"Even if they did, they hadn't trained as physicians. I know how flesh
works in ways they wouldn't have. I can bring things back the way
they're meant to be. The women that Sterile broke, I can make whole
again. If we could only-"
"You're too important."
Eiah went silent. When she spoke again, her voice was heavy and bitter.
"You know you've just called all the others unimportant," Eiah said.
"Not unimportant," Maati said. "They're all important. They only aren't
all irreplaceable. Wait, Eiah-kya. Be patient. Once we have a grammar
that we know can work, I won't stop you. But let someone else be first."
"There isn't time," Eiah said. "We have a handful of months before the
trade starts in earnest. Maybe a year."
"Then we'll find a way to move them faster," Maati said.
The question of how that might be done, however, haunted him the rest of
the night. He lay on his cot, the night candle hissing almost inaudibly
and casting its misty light on the stone ceiling. The women, his
students, had all retired to what quarters Eiah had quietly arranged for
them. Eiah herself had gone back to the palaces of the Emperor, the
great structures dedicated to Otah, while Maati lay in the near-dark
under a warehouse, sleep eluding him and his mind gnawing at questions
of time.
Maati's father had died younger than he was now. Maati had been an
aspiring poet at the village of the Dai-kvo at the time. When the word
came, he had not seen the man in something near a decade. The news had
stung less than he would have anticipated, not a fresh loss so much as
the reminder of one already suffered. A slowing of blood had taken the
man, the message said, and Maati had never looked into the matter more
deeply. Lately he'd found himself wondering whether his father had done
all that he'd wished, if the son he'd given over to the poets had made
him proud, what regrets had marked that last illness.
The candle had almost burned itself to nothing when he gave up any hope
of sleep. Outside, songbirds were greeting the still-invisible dawn, but
Maati took no joy in them. He lit a fresh candle and sat on the
smooth-worn stone steps and considered the small wooden box that carried
the only two irreplaceable things he owned. One was a painting he had
done from memory of Nayiit Chokavi, the son he should have had, the
child he had helped, however briefly, to raise, the boy whom Otah- Otah
to whom no rules applied-had brought into the world in Saraykeht and
taken out of it in Machi. The other was a book bound in black leather.
He opened the cover and considered the first page, squinting to bring
the letters clear. He could not help but think of another book-that one
brown-which had been his gift from Heshai-kvo and Seedless. Heshai's
handwriting had been clearer than Maati's own, his gift for language
more profound.
I, Maati Vaupathai, am one of the two men remaining in the
world who has wielded the power of the andat. As the
references from which I myself learned are lost, I shall
endeavor to record here what I know Q f grammar and of the
forms of thought by which the andat may be bound and the