THE (tlpq-4) (54 page)

gone. Both of those children.

"I will do my best, Otah-kvo," Maati said.

Otah bit back his first reply, and then his second.

"Tomorrow's going to be a very different day, Maati-cha," Otah said.

Maati nodded. After so much and so long, there should have been more.

Sinja appeared for a moment in the back of Otah's mind. There had been

no last good-bye for him. If this was to be the ending between the two

of them, Otah thought he should say something. He should make this

parting unlike the others that had come before. "I'm sorry it's come to

this."

Maati took a pose that agreed but kept the meaning as imprecise as Otah

had. One of the armsmen called out, pointing at the looming threat of

the Khai Udun's palaces. In a wide window precisely above the river, a

light had appeared, glittering like gold. Like a fallen star.

Ana and Danat were in a corner of the quay, their arms wrapped around

each other. Idaan stood among the armsmen, her expression grim. Eiah sat

alone by the water, listening. Otah saw Maati's gaze linger on her with

something like sorrow.

With a lantern in his unsteady hand, Maati walked off along the ruined

streets that ran beside the river. Otah guessed it would take him half a

hand to reach the palaces.

"All right," Idaan said. "He's gone."

Otah turned to look at her, some pale attempt at wit on his lips, and

saw that the comment hadn't been meant for him. Idaan crouched beside

Eiah. His daughter's face was turned toward nothing, but her hands were

digging through the physician's satchel. Danat glanced at Otah,

confusion in his eyes. Eiah started drawing flat stones from her bag and

laying them gently on the flagstones before her.

No, he was wrong. Not stones, but triangles of broken wax. The contents

of old, broken tablets with symbols and words inscribed on them in

Eiah's hand.

"You could try being of help," Idaan said and gestured toward the shards

at his daughter's knees. "There's a piece that goes right here I haven't

been able to find."

"You did enough," Eiah said, her hands shifting quickly, fitting the

breaks together. Already the wax was taking the shape of five separate

squares, the characters coming together. "Just going to the campsite and

bringing back the bits you did was more than I could have asked."

"What is this?" Otah asked, though he already knew.

"My work," Eiah said. "My binding. I hoped I'd have time. Before we

actually came across Vanjit-cha, there was the chance she was spying on

us. She'd always planned to kill me by distracting me during the

binding. But now, and for I think at least the next hand and a half, her

attention is going to be on Maati-kvo. So..."

Idaan shook her head, clearing some thought away, and gestured to the

captain of the guard.

"We'll need light," she said. "Eiah may be able to work puzzles in the

dark, but I'm better if I can see what I'm doing."

"I thought you couldn't do this," Otah said, kneeling.

"Well, I haven't managed it yet," Eiah said with a wry smile. "On the

other hand, I've studied to be a physician. Holding things in memory

isn't so difficult, once you've had the practice. And there's enough

here, I think, to guide me through it, no matter what Maati-kvo believes."

Idaan made a low grunt of pleasure, reached across Eiah and shifted a

stray chunk of wax into place. Eiah's fingers caressed the new join, and

she nodded to herself. Armsmen brought the wild, flickering light close,

the waxwork lettering seeming to breathe in the shadows.

"Maati's warnings," Otah said. "You can't know what will happen if you

pit your andat against hers."

"I won't have to," Eiah said. "I've thought this through, Papa-kya. I

know what I'm doing. There was another section. It was almost square

with one corner missing. Can anyone see that?"

"Check the satchel," Idaan said as Otah plucked the piece from the hem

of Eiah's robe. He pressed it into her hand. Her fingertips traced its

surface before she placed it at the bottom of the second almost-formed

tablet. Her smile was gentler than he'd seen from her since he'd walked

into the wayhouse. He touched her cheek.

"Maati doesn't know you're doing this, then?" Otah asked.

"We didn't think we'd ask him," Idaan said. "No disrespect to Eiahcha,

but that man's about half again as cracked as his poet."

"No, he isn't mad," Eiah said, her hands never slowing their dance

across the face of the broken tablets. "He's just not equal to the task

he set himself. He always meant well."

"And I'm sure the two dozen remaining Galts will feel better because of

it," Idaan said acidly. And then, in a gentler voice, "It doesn't matter

what story you tell yourself, you know. We've done what we've done."

"I wish you would stop that," Eiah said.

Idaan's surprise was clear on her face, and apparently in her silence as

well. Eiah shook her head and went on, her tone damning and conversational.

"Every third thing you say is an oblique reference to killing my

grandfather. We all know you did the thing, and we all know you regret

it. None of this is anything to do with that. Papa-kya and Maati love

each other and they hate each other, and it doesn't pertain either.

Maati's overwhelmed by the consequences of misjudging Vanjit, and he

might not be if he weren't hauling Nayiit and Sterile and Seedless along

behind him."

Idaan looked like she'd been slapped. The armsmen were crowded so close,

Otah could hear the low flutter of the torches burning, but the men

pretended not to have heard.

"The past doesn't matter," Eiah said. "A hundred years ago or last

night, it's all just as gone. I have a binding to work, and I'd like to

make the attempt before Vanjit blinds Maati and walks him off something

tall. I think we have something like half a hand."

