been alone with her tablets. Even when the rest of them sang to pass the
time, she kept to her work, steady and focused. When the conversation
turned to whether they should keep riding after sunset in hopes of
reaching the river, she spoke for stopping on the road. She didn't want
Maati to be tired any more than was needed. Large Kae sided with her for
the horses' sake.
The women made a small camp, dividing the night into watches since they
were so near the road. Vanjit sharpened their sight in the evenings but
insisted on returning them to normal when dawn came. She, of course,
didn't have a turn at watch. Neither did Maati. Instead, he watched the
moon as it hung in the tree branches, listened to the low call of owls,
and drank the noxious tea. Vanjit, Irit, and Small Kae lay in the bed of
the cart, their robes wrapped tightly around them. The andat sat beside
its poet, as still as a stone. Eiah and Large Kae had taken the first
watch, and were sitting with their backs to the fire to keep their
unnaturally sharp eyes well-adapted to the darkness.
You have to kill her, it had said, and when Maati had reared back, his
fragile heart racing, the andat had only looked at him. Its childish
eyes had seemed older, like something ancient wearing the mask of a
baby. It had nodded to itself and then turned and crawled awkwardly
away. The message had been delivered. The rest, it seemed to imply, was
Maati's.
He looked at the bowl of dark tea in his hands. The warmth of it was
almost gone. Small bits of leaf and root shifted in the depths. An idea
occurred to him. Not, perhaps, a brilliant one, but they would reach the
river and hire a boat in the morning. It was a risk worth taking.
"Eiah-kya," he said softly. "Something's odd with this tea. Could you...?"
Eiah looked over at him. She looked old in the dim light of moon and
fire. She came to the tree where he sat. Large Kae's gaze followed her.
The sleepers in the cart didn't stir, but the andat's eyes were on him.
Maati held out the bowl, and Eiah sipped from it.
"We need to speak," Maati said under his breath. "The others can't know."
"It seems fine. Give me your wrists," Eiah said in a conversational
tone. Then, softly, "What's happened?"
"It's the andat. Blindness. It spoke to me. It told me to kill
Vanjit-cha. This is all its doing."
Eiah switched to compare pulses in both wrists, her eyes closed as if
she were concentrating.
"How do you mean?" she whispered.
"The babe was always clinging to Ashti Beg. It made Ashti-cha feel that
it cared for her. Vanjit grew jealous. The conflict between them was the
andat's doing. Now that it thinks we're frightened of it, it's trying to
use me as well. It's Stone-Made-Soft encouraging Cehmai-cha into
distracting conflicts. It's Seedless again."
Eiah put down his wrists, pressing her fingertips against his palms with
the air of a buyer at a market.
"Does it matter?" Eiah murmured. "Say that the andat has been
manipulating us all. What does that change?"
Eiah put down his hands. Her smile was thin and humorless. Something