THE (tlpq-4) (40 page)

distracted her from the thing. It has more freedom when her mind is

elsewhere."

Eiah turned her head to look at him. There was nothing soft in her eyes.

Maati drew himself up, frowning. Anger bloomed in his breast, but he

couldn't say why or with whom.

"Why is it so important to you," Eiah asked, "that nothing she does be

wrong?"

And with a sensation that was almost physical, Maati knew what he had

been trying for months to ignore. A wave of vertigo shook him, but he

forced himself to speak.

"Because she should never have become a poet," he said. "She's too young

and too angry and more than half mad. And that beast on her lap? We gave

it to her."

Eiah's startled expression lasted only a moment before something both

resignation and weariness took its place. She kissed Maati's cheek. They

stood together, a silence within the storm. He had said what she had

already known, and she too had wished it was not truth.

Large Kae and Small Kae quietly prepared the cart and horses. While the

wayhouse and every man and woman within running distance came to pay

homage to child, mother, and physician, Irit and Maati packed their

things. Eiah saw to it that the wine flowed freely, that-near the

end-the celebratory drinks were all laced with certain herbs.

It was still four hands before dawn when they made their escape. Maati

and Eiah drove the cart. Large Kae rode ahead, leading the spare horses.

The others slept in the cart, exhausted bodies fitted in among the

crates and sacks. The moon had already set, and the road before them was

black and featureless apart from Large Kae's guiding torch. The fog had

cleared, but a deep cold kept Maati's cloak wrapped tight. His eyes

wanted nothing more than to close.

"We can make the river in seven days if we go through the night. Large

Kae will fight against it for the horses' sake," Maati said.

"I'll fight against it for yours," Eiah said. "There was a reason I was

trying to make this journey restful."

"I'm fine. I'll last to Utani and years past it, you watch." He sighed.

His flesh seemed about to drip off his bones from simple exhaustion.

"You watch."

"Crawl back," Eiah said. "Rest. I can do this alone."

"You'd fall asleep," Maati said.

"And use you for a pillow, Uncle. I'm fine. Go."

He looked back. There was a place for him. Irit had made it up with two

thick wool blankets. He couldn't see it in the night, but he knew it was

there. He wanted nothing more than to turn to it and let the whole

broken world fade for a while. He couldn't. Not yet.

"Eiah-kya," he said softly. "About your binding. About Wounded. .

She turned to him, a shadow within a shadow. He bent close to her, his

voice as low as he could make it and still be heard over the clatter of

hooves on stone.

"You know the grammar well? You have it all in mind?"

"Of course," she said.

"Could you do it without it being written? It's usual to write it all

out, the way Vanjit-cha did. And it helps to have that there to follow,

but you could do the thing without. Couldn't you?"

"I don't know," Eiah said. "Perhaps. It isn't something I'd thought

about particularly. But why ... ?"

"We should postpone your binding," Maati said. "Until you are certain

you could do it without the reference text."

Eiah was silent. Something fluttered by, the sound of wings against air.

"What are you saying?" Eiah said, her words low, clipped, and precise.

Maati squeezed his hands together. The joints had started aching

sometime earlier in the night. The ancient dagger scar in his belly

itched the way it did when he'd grown too tired.

"If you were performing the binding, and something happened so that you

couldn't see," Maati said. "If you were to go blind when you'd already

started ... you should know the words and the thoughts well enough to

keep to it. Not to slip."

"Not pay its price," Eiah said. Meaning, they both knew, die. A moment

later, "She'd do that?"

"I don't know," Maati said. "I don't know anything anymore. But be ready

if she does."

Eiah shifted the reins, the pattern of the horses' stride altered, and

the cart rocked gently. She didn't speak again, and Maati imagined the

silence to be thoughtful. He shifted his weight carefully, turned, and

let himself slip down to the bed of the cart. The wool blankets were

where he'd remembered them. Feeling his way through the darkness

reminded him of his brush with blindness. He told himself that the

shudder was only the cold of the morning.

The shifting of the cart became like the rocking of a ship or a cradle.

Maati's mind softened, slipped. He felt his body sinking into the planks

below him, heard the creak and clatter of the wheels. His heart, low and

steady, was like the throbbing drum at the wayhouse. It didn't sound at

all unwell.

On the shifting edge of sleep, he imagined himself capable of moving

between spaces, folding the world so that the distance between himself

and Otah-kvo was only a step. He pictured Otah's awe and rage and

impotence. It was a fantasy Maati had cultivated before this, and it

went through its phases like a habit. Maati's presentation of the poets,

the women's grammar, the andat. Otah's abasement and apologies and

humble amazement at the world made right. For years, Maati had driven

himself toward that moment. He had brought on the sacrifice of ten

women, each of them paying the price of a binding that wasn't quite correct.

He watched now as if someone else were dreaming it. Dispassionate, cold,

thoughtful. He felt nothing-not disappointment or regret or hope. It was

like being a boy again and coming across some iridescent and pincered

insect, fascinating and beautiful and dangerous.

More than half asleep, he didn't feel the tiny body inching its way to

him until it lay almost within his arms. With the reflex of a man who

has cared for a baby, instincts long unused but never forgotten, he

gathered the child close.

"You have to kill her," it whispered.

