when Seedless was bound and the world was set right. Whatever that meant
anymore.
The scratch at his door was an annoyance and a relief both. lie called
out his permission, and the door swung open. Nayiit ducked into the
room, an apologetic smile on his face. Behind him, a small figure
waddled-Danat wrapped in robes and cloaks until he seemed almost as wide
as tall. Maati rose, his back and knees protesting from having been too
long in one position.
"I'm sorry, Father," Nayiit said. "I told Danat-cha that you might be
busy...."
"Nothing that can't wait a hand or two," Maati said, waving them in. "It
might he best, really, if I step away from it all. After a while, it all
starts looking the same."
Nayiit chuckled and took a pose that expressed his sympathy. Danat,
red-cheeked, shifted his gaze shyly from one man to the other. Maati
nodded a question to Nayiit.
"Danat wanted to ask you something," Nayiit said, and squatted down so
that his eyes were on a level with the child's. His smile was gentle,
encouraging. A favorite uncle helping his nephew over some simple
childhood fear. Maati felt the sudden powerful regret that he had never
met Nayiit's wife, never seen his child. "Go ahead, Danat-kya. We came
so that you could ask, and Maati-cha's here. Do it like we practiced."
Danat turned to Maati, blushing furiously, and took a pose of respect
made awkward by the thickness of cloth around his small arms; then he
began pulling books out from beneath his robes and placing them one by
one in a neat pile before Maati. When the last of them had appeared,
Danat shot a glance at Nayiit who answered with an approving pose.
"Excuse me, Nlaati-cha," Danat said, his face screwed into a knot of
concentration, his words choppy from being rehearsed. "Papa-kya's still
not back. And I've finished all these. I wondered ..
The words fell to a mumble. \laati smiled and shook his head.
"You'll have to speak louder," Nayiit said. "Hc can't hear you."
"I wondered if you had any others I could read," the boy said, staring
at his own feet as if he'd asked for the moon on a ribbon and feared to
he mocked for it.
Behind him, where the boy couldn't see, Nayiit grinned. This is who he
would be, Nlaati thought. This is the kind of father my boy would be.
"\V'ell," he said aloud. "We might be able to find something. Come with me."
He led them out and along the gravel path to the library's entrance. The
air had a bite to it. I Ic could feel the color coming to his own
checks. When he'd been young, a child-poet younger than Nayiit, he'd
spent his terrible winter in Saraykeht with Seedless and Otah and Liat.
In the summer cities, this chill would have been the depth of winter. In
the North, it was only the first breath of autumn.
Cehmai looked tip when they came in, a scroll case of shattered silk in
his hand. A smear of dust marked his check like ashes. Boxes and crates
lay about the main room, stacked man-high. One of the couches was piled
with scrolls that hadn't been looked over, two others with the ones that
had. The air was thick with the smells of dust and parchment and old