voice when he spoke again. "That isn't true. We've done good work here.
The equal of anything I learned from the Dai-kvo. Your chances are equal
to the best any poet has faced. I'll swear to that if you'd like."
"There's no call," she said. From down the hall, he heard voices in
bright conversation. He heard laughter. Vanjit took his hand. He had
never noticed how small her hands were. How small she was, hardly more
than a child herself.
"Thank you," she said. "Whatever happens, thank you. If I die today,
thank you. Do you understand?"
"No."
"You've made living bearable," she said. "It's more than I can ever repay.
"You can. You can repay all of it and more. Don't die. Succeed."
Vanjit smiled and took a pose that accepted instruction, then moved
forward, wrapping her arms around Maati in a bear hug. He cradled her
head on his breast, his eyes pressed closed, his heart sick and anxious.
The chamber they had set aside for the binding had once been the
sleeping room for one of the younger cohorts. The lines of cots were
gone now. The windows shone with the light of middle morning. Vanjit
took a round of chalk and began writing out her binding on the wide
south wall, ancient words and recent blending together in the new
grammar they had all created. From Maati's cushion at the back of the
room, the letters were blurry and indistinct, but from their shape
alone, he could see that the binding had shifted since the last time
he'd seen it.
Eiah sat at his side, her hand on his arm, her gaze fixed on the
opposite wall. She looked half-ill.
"It's going to be all right," Maati murmured.
Eiah nodded once, her eyes never leaving the pale words taking over the
far wall like a bright shadow. When Vanjit was finished, she walked to
the beginning again, paced slowly down the wall reading all she'd
written, and then, satisfied, put the chalk on the ground. A single
cushion had been placed in the middle of the room for her. She stopped
at it, her binding behind her, her face turned toward the small assembly
at the back. She took a silent pose of gratitude, turned, and sat.
Maati had a powerful urge to stand, to call out. He could wash the wall
clean, talk through the binding again, check it for errors one last
time. Vanjit began to chant, the cadences unlike anything he had heard
before. Her voice was soft, coaxing, gentle; she was singing her andat
into the world. He clenched his fists and stayed quiet. Eiah seemed to
have stopped breathing.
The sound of Vanjit's voice filled the air, reverberating as if the
building had grown huge. The chant began to echo, and Vanjit's actual
voice receded. Words and phrases combined, voice against echo, making
new sentences and meanings. The lilt of the girl's voice fell into
harmony with itself, and Maati heard a third voice, neither Vanjit nor
her echo, but something deep and sonorous as a bell. It was reciting
syllables borrowed from the words of the binding, creating another layer
of sound and intention. The air thickened, and Vanjit's back-her
shoulders hunched, her head bowed-seemed very far away. Maati smelled