21

Otah stood in the ruins of the school's west garden. Half a century

before, he'd been in this same spot, screaming at boys not ten summers

old. Humiliating them. This was where, in a fit of childish rage, he had

forced a little boy to eat clods of dirt. He'd been twelve summers old

at the time, but he recalled it with a vividness like a cut. Maati's

young eyes and blistered hands, tears and apologies. The incident had

begun Maati's career as a poet and ended his own.

The stone walls of the school were lower than he remembered them. The

crows that perched in the stark, leafless trees, on the other hand, were

as familiar as childhood enemies. As a boy, he had hated this place.

With all its changes and his own, he still did.

Ashti Beg had told them of Maati's clandestine school. Of Eiah's

involvement, and the others'. Two women named Kae, another-Ashti Beg's

particular confidante-named Irit. And the new poet, Vanjit. Ashti Beg

had escaped the school and the increasingly dangerous poet and her false

baby, the andat Blindness. Or Clarity-of-Sight.

Three days after Eiah had left her in one of the low towns, she had lost

her sight without warning. The poet girl Vanjit taking revenge for

whatever slight she imagined. In a spirit of vengeance, Ashti Beg had

offered to lead Otah to them all. Under cover of night, if he wished.

There was no need. Otah knew the way.

The armsmen had gone first, scouting from what little cover there was.

No sign of life had greeted them, and they had arrived to find the

school cleaned, repaired, cared for, and empty. They had come too late,

and the wind and snow had erased any clue to where Maati and Eiah and

the other women had gone. Including the new poet.

Idaan emerged from the building, walking toward him with a determined

gait. Otah could see the ghost of her breath. He took a pose that

offered greeting. It seemed too formal, but he couldn't think of one

more fitting and he didn't want to speak.

"I'd guess they left before you reached Pathai," Idaan said. "They've

left very little. A few jars of pickled nuts and some dry cheese.

Otherwise, it all matches what she said. Someone's been here for months.

The kitchen's been used. And the graves are still fresh."

"How many boys died here, do you think?" Otah asked.

"In the war, or when the Dai-kvo ran the place?" Idaan asked, and then

went on without waiting for his reply. "I don't know. Fewer than have

died in Galt since you and ... the others left Saraykeht."

She had stumbled at mentioning Danat. He'd noticed more than once that

it wasn't a name she liked saying.

"We have to find them," Otah said. "If we can't make her change this

soon, the High Council will never forgive us."

Idaan smiled. It was an odd and catlike expression, gentle and predatory

both. She glanced at him, saw his unease, and shrugged.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's only that you keep speaking as if there was

still a High Council. Or a nation called Galt, for that. If this Vanjit

has done what for all the world it seems she's done, every city and town

and village over there has been blinded for weeks now. It isn't winter

yet, but it's cold enough. And even if they had gotten some of the

harvest in before this, it would only help the people on the farms. You

can't walk from town to town blind, much less steer one of these soup

pots on wheels."

"They'll find ways."

"Some of them may have, but there'll be fewer tomorrow. And then the

next day. The next," Idaan agreed. "It doesn't matter. However many

there are, they aren't Galts anymore."

"No? Then what are they?"

"Survivors," Idaan said, and any amusement that had been in her voice

was gone. "Just survivors."

They stood in silence, looking at nothing. The crows insulted one

another, rose into the air, and settled again. The breeze smelled of new

snow and the promise of frost.

Inside the stone walls, the armsmen had made camp. The kitchen was warm,

and the smell of boiling lentils and pork fat filled the air. Ana Dasin

and Ashti Beg sat side by side, talking to the air. Otah tried not to

watch the two blind women, but he found he couldn't turn away. It was

their faces that captured him. Their expressions, their gestures thrown

into nothingness, were strangely intimate. It was as if by being cast

into their personal darkness, they had lost some ability to dissemble.

Ashti Beg's anger was carved into the lines around her mouth. Ana, by

contrast, betrayed an unexpected serenity in every movement of her

hands, every smile. Three empty bowls lay beside them, evidence of Ana's

appetite. Their voices betrayed nothing, but their faces and their

bodies were eloquent.

As the sun set, the cold grew. It seemed to radiate from the walls,

sucking away the life and heat like a restless ghost. That night, they

slept in the shelter of the school. Otah took the wide, comfortable room

that had once belonged to Tahi-kvo, his first and least-loved teacher.

The wool blankets were heavy and thick. The night wind sang empty,

mindless songs against the shutters. In the dim flickering light from

the fire grate, he let his mind wander.

It was uncomfortable to think of Eiah in this place. It wasn't only that

she was angry with him, that she had chosen this path and not the one he

preferred. All that was true, but it was also that this place was one

part of his life and that she was another. The two didn't belong

together. He tried to imagine what he would have said to her, had she

and Maati and the other students in Maati's little school still been

encamped there.

The truth he could not admit to anyone was that he was relieved to have

failed.

The shadows at the fire grate seemed to grow solid, a figure crouching

there. He knew it was an illusion. It wasn't the first time his mind had

tricked itself into imagining Kiyan after her death. He smiled at the

vision of his wife, but the dream of her had already faded. It was a

sign, and since it was both intended for him and created by his mind, it

was perfectly explicable. If killing his daughter was the price it took

to save the world, then the world could die. He took little comfort in

the knowledge.

In the morning, Danat woke him, grinning. A piece of paper flapped in