the road all this time. We can hand a few things down from a cart."
"Of course," Vanjit said. "You should rest, Eiah-kya. We'll be happy to
help."
Eiah put down her soup and took a pose that offered gratitude. Something
in the cant of her wrists caught Maati's attention, but the pose was
gone as quickly as it had come and Eiah was sitting back, drinking wine
and leaning her still-wet hair toward the fire. Large Kae rejoined them,
smelling of wet horse, and Eiah told the whole story again for her
benefit and then left for her rooms. Maati felt the impulse to follow
her, to speak in private, but Vanjit took him by the hand and led him
out to the cart with the others.
The supplies were something less than Maati had expected. Two chests of
salted pork, a few jars of lard and flour and sweet oil. Bags of rice.
It wasn't inconsiderable-certainly there was enough to keep them all
well-fed for weeks, but likely not months. There were few spices, and no
wine. Large Kae made a few small remarks about the failures of low-town
trade fairs, and the others chuckled their agreement. The rain
slackened, and then, as Vanjit balanced the last bag of rice on one hip
and Clarity-of-Sight on the other, snow began to fall. Maati went back
to his rooms, heated a kettle over his fire, and debated whether to try
to boil enough water for a bath. Immersion was the one way he was sure
he could chase the cold from his joints, but the effort required seemed
worse than enduring the chill. And there was an errand he preferred to
complete.
Light glowed through the cracks around Eiah's door. Dim and flickering,
it was still more than a single night candle would have made. Maati
scratched at the door. For a moment, nothing happened. Perhaps Eiah had
taken to her cot. Perhaps she was elsewhere in the school. A soft sound,
no more than a whisper, drew him back to the door.
"Eiah-kya?" he said, his voice low. "It's me."
Her door opened. Eiah had changed into a simple robe of thick wool, her
hair tied back with a length of twine. She looked powerfully like her
mother. The room she brought Maati into had once been a storage pantry.
Her cot and brazier and a low table were all the furnishings. There was
no window, and the air was thick with the heat and smoke from the coals.
Papers and scrolls lay on the table beside a wax tablet half-whitened by
fresh notes. Medical texts in the languages of the Westlands, Eiah's own
earlier drafts of the binding of Wounded. And also, he saw, the
completed binding they had all devised for Clarity-of-Sight. Eiah sat on
the cot, the frail structure creaking under her. She didn't look up at him.
"Why did she leave?" Maati asked. "Truth, now"
"I told her to," Eiah said. "She was frightened to come back. I told her
that I understood. What happens if two poets come into conflict? If one
poet has something like Floats-in-Air and the other has something like
Sinking?"
"Or one poet can blind, and the other heal injury?"
"As an example," Eiah said.
Maati sighed and lowered himself to sit beside her. The cot complained.
He laced his fingers together, looking at the words and diagrams without