his time. Another schedule of ritual and audience and meeting. Perhaps
it would all go as well as today had, and he would end the day in his
rooms, feeling old and maudlin despite his success. There were so many
men and women in the court-in the world-who wanted nothing more than
power. Otah, who had it, had always known how little it changed.
He slept deeply and without dreams. When he woke, every man and woman of
Galt had gone blind.
16
It had been raining for two full days. Occasionally the water changed to
sleet or hail, and small accumulations of rotten ice had begun to form
in the sheltered corners of the courtyard. Maati closed his shutters
against the low clouds and sat close to the fire, the weather tapping on
wood like fingers on a table. It might almost have been pleasant if it
hadn't made his spine stiffen and ache.
The cold coupled with Eiah's absence had turned life quiet and slow,
like a bear preparing to sleep through the winter. Maati went down to
the kitchen in the morning and ate with the others. Large Kae and Irit
had started rehearsing old songs together to pass the time. They sang
while they cooked, and the harmonies were prettier than Maati would have
imagined. When Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight were there, the andat would
grow restive, its eyes shifting from one singer to the next and back
again until Vanjit started to fidget and took her charge away. Small Kae
had no ear for music, so instead spent her time reading the old texts
that Clarity-of-Sight had been built from and asking questions about the
finer points of their newly re-created grammar.
Most of the day, Maati spent alone in his rooms, or dressed in several
thick robes, walking through the halls. He would not say it, but the
space had begun to feel close and restricting. Likely it was only the
sense of winter moving in.
With the journey to Pathai and back, along with the trading and
provisioning, he couldn't expect Eiah's return for another ten days. He
hadn't expected to feel that burden so heavily upon him, and so both
delight and dread touched him when Small Kae interrupted his halfdoze.
"She's come back. Vanjit's been watching from the classroom, and she
says Eiah's come back. She's already turned from the high road, and if
the path's not too muddy, she'll be here by nightfall."
Maati rose and opened the shutters, as if by squinting at the gray he
could match Vanjit's sight. A gust of cold and damp pulled at the
shutter in his hand. He was half-tempted to find a cloak of oiled silk
and go out to meet her. It would be folly, of course, and gain him
nothing. He ran a hand through the thin remnants of his hair, wondering
how many days it had been since he'd bathed and shaved himself, and then
realized that Small Kae was still there, waiting for him to speak.
"Well," he said, "whatever we have that's best, let's cook it up.
Eiahcha's going to have fresh supplies, so there's no point in saving it."
Small Kae grinned, took a pose that accepted his instruction, and
bustled out. Maati turned back to the open window. Ice and mud and
gloom. And set in it, invisible to him, Eiah and news.
There was no sunset; Eiah arrived shortly after the clouds had faded