It was happening less and less often. The binding, Maati knew, was
coming near its final form. The certainty in Vanjit's voice and the
angle of her shoulders told him as much about her chances of success as
looking over the details of her binding.
As they ended the evening's session, reluctant despite yawns and
heavy-lidded eyes, Maati realized that the work they were doing was less
like his own training before the Dai-kvo and more like the long, arduous
hours he had spent with Cehmai. Somehow, during his absence, they had
all become equals. Not in knowledge-he was still far and away the best
informed-but in status. Where he had once had a body of students, he was
working now with a group of novice poets. A lizard scampered along
before him and then up the rough wall and into the darkness. A
nightingale sang.
He was exhausted, his body heavy, his mind beginning to spark and slip.
And he was also elated. The wide night sky above him seemed rich with
promise, the ground he walked upon eager to bear him up.
His bed, however, didn't invite sleep. Small pains in his knees and
spine prodded him, and his mind failed to calm. The light of the
halfmoon cast shadows on the walls that seemed to move of their own
accord. The restlessness of age, as opposed, he thought with weary
amusement, to the restlessness of youth. As he lay there, small doubts
began to arise, gnawing at him. Perhaps Vanjit wasn't ready yet to take
on the role of poet. Perhaps he and Eiah in their need and optimism were
sending the girl to her death.
There was no way to know another person's heart. No way to judge. It
might be that Vanjit herself was as afraid of this as he was, but held
by her despair and anger and sense of obligation to the others to move
forward as if she weren't.
Every poet that bound an andat came face-to-face with their own flaws,
their own failures. Maati's first master, Heshai-kvo, had made Seedless
the embodiment of his own self-hatred, but that was only one extreme
example. Kiai Jut three generations earlier had bound Flatness only to
find the andat bent on destroying the family the poet secretly hated.
Magar Inarit had famously bound Unwoven only to discover his own
shameful desires made manifest in his creation. The work of binding the
andat was of such depth and complexity, the poet's true self was
difficult if not impossible to hide within it. And what, he wondered,
would Vanjit discover about herself if she succeeded? With all the hours
they had spent on the mechanics of the binding, was it not also his
responsibility to prepare the girl to face her imperfections?
His mind worried at the questions like a dog at a bone. As the moon
vanished from his window and left him with only the night candle, Maati
rose. A walk might work the kinks from his muscles.
The school was a different place at night. The ravages of war and time
were less obvious, the shapes of the looming walls and hallways familiar
and prone to stir the ancient memories of the boy Maati had been. Here,
for instance, was the rough stone floor of the main hall. He had cleaned
these very stones when his hands had been smooth and strong and free
from the dark, liver-colored spots. He stood at the place where