flaws in his original work. Here ..."
Maati rose up with a grunt and fished through his papers for a moment
until the old, worn leather-bound hook came to hand. Its cover was limp
from years of reading, the pages growing yellow and smudged. The envoy
took it and read a bit by the light of candles.
"But this is too much like his original work," Athai said as he thumbed
through the pages. "It could never be used."
"No, of course not," Maati agreed. "But he made the attempt to examine
the form of the binding, you see, in hopes that showing the kinds of
errors he'd made might help others avoid things that were similar.
Heshai-kvo was one of my first teachers."
"He was the one murdered in Saraykeht, ne?" Athai asked, not looking up
from the book in his hands.
"Yes," Maati said.
Athai looked up, one hand taking an informal pose asking excuse.
"I didn't mean anything by asking," he said. "I only wanted to place him."
Maati brought himself to smile and nod.
"The reason I wrote to the Dai-kvo," Cehmai said, "was the application
Maati-kvo was thinking of."
"Application?1"Tell
"It's too early yet to really examine closely," Maati said. He felt
himself starting to blush, and his embarrassment at the thought fueled
the blood in his face. "It's too early to say whether there's anything
in it."
him," Cehmai said, his voice warm and coaxing. The envoy put
Heshai-kvo's book down, his attention entirely on Maati now.
""There are ... patterns," Maati said. "There seems to be a structure
that links the form of the binding to its ... its worst expression. Its
price. The forms only seem random because it's a very complex structure.
And I was reading Catji's meditations-the one from the Second Empire,
not Catji Sano-and there are some speculations he made about the nature
of language and grammar that ... that seem related."
"He's found a way to shield a poet from paying the price," Cehmai said.
"I don't know that's true," Maati said quickly.
"But possibly," Cehmai said.
The envoy and the andat both shifted forward in their seats. The effect
was eerie.
"I thought that, if a poet's first attempt at a binding didn't have to
be his last-if an imperfect binding didn't mean death ..."
Maati gestured helplessly at the air. He had spent so many hours
thinking about what it could mean, about what it could bring about and
bring hack. All the andat lost over the course of generations that had
been thought beyond recapture might still he hound if only the men
binding them could learn from their errors, adjust their work as Heshai
had done after the fact. Softness. Water-Moving-Down. 't'hinking-in-
Words. All the spirits cataloged in the histories, the work of poets who
had made the Empire great. Perhaps they were not past redemption.
He looked at Athai, but the young man's eyes were unfocused and distant.
"May I see your work, Maati-kvo?" he asked, and the barely suppressed