this. None of it would have happened if Maati hadn't been so bent by his
own guilt or so deluded by his optimism that he ignored the dangers.
Or if Otah had found him and stopped him when that first letter had
come. Or if Eiah hadn't made common cause with Maati's clandestine
school. Or if Vanjit hadn't been mad, or Balasar ambitious, or the world
and everything in it made from the first. Otah closed his eyes, letting
the darkness create a space large enough for the woman in his arms and
his own complicated heart.
Eiah murmured something he couldn't make out. He made a small
interrogative sound in the back of his throat, and she coughed before
repeating herself.
"There was no one at the school I could talk with," she said. "I got so
tired of being strong all the time."
"I know," he said. "Oh, love. That, I know."
Otah slept deeply that night, lulled by exhaustion and the soft sounds
of familiar voices and of the river. He slept as if he had been ill and
the fever had only just broken. As if he was weak, and gaining strength.
The dreams that possessed him faded with his first awareness of light
and motion, less substantial than cobwebs, less lasting than mist.
The air itself seemed cleaner. The early-morning haze burned off in
sunlight the color of water. They ate boiled wheat and honey, dried
apples, and black tea. The boatman's second made his call, the boatman
responded, and they nosed out again into the flow. Maati, sulking, kept
as nearly clear of Otah as he could but kept casting glances at Eiah.
Jealous, Otah assumed, of the conversation between father and daughter
and unsure of her allegiance. Eiah for her part seemed to be making a
point of speaking with her brother and her aunt and Ana Dasin, sitting
with them, eating with them, making conversation with the jaw-clenched
determination of a horse laboring uphill.
The character of the river itself changed as they went farther north.
Where the south was wide and slow and gentle, the stretch just south of
Udun was narrower-sometimes no more than a hundred yards acrossand
faster. The boatman kept his kiln roaring, the boiler bumping and
complaining. The paddle wheel spat up river water, slicking the deck
nearest the stern. Otah would have been concerned if the boatman and his
second hadn't appeared so pleased with themselves. Still, whenever the
boiler chimed after some particularly loud knock, Otah eyed it with
suspicion. He had seen boilers burst their seams.
The miles passed slowly, though still faster than the poet girl could
have walked. Every now and then, a flicker of movement on the shore
would catch Otah's attention. Bird or deer or trick of the light. He
found himself wondering what they would do if she appeared, andat in her
arms, and struck them all blind. His fears always took the form of
getting Danat and Eiah and Ana to safety, though he knew that his own
danger would be as great as theirs and their competence likely greater.
The spitting waterwheel slowly drove them toward the bow. Near midday,
the captain of the guard brought them tin bowls of raisins and bread and
cheese. They all sat in a clump, and even Maati haunted the edges of the
conversation. Ana and Eiah sat hand in hand on a long, low bench; Danat,