'And use you for a pillow, Uncle. I'm fine. Go.'
He looked back. There was a place for him. Irit had made it up with two thick wool blankets. He couldn't see it in the night, but he knew it was there. He wanted nothing more than to turn to it and let the whole broken world fade for a while. He couldn't. Not yet.
'Eiah-kya,' he said softly. 'About your binding. About Wounded..
She turned to him, a shadow within a shadow. He bent close to her, his voice as low as he could make it and still be heard over the clatter of hooves on stone. 'You know the grammar well? You have it all in mind?'
'Of course,' she said.
'Could you do it without it being written? It's usual to write it all out, the way Vanjit-cha did. And it helps to have that there to follow, but you could do the thing without. Couldn't you?'
'I don't know,' Eiah said. 'Perhaps. It isn't something I'd thought about particularly. But why…?'
'We should postpone your binding,' Maati said. 'Until you are certain you could do it without the reference text.'
Eiah was silent. Something fluttered by, the sound of wings against air.
'What are you saying?' Eiah said, her words low, clipped, and precise. Maati squeezed his hands together. The joints had started aching sometime earlier in the night. The ancient dagger scar in his belly itched the way it did when he'd grown too tired.
'If you were performing the binding, and something happened so that you couldn't see,' Maati said. 'If you were to go blind when you'd already started… you should know the words and the thoughts well enough to keep to it. Not to slip.'
'Not pay its price,' Eiah said. Meaning, they both knew, die. A moment later, 'She'd do that?'
'I don't know,' Maati said. 'I don't know anything anymore. But be ready if she does.'
Eiah shifted the reins, the pattern of the horses' stride altered, and the cart rocked gently. She didn't speak again, and Maati imagined the silence to be thoughtful. He shifted his weight carefully, turned, and let himself slip down to the bed of the cart. The wool blankets were where he'd remembered them. Feeling his way through the darkness reminded him of his brush with blindness. He told himself that the shudder was only the cold of the morning.
The shifting of the cart became like the rocking of a ship or a cradle. Maati's mind softened, slipped. He felt his body sinking into the planks below him, heard the creak and clatter of the wheels. His heart, low and steady, was like the throbbing drum at the wayhouse. It didn't sound at all unwell.
On the shifting edge of sleep, he imagined himself capable of moving between spaces, folding the world so that the distance between himself and Otah-kvo was only a step. He pictured Otah's awe and rage and impotence. It was a fantasy Maati had cultivated before this, and it went through its phases like a habit. Maati's presentation of the poets, the women's grammar, the andat. Otah's abasement and apologies and humble amazement at the world made right. For years, Maati had driven himself toward that moment. He had brought on the sacrifice of ten women, each of them paying the price of a binding that wasn't quite correct.
He watched now as if someone else were dreaming it. Dispassionate, cold, thoughtful. He felt nothing-not disappointment or regret or hope. It was like being a boy again and coming across some iridescent and pincered insect, fascinating and beautiful and dangerous.
More than half asleep, he didn't feel the tiny body inching its way to him until it lay almost within his arms. With the reflex of a man who has cared for a baby, instincts long unused but never forgotten, he gathered the child close.
'You have to kill her,' it whispered.
21
Otah stood in the ruins of the school's west garden. Half a century before, he'd been in this same spot, screaming at boys not ten summers old. Humiliating them. This was where, in a fit of childish rage, he had forced a little boy to eat clods of dirt. He'd been twelve summers old at the time, but he recalled it with a vividness like a cut. Maati's young eyes and blistered hands, tears and apologies. The incident had begun Maati's career as a poet and ended his own.
The stone walls of the school were lower than he remembered them. The crows that perched in the stark, leafless trees, on the other hand, were as familiar as childhood enemies. As a boy, he had hated this place. With all its changes and his own, he still did.
Ashti Beg had told them of Maati's clandestine school. Of Eiah's involvement, and the others'. Two women named Kae, another-Ashti Beg's particular confidante-named Irit. And the new poet, Vanjit. Ashti Beg had escaped the school and the increasingly dangerous poet and her false baby, the andat Blindness. Or Clarity-of-Sight.
Three days after Eiah had left her in one of the low towns, she had lost her sight without warning. The poet girl Vanjit taking revenge for whatever slight she imagined. In a spirit of vengeance, Ashti Beg had offered to lead Otah to them all. Under cover of night, if he wished.
There was no need. Otah knew the way.
The armsmen had gone first, scouting from what little cover there was. No sign of life had greeted them, and they had arrived to find the school cleaned, repaired, cared for, and empty. They had come too late, and the wind and snow had erased any clue to where Maati and Eiah and the other women had gone. Including the new poet.
Idaan emerged from the building, walking toward him with a determined gait. Otah could see the ghost of her breath. He took a pose that offered greeting. It seemed too formal, but he couldn't think of one more fitting and he didn't want to speak.
'I'd guess they left before you reached Pathai,' Idaan said. 'They've left very little. A few jars of pickled nuts and some dry cheese. Otherwise, it all matches what she said. Someone's been here for months. The kitchen's been used. And the graves are still fresh.'
'How many boys died here, do you think?' Otah asked.
'In the war, or when the Dai-kvo ran the place?' Idaan asked, and then went on without waiting for his reply. 'I don't know. Fewer than have died in Galt since you and… the others left Saraykeht.'
She had stumbled at mentioning Danat. He'd noticed more than once that it wasn't a name she liked saying.
'We have to find them,' Otah said. 'If we can't make her change this soon, the High Council will never forgive us.'
Idaan smiled. It was an odd and catlike expression, gentle and predatory both. She glanced at him, saw his unease, and shrugged.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It's only that you keep speaking as if there was still a High Council. Or a nation called Galt, for that. If this Vanjit has done what for all the world it seems she's done, every city and town and village over there has been blinded for weeks now. It isn't winter yet, but it's cold enough. And even if they had gotten some of the harvest in before this, it would only help the people on the farms. You can't walk from town to town blind, much less steer one of these soup pots on wheels.'
'They'll find ways.'
'Some of them may have, but there'll be fewer tomorrow. And then the next day. The next,' Idaan agreed. 'It doesn't matter. However many there are, they aren't Galts anymore.'
'No? Then what are they?'
'Survivors,' Idaan said, and any amusement that had been in her voice was gone. 'Just survivors.'
They stood in silence, looking at nothing. The crows insulted one another, rose into the air, and settled again. The breeze smelled of new snow and the promise of frost.
Inside the stone walls, the armsmen had made camp. The kitchen was warm, and the smell of boiling lentils and pork fat filled the air. Ana Dasin and Ashti Beg sat side by side, talking to the air. Otah tried not to watch the two blind women, but he found he couldn't turn away. It was their faces that captured him. Their expressions, their gestures thrown into nothingness, were strangely intimate. It was as if by being cast into their personal darkness, they had lost some ability to dissemble. Ashti Beg's anger was carved into the lines around her mouth. Ana, by
