Eiah grabbed it, plucked out a cloth bag, and started shuffling through sheaves of dried herbs that to Maati looked identical.
'There's another bag. A yellow one,' Eiah said. 'Where is it?'
'I don't think we brought it,' Danat said.
'Then it's back at the quay. Get it now.'
Danat turned and sprinted. Gently, Eiah took Maati's hand. He thought at first she meant to comfort him, but her fingers pressed into his wrist, and then she reached for his other hand. He surrendered himself to her care. He didn't have a great deal of choice. Idaan squatted at his side, Otah sitting on the dais. The andat rose, stepping back by Ana's side as if out of respect.
'How bad?' Idaan asked.
'He hasn't died. That's what I can offer for now,' Eiah said. 'Maati- kya, open your mouth. I don't have time to brew this, but it will help until I can get the rest of my supplies. It's going to be sweet first and then bitter.'
'You've done it,' Maati said around the pinch of leaves she put on his tongue.
Eiah looked at him, her expression startled. He smiled at her.
'You bound it. You've cured the blindness.'
Eiah looked up at her creation, her slave. It nodded.
'Well, no,' she said. 'I mean, yes, I bound him. And I did undo Vanjit's damage to Ana and myself. And then you, when I saw that she'd done it.'
'Galt?' Ana asked.
'I hadn't… I hadn't even thought of it. Gods. Is there anything different to be done? I mean, a whole nation at once?'
'You have to do everything,' Maati said. 'Birds. Beasts. Fish. Everyone, everywhere. You have to hurry. It's only a thought.' The herbs were making his mouth tingle and burn, but the pain in his breast seemed to ebb. 'It's no different.'
Eiah turned to the andat. The kind, pale face hardened. No matter how it seemed, the thing wasn't a man and it wasn't gentle. But it was bound to her will, and a moment later Eiah caught her breath.
'It's done,' she said, wonder in her voice. 'They've been put back. The ones who are left.'
Ana stepped forward and knelt, wordlessly enfolding Eiah in her arms. From where he lay, he could see Eiah's eyes close, watch her lean into the embrace. The two women seemed to pause in time, a moment that lasted less than two long breaths together but carried the weight of years within it. Eiah raised her head sharply and the andat twitched. Idaan leaped up, yelping. All eyes turned to her as she pressed a flat palm to her belly.
'That,' she said, 'felt very odd. You should warn someone when you're planning something like that.'
'Sterile?' Otah asked. His voice was low. There was no joy in it.
'Repaired,' Eiah said. 'We can bear again. Galts can father children and we can bear them.'
'I don't suppose you could leave me as I was?' Idaan asked.
'So we've begun again,' Otah said. 'It is all as it was. We've only changed a few names. Well-'
Wounded cut him off with a low bark of a laugh. Its eyes were fixed upon Eiah. Otah looked from one to the other, his hands taking a querying pose. Woman and slave both ignored him.
'Everyone?' the andat asked.
'Everyone, everywhere,' Eiah said. 'It's only a thought, isn't it? That's all it needs to be.'
'What are you doing?' Ana asked. It seemed like a real curiosity.
'I'm curing everyone,' Eiah said. 'If there's a child in Bakta who split her head on a stone this morning, I want it fixed. A man in Eymond whose hip was broken when he was a boy and healed poorly, I want him walking without pain in the morning. Everyone. Everywhere. Now.'
'Eiah Machi,' the andat said, its voice low and amused, 'the little girl who saved the world. Is that how you see it? Or is this how you apologize for slaughtering a whole people?'
Eiah didn't speak, and the andat went still again. Anger flashed in its eyes and Maati's hand went out, touching Eiah's. She patted him away absently, as if he were no more than a well-intentioned dog. The andat hissed under its breath and turned away. Maati noticed for the first time that its teeth were pointed. Eiah relaxed. Maati sat up; his breath had almost returned. The andat shifted to look at him. The whites of his eyes had gone as black as a shark's; he had never seen an andat shift its appearance before, and it filled him with sudden dread. Eiah made a scolding sound, and the andat took an apologetic pose.
Maati tried to imagine what it would be like, a thought that changeable, that flexible, that filled with violence and rage. How did we everthink we could do good with these as our tools? For as long as she held the andat, Eiah was condemned to the struggle. And Maati was responsible for that sacrifice too.
Eiah, it seemed, had other intentions.
'That should do,' she said. 'You can go.'
The andat vanished, its robe collapsing to the floor in a pool of blue and gold. The scent of overheated stone came and went, a breath of hell on the night air. The others were silent. Maati came to himself first.
'What have you done?' he whispered.
'I'm a physician,' Eiah said, her tone dismissive. 'Holding that abomination the rest of my life would have gotten in the way of my work, and who told you that you were allowed to sit up? On your back or I'll call in armsmen to hold you down. No, don't say anything. I don't care if you're feeling a thousand times better. Down. Now.'
He lay back, staring up at the ceiling. His mind felt blasted and blank. The enameled brick was blurred in the torchlight, or perhaps it was only that his eyes were only what they had been. The cold air that breathed in through the window too gently to even be a breeze felt better than he would have expected, the stone floor beneath him more comfortable. The voices around him were quiet with respect for his poor health or else with awe. The world had never seen a night like this one. It likely never would again.
She had freed it. Gods, all that they'd done, all that they'd suffered, and she'd just freed the thing.
When Danat returned, Eiah forced half a handful of herbs more bitter than the last into his mouth and told him to leave them under his tongue until she told him otherwise. Idaan and one of the armsmen hauled Vanjit's body away. They would burn it, Maati thought, in the morning. Vanjit had been a broken, sad, dangerous woman, but she deserved better than to have her corpse left out. He remembered Idaan saying something similar of the slaughtered buck.
He didn't notice falling asleep, but Eiah gently shook him awake and helped him to sit. While she compared his pulses and pressed his fingertips, he spat out the black leaves. His mouth was numb.
'We're going to take you back down in a litter,' she said, and before he could object, she lifted her hand to his lips. He took a pose that acquiesced. Eiah rose to her feet and walked back toward the great bronze doors.
The footsteps behind him were as familiar as an old song.
'Otah-kvo,' Maati said.
The Emperor sat on the dais, his hands between his knees. He looked pale and exhausted.
'Nothing ever goes the way I plan,' Otah said, his tone peevish. 'Not ever.'
'You're tired,' Maati said.
'I am. Gods, that I am.'
The captain of the armsmen pulled open the doors. Four men followed, a low weaving of branches and rope between them. Eiah walked at their side. One of the men at the rear called out, and the whole parade stopped while the captain, cursing, retied a series of knots. Maati watched them as if they were dancers and gymnasts performing before a banquet.
'I'm sorry,' Maati said. 'This wasn't what I intended.'
'Isn't it? I thought the hope was to undo the damage we did with Sterile, no matter what the price.'
Maati started to object, then stopped himself. Outside the great window, a star fell. The smear of light vanished as quickly as it had come.
'I didn't know how far it would go.'
'Would it have mattered? If you had known everything it would take, would you have been able to abandon the project?' Otah asked. He didn't sound angry or accusing. Only like a man who didn't know the answer to a question. Maati found he didn't either.
'If I asked your forgiveness…'
Otah was silent, then sighed deeply, his head hanging low.
