaps he had known too much of the andat, but he held

the growing impression that it was perfectly aware of the effect its

toothless smile could have. And that it was especially cultivating the

admiration of Ashti Beg.

Added to that, Vanjit herself had come almost disconnected from the

rest. She would sit for whole days, the andat in her lap or at her

breast, staring at water or empty air. Maati had some sympathy for that.

She had shown him the most compelling of the wonders her new powers had

uncovered, and he had been as delighted as she was. But her little

raptures meant that she wasn't engaged in the work at hand: Eiah, and

the binding of Wounded.

"There is something we can do," Eiah said. "If we set the classes in the

mornings, just after the first meal, we won't have had a full day behind

us. We could come at it fresh each time."

Maati nodded more to show he'd heard her than from any real agreement.

His fingertips traced the lines of the binding again, tapping the page

each time some little infelicity struck him. He had seen bindings falter

this way before. In those first years when Maati had been a new poet,

the Dai-kvo had spoken of the dangers of muddying thoughts by too much

work. One sure way to fail was to build something sufficient and then

not stop. With every small improvement, the larger structure became less

tenable, until eventually the thing collapsed under the weight of too

much history.

He wondered if they had gone too far, corrected one too many things

which were not truly problems so much as differences of taste.

Eiah took a pose that challenged him. He looked at her directly for

perhaps the first time since she'd come to his study.

"You think I'm wrong," she said. "You can say it. I've heard worse."

It took Maati the space of several heartbeats to recall what her

proposal had been.

"I think it can't hurt. But I also think it isn't our essential problem.

We were all quite capable of designing Clarity-of-Sight with meetings in

the evening. This"-he rattled the papers in his hand-"is something

different. Half-measures won't suffice."

"What then?" she said.

He put the papers down.

"We stop," he said. "For a few days, we don't touch it at all. Instead

we can send someone to a low town for meat and candles, or clear the

gardens. Anything."

"Do we have time for that?" Eiah asked. "Anything could have happened.

My brother may be married. His wife may be carrying a child. All of Galt

may be loading their daughters in ships, and the men of the cities may

be scuttling off to Kirinton and Acton and Marsh. We are out here where

there's no one to talk to, no couriers on the roads, and I know it feels

that time has stopped. It hasn't. We've been weeks at this. Months. We

can't spend time we don't have."

"You'd recommend what, then? Move faster than we can move? Think more

clearly than we can think? It isn't as if we can sit down with a serious

expression and demand that the work be better than it is. Have you never

seen a man ill with something that needed quiet and time? This is no

different."

"I've also watched ill men die," Eiah said. "Time passes, and once

you've waited too long for something, there's no getting it back."

Her mouth bent in a deep frown. There were dark circles under her eyes.

She bit her lower lip and shook her head as if conducting some

conversation within her mind and disagreeing with herself. The coal

burning in the brazier settled and gave off a dozen small sparks as

bright as fireflies. One landed on the paper, already cold and gray. Ash.

"You're reconsidering," Maati said.

"No. I'm not. We can't tell my father," she said. "Not yet."

"We could send to others, then," Maati said. "There are high families in

every city that would rise up against Otah's every plan if they knew the

andat were back in the world. You've lived your whole life in the

courts. Two or three people whose discretion you trust would be all it

took. A rumor spoken in the right ears. We needn't even say where we are

or what's been bound."

Eiah combed her fingers through her hair. Every breath that she didn't

answer, Maati felt his hopes rise. She would, if he only gave her a

little more time and silence to convince herself. She would announce

their success, and everyone in the cities of the Khaiem would know that

Maati Vaupathai had remained true to them. He had never given up, never

turned away.

"It would mean going to a city," Eiah said. "I can't send half-a-dozen

ciphered letters under my own seal out from a low town without every

courier in the south finding out where we are."

"Then Pathai," Maati said, his hands opening. "We need to step back from

the binding. The letters will win us time to make things right."

