protecting the Emperor's son, Danat, as the final assault on Machi began. She spoke with the chalky tones of a woman still in pain. If Maati had held hopes that his once-lover might take him in, they did not survive that conversation. He left her house in agony. He had not spoken to her since.
Two years after that, he took his first student, a woman named Halit. Since then, his life had become a narrow, focused thing. He had remade himself as a teacher, as an agent of hope, as the Dai-kvo of a new age.
It was less glamorous than it sounded.
All that morning he had lain in the small room that was presently his home, squinting at the dirty light that made its way through the oiledparchment window and thinking of the andat. Thinking of thoughts made flesh, of ideas given human form and volition. Little gods, held tight to existence by the poets who knew them best and, by knowing, bound them. Removing-the-Part-That-Continues, called Seedless. WaterMoving-Down, called Rain or Seaward. Stone-Made-Soft who had no other name. And his own-Corrupting-the-Generative, called Sterile, whom Maati had not quite bound, and who had remade the world.
The lessons he had learned as a boy, the conversations he had had as a man and a poet, they all came back to him dimly. Fragments and moments, insights but not all the steps that had led him there. A mosquito whined in the gloom, and Maati waved it away.
Teaching his girls was like telling the story of his life and finding there were holes in it. He knew things- structures of grammar and metaphor, anecdotes of long-dead poets and the bindings they had made, occult relationships between abstractions like shapes and numbers and the concrete things of the world-without remembering how he'd learned them. Every lecture he gave, he had to half-invent. Every question he answered, he had to solve in his mind to be sure. On one hand, it was as awkward as using a grand palace as a lesson on how to build scaffolding. And on the other, it was making him a better poet and a better teacher than he would ever have been otherwise.
He sat up, the canvas cot groaning as his weight shifted. The room was tiny and quiet; the stone walls wept and smelled of fungus. Halfaware of his surroundings and half in the fine points of ancient grammars, Maati rose and trundled up the short flight of stairs. The warehouse stood empty, the muted daylight and the sound of light rain making their way through the high, narrow windows. His footsteps echoed as he crossed to the makeshift lecture hall.
Benches of old, splintering wood squatted near a length of wall smooth enough to take chalk. The markings of the previous evening still shone white against the stone. Maati squinted at them.
Age was a thief. It took his wind, it made his heart race at odd times, and it stole his sleep. But the worst of all the little indignities was his sight. He hadn't thought about the blessing that decent vision was until his eyes started to fail. It made his head ache a bit, but he found the diagram he'd been thinking of, traced it with his fingertips, considered, and then took a rag from the pail of water beside his little podium and washed the marks away. He could start there tonight, with the four categories of being and their relationships. It was a subtle point, but without it, the girls would never build a decent binding.
There were five of them now: Irit, Ashti Beg, Vanjit, Small Kae, and Large Kae. Half a year ago, there had been seven, but Umnit had tried her binding, failed, and perished. Lisat had given up and left him. Just as well, really. Lisat had been a good-hearted girl, but slow-witted as a cow. And so, five. Or six, if he counted Eiah.
Eiah had been a gift from the gods. She spent her days in the palaces of Utani, playing the daughter of Empire. He knew it was a life she disliked, but she saw to it that food and money found their way to Maati. And being part of the court let her keep an ear out for gossip that would serve them, like a dispute over the ownership of a low-town warehouse that left both claimants barred from visiting the building until judgment was passed. The warehouse had been Maati's for two months now. It was beginning to feel like his own. He dropped the rag back into its pail, found the thick cube of chalk, and started drawing the charts for the evening's lecture. He wondered whether Eiah would be able to join them. She was a good student, when she could slip away from her life at the palace. She asked good questions.
The crude iron bolt turned with a sound like a dropped hammer, and the small, human-size door beside the great sliding walls intended for carts and wagons opened. A woman's figure was silhouetted against the soft gray light. It was neither of the Kaes, but his eyes weren't strong enough to make out features. When she came in, closing the door behind her, he recognized Vanjit by her gait.
'You're early, Vanjit-cha,' Maati said, turning back to the wall and chalk.
'I thought I might be able to help,' she said. 'Are you well, Maaticha?'
Vanjit had been with him for almost a year now. She had come to his covert school, as all the others had, through a series of happy accidents. Another of his students-Umnit-had fallen into conversation with her, and something had sparked between them. Umnit had presented Vanjit as a candidate to join in their work. Reluctantly, Maati had accepted her.
The girl had a brilliant mind, no question. But she had been a child in Udun, the only one of her family to survive when the Galts had come, and the memory of that slaughter still touched her eyes from time to time. She might laugh and talk and make music, but she bore scars on her body and in her mind. In the months he had spent working with her, Maati had come to realize what had first unnerved him about the girl: of all the students he had taught, she was most like him.
He had lost his family in the war as well-his almost-son Nayiit, his lover Liat, and the man he had once thought his dearest friend. Otah, Emperor of the Khaiem. Otah, favored of the gods, who couldn't fall down without landing on rose petals. They had not all died, but they were all lost to him.
'Maati-cha?' Vanjit said. 'Did I say something wrong?'
Maati blinked and took a pose of query.
'You looked angry,' she said.
'Nothing,' Maati said, shifting the chalk to his other hand and shaking the ache from his fingers. 'Nothing, Vanjit-kya, my mind was just wandering. Come, sit. There's nothing that you need to do, but you can keep me company while I get ready.'
She sat on the bench, one leg tucked under her. He noticed that her hair and robe were wet from the rain. There was mud on her boots. She'd been walking out in the weather. Maati hesitated, chalk halfway back to the stone.
'Or,' he said slowly, 'perhaps I should ask if you've been well?'
She smiled and took a pose that dismissed his concerns.
'Bad dream again,' she said. 'That's all.'
'About the baby,' Maati said.
'I could feel him inside of me,' she said. 'I could feel his heartbeat. It's strange. I hate dreaming about him. The nightmares that I'm back in the war-I may scream myself awake, but at least I'm pleased that the dream's ended. When I dream about him, I'm happy. I'm at peace. And then…'
She gestured at the childless world around them.
'It's worse, wishing I could sleep and dream and never awake.'
Maati's heart rang in sympathy, like a crystal bowl taking up the ringing of a great bell. How many times had he dreamed that Nayiit lived? That the world had not been broken, or, if it had, not by him?
'We'll bring him,' Maati said. 'Have faith. Every week, we come closer. Once the grammar is built solidly enough, anything will be possible.'
'Are we coming closer?' she asked. 'Be honest, Maati-cha. Every week we spend on this, I think we're on the edge, and every week, there's more after it.'
He tucked the chalk into his sleeve and sat at the girl's side. She leaned forward, and he thought there was something in her expressionnot despair and not shame, but something related to both.
'We are coming near, and we are close,' he said. 'I know it isn't something you can see, but each of you knows more about the andat and the bindings right now than I did after a year with the Dai-kvo. You're smart and dedicated and talented. And together, we can make this work. It sounds terrible, I know, but as soon as Siimat failed her binding and paid the price… I won't say I was pleased. I can't say that. She was a brave woman, and she had a wonderful mind. I miss her. But that she and all the others died means we are very close.'
Ten bindings, ending in ten failures and ten corpses. His fallen soldiers, Maati thought. His girls who had sacrificed themselves. And here, wet as a canal rat and sad to her bones, Vanjit impatient to make her own try, risk her own life. Maati took her small hand in his own. The girl smiled at the wall.
'This will happen,' he said.
