even that would pass soon.
"And how did he die?" she asked.
"I never said he did," Maati said.
Eiah's lips bent in a frown. Her dark eyes narrowed.
"You don't tell stories where they live, Uncle Maati. You like the dead
ones."
Maati chuckled. It was a fair enough criticism, and her exasperation was
as amusing as her interest. Since she'd been old enough to read, Eiah
had haunted the library of Machi, poking here and there, reading and
being frustrated. And now that she'd reached her fourteenth summer, the
time had come for her to turn to matters of court. She was the only
daughter of the Khai Machi, and as such, a rare chance for a marriage
alliance. She would be the most valued property in the city, and worse
for her and her parents, she was more than clever enough to know it. Her
time in the library had taken on a tone of defiance, but it was never
leveled at Maati, so it never bothered him. In fact, he found it rather
delightful.
"Well," he said, settling his paunch more comfortably in the library's
deep silk-covered chair, "as it happens, his binding did fail. It was
tragic. He started screaming, and didn't stop for hours. He stopped when
he died, of course, and when they examined him afterwards, they found
slivers of glass all through his blood."
"They cut him open?"
"Of course," Maati said.
"That's disgusting," she said. "l'hen a moment later, "If someone died
here, could I help do it?"
"No one's likely to try a binding here, Eiah-kya. Only poets who've
trained for years with the I)ai-kvo are allowed to make the attempt, and
even then they're under strict supervision. Holding the andat is
dangerous work, and not just if it fails."
"'T'hey should let girls do it too," she said. "I want to go to the
school and train to he a poet."
"But then you wouldn't he your father's daughter anymore. If the
I)ai-kvo didn't choose you, you'd he one of the branded, and they'd turn
you out into the world to make whatever way you could without anyone to
help you."
"That's not true. Father was at the school, and he didn't have to take
the brand. If the Dai-kvo didn't pick me, I wouldn't take it either. I'd
just come back here and live alone like you do."
"But then wouldn't you and I)anat have to fight?"
"No," Eiah said, taking a pose appropriate to a tutor offering
correction. "Girls can't be Khai, so Danat wouldn't have to fight me for
the chair."
"But if you're going to have women be poets, why not Khaiem too?"
"Because who'd want to he Khai?" she asked and took another piece of
cake from the tray on the table between them.
The library stretched out around them-chamber after chamber of scrolls
and books and codices that were Maati's private domain. The air was rich
with the scent of old leather and dust and the pungent herbs he used to
keep the mice and insects away. Baarath, the chief librarian and Maati's
best friend here in the far, cold North, had kept it before him. Often
when Maati arrived in the morning or remained long after dark, puzzling
over some piece of ancient text or obscure reference, he would look up,
half-wondering where the annoying, fat, boisterous, petty little man had
gotten to, and then he would remember.
The fever had taken dozens of people that year. Winter always changed
the city, the cold driving them deep into the tunnels and hidden
chambers below Machi. For months they lived by firelight and in
darkness. By midwinter, the air itself could seem thick and stifling.
And illnesses spread easily in the dark and close, and Baraath had grown
ill and died, one man among many. Now he was only memory and ash. Maati
was the master of the library, appointed by his old friend and enemy and
companion Otah Machi. The Khai Machi, husband of Kiyan, and father to
this almost-woman Eiah who shared his almond cakes, and to her brother
Danat. And, perhaps, to one other.
"Maati-kya? Are you okay?"
"I was just wondering how your brother was," he said.
"Better. He's hardly coughing at all anymore. Everyone's saying he has
weak lungs, but I was just as sick when I was young, and I'm just fine."
"People tell stories," Maati said. "It keeps them amused, I suppose."
"What would happen if Danat died?"
"Your father would be expected to take a new, younger wife and produce a
son to take his place. More than one, if he could. "That's part of why
the utkhaiem are so worried about Danat. If he died and no brothers were
forthcoming, it would be had for the city. All the most powerful houses
would start fighting over who would be the new Khai. People would
probably be killed."
"Well, Danat won't die," Eiah said. "So it doesn't matter. Did you know
him?"
"Who?"
"My real uncle. Danat. The one Danat's named for?"
"No," Maati said. "Not really. I met him once."
"Did you like him?"
Maati tried to remember what it had been like, all those years ago. The
Dai-kvo had summoned him. That had been the old Dai-kvo- "Iahi-kvo. He'd
never met the new one. 'Iahi-kvo had brought him to meet the two men,
and set him the task that had ended with Otah on the chair and himself
living in the court of Machi. It had been a different lifetime.
"I don't recall liking him or disliking him," Maati said. "He was just a
man I'd met."
Eiah sighed impatiently.
""Tell me about another one," she said.
"Well. There was a poet in the First Empire before people understood
that andat were harder and harder to capture each time they escaped. He
tried to bind Softness with the same binding another poet had used a
generation before. Of course it didn't work."
"Because a new binding has to be different," Isiah said.
"But he didn't know that."
"What happened to him?"
"His joints all froze in place. He was alive, but like a statue. He
couldn't move at all."
"How did he cat?"
"He didn't. They tried to give him water by forcing it up his nostrils,
and he drowned on it. When they examined his body, all the bones were
fused together as if they had never been separate at all. It looked like
one single thing."
"That's disgusting," she said. It was something she often said. Maati
grinned.
They talked for another half a hand, Maati telling tales of failed
bindings, of the prices paid by poets of old who had attempted the
greatest trick in the world and fallen short. Eiah listened and passed
her own certain judgment. They finished the last of the almond cakes and
called a servant girl in to carry the plates away. Eiah left just as the