Eiah turned, looking out the window. In the courtyard, the maple trees

were losing their leaves. A storm, a strong wind, and the branches would

be bare. A sparrow, brown and gray, hopped from one twig to another.

Maati could see the fine markings on its wings, the blackness of its

eyes. It had been years since sparrows had been more than dull smears.

He glanced at Eiah, surprised to see the tears on her cheek.

His hand touched her shoulder. She didn't look back, but he felt her

lean into him a degree.

"I don't know," she said as if to the sparrow, the trees, the thousand

fallen leaves. "I don't know why it should matter. It's no secret what

he's done or what I think of it. I don't have any doubts that what we're

doing is the right choice."

"And yet," Maati said.

"And yet," she agreed. "My father will be disappointed in me. I would

have thought I was old enough that his opinion wouldn't matter."

He searched for a response-something gentle and kind and that would

strengthen her resolve. Before he found the words, he felt her tense. He

took back his hand, adopting a querying pose.

"I thought I heard something," she said. "Someone was yelling."

A long, high shriek rang in the air. It was a woman's voice, but he

couldn't guess whose. Eiah leaped from her stool and vanished into the

dark hallways before Maati recovered himself. He followed, his heart

pounding, his breath short. The shrieking didn't stop, and as he came

nearer the kitchen, he heard other sounds-clattering, banging, high

voices urging calm or making demands that he couldn't decipher, the

andat's infantile wail. And then Eiah's commanding voice, with the

single word stop.

He rounded the last corner, his fist pressed to his chest, his heart

hammering. The cooking areas were raw chaos come to earth. An

earthenware jar of wheat flour had been overturned and cracked. The thin

stone block Irit used for chopping plants lay in shards on the floor.

Ashti Beg stood in the middle of the room, a knife in her hand, her chin

held high like a statue of abstract vengeance. In the corner, Vanjit

held the stillmewling andat close to her breast. Large Kae, Small Kae,

and Irit were all cowering against the walls, their eyes wide and mouths

hanging open. Eiah's expression was calm and commanding at the same

time, like a mother calling back her children from a cliff edge.

"It's done, Ashti-cha," Eiah said, walking slowly toward the woman.

"I'll have the knife."

"Not until I find that bitch and put it in her heart," Ashti Beg spat,

turning toward Eiah's voice. Maati saw for the first time that the

woman's eyes were as gray as storm clouds.

"I'll have the knife," Eiah said again. "Or I will beat you down and

take it. You know you're more likely to hurt the others than Vanjit."

The andat whimpered and Ashti Beg whirled toward it. Eiah stepped

forward smoothly, took Ashti Beg's elbow and wrist in her hands, and

twisted. Ashti Beg yelped, the blade clattering to the floor.

"What. . ." Maati gasped. "What is happening?"

Four voices answered at once, words tripping over each other. Only Eiah

and Vanjit remained silent, the two poets considering each other

silently in the center of the storm. Maati raised his hands in a pose

that commanded silence, and all of them stopped except Ashti Beg.

". . . power over us. It isn't right, it isn't fair, and I will not

simper and smile and lick her ass because she happened to be the one to

go first!"

"Enough!" Maati said. "Enough, all of you. Gods. Gods. Vanjit. Come with

me."

The girl looked over as if noticing him for the first time. The rage in

her expression faltered. Her hands were shaking. Eiah stepped forward,

keeping herself between Ashti Beg and her prey as Vanjit walked across

the room.

"Eiah, see to Ashti-cha," Maati said, taking Vanjit's wrist. "The rest

of you, clean this mess. I'd rather not eat food prepared in a child's

playpen."

