and loss that I suffered to be a poet was justified. If it kept people like Vanjit from the power of the andat, it was all justified. And I have ignored it.
As if reading the words in his eyes, Eiah glanced over her shoulder at Vanjit. The sun was shining off the water, surrounding the dark, huddled girl with a brilliant halo of gold and white. When Maati looked away, the image had scarred his eyes. It lay over everything else he saw, black where it had been light, and a pale shape the color of mourning robes where Vanjit had been.
'I'm making your tea,' Eiah said, her voice grim. 'Stay here and rest.'
'Eiah-kya? We… we have to kill her,' Maati said.
Eiah turned to him, her expression empty. He gestured to Vanjit's back. His hand trembled.
'Before your binding,' he said, 'we should be sure that it's safe for you. Or, that is, as safe as we can make it. You… you understand.'
Eiah sighed. When she spoke again, her voice was distant and reflective.
'I knew a physician in Lachi. She told me about being in a low town when one of the men caught blood fever. He was a good person. Wellliked. This was a long time ago, so he had children. He'd gone out hunting and come back ill. She had them smother him and burn the body. His children stayed in their house and screamed the whole time they did it. She didn't sleep well for years afterward.'
Her eyes were focused on nothing, her jaw forward as if she was facing someone down. Man or god or fate.
'You're saying it's not her fault,' Maati said softly, careful not to speak Vanjit's name. 'She was a little girl who had her family slaughtered before her. She was a lost woman who wanted a child and could never have one. What's wrong with her mind was done to her.'
Eiah took a pose that disagreed.
'I'm saying no matter how little my physician friend slept, she saved those children's lives,' Eiah said. 'There are some herbs. When we stop for the night, I can gather them. I'll see it's done.'
'No. No, I'll do the thing. If it's anyone, it should-'
'It will have to be quick,' Eiah said. 'She mustn't know it's coming. You can't do that.'
Maati took a pose that challenged her, and Eiah folded his hands gently closed.
'Because you still want to save her,' she said. Something about weariness and determination made her look like her father.
Otah, who had killed a poet once too.
23
Otah rose in the mornings with stiff, aching joints and a pain in his side that would not fade. The steamcarts allowed each of them the chance to sleep for a hand or two in the late mornings or just after the midday meal. Without the rest, Otah knew he wouldn't have been able to keep pace with the others.
The courier found them on the road. His outer robe was the colors of House Siyanti and mud-spattered to the waist. His mount cantered alongside the carts now, cooling down from the morning's travel as its rider waited for replies. The man's satchel held a dozen letters at least, but only one had occasioned his speed. It was written on paper the color of cream, sewn with black thread, and the imprint in the wax belonged to Balasar Gice. Otah sat in his saddle, afraid to open it and afraid not to.
The thread ripped easily and the pages unfolded. Otah skimmed the letter from beginning to end, then began again, reading more slowly, letting the full import of the words wash over him. He folded the letter and slipped it into his sleeve, his heart heavy.
Danat drew closer, his hands in a pose that both called for inclusion and offered sympathy. The boy might not know what had happened, but he'd drawn the fact that it wasn't good.
'Chaburi-Tan,' Otah said, beginning with the least of the day's losses. 'It's gone. Sacked. Burned. We don't know whether the mercenaries turned sides or simply wouldn't protect it, but it comes to the same thing. The pirates attacked the city, took what they could, and set the rest alight.'
'And the fleet?'
Otah looked at the roadside. Sun had melted the snow as far as its light could reach, but the shadows were still pale. Otah had known Sinja Ajutani for more years than not. The dry humor, the casual disrespect of all things pompous or self-certain, the knife-sharp and unsentimental analysis of any issue. When Kiyan died, they had been the only two men in the world who truly understood what had been lost.
Now, only Otah knew.
'What ships remain have been set to guard the seafront at Saraykeht,' he said when he could speak again. 'The thought is that winter will protect Yalakeht and Amnat-Tan. When the thaw comes in spring, we may have to revisit the plan.'
'Are you all right, Papa-kya?'
'I'll be fine,' Otah said, then he raised his hand and called the courier close. 'Tell them I read it. Tell them I understood.'
The courier made his obeisance, turned his mount, and rode away. Otah let himself sit with his grief. The other letters for him could wait. They had come from his Master of Tides, and from others he'd named to watch the Empire crumble in his absence. Two had been for Ana Dasin, and he assumed they were from her parents. The letters had made their way up from Saraykeht and then along the low roads, tracking Otah and his party for days. And each day had marked the ending of lives, in Galt especially, but everywhere.
He had known that Sinja might die. He'd sent the fleet out knowing it might happen, and Sinja had gone without any illusions of safety. If it hadn't been this and now, it would have been something else at some other time. Every man and woman died, in time.
And in truth, death wasn't the curse he'd set out to break. All his work and sacrifice had been only so that they could balance the constant withering of age with some measure of renewal. He thought of his own children: Eiah, Danat, and even long-dead Nayiit. They had each of them been wagers he'd placed against a cruel world. A child comes into the world, and its father holds it close and thinks, If all goes as it should, I will die first. This one, I can love and never mourn for. That was all he wanted to leave for Danat and Eiah. The chance of knowing a love that they would never be called to bury. It was the world as it was intended to be.
He didn't notice Idaan riding close to him until she spoke. Her voice was gruff, but he imagined he could hear some offer of comfort in it.
'It's past time to shift. Crawl up on that cart and rest awhile. You've been riding that thing for five hands together.'
'Have I?' Otah said. 'I didn't notice.'
'I know. It's why I came,' she said. After a moment's pause, she added, 'Danat told us what happened.'
Otah took a pose that acknowledged having heard her, but nothing more than that. There wasn't anything more that could be meaningfully said. Idaan respected it and let him turn his horse aside and shift to the steamcart where Ana Dasin and Ashti Beg sat, their sightless eyes fixed on nothing. Otah sat on the wide boards not far from them, but not so near that their conversation would include him. Ana laughed at something Ashti Beg had said. The older woman looked vaguely pleased. Otah lay back, his closed eyes flooded with the red of sun and blood. He willed himself to sleep, certain that it would elude him.
He woke when the cart jerked to a halt. He sat up, half-thoughts of snapped axles and broken wheels forming and falling apart like mist in a high wind. When he was awake enough to make sense of the world, he saw that the sun had sunk almost to the treetops, and the cart was sitting in the yard of a wayhouse. The memory of the morning's foul message flooded back into him, but not so deeply as before. It would rise and fall, he knew. He would be jarred by the loss of his friend again and again and again, but less and less and less. It said something he didn't want to know that mourning had become so familiar. He plucked his traveling robes into their proper drape and lowered himself to the ground.
The one thing he truly didn't regret about the journey was that his servants were all in Utani or Saraykeht. Walking into the low, warm main room of the wayhouse without being surrounded by men and women wanting to change his robes or powder his feet was a small pleasure. He tried to savor it.
