THE (tlpq-4) (36 page)

into ashes softer than snow.

He was surprised to see the anger and bitterness in the book. There was

a thread, he thought, of hatred in these words. He didn't think he'd

meant it to be there, and yet sitting alone with his slowing blood, it

could not be denied. Hatred of Otah and the Galts, of course, but also

of Cehmai. Of Liat, whom he mentioned more frequently than he remembered

and in terms that he knew she didn't deserve. Hatred toward the gods and

the world. And thus, he had to think, toward himself. Before he reached

the last page, Maati was weeping quietly.

He found an ink brick and a fresh pen, lit all the lanterns and candles

he could find, and sat at his desk. He drew a line across the middle of

the last page, marking a change in the book and in himself that he could

not yet describe. He freshened the ink and did not know precisely what

he intended to write until the nib touched the page, tracing out letters

with a sound as dry and quiet as a lizard on stones.

If it were within my power, I would begin again. I would

begin as a boy again, and live my life a different way. I

have been told tonight that my heart is growing weak.

Looking back upon the man I have been until now, I think it

always has been. I think it was shattered one time too many

and put back without all the shards in place.

And, though I think this is the cry of a coward, I do not

want to die. I want to see the world made right. I want to

live that long, at least.

He paused, looking at the words where they grew fainter, the ink running

thin.

He found Eiah asleep on her cot, still wearing the robes she'd worn all

day. Her door stood ajar, and his scratch woke her.

"Uncle," she said, yawning. "What's happened? Is something wrong?"

"You're certain. What you said about my blood. You're sure."

"Yes," she said. There was no hesitation in her.

"Perhaps," he said, then coughed. "Perhaps we should go to Utani."

Tears came to her eyes again, but with them a smile. The first true

smile he'd seen from her since her journey to the low town. Since

Vanjit's blinding of the Galts.

"Thank you, Uncle," she said.

In the morning, the others were shocked, and yet before the sun broke

through the midday clouds, the cart was loaded with food and books, wax

tables and wineskins. The horses were fitted with their leads and

burdens, and all six of the travelers, seven if he counted

Clarity-of-Sight, were wrapped in warm robes and ready for the road. The

only delay was Irit scrambling back at the last moment to find some

small, forgotten token.

Maati pulled himself deep into the enfolding wool as the cart shifted

under him, and the low buildings with snow on the roofs and the cracks

between stones receded. His breath plumed before him, rubbing out the

division between sky and snow.

Vanjit sat beside him, the andat wrapped in her cloak. Her expression

was blank. Dark smudges of fatigue marked her eyes, and the andat

squirmed and fussed. The wide wheels tossed bits of hard-packed snow up

into the cart, and Maati brushed them away idly. It would be an hour or

more to the high road, and then perhaps a day before they turned into

the network of tracks and roads that connected the low towns that would

take them to the grand palaces of Utani, center of the Empire. Maati

found himself wondering whether Otah-kvo would have returned there, to

sit on the gold-worked seat. Or perhaps he would still be in Saraykeht,

scheming to haul countless thousands of blinded women from Kirinton,

Acton, and Marsh.

He tried to picture his old friend and enemy, but he could conjure only

a sense of his presence. Otah's face escaped him, but it had been a

decade and a half since they had seen each other. All memory faded, he

supposed. Everything, eventually, passed into the white veil and was

forgotten.

The snow made roadway and meadow identical, so the first bend in the

road was marked by a stand of thin trees and a low ridge of stone. Maati

watched the dark buildings vanish behind the hillside. It was unlikely

that he would ever see them again. But he would carry his memories of

the warmth of the kitchens, the laughter of women, the first binding

done by a woman, and the proof that his new grammar would function.

Better that than the death house it had been when the Galts had come

down this same road, murder in their minds. Or the mourning chambers for

boys without families before that.

Vanjit shuddered. Her face was paler. Maati freed his hands and took a

pose that expressed concern and offered comfort. Vanjit shook her head.

"He's never been away," she said. "He's leaving home for the first time."

"It can be frightening," Maati said. "It will pass."

"No. Worse, really. He's happy. He's very happy to be leaving," Vanjit

said. Her voice was low and exhausted. "All the things we said about the

struggle to hold them. It's all truth. I can feel him in the back of my

mind. He never stops pushing."

"It's the nature of the andat," Maati said. "If you'd like, we can talk

about ways to make bearing the burden easier."

Vanjit looked away. Her lips were pale.

"No," she said. "We'll be fine. It's only a harder day than usual. We'll

find another place, and see you cared for, and then all will be well.

But when the time comes to bind Wounded, there are things I'll do

differently."

"We can hope it never comes to that," Maati said.

Vanjit shifted, her eyes widening for a moment, and the soft, almost

flirting smile came to her lips.

"Of course not," she said. "Of course it won't. Eiah-cha will be fine. I

was only thinking aloud. It was nothing."

Maati nodded and lay back. His thick robes cushioned the bare wood of

the cart's side. Crates and chests groaned and shifted against their

ropes. Small Kae and Irit began singing, and the others slowly joined

them. All of them except Vanjit and himself. He let his eyes close to

slits, watching Vanjit from between the distorting bars of his eyelashes.

