here she was-thin as a stick and awkward, but tall as her mother. She'd
even taken to wearing a woman's jewelry-necklace of gold and silver,
armbands of lacework silver and gems, and rings on half her fingers. She
still looked like a girl playing dress-up in her mother's things, but
even that would pass soon.
"And how did he die?" she asked.
"I never said he did," Maati said.
Eiah's lips bent in a frown. Her dark eyes narrowed.
"You don't tell stories where they live, Uncle Maati. You like the dead
ones."
Maati chuckled. It was a fair enough criticism, and her exasperation was
as amusing as her interest. Since she'd been old enough to read, Eiah
had haunted the library of Machi, poking here and there, reading and
being frustrated. And now that she'd reached her fourteenth summer, the
time had come for her to turn to matters of court. She was the only
daughter of the Khai Machi, and as such, a rare chance for a marriage
alliance. She would be the most valued property in the city, and worse
for her and her parents, she was more than clever enough to know it. Her
time in the library had taken on a tone of defiance, but it was never
leveled at Maati, so it never bothered him. In fact, he found it rather
delightful.
"Well," he said, settling his paunch more comfortably in the library's
deep silk-covered chair, "as it happens, his binding did fail. It was
tragic. He started screaming, and didn't stop for hours. He stopped when
he died, of course, and when they examined him afterwards, they found
slivers of glass all through his blood."
"They cut him open?"
"Of course," Maati said.
"That's disgusting," she said. "l'hen a moment later, "If someone died
here, could I help do it?"
"No one's likely to try a binding here, Eiah-kya. Only poets who've
trained for years with the I)ai-kvo are allowed to make the attempt, and
even then they're under strict supervision. Holding the andat is
dangerous work, and not just if it fails."
"'T'hey should let girls do it too," she said. "I want to go to the
school and train to he a poet."
"But then you wouldn't he your father's daughter anymore. If the
I)ai-kvo didn't choose you, you'd he one of the branded, and they'd turn
you out into the world to make whatever way you could without anyone to
help you."
"That's not true. Father was at the school, and he didn't have to take
the brand. If the Dai-kvo didn't pick me, I wouldn't take it either. I'd
just come back here and live alone like you do."
"But then wouldn't you and I)anat have to fight?"
"No," Eiah said, taking a pose appropriate to a tutor offering
correction. "Girls can't be Khai, so Danat wouldn't have to fight me for
the chair."
"But if you're going to have women be poets, why not Khaiem too?"
"Because who'd want to he Khai?" she asked and took another piece of