stand hack and let the thing take its course. Instead, he was going to be cut down like a dog. But if the men were watching him, Danat could slip away. A boy of five summers was no threat. The men might not bother tracking him. Danat might find his way to the tunnel or some low town or into friendly hands. There wasn't a better option.
'Call them off, Eustin. This is between the two of us.'
'What's between the two of us?'
Sinja raised the tip of his sword by a hand's span in answer. Eustin nodded and dropped his own blade into guard position.
'He's mine,' Eustin called. 'Leave us be.'
Sinja took a step hack, away from the cart, and smiled. Eustin let himself be drawn. In the corner of his vision, Sinja saw Danat drop from the cart's hack. He took a hard grip on his sword, grinned, and swung. Steel rang on steel. Eustin closed and Sinja darted back, the snow crackling under his boots. They were both smiling now, and one of the bowmen had pulled out his quiver, prepared to act in case Eustin should fail. Sinja took a deep breath of cold air, and felt strangely like shouting.
He'd been wrong before; this was exactly how he'd hoped to die.
Niaati chanted until his mouth was dry, his eyes locked on the scrawled note on the wall before him. Each time he began to feel his thoughts taking shape, it distracted him. He would think that the binding was beginning to work, and he would leap ahead to the battle outside and what he could do, the fate of Gait, the future, what Eiah and Cehmai were seeing, and the solidity that the binding had taken would slip away again. It was hard to put the world aside. It was hard not to care.
He didn't pause, but he closed his eyes, picturing the wall and his writing upon it. He knew the binding-knew the structures of it, the grammars that formed the thoughts that put together everything he had hoped and intended. And instead of reading it from the world, he read it from the image in his own mind. Dreamlike, the warehouse wall seemed more solid, more palpable, with his eyes closed. The sound of his voice began to echo, syllables from different phrases blending together, creating new words that also spoke to Maati's intention. The air seemed thicker, harder to breathe. The world had become dense. He began his chant again, though he could still hear himself speaking the words that came halfway through it.
The wall in his mind began to sway, the image fading into a seedpeach pit and flax seed and everything in between the two. And an egg. And a womb. And the three images became a single object, still halfformed in his mind. Bright as sunlight, but blasted, twisted. There was a scent like a wound gone rancid, the sulfur scent of bad eggs. His fingers seemed to touch the words, feeling them sliding out into the world and collapsing back; they were sticky and slick. The echo of the chant deepened until he found himself speaking the first phrase of the binding at the same moment his remembered voice spoke the same phrase and the whole grand complex, raucous song fell into him like a stone dropping into the abyss. He could still hear it, and feel it. The smell of it was thick in his nostrils, though he was also aware that the air smelled only of dust and hot iron. So it wasn't truly the thick smell of rot; only the idea of it, as compelling as the truth.
Maati balanced the storm in a part of his mind-hack behind his ears, even with the point at which his spine met his skull. It balanced there. He didn't know when he'd stopped chanting. He opened his eyes.
'Well, my dear,' the andat said. 'Who'd have thought we'd meet again?'
It sat before him, naked. The soft, androgynous face was the moonlight pale that Seedless' had been. The long, flowing hair so black it was blue. The rise and curve of a woman's body. Corrupting-the-Generative. Sterile. He hadn't thought she would look so much like Seedless, but now that he saw her, he found himself unsurprised.
Cehmai approached on soft feet. Maati could hear Eiah's breath behind him, panting as if she'd run a race. Maati found himself exhausted but also exhilarated, as if he could begin again from the start.
'You're here,' Nlaati said.
'Am I? Yes, I suppose I am. I'm not really him, you know.'
Seedless, it meant. The first andat he'd seen. The one he'd been meant for.
'lily memory of him is part of you,' he said.
'And so the sense that I've seen you before,' it said, smiling. 'And of being the slave you hoped to own.'
Cehmai lifted the robe, unfolding the rich cloth. The andat looked up and hack at him. There was something of Liat in the line of its jaw, the way that it smiled. Sterile rose, and stepped into the waiting folds of cloth. When Cehmai helped it with the stays, it answered with a pose of thanks.
'We should call Otah-kvo,' Nlaati said. 'He should know we've succeeded.'
Sterile took a pose that objected and smiled. Its teeth were sharper than Nlaati had pictured them. Its cheeks higher. He felt a surge of dread sweep through him.
'Tell me what you remember of Seedless,' it said.
'What?'
'Oh,' the andat said, taking a pose of apology. 'Tell me what you remember of Seedless, master. Is that an improvement?'
'Maati-kvo-' Cehmai began, but Maati raised a hand to quiet him. The andat smiled. He felt its sorrow and rage in the back of his mind. It was like knowing a woman, being so close to her that he had become part of her and she part of him. It was the intimacy he had confused with the physical act of love when he had been too young and naive to distinguish between the two. He stepped close to it, raising a hand to caress its pale cheek. The flesh was hard as marble, and cold.
'He was beautiful,' Nlaati said.
'And clever,' it said.
'And he loved me in his way.'
'Heshai-kvo loved you. And he expressed that love by protecting you. By dying.'
'And you?' Maati said, though of course he knew the answer. It was an andat. It wanted freedom the way water wanted to flow, the way rain wanted to fall. It did not love him. Sterile smiled, the stone-hard flesh moving under his fingertips. A living statue.
'Maati-kvo,' Cehmai said again.
'It didn't work,' Maati said. 'The binding. It failed. Didn't it?'
'Yes,' the andat said.
'What?' Cehmai said.
'But it's here!' Eiah said. Maati hadn't noticed her coming close to them. 'The andat's here, so you did it. If you didn't, it wouldn't be here.'
Sterile tuned, smiling, and put its hand out to touch Eiah's shoulder. Instinctively, Nlaati tried to force back the pale hand, to use his mind to push it away. He might as well have been wishing the tide not to turn. Sterile ran its fingers through Eiah's dark hair.
'But there's a price, little one. You know that. Uncle Maati told you that, all those grim, terrible stories about failed poets dying hard. You never heard the pleasure he took in those, did you? Can you imagine why a man like your Uncle Maati might want to study the deaths of other poets? Might want to revel in them?'
'Stop this,' Maati said, but it kept speaking, its voice fallen to a murmur.
'He might have been a little bitter,' it said, and grinned. 'That's why he romanced you too, you know. He didn't get to have a child of his own, so he made you his friend. Made himself your confidant. Because if he could take one of Otah-kvo's children away-even only a little hit-it would balance the boy he'd lost.'
Eiah frowned, a thousand tiny lines darkening her brow.
'heave her out of it,' Maati said.
'What?' Sterile asked. ''T'urn my wrath on you? Have you pay the price? I can't. That's your doing, not mine. Your clever plan. I wasn't here when you decided on this.'
Cehmai stepped between them, his hands on Maati's arms. The younger poet's face was ashen, and Nlaati could feel the trembling in his hands and hear it in his voice.
'Maati-kvo, you have to get control of it. Quickly.'
'I can't,' Maati said, knowing as he did that it was true.
'Then let it go.'
'Not until the price is paid,' it said. 'And I think I know where to begin.'
'No!' Maati cried, pushing Cehmai aside, but Eiah's mouth had already gone wide, her eyes open with surprise and horror. With a shriek, she fell to her knees, her arms clutching at her belly, and then lower.
'Stop this,' Maati said. 'She hasn't done anything to deserve this.'
