"It looked like a wiser strategy, if this is the alternative," Eiah
said. "Do you think she'll listen to you?"
"Listen, yes. Do as I command? I don't know. And I don't know that I'd
want her to. She's learning responsibility. She's learning her own
limits. Even if I could tell her what they are, she couldn't learn by
having it said. She's ... exploring."
"She's killed thousands of people, at the least."
"Galts," Maati said. "She's killed Galts. We were never here to save
them. Yes, Eiah-kya. Vanjit went too far, and because she's holding an
andat, there are consequences. When you slaughter a city? When you send
your army to kill a little girl's family in front of her? There are
consequences to that too. Or by all the gods there should be."
"You're saying this is justice?" Eiah asked.
"We made peace with Galt," Maati said. "None of Vanjit's family were
avenged. There was no justice for them because it was simpler for Otah
to ignore their deaths. Just as it's simpler for him to ignore all the
women of the cities. Vanjit has an andat, and so her will is now more
important than your father's. I don't see that makes it any more or less
just."
Eiah took a pose that respectfully disagreed, then dropped her hands to
her sides.
"I don't argue that she's gone too far," Maati said. "She's killing a
horsefly with a hammer. Only that it's not as bad as it first seems.
She's still young. She's still new to her powers."
"And that forgives everything?" Eiah said.
"Don't," Maati said more sharply than he'd intended. "Don't be so quick
to judge her. You'll be in her position soon enough. If all goes well."
"I wonder what I'll forget. How I'll go too far," Eiah said, and sighed.
"How did we ever think we could do good with these as our tools?"
Maati was silent for a moment. His memory turned on Heshai and Seedless,
Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft. The sickening twist that was Sterile, moving
through his own mind like an eel through muddy water.
"Is there another way to fix it?" Maati asked. "After Sterile, is there
a way other than this to make the world whole? All those women who will
never bear a child. All those men whose money is going to charming
Galtic liars. Is there a way to make the world well again besides what
we're doing?"
"We could wait," Eiah said, her voice gray and toneless. "Given enough
time, we'll all die and be forgotten."
Maati was silent. Eiah closed her eyes. The flame of the night candle
fluttered in a draft that smelled of fresh snow and wet cloth. Eiah's
gaze focused inward, on some landscape of her own mind. He didn't think
she liked what she saw there. She opened her mouth as if to speak,
closed it again, and looked away.
"You're right, though," Maati said. "This is twice."
They found Vanjit in her room, the andat wailing disconsolately as she
rocked it in her arms. Maati entered the room first to Vanjit's gentle
smile, but her expression went blank when Eiah came in after him and
slid the door shut behind her. The andat's black eyes went from Vanjit