"No, Maati-kvo."
"And wash the pots when your turn comes."
Vanjit took a pose that was a promise and an expression of gratitude.
The quiet sobs as she walked away made Maati feel smaller. If they had
been in a city, he would have gone to a bathhouse or some public square,
listened to beggars singing on the corners and bought food from the
carts. He would have tried to lose himself for a while, perhaps in wine,
perhaps in music, rarely in gambling, and never in sex. At the school,
there was no escape. He walked out, leaving the stone walls and memories
behind him. Then the gardens. The low hills that haunted the land west
of the buildings.
He sat on the wind-paved hillside, marking the passage of the sun across
the afternoon sky, his mind tugged a hundred different ways. He had been
too harsh with Vanjit, or not harsh enough. The binding of Wounded was
overworked or not deeply enough considered, doomed or on the edge of
being perfected. Ashti Beg had been in the wrong or justified or both.
He closed his eyes and let the sunlight beat down on them, turning the
world to red.
In time, the turmoil in his heart calmed. A small, blue-tailed lizard
scrambled past him. He had chased lizards like it when he'd been a boy.
He hadn't recalled that in years.
It was folly to think of poets as different from other men. Other women,
now that Vanjit had proved their grammar effective. It was that mistake
which had made the school what it was, which had deformed the lives of
so many people, his own included. Of course Vanjit was still subject to
petty jealousy and pride. Of course she would need to learn wisdom, just
the same as anyone else. The andat had never changed who someone was,
only what they could do.
He should have taught them that along with all the rest. Every now and
again, he could have spent an evening talking about what power was, and
what responsibility it carried. He'd never thought to do it, he now
realized, because when he imagined a woman wielding the power of the
andat, that woman was always Eiah.
Maati made his way back as the cold afternoon breeze set the trees and
bushes rustling. He found the kitchen empty but immaculate. The broken
cutting stone had been replaced with a length of polished wood, but
otherwise everything was as it had been. His students, he found under
Eiah's command in the courtyard. They were raking the fallen leaves into
a pit for burning and resetting a half-dozen flagstones that had broken
from years of frost, tree roots, and neglect. Vanjit knelt with Large
Kae, lifting the stones from the ground. Clarity-of-Sight nestled in
Irit's lap, its eyes closed and its mouth a perfect O. Ashti Beg, her
vision clearly restored, was by Small Kae's side, a deep pile of russet
leaves before them.
"Maati-kvo," Eiah said, taking a pose of greeting, which he returned.
The others acknowledged him with a smile or simple pose. Vanjit turned
away quickly, as if afraid to see anger still in his expression.
He trundled to a rough boulder, resting against it to catch his breath.
Irit joined him and, without a word, passed the andat to him. It