"Who's to say I'd take it?"
They left in the morning, the horses rested or changed for fresh, the
carts restocked with wood and coal and water. Ana looked worse, but kept
a brave face. Idaan stayed with her like a personal guard, to Danat's
visible annoyance. A cold wind haunted them, striking leaves from the trees.
News of the Emperor's party came close to overwhelming stories of the
mysterious baby at the wayhouse. No couriers came to trouble Otah with
word of fire or death. Twice, Otah dreamed that Sinja was riding at his
side, robes soaked with seawater and black as a bat's wing, and he woke
each time with an obscure feeling of peace. And with every stop, they
found the poets had passed before them more and more recently.
Three days ago. Then two.
When they reached the river Qiit, tea-dark with newly fallen leaves,
just the day before.
24
The cold caught up with them in the middle of the day, a wind from the
west that rattled the trees and sent tiny whitecaps across the river's
back. They had covered a great stretch of river in their day's travel,
but night meant landing. The boatman was adamant. The river, he said,
was a living thing; it changed from one journey to the next. Sandbars
shifted, rocks lurked where none had been before. The boat was shallow
enough to pass over many dangers, but a log invisible in the darkness
could break a hole in the deck. Better to run in the daylight than swim
in the dark. The way the boatman said it left no room for disagreement.
They camped at the riverside, and awakened with tents and robes soaked
heavy by dew. Morning light saw them on the water again, the boiler at
the stern muttering angrily to itself, the paddle wheel punishing the water.
Maati sat away from the noise, huddled in two wool robes, and watched
the trees march from the north to the south like an army bent on sacking
Saraykeht. Large Kae and Small Kae sat in the stern, making conversation
with the boatman and his second when the men would deign to speak.
Vanjit and Eiah turned around each other, one in the bow, the other in
the center of the craft, both maintaining a space between them, the
andat watching with rage and hunger in its black eyes. It was like
watching an alley-mouth knife fight drawn out over hours and days.
It was hard now to remember the days before they had been splintered.
The years he had spent in hiding had seemed like a punishment at the
time. Living in warehouses, giving the lectures he half-recalled from
his own youth and half-invented anew, trying to understand the ways in
which a woman's mind was not a man's and how that power could be
channeled into grammar. He had resented it. He recalled crawling onto a
cot, exhausted from the day's work. He could still picture the
expressions of hunger and determination on their faces. He had not seen
it then, but it had all of it been driven by hope. Even the sorrow and
mourning that came after a binding failed and they lost someone to the
andat's grim price had held a sense of community.
Now they had won, and the world seemed all cold wind and dark water.
Even the two Kaes seemed to have set themselves apart from Vanjit, from
Eiah, from himself. The nights of conversation and food and laughter