'There is something we can do,' Eiah said. 'If we set the classes in the mornings, just after the first meal, we won't have had a full day behind us. We could come at it fresh each time.'
Maati nodded more to show he'd heard her than from any real agreement. His fingertips traced the lines of the binding again, tapping the page each time some little infelicity struck him. He had seen bindings falter this way before. In those first years when Maati had been a new poet, the Dai-kvo had spoken of the dangers of muddying thoughts by too much work. One sure way to fail was to build something sufficient and then not stop. With every small improvement, the larger structure became less tenable, until eventually the thing collapsed under the weight of too much history.
He wondered if they had gone too far, corrected one too many things which were not truly problems so much as differences of taste.
Eiah took a pose that challenged him. He looked at her directly for perhaps the first time since she'd come to his study.
'You think I'm wrong,' she said. 'You can say it. I've heard worse.'
It took Maati the space of several heartbeats to recall what her proposal had been.
'I think it can't hurt. But I also think it isn't our essential problem. We were all quite capable of designing Clarity-of-Sight with meetings in the evening. This'-he rattled the papers in his hand-'is something different. Half- measures won't suffice.'
'What then?' she said.
He put the papers down.
'We stop,' he said. 'For a few days, we don't touch it at all. Instead we can send someone to a low town for meat and candles, or clear the gardens. Anything.'
'Do we have time for that?' Eiah asked. 'Anything could have happened. My brother may be married. His wife may be carrying a child. All of Galt may be loading their daughters in ships, and the men of the cities may be scuttling off to Kirinton and Acton and Marsh. We are out here where there's no one to talk to, no couriers on the roads, and I know it feels that time has stopped. It hasn't. We've been weeks at this. Months. We can't spend time we don't have.'
'You'd recommend what, then? Move faster than we can move? Think more clearly than we can think? It isn't as if we can sit down with a serious expression and demand that the work be better than it is. Have you never seen a man ill with something that needed quiet and time? This is no different.'
'I've also watched ill men die,' Eiah said. 'Time passes, and once you've waited too long for something, there's no getting it back.'
Her mouth bent in a deep frown. There were dark circles under her eyes. She bit her lower lip and shook her head as if conducting some conversation within her mind and disagreeing with herself. The coal burning in the brazier settled and gave off a dozen small sparks as bright as fireflies. One landed on the paper, already cold and gray. Ash.
'You're reconsidering,' Maati said.
'No. I'm not. We can't tell my father,' she said. 'Not yet.'
'We could send to others, then,' Maati said. 'There are high families in every city that would rise up against Otah's every plan if they knew the andat were back in the world. You've lived your whole life in the courts. Two or three people whose discretion you trust would be all it took. A rumor spoken in the right ears. We needn't even say where we are or what's been bound.'
Eiah combed her fingers through her hair. Every breath that she didn't answer, Maati felt his hopes rise. She would, if he only gave her a little more time and silence to convince herself. She would announce their success, and everyone in the cities of the Khaiem would know that Maati Vaupathai had remained true to them. He had never given up, never turned away.
'It would mean going to a city,' Eiah said. 'I can't send half-a-dozen ciphered letters under my own seal out from a low town without every courier in the south finding out where we are.'
'Then Pathai,' Maati said, his hands opening. 'We need to step back from the binding. The letters will win us time to make things right.'
Eiah turned, looking out the window. In the courtyard, the maple trees were losing their leaves. A storm, a strong wind, and the branches would be bare. A sparrow, brown and gray, hopped from one twig to another. Maati could see the fine markings on its wings, the blackness of its eyes. It had been years since sparrows had been more than dull smears. He glanced at Eiah, surprised to see the tears on her cheek.
His hand touched her shoulder. She didn't look back, but he felt her lean into him a degree.
'I don't know,' she said as if to the sparrow, the trees, the thousand fallen leaves. 'I don't know why it should matter. It's no secret what he's done or what I think of it. I don't have any doubts that what we're doing is the right choice.'
'And yet,' Maati said.
'And yet,' she agreed. 'My father will be disappointed in me. I would have thought I was old enough that his opinion wouldn't matter.'
He searched for a response-something gentle and kind and that would strengthen her resolve. Before he found the words, he felt her tense. He took back his hand, adopting a querying pose.
'I thought I heard something,' she said. 'Someone was yelling.'
A long, high shriek rang in the air. It was a woman's voice, but he couldn't guess whose. Eiah leaped from her stool and vanished into the dark hallways before Maati recovered himself. He followed, his heart pounding, his breath short. The shrieking didn't stop, and as he came nearer the kitchen, he heard other sounds-clattering, banging, high voices urging calm or making demands that he couldn't decipher, the andat's infantile wail. And then Eiah's commanding voice, with the single word stop.
He rounded the last corner, his fist pressed to his chest, his heart hammering. The cooking areas were raw chaos come to earth. An earthenware jar of wheat flour had been overturned and cracked. The thin stone block Irit used for chopping plants lay in shards on the floor. Ashti Beg stood in the middle of the room, a knife in her hand, her chin held high like a statue of abstract vengeance. In the corner, Vanjit held the stillmewling andat close to her breast. Large Kae, Small Kae, and Irit were all cowering against the walls, their eyes wide and mouths hanging open. Eiah's expression was calm and commanding at the same time, like a mother calling back her children from a cliff edge.
'It's done, Ashti-cha,' Eiah said, walking slowly toward the woman. 'I'll have the knife.'
'Not until I find that bitch and put it in her heart,' Ashti Beg spat, turning toward Eiah's voice. Maati saw for the first time that the woman's eyes were as gray as storm clouds.
'I'll have the knife,' Eiah said again. 'Or I will beat you down and take it. You know you're more likely to hurt the others than Vanjit.'
The andat whimpered and Ashti Beg whirled toward it. Eiah stepped forward smoothly, took Ashti Beg's elbow and wrist in her hands, and twisted. Ashti Beg yelped, the blade clattering to the floor.
'What…' Maati gasped. 'What is happening?'
Four voices answered at once, words tripping over each other. Only Eiah and Vanjit remained silent, the two poets considering each other silently in the center of the storm. Maati raised his hands in a pose that commanded silence, and all of them stopped except Ashti Beg.
'… power over us. It isn't right, it isn't fair, and I will not simper and smile and lick her ass because she happened to be the one to go first!'
'Enough!' Maati said. 'Enough, all of you. Gods. Gods. Vanjit. Come with me.'
The girl looked over as if noticing him for the first time. The rage in her expression faltered. Her hands were shaking. Eiah stepped forward, keeping herself between Ashti Beg and her prey as Vanjit walked across the room.
'Eiah, see to Ashti-cha,' Maati said, taking Vanjit's wrist. 'The rest of you, clean this mess. I'd rather not eat food prepared in a child's playpen.'
He turned away, pulling Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight after him. The andat was silent now. Maati crossed the hallway and started down a flight of stone stairs that led to the sleeping rooms for the younger cohorts. The voices of the others rose behind them and faded. He wasn't certain where he was taking her until he reached the branching hall that led to the slate-paved rooms where the teachers had once disciplined boys with the cutting slash of a lacquered rod. He stopped in the hallway instead, putting the reflexive impulse to violence aside. Vanjit
