error from which the world is still suffering.
Half-reading, he flipped through the pages, caught occasionally by a
particular turn of phrase of which he was fond or tripped by a diagram
or metaphor that was still not to his best liking. Though his eyes
strained, he could still read what he'd written, and when the ink seemed
to blur, he had the memory of what he had put there. He reached the
blank pages sooner than he expected, and sat on his stairs, fingertips
moving over the smooth paper with a sound like skin against skin. There
was so much to say, so many things he'd thought and considered. Often,
he would come back from a particularly good lecture to his students full
of fire and intentions, prepared to write a fresh section. Sometimes his
energy lasted long enough to do so. Sometimes not.
It will be a sad legacy to die with this half-finished, he thought as he
let the cover close.
He needed a real school, the school needed a teacher, and he himself
could manage only so much. There wasn't time to lecture all his students
and write his manual and slink like a criminal through the dark corners
of the Empire. If he'd been younger, perhaps-fifty, or better yet forty
years old-he might have made the attempt, but not now. And with this mad
scheme of Otah's, time had grown even dearer.
"Maati-cha?"
Maati blinked. Vanjit came toward him, her steps tentative. He tucked
his book into its box and took a pose of welcome.
"The door wasn't bolted," she said. "I was afraid something had happened?"
"No," Maati said, rising and hoisting himself up the stairs. "I forgot
it last night. An old man getting older is all."
The girl took a pose that was both an acceptance and a denial. She
looked exhausted, and Maati suspected there were dark smudges under his
own eyes to match hers. The scent of eggs and beef caught his attention.
A small lacquer box hung at Vanjit's side.
"Ah," Maati said. "It that what I hope it is?"
She smiled at that. The girl did have a pleasant smile, when she used
it. The eggs were fresh; whipped and steamed in bright orange blocks.
The beef was rich and moist. Vanjit sat beside him in the echoing, empty
space of the warehouse as the morning light pressed in at the high,
narrow windows, blue then yellow then gold. They talked about nothing
important: the wayhouse where she was staying, his annoyance with his
failing eyes, the merits of their present warehouse as compared to the
half-dozen other places where Maati had taken up his chalk. Vanjit asked
him questions that built on what they'd discussed the night before: How
did the different forms of being relate to time? How did a number exist
differently than an apple or a man? Or a child?
Maati found himself holding forth on matters of the andat and the poets,
his time with the Dai-kvo, and even before that at the school. Vanjit
sat still, her gaze on him, and drank his words like water.
She had lost her family when she was barely six years old. Her mother,
father, younger sister, and two older brothers cut down by the gale of
Galtic blades. The pain of it had faded, perhaps. It had never gone.
Maati felt, as they sat together, that perhaps she had begun, however