what he could do, the fate of Gait, the future, what Eiah and Cehmai
were seeing, and the solidity that the binding had taken would slip away
again. It was hard to put the world aside. It was hard not to care.
He didn't pause, but he closed his eyes, picturing the wall and his
writing upon it. He knew the binding-knew the structures of it, the
grammars that formed the thoughts that put together everything he had
hoped and intended. And instead of reading it from the world, he read it
from the image in his own mind. Dreamlike, the warehouse wall seemed
more solid, more palpable, with his eyes closed. The sound of his voice
began to echo, syllables from different phrases blending together,
creating new words that also spoke to Maati's intention. The air seemed
thicker, harder to breathe. The world had become dense. He began his
chant again, though he could still hear himself speaking the words that
came halfway through it.
The wall in his mind began to sway, the image fading into a seedpeach
pit and flax seed and everything in between the two. And an egg. And a
womb. And the three images became a single object, still halfformed in
his mind. Bright as sunlight, but blasted, twisted. There was a scent
like a wound gone rancid, the sulfur scent of bad eggs. His fingers
seemed to touch the words, feeling them sliding out into the world and
collapsing back; they were sticky and slick. The echo of the chant
deepened until he found himself speaking the first phrase of the binding
at the same moment his remembered voice spoke the same phrase and the
whole grand complex, raucous song fell into him like a stone dropping
into the abyss. He could still hear it, and feel it. The smell of it was
thick in his nostrils, though he was also aware that the air smelled
only of dust and hot iron. So it wasn't truly the thick smell of rot;
only the idea of it, as compelling as the truth.
Maati balanced the storm in a part of his mind-hack behind his ears,
even with the point at which his spine met his skull. It balanced there.
He didn't know when he'd stopped chanting. He opened his eyes.
"Well, my dear," the andat said. "Who'd have thought we'd meet again?"
It sat before him, naked. The soft, androgynous face was the moonlight
pale that Seedless' had been. The long, flowing hair so black it was
blue. The rise and curve of a woman's body. Corrupting-the-Generative.
Sterile. He hadn't thought she would look so much like Seedless, but now
that he saw her, he found himself unsurprised.
Cehmai approached on soft feet. Maati could hear Eiah's breath behind
him, panting as if she'd run a race. Maati found himself exhausted but
also exhilarated, as if he could begin again from the start.
"You're here," Nlaati said.
"Am I? Yes, I suppose I am. I'm not really him, you know."
Seedless, it meant. The first andat he'd seen. The one he'd been meant for.
"lily memory of him is part of you," he said.
"And so the sense that I've seen you before," it said, smiling. "And of
being the slave you hoped to own."
Cehmai lifted the robe, unfolding the rich cloth. The andat looked up
and hack at him. There was something of Liat in the line of its jaw, the
way that it smiled. Sterile rose, and stepped into the waiting folds of