The andat squirmed again, howled out once, and her face went hard and

still. She glanced over at Maati, but he feigned sleep. The others,

involved in their song and the road, didn't see it when she pulled

Clarity-of-Sight from her cloak, staring at it. The tiny arms flailed,

the soft legs whirled. The andat made a low, angry sound, and Vanjit's

expression hardened.

She shook the thing once, hard enough to make the oversized head snap

back. The tiny mouth set itself into a shocked grimace and it began to

wail. Vanjit looked about, but no one had seen the small violence

between them. She pulled the andat back to her, cooing and rocking

slowly back and forth while it whimpered and fought. Desolate tears

tracked her cheeks. And were wiped away with a sleeve.

Maati wondered how often scenes like this one had passed without comment

or notice. Many years before, he had cared for an infant himself, and

the frustration of it was something he understood. This was something

different. He thought of what it would have been to have a child that

hated him, that wanted nothing more than to be free. Clarity-ofSight was

all the longing that haunted Vanjit and all the anger that sustained her

put into a being that would do whatever was needed to escape. Vanjit had

been betrayed by the cruelty of the world, and now also her own desire

made flesh.

At last she had the baby that had haunted her dreams. And it wanted to die.

Eiah spoke in his memory. What makes its imagine we can do good with

these as our tools?

19

Low towns clustered around the great cities of the Khaiem, small centers

of commerce and farming, justice and healing. Men and women could live

out their lives under the nominal control of the Khaiem or now of the

Emperor and never pass into the cities themselves. They had low courts,

road taxes, smiths and stablers, wayhouses and comfort houses and common

meadows for anyone's use. He had seen them all, years before, when he

had only been a courier. They were the cities of the Khaiem writ small,

and as he passed through them with his armsmen, his son, and the Galtic

half-stowaway, Otah saw all his fears made real.

Silences lay where children should have been playing street games. Great

swings made from rope and plank hung from ancient branches that shadowed

the common fields, no boys daring each other higher. As a child who had

seen no more than twelve summers, Otah had set out on his own, competing

with low-town boys for small work. With every low town he entered, his

eyes caught the sorts of things he had done: roofs with thatch that

wanted care, fences and stone walls in need of mending, cisterns grown

thick and black with weeds that required only a strong back and the

energy of youth to repair. But there were no boys, no girls; only men

and women whose smiles carried a bewildered, permanent sorrow. The

leaves on the trees had turned brown and yellow and fallen. The nights

were long, and the dawns touched by frost.

The land was dead. He had known it. Being reminded brought him no joy.

They stopped for the night in a wayhouse nestled in a wooded valley. The

walls were kiln-fired brick with a thick covering of ivy that the autumn

chill had turned brown and brittle. News of his identity and errand had

spread before him like a wave on water, making quiet investigation

impossible. The keeper had cleared all his rooms before they knew where

they meant to stop, had his best calf killed and hot baths drawn on the

chance that Otah might stop to rest. Sitting now in the alcove of a room

large enough to fit a dozen men, Otah felt his muscles slowly and

incompletely unknotting. With the supplies carried on the steam wagons

and the men shifting between tending the kilns and riding, Pathai was

less than two days away. Without the Galtic machines, it would have been

four, perhaps five.

Low clouds obscured moon and stars. When Otah closed the shutters

against the cold night air, the room grew no darker. The great copper

tub the keeper had prepared glowed in the light of the fire grate. The

earthenware jar of soap beside it was half-empty, but at least Otah felt

like his skin was his own again and not hidden under layers of dust and

sweat. His traveling robes had vanished and he'd picked a simple garment

of combed wool lined with silk. The voices of the armsmen rose through

the floorboards. The song was patriotic and bawdy, and the drum that

accompanied them kept missing the right time. Otah rose on bare feet and

walked out to the stairs. No servants scuttled out of his way, and he

noticed the absence.

Danat was not among the armsmen or out with the horses. It was only when

Otah approached the room set aside for Ana Dasin that he heard his son's

voice. The room was on the lower floor, near the kitchens. The floor

there was stone. Otah's steps made no sound as he walked forward. Ana

said something he couldn't make out, but when Danat answered, he'd come

near enough to hear.

"Of course there are, it's only Papa-kya isn't one of them. When I was a

boy, he told me stories from the First Empire about a half-Bakta boy.

And he nearly married a girl from the eastern islands."

"When was that?" Ana asked. Otah heard a sound of shifting cloth, like a

blanket being pulled or a robe being adjusted.

"A long time ago," Danat said. "Just after Saraykeht. He lived in the

eastern islands for years after that. They build their marriages in

stages there. He's got the first half of the marriage tattoo."

"Why didn't he finish it?" Ana asked.

Otah remembered Maj as he hadn't in years. Her wide, pale lips. Her eyes

that could go from blue the color of the sky at dawn to slate gray. The

stretch marks on her belly, a constant reminder of the child that had

been taken from her. In his mind, she was linked with the scent of the

ocean.

"I don't know," Danat said. "But it wasn't that he was trying to keep

his bloodline pure. Really, there's a strong case that my lineage isn't

par ticularly high. My mother didn't come from the utkhaiem, and for

some people that's as much an insult as marrying a Westlander."

"Or a Galt," Ana said, tartly.

"Exactly," Danat said. "So, yes. Of course there are people in the court

who want some kind of purity, but they've gotten used to disappointment

over the last few decades."

"They would never accept me."