'I suppose this is to do with me,' Otah said.
'We only wanted to see that you were safe, Most High,' the captain said. The words were strangled. Otah hesitated, then took a pose of apology.
'I needed solitude,' he said. 'I should have told you before I left. But if I'd been clear-minded, I likely wouldn't have needed to leave. Please accept my apology.'
There was little enough the man could do. Moments later, the armsmen were scattering back to the wayhouse or the stables. The smell of doused torches filled the air like a forest on fire. Danat and Idaan stood side by side.
'Should I apologize to you as well?' Otah asked with a half-smile.
'Isn't called for,' Idaan said. 'I was only keeping your boy near to hand in case you reconsidered my death order.'
'Next time, maybe,' Otah said, and Idaan grinned. 'Is there anything warm to drink in this place?'
The young keeper brought them the best food the wayhouse had to offer-river fish baked with red pepper and lemon, sweet rice, almond milk with mint, hot plum wine, and cold water. They arrayed themselves through the main room, all other guests being turned away by the paired guards at every door. Ana and Ashti Beg were in a deep conversation about the strategies they'd developed in their new sightlessness. Danat sat nearer the fire, watching them with a naked longing in his expression that would have made Ana blush, Otah thought, had she been able to see it. Otah and Idaan sat together at a low table, passing the chipped lacquer bowls back and forth. The armsmen who weren't on duty had taken a back room, and their voices came in occasional outbursts of hilarity and song.
It could have been the image of peace, of something approaching a family passing a road-wearied night in warmth and companionship. And perhaps it was. But it was other things as well.
'You look better,' Idaan said, freshening the wine in his bowl. Fragrant steam rose from it, astringent and rich with the scent of the fruit.
'I am for now,' Otah said. 'I'll be worse again later.'
'Have you made up your mind, then?' she asked. He sighed. Ashti Beg illustrated some point with a wide, vague gesture. Danat placed a new length of pine on the fire.
'There isn't an answer,' Otah said. 'They have all the power. All I can do is ask them to reconsider. So I suppose I'll do that and see what happens next. I know that you think I should go in and kill them all-'
'I didn't say that,' Idaan said. 'I said it was what I would do. My judgment on those matters is… occasionally suspect.'
Otah sipped his wine, then put the bowl down carefully.
'I think that's the nearest you've ever come to apologizing,' he said.
'To you, perhaps,' Idaan said. 'I spent years talking to the dead about it. They didn't have much to say back.'
'Do you miss them?'
'Yes,' Idaan said without hesitation. 'I do.'
They lapsed into silence again. Danat and Ashti Beg were in the middle of a lively debate over the ethics of showfighting, Ana listening to them both with a frown. Her hand pressed her belly as if the fish was troubling her.
'If Maati were here tonight,' Otah said, 'and demanded that he be named emperor, I think I'd give it to him.'
'He'd hand it back in a week,' Idaan said with a smile.
'Who's to say I'd take it?'
They left in the morning, the horses rested or changed for fresh, the carts restocked with wood and coal and water. Ana looked worse, but kept a brave face. Idaan stayed with her like a personal guard, to Danat's visible annoyance. A cold wind haunted them, striking leaves from the trees.
News of the Emperor's party came close to overwhelming stories of the mysterious baby at the wayhouse. No couriers came to trouble Otah with word of fire or death. Twice, Otah dreamed that Sinja was riding at his side, robes soaked with seawater and black as a bat's wing, and he woke each time with an obscure feeling of peace. And with every stop, they found the poets had passed before them more and more recently.
Three days ago. Then two.
When they reached the river Qiit, tea-dark with newly fallen leaves, just the day before.
24
The cold caught up with them in the middle of the day, a wind from the west that rattled the trees and sent tiny whitecaps across the river's back. They had covered a great stretch of river in their day's travel, but night meant landing. The boatman was adamant. The river, he said, was a living thing; it changed from one journey to the next. Sandbars shifted, rocks lurked where none had been before. The boat was shallow enough to pass over many dangers, but a log invisible in the darkness could break a hole in the deck. Better to run in the daylight than swim in the dark. The way the boatman said it left no room for disagreement.
They camped at the riverside, and awakened with tents and robes soaked heavy by dew. Morning light saw them on the water again, the boiler at the stern muttering angrily to itself, the paddle wheel punishing the water.
Maati sat away from the noise, huddled in two wool robes, and watched the trees march from the north to the south like an army bent on sacking Saraykeht. Large Kae and Small Kae sat in the stern, making conversation with the boatman and his second when the men would deign to speak. Vanjit and Eiah turned around each other, one in the bow, the other in the center of the craft, both maintaining a space between them, the andat watching with rage and hunger in its black eyes. It was like watching an alley-mouth knife fight drawn out over hours and days.
It was hard now to remember the days before they had been splintered. The years he had spent in hiding had seemed like a punishment at the time. Living in warehouses, giving the lectures he half-recalled from his own youth and half-invented anew, trying to understand the ways in which a woman's mind was not a man's and how that power could be channeled into grammar. He had resented it. He recalled crawling onto a cot, exhausted from the day's work. He could still picture the expressions of hunger and determination on their faces. He had not seen it then, but it had all of it been driven by hope. Even the sorrow and mourning that came after a binding failed and they lost someone to the andat's grim price had held a sense of community.
Now they had won, and the world seemed all cold wind and dark water. Even the two Kaes seemed to have set themselves apart from Vanjit, from Eiah, from himself. The nights of conversation and food and laughter were gone like a pleasant dream. They had created a women's grammar and the price was higher than he could have imagined.
Murder. He was planning to murder one of his own.
As he had expected, the boat was too small for any more private conversations. He had managed no more than a few moments with Eiah when none of the others were paying them attention. Something in Vanjit's wine, perhaps, to slow her mind and deepen her sleep. She mustn't know that the blow was coming.
He could see that it weighed on Eiah as much as it did upon him. She sat carving soft wood with a knife wherever Vanjit was not, her mouth in a vicious scowl. The wax tablets that had been her whole work before he'd come to her lay stacked in a crate. The latest version of Wounded, waiting for his analysis and approval. He imagined the two of them would sit nearer each other if it weren't for the fear that Vanjit would suspect them of plotting. And he would not fear that except that it was truth.
For their own part, Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight held to themselves. Poet and andat in apparent harmony, watching the night sky or penetrating the secrets of wood and water that only she could see. Vanjit hadn't offered to share the wonders the andat revealed since before they had left the school, and Maati couldn't bring himself to ask the favor. Not knowing what he knew. Not intending what he intended.
When evening came, the boatman sang out, his second joining the high whooping call. There was no reason for it that Maati could see, only the habit of years. The boat angled its way to a low, muddy bank. When the water