He turned away, pulling Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight after him. The andat

was silent now. Maati crossed the hallway and started down a flight of

stone stairs that led to the sleeping rooms for the younger cohorts. The

voices of the others rose behind them and faded. He wasn't certain where

he was taking her until he reached the branching hall that led to the

slate-paved rooms where the teachers had once disciplined boys with the

cutting slash of a lacquered rod. He stopped in the hallway instead,

putting the reflexive impulse to violence aside. Vanjit bowed her head.

"I would like an explanation of that," he said, his voice shaking with

anger.

"It was Ashti Beg," Vanjit said. "She can't contain her jealousy any

longer, Maati-kvo. I have tried to give her the time and consideration,

but she won't understand. I am a poet now. I have an andat to care for.

I can't be expected to work and toil like a servant."

The andat twisted in her grasp, looking up at Maati with tears in its

black eyes. The tiny, toothless mouth gaped in what would have been

distress if it had been a baby.

"Tell me," Maati said. "Tell me what happened."

"Ashti Beg said that I had to clean the pots from breakfast. Irit

offered to, but Ashti wouldn't even let her finish her sentences. I

explained that I couldn't. I was very calm. I am patient with her,

Maati-kvo. I'm always very patient."

"What happened?" Maati insisted.

"She tried to take him," Vanjit said. Her voice had changed. The

pleading tone was gone. Her words could have been shaved from ice. "She

said that she could look after him as well as anyone, and that I was

more than welcome to have him back once the kitchen had been cleaned."

Maati closed his eyes.

"She put her hands on him," Vanjit said. In her voice, it sounded like a

violation. Perhaps it was.

"And what did you do," Maati asked, though he knew the answer.

"What you told me," Vanjit said. "What you said about Wounded."

"Which was?" he said. Clarity-of-Sight gurgled and swung its thick arms

at Vanjit's ears, its dumb show of fear and distress forgotten.

"You said that Eiah-cha couldn't make an andat based on things being as

they're meant to, because the andat aren't meant to be bound. It's not

their nature. You said she had to bind Wounded and then withdraw it from

all the women who still can't bear babes. And so we withdrew from Ashti

Beg."

The andat cooed. It might have been Maati's imagination, but the thing

seemed proud. Clarity-of-Sight. And so also Blindness.

The warmth that bloomed in his breast, the tightening of his jaw, the

near-unconscious shaking of his head. They were not anger so much as a

bone-deep impatience.

"It is manipulating you," he said. "We've talked about this from the

beginning. The andat wants its freedom. Whatever else it is, it will

always struggle to be free. It has been courting Ashti Beg and the

others for days to precipitate exactly this. You have to know yourself

better than it does. You have to behave like a grown woman, not a

selfrighteous child."

"But she-"

Maati put two fingers against the girl's lips. The andat was silent now,

staring at him with silent anger.

"You have been entrusted with a power beyond any living person," Maati

said, his tone harsher than he'd intended. "You are responsible for that

power. You understand me? Responsible. I have tried to make you see

that, but now I think I've failed. Poets aren't simply men ... or women

... who have a particular profession. We aren't like sailors or

cabinetmakers or armsmen. Holding the andat is like holding small gods,

and there is a price you pay for that. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes, Maati-kvo," Vanjit whispered.

"I doubt that," he said. "After what I've seen today, I very much doubt it.

She was weeping silently. Maati opened his mouth, some cutting comment

ready to humiliate her further, and stopped. For a moment, he was a boy

again, in this same hallway. He could feel the thin robes and the winter

cold, and the tears on his own cheeks as the older boys mocked him or

Tahi-kvo-bald, cruel Tahi-kvo, who had later become the Dai- kvo-beat

him. He wondered if this fear and rage had been what drove his teachers

back then, or if it had been something colder.

"Fix it," Maati said. "Put Ashti Beg back as she was, and never, never

use the andat for petty infighting again."

"No, Maati-kvo."

"And wash the pots when your turn comes."

Vanjit took a pose that was a promise and an expression of gratitude.

