into the binding in a panic. We'll wait. Vanjit may come back."
"Maati-kvo-" Eiah began.
"She is alone in the forest with nothing to sustain her. She's cold and
frightened and betrayed," Maati said. "Put yourself in her place. She's
discovered that the only friends she had in the world were planning to
kill her. The andat must certainly be pushing for its freedom with all
its power. She didn't even have the soup before she went. She's cold and
hungry and confused, and we are the only place she can go for help or
comfort."
"All respect, Maati-kvo," Small Kae said, "but that first part was along
the lines that you were going to kill her. She won't come back."
"We don't know that," Maati said. "We can't yet be sure."
But morning came without Vanjit. The sky became a lighter black, and
then gray. Morning birds broke into their chorus of chatters and
shrieks; finches and day larks and other species Maati couldn't name.
The trees deepened, rank after ragged rank becoming first gray and then
brown and then real. Poet and andat were gone into the wild, and as the
dawn crept up rosy and wild in the east, it became clear they were not
going to return.
Maati built a small fire from last night's embers and brewed tea for the
four of them still remaining. Large Kae wouldn't stop crying despite
Small Kae's constant attentions. Eiah sat wrapped in her robes from the
previous night. She looked drawn. Maati pressed a bowl of warm tea into
her hand. Neither spoke.
At the end, Maati took the belts from their spare robes and used them to
make a line. He led Eiah, Eiah led Small Kae, and Small Kae led Large
Kae. It was the obscene parody of a game he'd played as a child, and he
walked the path back to the boat, calling out the obstacles he
passed-log, step down, be careful of the mud. They left the sleeping
tents and cooking things behind.
To Maati's surprise, the boat was already floating. The boatman and his
second were moving over the craft with the ease and silence of long
practice. When he called out, the boatman stopped and stared. The man's
mouth gaped in surprise; the first strong reaction Maati had seen from him.
"No," the boatman said. "This wasn't the agreement. Where's the other
one? The one with the babe?"
"I don't know," Maati called out. "She left in the night."
The second, guessing the boatman's mind, started to pull in the plank
that bridged boat and sticky, dark mud. Maati yelped, dropped Eiah's
lead, and lumbered out into the icy flow, grabbing at the retreating wood.
"We didn't contract for this," the boatman said. "Missing girls, blinded
ones? No, there wasn't anything about this."
"We'll die if you leave us," Eiah said.
"That one can see after you," the boatman called, gesturing pointlessly
at Maati, hip deep in river mud. It would have been comic if it had been
less terrible.
"He's old and he's dying," Eiah said, and lifted her physician's satchel
as if to prove the gravity of her opinion. "If he has an attack, you'll
be leaving all the women out here to die."