Otah-kvo and Eiah, Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight. The Galts and his own
unsettling if unsurprising insight into the nature of time and decay.
He opened his book, reading his own handwriting by the light of the
night candle. Even the quality of his script had changed since Vanjit
had sharpened his vision. The older entries had been ... not sloppy,
never that. But not so crisp as he was capable of now. It had been an
old man's handwriting. Now it was something different. He picked up his
pen, touched nib to ink, but found nothing coherent to say.
He wiped the pen clean and put the book aside. Somewhere far to the
south, Otah was dining with the men who had destroyed the Khaiem. He was
sleeping on a bed of silk and drinking wine from bowls of beaten gold,
while here in the dry plains his own daughter prepared to risk her life
to make right what he had done.
What they had done together. Otah, Cehmai, and Maati himself. One was
crawling into bed with the enemy, another turning away and hiding his
face. Only Maati had even tried to make things whole again. Vanjit's
success meant it had not been wasted effort. Eiah's fear reminded him
that it was not yet finished.
He made his way down the corridors in the near darkness. Only candles
and a half-moon lit his way. He was unsurprised to see Vanjit sitting
alone in the gardens. Unlike the courtyard where they had spoken before,
the gardens were bleak and bare. They had come too late to plant this
season. Eiah's occasional journeys to Pathai provided food enough, and
they didn't have the surplus of spare hands that had once held up the
school. The wilderness encroached on the high stone walls here, young
trees growing green and bold in plots where Maati had sown peas and
harvested pods.
She heard him approaching and glanced back over her shoulder. She
shifted, adjusting her robes, and Maati saw the small, black eyes of the
andat appear from among the folds of cotton. She had been nursing it. It
shocked him for a moment, though on reflection it shouldn't have. The
andat had no need of milk, of course, but it was a product of Vanjit's
conceptions. Stone-Made-Soft had been involved with the game of stones.
Three-Bound-as-One had been fascinated by knots. The relationship of
poet and andat was modeled on mother and child as it had never been
before in all of history. The nursing was, Maati supposed, the physical
emblem of it.
"Maati-kvo," she said. "I didn't expect anyone to be here."
He took a pose of apology, and she waved it away. In the cold light, she
looked ghostly. The andat's eyes and mouth seemed to eat the light, its
skin to glow. Maati came nearer.
"I was worried, I suppose," he said. "It seemed ... uncomfortable at
dinner this evening."
"I'd been thinking about that," Vanjit said. "It's hard for them. Ashti
Beg and the others. I think it must be very hard for them."
"How do you mean?"
She shrugged. The andat in her lap gurgled to itself, considering its
own short, pale fingers with fascination.
"They have all put in so much time, so much work. Then to see another