They worked together in silence, three pairs of hands putting the wax

into place quickly. There were still sections missing, and some parts of

the tablets were shattered so thoroughly that Eiah's markings were all

but lost. His daughter passed her fingertips slowly over each of the

surfaces, her brow furrowed, her lips moving as if reciting something

under her breath. Whether it was the binding or a prayer, Otah couldn't

guess.

Idaan leaned close to Otah, her breath a warm and whispering breeze

against his ear.

"She takes the tact from her mother's side, I assume?"

His tension and fear gave the words a hilarity they didn't deserve, and

he fought to contain his laughter. The quay was dark around them; the

torches kept his eyes from adapting to the darkness. It was as if the

world had narrowed to a few feet of lichen-slicked flagstone, a single

unshuttered window in the distance, and countless, endless, unnumbered

stars.

"All right," Eiah said. "I can't be disturbed while I do this. If we

could have the armsmen set up a guard formation? It would be in keeping

with my luck to have a stray boar stumble into us at the wrong moment."

The captain didn't wait for Otah's approval. The men shifted, Idaan and

Danat with them. Only Otah stayed. As if she saw him there, Eiah took a

querying pose.

"You may die from this," he said.

"I'm aware of it," she said. "It doesn't matter. I have to try. And I

think you have to let me."

"I do," Otah agreed. Smiling, she looked young.

"I love you too, Papa-kya."

"May I sit with you?" he asked. "I don't want to distract you, but it

would be a favor."

He brushed the back of her hand with his fingertips. She took him by the

sleeve of his robe and pulled him down to sit beside her. The fingers of

her left hand laced with his right. For a moment, the only sounds were

the gentle lapping of the river against the stone, the diminished hush

of torch fire, the cooing of owls. Eiah leaned forward, her fingertips

on the first tablet. Otah let go, and both of her hands caressed the

wax. She began to chant.

The words were only words. He recognized a few of them, some phrases.

Her voice went out on the cool night air as she moved slowly across each

of the shattered tablets. When she reached the end, she went back to the

beginning.

Though there were no walls or cliffs to sound against, her voice began

first to resonate and then to echo.

30

Maati traveled through the darkness alone. The sense of unreality was

profound. He had refused Otah Machi, Emperor of the Khaiem. He had

refused Otah-kvo. For years, perhaps a lifetime, he had admired Otah or

else despised him. Maati had broken the world twice, once in Otah's

service, and now, through Vanjit, in opposition to him. But this once,

Otah had been wrong, and he had been right, and Otah had acknowledged it.

How strange that such a small moment should bring him such a profound

sense of peace. His body itself felt lighter, his shoulders more nearly

square. To his immense surprise, he realized he had shed a burden he'd

been carrying unaware for most of his life.

Maati traveled through the darkness of Udun alone, because he had chosen to.

The brown vines and bare branches stirred in a soft breeze. The flutter

of wings came from all around him, from nowhere. The air was cold enough

to make his breath steam, and the voice of the river was a constant

hush. With each step, some new detail of his path would come clear: an

axe consumed by rust, a door still hanging from rotten leather hinges,

the green-glowing eyes of some small predator. Cracks appeared in the

paving stones, running out before him as if his passage were corrupting

the city rather than revealing the decay already there.

He and Vanjit carried a history together. They had known each other, had

helped each other. She would see that it was the andat's intervention

that had turned him against her. The palaces of the Khai Udun grew

taller and taller without ever seeming to come close until, it seemed

between one breath and the next, he stepped into a grand courtyard. Moss

and lichen had almost obscured the swirling design of white and red and

gold stones. Maati paused, his lantern held over his head.

Once, it would have been a breathtaking testament to power and ingenuity

and overwhelming confidence. Columns rose into the black air. Statues of

women and men and beasts towered over the entranceway, the bronze lost

under green and gray. He walked alone into a welcoming chamber too vast

for his lantern to penetrate. There was no ceiling, no walls. The river

was silent here. Far above, wings fluttered in still air.

Maati took a deep breath-dust and rot and, after a decade and a half of

utter ruin, still the faint scent of smoke. It smelled like the corpse

of history.

He walked forward over parquet of ebony and oak, the pattern ruined and

pieces pried up by water and time. He expected his footsteps to echo,

but no sound he made returned to him.

A light glimmered high up and to his left. Maati stopped. He lowered his

lantern and raised it again. The glimmer didn't shift. Not a reflection,

then. Maati angled toward it.

A great stone stairway swept up in the gloom, a single candle burning at

its top. Maati made his way slowly enough to keep from tiring. The hall

that opened before him was not as numbingly huge as the first chamber;

Maati could make out the ceiling, and that the walls existed. And far

down it, another light.

The carpets underfoot had rotted to scraps years before. The shattered

glass and fallen crystal might have been the damage of the elements or

of the city's fall. The next flight of stairs-equally grand and equally

arduous-could only have been a testament to that first violence, long

ago. A human skull rested at the center of every step, shadows moving in

the sockets as Maati passed them. He hoped the Galts had left the grim

markers, but he didn't believe it.

Here, Vanjit was saying, each of these is a life the soldiers of Galt

ended. They were her justification. Her honor guard.

He should have guessed where the candles were leading him. The grand

double doors of the Khai's audience chamber stood closed, but light

leaked through at the seams. After so long in the dark, he halfexpected

them to open onto a fire.

In its day, the chamber must have inspired awe. In its way, it still

did. The arches, the angles of the walls, the thin ironwork as delicate