the stone walls. But then they might have been found, and without discussing it, they had agreed to flee farther away from the city and the people they had known. Cehmai knew the tunnels well enough to find a new hiding place where the ventilation was good. They weren't in danger of the fire igniting the mine air, as had sometimes happened. Or of the flames suffocating them.
The only thing they didn't have in quantity was water; that, they could harvest. MMlaati or Cehmai could take one of the mine sleds out, fill it with snow, and haul it down into the earth. A trip every day or two was sufficient. They took turns sitting at the brazier, scooping handful after handful of snow into the flat iron pans, watching the perfect white collapse on itself and vanish into the black of the iron.
'We did what we could,' Maati said. 'It isn't as if we could have done anything differently.'
'I know,' Cehmai said, settling deeper into his cloak.
The rough stone walls didn't make their voices echo so much as sound hollow.
'I couldn't just let the Galts roll through the city. I had to try,' Maati said.
'We all agreed,' Cehmai said. 'It was a decision we all reached together. It's not your fault. Let it go.'
It was the conversation Maati always returned to in the handful of days they'd spent in hiding. He couldn't help it. He could start with plans for the spring-taking gold and gems from the bolt-hole and marching off to Eddensea or the Westlands. He could start with speculations on what was happening in Machi or reminiscences of his childhood, or what sort of drum fit best with which type of court dance. He could begin anywhere, and he found himself always coming hack to the same series of justifications, and Cehmai agreeing by rote with each of them. The dark season spread out before them-only one another for company and only one conversation spoken over and over, its variations meaningless. Maati took another handful of snow and dropped it into the iron melting pan.
'I've always wanted to go to Bakta,' Cehmai said. '1 hear it's warm all year.'
'I've heard that too.'
'Maybe next winter,' Cehmai said.
'Maybe,' Maati agreed. 'I'he last icy island of snow melted and vanished. Maati dropped another handful in.
'What part of the day is it, do you think?' Nlaati asked.
'After morning, I'd think. Maybe a hand or two either side of midday.'
'You think so? I'd have thought later.'
'Could be later,' Cehmai said. 'I lose track down here.'
'I'm going to the bolt-hole again. Get more supplies.'
They didn't need them, but Cehmai only raised his hands in a pose of agreement, then curled into himself and shut his eyes. Maati pulled the thick leather straps of the sled harness over his shoulders, lit a lantern, and began the long walk through the starless dark. The wood and metal flat-bottomed sled scraped and ground along the stone and dust of the mine floor. It was light now. It would be heavier coming hack. But at least laati was alone for a time, and the effort of pulling kept his mind clear.
An instrument of slaughter, made in fear. Sterile had called herself that. Maati could still hear her voice, could still feel the bite of her words. He had destroyed Galt, but he had destroyed his own people as well. He'd failed, and every doubt he had ever had of his own ability, or his worthiness to be among the poets, stood justified. He would he the most hated man in generations. And he'd earned it. The sled dragging behind him, the straps pulling hack at his shoulders-they were the simplest burden he carried. They were nothing.
Cehmai had marked the turnings to take with piles of stone. Hunters searching the mines would be unlikely to notice the marks, but they were easy enough for Maati to follow. He turned left at a crossing, and then bore right where the tunnel forked, one passage leading up into darkness, the other down into air just as black.
The only comfort that the andat had offered-the only faint sliver of grace-was that Maati was not wholly at fault. Otah-kvo bore some measure of this guilt as well. fie was the one who had come to Ntaati, all those years ago. He was the one who had hinted to Maati that the school to which they had both been sent had a hidden structure. If he hadn't, Maati might never have been a poet. Never have known Seedless or Heshai, Liat or Cehmai. Nayiit might never have been born. Even if the Galts had come, even if the world had fallen, it wouldn't have fallen on Maati's shoulders. Cehmai was right; the binding of Sterile had been a decision they had all made-Otah-kvo more than any of the rest. But it was Maati who was cast out to live in the dark and the cold. The sense of betrayal was as comforting as a candle in the darkness, and as he walked, Maati found himself indulging it.