The quiet sobs as she walked away made Maati feel smaller. If they had

been in a city, he would have gone to a bathhouse or some public square,

listened to beggars singing on the corners and bought food from the

carts. He would have tried to lose himself for a while, perhaps in wine,

perhaps in music, rarely in gambling, and never in sex. At the school,

there was no escape. He walked out, leaving the stone walls and memories

behind him. Then the gardens. The low hills that haunted the land west

of the buildings.

He sat on the wind-paved hillside, marking the passage of the sun across

the afternoon sky, his mind tugged a hundred different ways. He had been

too harsh with Vanjit, or not harsh enough. The binding of Wounded was

overworked or not deeply enough considered, doomed or on the edge of

being perfected. Ashti Beg had been in the wrong or justified or both.

He closed his eyes and let the sunlight beat down on them, turning the

world to red.

In time, the turmoil in his heart calmed. A small, blue-tailed lizard

scrambled past him. He had chased lizards like it when he'd been a boy.

He hadn't recalled that in years.

It was folly to think of poets as different from other men. Other women,

now that Vanjit had proved their grammar effective. It was that mistake

which had made the school what it was, which had deformed the lives of

so many people, his own included. Of course Vanjit was still subject to

petty jealousy and pride. Of course she would need to learn wisdom, just

the same as anyone else. The andat had never changed who someone was,

only what they could do.

He should have taught them that along with all the rest. Every now and

again, he could have spent an evening talking about what power was, and

what responsibility it carried. He'd never thought to do it, he now

realized, because when he imagined a woman wielding the power of the

andat, that woman was always Eiah.

Maati made his way back as the cold afternoon breeze set the trees and

bushes rustling. He found the kitchen empty but immaculate. The broken

cutting stone had been replaced with a length of polished wood, but

otherwise everything was as it had been. His students, he found under

Eiah's command in the courtyard. They were raking the fallen leaves into

a pit for burning and resetting a half-dozen flagstones that had broken

from years of frost, tree roots, and neglect. Vanjit knelt with Large

Kae, lifting the stones from the ground. Clarity-of-Sight nestled in

Irit's lap, its eyes closed and its mouth a perfect O. Ashti Beg, her

vision clearly restored, was by Small Kae's side, a deep pile of russet

leaves before them.

"Maati-kvo," Eiah said, taking a pose of greeting, which he returned.

The others acknowledged him with a smile or simple pose. Vanjit turned

away quickly, as if afraid to see anger still in his expression.

He trundled to a rough boulder, resting against it to catch his breath.

Irit joined him and, without a word, passed the andat to him. It

stirred, groaned once, and then turned to nestle its face into his

robes. The andat had no need of breath. Maati had known that since he

had first met Seedless over half a century earlier. Clarity-of-Sight's

deep, regular sighs were manipulations, but Maati welcomed them. To hold

something so much like a child but as still as the dead would have

unnerved him.

Irit especially talked in light tones, but no one seeing them would have

guessed that one of the group had been swinging a knife at another

earlier in the day. Apart from a mutually respected distance between

Ashti Beg and Vanjit, there was no sign of unease.

Large Kae and Small Kae left to prepare a simple meal just as Eiah put

the torch to the pit of leaves. The flames rose, dancing. Pale smoke

filled the air with the scent of autumn, then floated into the sky while

the rest of them watched: Vanjit and Eiah, Ashti Beg, Irit, Maati and

Clarityof-Sight, who was also Blindness. The andat seemed captivated by

the flames. Maati stretched his palm out to the fire and felt the heat

pushing gently back.

They ate roasted chicken and drank watered wine. By the end of the meal,

Vanjit was smiling again. When the last wine bowl was empty, the last

thin, blood-darkened bone set bare on its plate, she was the first to

rise and gather the washing. Maati felt a relief that surprised him. The

trouble had passed; whether it had been Vanjit's pride or Ashti Beg's

jealousy, it didn't matter.

