Maati startled and turned.
Exhaustion and hunger had thinned the girl. Her dark hair was pulled
back, but what few locks had escaped the bond hung limp and lank,
framing her pale face.
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Fear of justice," Vanjit said.
She stepped out into the candlelight. Her robes were silken rags,
scavenged from some noble wardrobe, fourteen years a ruin. Her head was
bowed beneath an invisible weight and she moved like an old woman bent
with the pain for years. She had become Udun. The war, the damage, the
ruin. It was her. The baby-the inhuman thing shaped like a baby-shrieked
with joy and clapped its tiny hands. Vanjit shuddered.
"Vanjit-cha," Maati said, "we can talk this through. We can ... we can
still end this well."
"You tried to murder me," Vanjit said. "You and your pet poisoner. If
you'd had your way, I would be dead now. How, Maati-kvo, do you propose
to talk that through?"
"I . . ." he said. "There must ... there must be a way."
"What was I supposed to be that I wasn't?" Vanjit asked as she walked
toward the black chair with its tiny beast. "You knew what the Galts had
done to me. Did you want me to get this power, and then forget? Forgive?
Was this supposed to be the compensation for their deaths?"
"No," Maati said. "No, of course not."
"No," she said. "Because you didn't care when I blinded them, did you?
That was my decision. My burden, if I chose to take it up. Innocent
women. Children. I could destroy them, and you could treat it as
justice, but I went too far. I blinded you. For half a hand, I turned it
against you, and for that, I deserved to die."
"The andat, Vanjit-kya," Maati said, his voice breaking. "They have
always schemed against their poets. They have manipulated the people
around them in terrible ways. Eiah and I ..."
"You hear that?" Vanjit said, scooping up Clarity-of-Sight. The andat's
black eyes met hers. "This is your doing."
The andat cooed and waved its arms. Vanjit smiled as if at some unspoken
jest, shared only between those two.
"I thought I would make the world right again," Vanjit said. "I thought
I could make a baby. Make a family."
"You thought you could save the world," Maati said.
"I thought you could," she said in a voice like cold vinegar. "Look at me.
"I don't understand," he said.
"Look."
Her face sharpened. He saw the smudge of dust along her cheek, the
stippled pores along her cheek, the individual hairs smaller than the
thinnest threads. Her eyes were labyrinths of blood mapped on the
whites, and the pupils glowed like a wolf's where the candlelight
reflected from their depths. Her skin was a mosaic, tiny scales that
broke and scattered with every movement. Insects too small to see
scuttled through the roots of her hair, her eyelashes.
Maati's stomach turned, a deep nausea taking him. He closed his eyes,