The fault wasn't his alone, and the punishment was. There was nothing fair in that. Nothing right. The terrible thing that had happened seemed nearly inevitable now that he looked back on it. He'd been given hardly any hooks, not half the time he'd been promised, and the threat of death at the end of a Galtic sword unless he succeeded. It would have been astounding it he hadn't failed.
And for the price, that wasn't something he'd chosen. That had been Sterile. Once the binding had failed, he'd had no control over it. He would never have hurt Eiah if he'd had the choice. It had simply happened. And still, he felt it in the hack of his mind-the shape of the andat, the place in the realm of ideas that it had pressed down in him, like the flattened grass where a hunting cat has slept. Sterile came from him, was him, and even if she had only been brief, she had still learned her voice from him and visited her price upon the world through his mind and fears. The clever trick of pushing the price away from himself and onto the world had been his. The way in which the world had broken was his shadow-not him, not even truly shaped like him. But connected.
The tunnel before him came to a sudden end, and Nlaati had to follow his own track back to the turn he'd missed, angling up a steep slope and into the first breath of fresh, cold air, the first glimmer of daylight. Nlaati stood still a moment to catch his breath, then fastened all the tics on his cloak, pulled the furred hood up over his head, and began the long last climb.
The bolt-hole was perhaps half a hand's walk from the entrance to the mines in which the poets hid. The snow was dry as sand, and the icy breeze from the North would he enough to conceal what traces of his footsteps the sled didn't smooth over. Iaati trudged through the world of snow and stone, his breath pluming out before him, his face stung and numbed. It was a hellish. His feet first burned then went numb, and frost began to form on the fur around his hood's mouth. AIaati dragged himself and his sled. The numbness and the pain felt a hit like penance, and he was so caught tip in them he nearly failed to notice the horse at the mouth of the bolt-hole.
It was a small animal, fit with heavy blankets and riding tack. Nlaati blinked at it, stunned by its presence, then scurried quickly behind a boulder, his heart in his mouth. Someone had come looking for them. Someone had found them. He turned to look back at the path he'd walked, certain that the footsteps in the snow were visible as blood on a wedding dress. lie waited for what seemed half a day but couldn't have been more than half a hand's width in the arc of the fast winter sun. A figure emerged from the tunnels-thick black cloak, and wide, heavy hood. Mlaati was torn between poking his head out to watch it and pulling back to hide behind his boulder. In the end caution won out, and he waited blind while the sound of horse's hooves on snow began and then grew faint. tie chanced a look, and the rider had its back to him, heading back south to Machi, a twig of black on the wide field of mourning white. laati waited until he judged the risk of being seen no greater than the risk of frostbite if he stayed still, then forced himself-all his limbs aching with the cold-to scramble the last stretch into the tunnel.
The bolt-hole was empty. He was surprised to find that he'd halfexpected it to be filled with men bearing swords, ready to take their vengeance out against him. He pulled off his gloves and lit a small fire to warm himself, and when his hands could move again without pain, he made an inventory of the place. Nothing seemed to be missing, nothing disturbed. Except this: a small wicker basket with two low stone wax-sealed jars where none had been before. Maati squatted over them, lifting them carefully. They were heavy-packed with something. And a length of scroll, curled like a leaf, had been nestled between them. Maati blew on his fingers and unfurled the scrap of parchment. Maati-rha- I thought you might be out in the hiding place where we were supposed to go when the Galts came, but you aren't here, so I'm not sure anymore. I'm leaving this for you just in case. It's peaches from the gardens. They were going to give them to the Galts, so I stole them. Loya-cha says I'm not supposed to ride yet, so I don't know when I'll be able to get out again. If you find this, take it so I'll know you were there. It's going to be all right.
It was signed with Eiah's wide, uncontrolled hand. Maati felt himself weeping. He broke the seal of one jar and with numb fingers drew out a slice of the deep orange fruit, sweet and rich and thick with the sunshine of the autumn days that had passed.
The World changes. Sometimes slowly, sometimes all of an instant.
But the world changes, and it doesn't change back. A rockslide shifts the face of a mountain, and the stones
