between them. She pulled the andat back to her, cooing and rocking
slowly back and forth while it whimpered and fought. Desolate tears
tracked her cheeks. And were wiped away with a sleeve.
Maati wondered how often scenes like this one had passed without comment
or notice. Many years before, he had cared for an infant himself, and
the frustration of it was something he understood. This was something
different. He thought of what it would have been to have a child that
hated him, that wanted nothing more than to be free. Clarity-ofSight was
all the longing that haunted Vanjit and all the anger that sustained her
put into a being that would do whatever was needed to escape. Vanjit had
been betrayed by the cruelty of the world, and now also her own desire
made flesh.
At last she had the baby that had haunted her dreams. And it wanted to die.
Eiah spoke in his memory. What makes its imagine we can do good with
these as our tools?
19
Low towns clustered around the great cities of the Khaiem, small centers
of commerce and farming, justice and healing. Men and women could live
out their lives under the nominal control of the Khaiem or now of the
Emperor and never pass into the cities themselves. They had low courts,
road taxes, smiths and stablers, wayhouses and comfort houses and common
meadows for anyone's use. He had seen them all, years before, when he
had only been a courier. They were the cities of the Khaiem writ small,
and as he passed through them with his armsmen, his son, and the Galtic
half-stowaway, Otah saw all his fears made real.
Silences lay where children should have been playing street games. Great
swings made from rope and plank hung from ancient branches that shadowed
the common fields, no boys daring each other higher. As a child who had
seen no more than twelve summers, Otah had set out on his own, competing
with low-town boys for small work. With every low town he entered, his
eyes caught the sorts of things he had done: roofs with thatch that
wanted care, fences and stone walls in need of mending, cisterns grown
thick and black with weeds that required only a strong back and the
energy of youth to repair. But there were no boys, no girls; only men
and women whose smiles carried a bewildered, permanent sorrow. The
leaves on the trees had turned brown and yellow and fallen. The nights
were long, and the dawns touched by frost.
The land was dead. He had known it. Being reminded brought him no joy.
They stopped for the night in a wayhouse nestled in a wooded valley. The
walls were kiln-fired brick with a thick covering of ivy that the autumn
chill had turned brown and brittle. News of his identity and errand had
spread before him like a wave on water, making quiet investigation
impossible. The keeper had cleared all his rooms before they knew where
they meant to stop, had his best calf killed and hot baths drawn on the
chance that Otah might stop to rest. Sitting now in the alcove of a room
large enough to fit a dozen men, Otah felt his muscles slowly and
incompletely unknotting. With the supplies carried on the steam wagons
and the men shifting between tending the kilns and riding, Pathai was
less than two days away. Without the Galtic machines, it would have been