burn is a burn, and a bruise is a bruise. Break a bone now, and it snaps
much the way it did in the Second Empire. Vanjit's binding was based on
a study of eyes and light that didn't exist back then. Nothing I'm
working from is new."
There was frustration in her voice. Perhaps fear.
"There is another way," Maati said. Eiah shifted, her gaze on his. Maati
scratched his arm.
"We have Clarity-of-Sight," he said. "It proves that we can do this
thing, and that alone gives us a certain power. If we send word to
Otahkvo, tell him what we've done and that he must turn away from his
scheme with the Galts, he would do it. He would have to. We could take
as much time as you care to take, consult as many scholars as we can
unearth. Even Cehmai would have to come. He couldn't refuse the Emperor."
It wasn't something he'd spoken aloud before. It was hardly something
he'd allowed himself to think. Before Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight, the
idea of returning to the courts of the Khaiem-to Otah-in triumph would
have been only a sort of torture of the soul. It would have been like
wishing for his son to be alive, or Liat at his side, or any of the
thousand regrets of his past to be unmade.
Now it was not only possible but perhaps even wise. Another letter, sent
by fast courier, announcing that Maati had succeeded and made himself
the new Dai-kvo, and Otah would have no choice but to honor him. He
could almost hear the apology now, sweeter for coming from the lips of
an emperor.
"It's a kind thought, but no," Eiah said. "It's too big a risk."
"I don't see how," Maati said, frowning.
"Vanjit's one woman, and binding an andat doesn't mean that a good man
and a sharp knife can't end you," Eiah said. "And she may slip, at which
point half the world will want our heads on sticks, just to be sure it
doesn't happen again. Once we've managed a few more, it will be safe.
And Wounded can't wait."
"If you heal all the women of the cities, they'll know we've bound an
andat," Maati said. "It will be just as clear a message as sending a
letter. And by your argument, just as dangerous."
"If they wait until after I've given back the chance of bearing
children, the Galts can kill me," Eiah said. "It will be too late to
matter."
"You don't believe that," Maati said, aghast. Eiah smiled and shrugged.
"Perhaps not," she agreed. "Say rather, if I'm going to die, I'd rather
it was after I'd finished this."
Maati put a hand on her shoulder, then let his arm fall to his side.
Eiah described the issues of the binding that troubled her most. To pull
a thought from abstraction into concrete form required a deep
understanding of the idea's limits and consequences. To bind Wounded,
Eiah needed to find the common features of a cut finger and a burned
foot, the difference between a tattooing quill and a rose thorn, the
definitions that kept the thought small enough for a single mind to
encompass.
"Take Vanjit's work," Eiah said. "Your eyes were never burned. No one