silence to be thoughtful. He shifted his weight carefully, turned, and
let himself slip down to the bed of the cart. The wool blankets were
where he'd remembered them. Feeling his way through the darkness
reminded him of his brush with blindness. He told himself that the
shudder was only the cold of the morning.
The shifting of the cart became like the rocking of a ship or a cradle.
Maati's mind softened, slipped. He felt his body sinking into the planks
below him, heard the creak and clatter of the wheels. His heart, low and
steady, was like the throbbing drum at the wayhouse. It didn't sound at
all unwell.
On the shifting edge of sleep, he imagined himself capable of moving
between spaces, folding the world so that the distance between himself
and Otah-kvo was only a step. He pictured Otah's awe and rage and
impotence. It was a fantasy Maati had cultivated before this, and it
went through its phases like a habit. Maati's presentation of the poets,
the women's grammar, the andat. Otah's abasement and apologies and
humble amazement at the world made right. For years, Maati had driven
himself toward that moment. He had brought on the sacrifice of ten
women, each of them paying the price of a binding that wasn't quite correct.
He watched now as if someone else were dreaming it. Dispassionate, cold,
thoughtful. He felt nothing-not disappointment or regret or hope. It was
like being a boy again and coming across some iridescent and pincered
insect, fascinating and beautiful and dangerous.
More than half asleep, he didn't feel the tiny body inching its way to
him until it lay almost within his arms. With the reflex of a man who
has cared for a baby, instincts long unused but never forgotten, he
gathered the child close.
"You have to kill her," it whispered.
21
Otah stood in the ruins of the school's west garden. Half a century
before, he'd been in this same spot, screaming at boys not ten summers
old. Humiliating them. This was where, in a fit of childish rage, he had
forced a little boy to eat clods of dirt. He'd been twelve summers old
at the time, but he recalled it with a vividness like a cut. Maati's
young eyes and blistered hands, tears and apologies. The incident had
begun Maati's career as a poet and ended his own.
The stone walls of the school were lower than he remembered them. The
crows that perched in the stark, leafless trees, on the other hand, were
as familiar as childhood enemies. As a boy, he had hated this place.
With all its changes and his own, he still did.
Ashti Beg had told them of Maati's clandestine school. Of Eiah's
involvement, and the others'. Two women named Kae, another-Ashti Beg's
particular confidante-named Irit. And the new poet, Vanjit. Ashti Beg
had escaped the school and the increasingly dangerous poet and her false
baby, the andat Blindness. Or Clarity-of-Sight.
Three days after Eiah had left her in one of the low towns, she had lost
her sight without warning. The poet girl Vanjit taking revenge for
whatever slight she imagined. In a spirit of vengeance, Ashti Beg had
offered to lead Otah to them all. Under cover of night, if he wished.