thanks.
"We should call Otah-kvo," Nlaati said. "He should know we've succeeded."
Sterile took a pose that objected and smiled. Its teeth were sharper
than Nlaati had pictured them. Its cheeks higher. He felt a surge of
dread sweep through him.
"Tell me what you remember of Seedless," it said.
"What?"
"Oh," the andat said, taking a pose of apology. "Tell me what you
remember of Seedless, master. Is that an improvement?"
"Maati-kvo-" Cehmai began, but Maati raised a hand to quiet him. The
andat smiled. He felt its sorrow and rage in the back of his mind. It
was like knowing a woman, being so close to her that he had become part
of her and she part of him. It was the intimacy he had confused with the
physical act of love when he had been too young and naive to distinguish
between the two. He stepped close to it, raising a hand to caress its
pale cheek. The flesh was hard as marble, and cold.
"He was beautiful," Nlaati said.
"And clever," it said.
"And he loved me in his way."
"Heshai-kvo loved you. And he expressed that love by protecting you. By
dying."
"And you?" Maati said, though of course he knew the answer. It was an
andat. It wanted freedom the way water wanted to flow, the way rain
wanted to fall. It did not love him. Sterile smiled, the stone-hard
flesh moving under his fingertips. A living statue.
"Maati-kvo," Cehmai said again.
"It didn't work," Maati said. "The binding. It failed. Didn't it?"
"Yes," the andat said.
"What?" Cehmai said.
"But it's here!" Eiah said. Maati hadn't noticed her coming close to
them. "The andat's here, so you did it. If you didn't, it wouldn't be here."
Sterile tuned, smiling, and put its hand out to touch Eiah's shoulder.
Instinctively, Nlaati tried to force back the pale hand, to use his mind
to push it away. He might as well have been wishing the tide not to
turn. Sterile ran its fingers through Eiah's dark hair.
"But there's a price, little one. You know that. Uncle Maati told you
that, all those grim, terrible stories about failed poets dying hard.
You never heard the pleasure he took in those, did you? Can you imagine
why a man like your Uncle Maati might want to study the deaths of other
poets? Might want to revel in them?"
"Stop this," Maati said, but it kept speaking, its voice fallen to a murmur.
"He might have been a little bitter," it said, and grinned. "That's why
he romanced you too, you know. He didn't get to have a child of his own,
so he made you his friend. Made himself your confidant. Because if he
could take one of Otah-kvo's children away-even only a little hit-it
would balance the boy he'd lost."
Eiah frowned, a thousand tiny lines darkening her brow.
"heave her out of it," Maati said.
"What?" Sterile asked. "'T'urn my wrath on you? Have you pay the price?