He began inching away from the door. He could follow the walls around
the building, and find the deck. If he waited long enough, Eiah would
come looking for him, and that might well be one of the first places
she'd look. He tried to recall where the deck's railing began and ended.
He had been there for hours earlier, but now he found the details
escaped him.
He stumbled over a log and bruised his knee, but he didn't cry out. The
cold was beginning to numb him. He reached the corner and a set of
stairs he didn't remember. The prospect of sitting in the cold at the
edge of the unseen lake was becoming less and less sustainable. He
started devising stories that would cover his blindness. He could go
near the common room, cry out, and collapse. If he kept his eyes closed,
he could feign unconsciousness. They would bring Eiah to him.
He stepped in something wet and soft, like mud but with a sudden,
billowing smell of rotting plants. Maati lifted his foot slowly to keep
the muck from pulling off his boot. It occurred to him for the first
time that they had done this-precisely this-to a nation.
His boot was heavy and made a wet sound when he put weight on it, but it
didn't slip. He started making his way back toward where he'd been. He
thought he'd made it halfway there when the world suddenly clicked back
into place. His hands pink and gray against the damp, black wood. The
thin fog hardly worth noticing. He turned and found Vanjit sitting
cross-legged on the stones of the courtyard. Her dark eyes were
considering. He wondered how long she'd been watching.
"What you said before? It was uncalled for," she said. Her voice was
steady as stone, and as unforgiving.
Maati took a pose that offered apology but also pointedly did not end
the conversation. Vanjit considered him.
"I love Eiah-cha," she said, frowning. "I would never, never wish her
ill. Suggesting that I want her to fail just so I could remain the only
poet ... it's madness. It hurts me that you would say it."
"I never did," Maati said. "I never said anything like it. If that's
what you heard, then something else is happening here."
Vanjit shifted back, surprise and dismay in her expression. Her hands
moved toward some formal pose, but never reached it. The shriek came
from within the wayhouse. The music stopped. Vanjit stood up muttering
something violent and obscene, but Maati was already moving to the door.
The large room was silent, drums and flute abandoned where they had
fallen. The woman who'd screamed was sitting on a stool, her hands still
pressed to her mouth, her face bloodless, and her gaze fixed on the
archway that led to the private rooms. No one spoke. Clarity-of-Sight
stood in the archway, its hands on the wall, its tiny hips swaying
crazily as it lost and regained and lost its balance. It saw Vanjit, let
out a high squeal, and waved its tiny arms before sitting down hard and
suddenly. The delight never left its face.
"It is," someone said in a voice woven from awe and tears. "It's a baby."
And as if the word had broken a dam, chaos flowed through the wayhouse.
Vanjit dashed forward, her hands low to scoop up the andat, and the
crowd surged with her. The chorus of questions and shouts rose, filling