mornings, just after the first meal, we won't have had a full day behind
us. We could come at it fresh each time."
Maati nodded more to show he'd heard her than from any real agreement.
His fingertips traced the lines of the binding again, tapping the page
each time some little infelicity struck him. He had seen bindings falter
this way before. In those first years when Maati had been a new poet,
the Dai-kvo had spoken of the dangers of muddying thoughts by too much
work. One sure way to fail was to build something sufficient and then
not stop. With every small improvement, the larger structure became less
tenable, until eventually the thing collapsed under the weight of too
much history.
He wondered if they had gone too far, corrected one too many things
which were not truly problems so much as differences of taste.
Eiah took a pose that challenged him. He looked at her directly for
perhaps the first time since she'd come to his study.
"You think I'm wrong," she said. "You can say it. I've heard worse."
It took Maati the space of several heartbeats to recall what her
proposal had been.
"I think it can't hurt. But I also think it isn't our essential problem.
We were all quite capable of designing Clarity-of-Sight with meetings in
the evening. This"-he rattled the papers in his hand-"is something
different. Half-measures won't suffice."
"What then?" she said.
He put the papers down.
"We stop," he said. "For a few days, we don't touch it at all. Instead
we can send someone to a low town for meat and candles, or clear the
gardens. Anything."
"Do we have time for that?" Eiah asked. "Anything could have happened.
My brother may be married. His wife may be carrying a child. All of Galt
may be loading their daughters in ships, and the men of the cities may
be scuttling off to Kirinton and Acton and Marsh. We are out here where
there's no one to talk to, no couriers on the roads, and I know it feels
that time has stopped. It hasn't. We've been weeks at this. Months. We
can't spend time we don't have."
"You'd recommend what, then? Move faster than we can move? Think more
clearly than we can think? It isn't as if we can sit down with a serious
expression and demand that the work be better than it is. Have you never
seen a man ill with something that needed quiet and time? This is no
different."
"I've also watched ill men die," Eiah said. "Time passes, and once
you've waited too long for something, there's no getting it back."
Her mouth bent in a deep frown. There were dark circles under her eyes.
She bit her lower lip and shook her head as if conducting some
conversation within her mind and disagreeing with herself. The coal
burning in the brazier settled and gave off a dozen small sparks as
bright as fireflies. One landed on the paper, already cold and gray. Ash.
"You're reconsidering," Maati said.
"No. I'm not. We can't tell my father," she said. "Not yet."
"We could send to others, then," Maati said. "There are high families in