"Whether he existed or not," Maati said. He meant it as a joke.
"Whether he existed or not," Eiah agreed with perfect seriousness. "I've been working with these. And with Vanjit. We have a draft. You should look at it."
Maati handed her back the book and she pulled a sheaf of papers from her sleeve. Maati found himself almost hesitant to accept them. Vanjit, and her dreamed baby. Vanjit, who had lost so much in the war. He didn't want to see any of his students pay the price of a failed binding, but especially not her.
He took the papers. Eiah waited. He opened them.
The binding was an outline, but it was well-considered. The sections and relationships sketched in with commentary detailing what would go in each, often with two or three notes of possible approaches. The andat would be Clarity-of-Sight, and it would be based in the medical knowledge of Westlands physicians and the women's grammar that Maati and Eiah had been creating. Even if some Second Empire poet had managed to hold the andat before, this approach, these descriptions and sensibilities, was likely to be wholly different. Wholly new.
"Why Vanjit?" he asked. "Why not Ashti Beg or Small Kae?"
"You think she isn't ready?"
"I… I wouldn't go so far as that," Maati said. "It's only that she's young, and she's had a harder life than some. I wonder whether
…"
"None of us are perfect, Maati-kya," Eiah said. "We have to work with the people we have. Vanjit is clever and determined."
"You think she can manage it? Bind this andat?"
"I think she has the best hope of any of us. Except possibly me."
Maati sighed, nodding as much to himself as to her. Dread thickened his throat.
"Let me look at this," he said. "Let me think about it."
Eiah took a pose that accepted his command. Maati looked down again.
"Why didn't he come?" Eiah asked.
"Because," Maati began, and then found he wasn't able to answer as easily as he'd thought. He folded the papers and began to tuck them into his sleeve, remembered how wet the cloth was, and tossed them instead onto his low, wood-framed bed. "Because he didn't want to," he said at last.
"And my aunt?"
"I don't know," Maati said. "I thought for a time that she might take my side. She didn't seem pleased with how they were living. Or, no. That's not right. She seemed to care more than he did about how they would live in the future. But he wouldn't have any of it."
"He's given up," Eiah said.
Maati recalled the man's face, the lines and weariness. The authenticity of his smile. When they'd first met, Cehmai had been little more than a boy, younger than Eiah was now. This was what the world had done to that boy. What it had done to them all.
"He has," Maati said.
"Then we'll do without him," Eiah said.
"Yes," Maati said, hoisting himself up. "Yes we will, but if you'll forgive me, Eiah-kya, I think the day's worn me thin. A little rest, and we'll begin fresh tomorrow. And where's that list of questions? Ah, thank you. I'll look over all of this, and we'll decide where best to go from here, eh?"
She took his hand, squeezing his knuckles gently.
"It's good to have you back," she said.
"I'm pleased to be here," he said.
"Did you have any news of my father?"
"No," he said. "I didn't ask. It's the first rule of running a race, isn't it? Not to look back at who's behind you?"
Eiah chuckled, but didn't respond otherwise. Once she'd left and Maati had banked the fire, he sat on the bed. The night candle stood straight in its glass case, the burning wick marking the hours before dawn. It wasn't to its first-quarter mark and he felt exhausted. He moved the papers and the scroll safely off the bed, pulled the blanket up over himself, and slept better than he had in weeks, waking to the sound of morning birds and pale light before dawn.
He read over the list of questions on the scroll, only surveying them and not bothering to think of answers just yet, and then turned to the proposed binding. When he went out, following the smells of wood smoke and warmed honey, his mind was turning at twice its usual speed.
They had made a small common room from what had once been the teachers' cells, and Irit and Large Kae were sitting at the window that Maati remembered looking out when he had been a child called before Tahi-kvo. Bald, mean-spirited Tahi-kvo, who would not have recognized the world as it had become; women studying the andat in his own rooms, the poets almost vanished from the world, Galts on the way to becoming the nobles of this new, rattling, sad, stumble-footed Empire. Nothing was the same as it had been. Everything was different.
Vanjit, sitting with her legs crossed by the fire grate, smiled up at him. Maati took a pose of greeting and lowered himself carefully to her side. Irit and Large Kae both glanced at him, their eyes rich with curiosity and perhaps even envy, but they kept to their window and their conversation. Vanjit held out her bowl of cooked wheat and raisins, but Maati took a pose that both thanked and refused, then changed his mind and scooped two fingers into his mouth. The grain was rich and salted, sweetened with fruit and honey both. Vanjit smiled at him; the expression failed to reach her eyes.
"I looked over your work. Yours and Eiah-cha's," he said. "It's interesting."
Vanjit looked down, setting the bowl on the stone floor at her side. After a moment's hesitation, her hands took a pose that invited his judgment.
"I…" Maati began, then coughed, looked out past Large Kae and Irit to the bright and featureless blue of the western sky. "I don't want to hurry this. And I would rather not see any more of you pay the price of falling short."
Her mouth tightened, and her eyebrows rose as if she were asking a question. She said nothing.
"You're sure you want this?" he asked. "You have seen all the women we've lost. You know the dangers."
"I want this, Maati-kvo. I want to try this. And… and I don't know how much longer I can wait," she said. Her gaze rose to meet his. "It's time for me. I have to try soon, or I think I never will."
"If you have doubts about-"
"Not doubts. Only a little despair now and then. You can take that from me. If you let me try." Maati started to speak, but the girl went on, raising her voice and speaking faster, as if she feared what he would say next. "I've seen death. I won't say I'm not afraid of it, but I'm not so taken by the fear that I can't risk anything. If it's called for."
"I didn't think you were," he said.
"And I helped bury Umnit. I know what the price can look like. But I buried my mother and my brother and his daughter too, and they didn't die for a reason. They were only on the streets when Udun fell," she said, and shrugged. "We all die sometime, Maati-kvo. Risking it sooner and for a reason is better than being safe and meaningless. Isn't it?"
Brave girl. She was such a brave girl. To have lost so much, so young, and still be strong enough to risk the binding. Maati felt tears in his eyes and forced himself to smile.
"We chose it for you. Clarity-of-Sight," she said. "I saw how hard it is for you to read some days, and Eiah and I thought… if we could help…"
Maati laid his hand on hers, his heart aching with something equally joy and fear. Vanjit was weeping a bit as well now. He heard voices coming down the hallway-Eiah and Ashti Beg-but Irit and Large Kae were silent. He was certain they were watching them. He didn't care.
"We'll be careful," he said. "We'll make it work."
Her smile outshone the sun. Maati nodded; yes, they would attempt the binding. Yes, Vanjit would be the first woman in history to hold an andat or else the next of his students to die.