To show his approval, Maati joined in the cleaning himself, sweeping the

kitchen and building up the fire. In place of the usual lecture, they

discussed the difficulties of looking too long at a binding. It came out

that all of them had felt some disquiet at the state of Eiah's work.

Even that was reassuring.

He and Eiah sat together after the session ended. A small kettle smelled

equally of hot iron and fresh tea. The wind was picking up outside, cold

and fragrant with the threat of rain or snow. By the warm light of the

fire grate, Eiah looked tired.

"I'll leave in the morning," Eiah said. "I want to beat the worst of the

weather, if I can."

"That seems wise," Maati said and sipped his tea. It was still scalding

hot, but its taste was comforting.

"Ashti Beg wants to come with me," she said. "I don't know what to do

about that."

He put down his bowl.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

"That she might leave. After today, I'm afraid she's been soured on the

work."

Maati snorted and waved the concern away.

"She'll move past it," Maati said. "It's finished. Vanjit overstepped,

and she's seen it. I don't think Ashti's so petty as to hold things past

that."

"Perhaps," Eiah said. "You think I should take her with me, then?"

"Certainly. There's no reason not to, and it will give you another pair

of hands on the road. And besides, we're a school, not a prison. If she

truly wants to leave, she should be able to."

"Even now?" Eiah asked.

"What option do we have?" Maati asked. "Chain her to a tree? Kill her?

No, Eiah-kya. Ashti Beg won't abandon the work, but if she does, we have

no choice but to let her."

Eiah was silent for five slow breaths together. When she looked up, he

was surprised by her grim expression.

"I still can't quite bring myself to believe Vanjit did that."

"Why not?"

Eiah frowned, her hands clasped together. Some distant shutter's ties

had slipped; wood clapping against stone. A soft wind pushed at the

windows and unsettled the fire in the grate.

"She's a poet," Eiah said. "She's the poet."

"Poets are human," Maati said. "We err. We can be petty on occasion.

Vindictive. Small. Her world has been turned on its head, and she hasn't

come yet to understand all that means. Well, of course she hasn't. I'd

have been more surprised if she'd never made a misstep."

"You don't think we have a problem then?" Eiah said.

"She's a reasonable girl. Given power, she's misbehaved once. Once."

Maati shook his head. "Once is as good as never."

"And if it becomes twice?" Eiah asked. "If it becomes every time?"

"It won't," Maati said. "That isn't who she is."

"But she's changed. You said it just now. The binding gave her power,

and power changes people."

"It changes their situation," Maati said. "It changes the calculations

of what things they choose to do. What they forbear. It doesn't change

their souls."

"I've cut through a hundred bodies, Uncle. I've never weighed out a

soul. I've never judged one. When I picked Vanjit, I hope I did the

right thing."

"Don't kill yourself with worry," Maati said. "Not yet, at any rate."

Eiah nodded slowly. "I've been thinking about who to send letters to.

I've picked half-a-dozen names. I'll hire a courier when we reach

Pathai. I won't be there long enough to bring back replies."

"That's fine," Maati said. "All we need is enough time to perfect Wounded."

Eiah took a pose that agreed and also ended the conversation. She walked

away into the darkened hall, her shoulders bent, her head bowed. Maati

felt a pang of guilt. Eiah was tired and sorrowful and more fearful than

she let on. He was sending her to announce to the world that she had

betrayed her father. He could have been gentler about her concerns over

Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight. He didn't know why he'd been so harsh.

He made his evening ablutions and prepared himself to write a few pages

in his book, scratching words onto paper by the light of the fluttering

night candle, thanks in no small part to Vanjit. He was less than

surprised when a soft scratching came at his door.

Vanjit looked small and young. The andat held in the crook of her arm

looked around the dim room, gurgling to itself almost like a baby. Maati

gestured for her to sit.

"I heard Eiah-cha speaking to Ashti Beg," Vanjit said. "They're leaving?"