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
as lace that held a hundred burning candles-everything was designed to
draw the eyes to the dais, the black lacquer chair, and then out a wide,
unshuttered window that reached from ceiling to floor. The Khai would
have sat there, his city arrayed out behind him like a cloak. Now the
cloak was only darkness, and in the black chair, Clarity-of-Sight cooed.
"I didn't think you'd come," Vanjit said from the shadows behind him.
Maati startled and turned.
Exhaustion and hunger had thinned the girl. Her dark hair was pulled
back, but what few locks had escaped the bond hung limp and lank,
framing her pale face.
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Fear of justice," Vanjit said.
She stepped out into the candlelight. Her robes were silken rags,
scavenged from some noble wardrobe, fourteen years a ruin. Her head was
bowed beneath an invisible weight and she moved like an old woman bent
with the pain for years. She had become Udun. The war, the damage, the
ruin. It was her. The baby-the inhuman thing shaped like a baby-shrieked
with joy and clapped its tiny hands. Vanjit shuddered.
"Vanjit-cha," Maati said, "we can talk this through. We can ... we can
still end this well."
"You tried to murder me," Vanjit said. "You and your pet poisoner. If
you'd had your way, I would be dead now. How, Maati-kvo, do you propose
to talk that through?"
"I . . ." he said. "There must ... there must be a way."
"What was I supposed to be that I wasn't?" Vanjit asked as she walked
toward the black chair with its tiny beast. "You knew what the Galts had
done to me. Did you want me to get this power, and then forget? Forgive?
Was this supposed to be the compensation for their deaths?"
"No," Maati said. "No, of course not."
"No," she said. "Because you didn't care when I blinded them, did you?
That was my decision. My burden, if I chose to take it up. Innocent
women. Children. I could destroy them, and you could treat it as
justice, but I went too far. I blinded you. For half a hand, I turned it
against you, and for that, I deserved to die."
"The andat, Vanjit-kya," Maati said, his voice breaking. "They have
always schemed against their poets. They have manipulated the people
around them in terrible ways. Eiah and I ..."
"You hear that?" Vanjit said, scooping up Clarity-of-Sight. The andat's
black eyes met hers. "This is your doing."
The andat cooed and waved its arms. Vanjit smiled as if at some unspoken
jest, shared only between those two.
"I thought I would make the world right again," Vanjit said. "I thought
I could make a baby. Make a family."
"You thought you could save the world," Maati said.
"I thought you could," she said in a voice like cold vinegar. "Look at me.
"I don't understand," he said.
"Look."
Her face sharpened. He saw the smudge of dust along her cheek, the
stippled pores along her cheek, the individual hairs smaller than the
thinnest threads. Her eyes were labyrinths of blood mapped on the
whites, and the pupils glowed like a wolf's where the candlelight
reflected from their depths. Her skin was a mosaic, tiny scales that
broke and scattered with every movement. Insects too small to see
scuttled through the roots of her hair, her eyelashes.
Maati's stomach turned, a deep nausea taking him. He closed his eyes,
pressing his palms into the lids.
"Please," he said, and Vanjit wrenched his hands away from his face.
"Look at me!" she shouted. "Look!"
Reluctantly, slowly, Maati opened his eyes. There was too much. Vanjit
was no longer a woman but a landscape as wide as the world, moving,
breaking, shifting. Looking at her was being tossed on an infinite sea.
"Can you see my pain, Maati-kvo? Can you see it?"
No, he tried to say, but his throat closed against his illness. Vanjit
pushed him away, and he spun, a thousand details assaulting him in the
space of a heartbeat. He fell to the stone floor and retched.
"I didn't think you would," she said.
"Please," Maati said.
"You've taken it from me," Vanjit said. "You and Eiah. All the others. I
was ready to do anything for you. I risked death. I did. And you don't
even know me."
Her laugh was short and brutal.
"My eyes," he said.
"Fine," Vanjit said, and Maati's vision went away. He was once again in
the fog of blindness. "Is that better?"
Maati reached toward the sound of her voice, then stumbled. Vanjit
kicked him once in the ribs. The surprise was worse than the pain.
"There is nothing you have to teach me anymore, old man," she said.
"I've learned everything you know. I understand."
"No," Maati said. "There's more. I can tell you more. I know what it is
to lose someone you love. I know what it is to feel betrayed by the ones
you thought closest to you."
"Then you know the world isn't worth saving," Vanjit said.
The words hung in the air. Maati tried to rise, but he was short of