eyes and Maati's hand went out, touching Eiah's. She patted him away
absently, as if he were no more than a well-intentioned dog. The andat
hissed under its breath and turned away. Maati noticed for the first
time that its teeth were pointed. Eiah relaxed. Maati sat up; his breath
had almost returned. The andat shifted to look at him. The whites of his
eyes had gone as black as a shark's; he had never seen an andat shift
its appearance before, and it filled him with sudden dread. Eiah made a
scolding sound, and the andat took an apologetic pose.
Maati tried to imagine what it would be like, a thought that changeable,
that flexible, that filled with violence and rage. How did we everthink
we could do good with these as our tools? For as long as she held the
andat, Eiah was condemned to the struggle. And Maati was responsible for
that sacrifice too.
Eiah, it seemed, had other intentions.
"That should do," she said. "You can go."
The andat vanished, its robe collapsing to the floor in a pool of blue
and gold. The scent of overheated stone came and went, a breath of hell
on the night air. The others were silent. Maati came to himself first.
"What have you done?" he whispered.
"I'm a physician," Eiah said, her tone dismissive. "Holding that
abomination the rest of my life would have gotten in the way of my work,
and who told you that you were allowed to sit up? On your back or I'll
call in armsmen to hold you down. No, don't say anything. I don't care
if you're feeling a thousand times better. Down. Now."
He lay back, staring up at the ceiling. His mind felt blasted and blank.
The enameled brick was blurred in the torchlight, or perhaps it was only
that his eyes were only what they had been. The cold air that breathed
in through the window too gently to even be a breeze felt better than he
would have expected, the stone floor beneath him more comfortable. The
voices around him were quiet with respect for his poor health or else
with awe. The world had never seen a night like this one. It likely
never would again.
She had freed it. Gods, all that they'd done, all that they'd suffered,
and she'd just freed the thing.
When Danat returned, Eiah forced half a handful of herbs more bitter
than the last into his mouth and told him to leave them under his tongue
until she told him otherwise. Idaan and one of the armsmen hauled
Vanjit's body away. They would burn it, Maati thought, in the morning.
Vanjit had been a broken, sad, dangerous woman, but she deserved better
than to have her corpse left out. He remembered Idaan saying something
similar of the slaughtered buck.
He didn't notice falling asleep, but Eiah gently shook him awake and
helped him to sit. While she compared his pulses and pressed his
fingertips, he spat out the black leaves. His mouth was numb.
"We're going to take you back down in a litter," she said, and before he
could object, she lifted her hand to his lips. He took a pose that
acquiesced. Eiah rose to her feet and walked back toward the great
bronze doors.
The footsteps behind him were as familiar as an old song.