That's all it needs to be."
"What are you doing?" Ana asked. It seemed like a real curiosity.
"I'm curing everyone," Eiah said. "If there's a child in Bakta who split
her head on a stone this morning, I want it fixed. A man in Eymond whose
hip was broken when he was a boy and healed poorly, I want him walking
without pain in the morning. Everyone. Everywhere. Now."
"Eiah Machi," the andat said, its voice low and amused, "the little girl
who saved the world. Is that how you see it? Or is this how you
apologize for slaughtering a whole people?"
Eiah didn't speak, and the andat went still again. Anger flashed in its
eyes and Maati's hand went out, touching Eiah's. She patted him away
absently, as if he were no more than a well-intentioned dog. The andat
hissed under its breath and turned away. Maati noticed for the first
time that its teeth were pointed. Eiah relaxed. Maati sat up; his breath
had almost returned. The andat shifted to look at him. The whites of his
eyes had gone as black as a shark's; he had never seen an andat shift
its appearance before, and it filled him with sudden dread. Eiah made a
scolding sound, and the andat took an apologetic pose.
Maati tried to imagine what it would be like, a thought that changeable,
that flexible, that filled with violence and rage. How did we everthink
we could do good with these as our tools? For as long as she held the
andat, Eiah was condemned to the struggle. And Maati was responsible for
that sacrifice too.
Eiah, it seemed, had other intentions.
"That should do," she said. "You can go."
The andat vanished, its robe collapsing to the floor in a pool of blue
and gold. The scent of overheated stone came and went, a breath of hell
on the night air. The others were silent. Maati came to himself first.
"What have you done?" he whispered.
"I'm a physician," Eiah said, her tone dismissive. "Holding that
abomination the rest of my life would have gotten in the way of my work,
and who told you that you were allowed to sit up? On your back or I'll
call in armsmen to hold you down. No, don't say anything. I don't care
if you're feeling a thousand times better. Down. Now."
He lay back, staring up at the ceiling. His mind felt blasted and blank.
The enameled brick was blurred in the torchlight, or perhaps it was only
that his eyes were only what they had been. The cold air that breathed
in through the window too gently to even be a breeze felt better than he
would have expected, the stone floor beneath him more comfortable. The
voices around him were quiet with respect for his poor health or else
with awe. The world had never seen a night like this one. It likely
never would again.
She had freed it. Gods, all that they'd done, all that they'd suffered,
and she'd just freed the thing.
When Danat returned, Eiah forced half a handful of herbs more bitter
than the last into his mouth and told him to leave them under his tongue
until she told him otherwise. Idaan and one of the armsmen hauled
Vanjit's body away. They would burn it, Maati thought, in the morning.
Vanjit had been a broken, sad, dangerous woman, but she deserved better
than to have her corpse left out. He remembered Idaan saying something
similar of the slaughtered buck.
He didn't notice falling asleep, but Eiah gently shook him awake and
helped him to sit. While she compared his pulses and pressed his
fingertips, he spat out the black leaves. His mouth was numb.
"We're going to take you back down in a litter," she said, and before he
could object, she lifted her hand to his lips. He took a pose that
acquiesced. Eiah rose to her feet and walked back toward the great
bronze doors.
The footsteps behind him were as familiar as an old song.
"Otah-kvo," Maati said.
The Emperor sat on the dais, his hands between his knees. He looked pale
and exhausted.
"Nothing ever goes the way I plan," Otah said, his tone peevish. "Not ever."
"You're tired," Maati said.
"I am. Gods, that I am."
The captain of the armsmen pulled open the doors. Four men followed, a
low weaving of branches and rope between them. Eiah walked at their
side. One of the men at the rear called out, and the whole parade
stopped while the captain, cursing, retied a series of knots. Maati
watched them as if they were dancers and gymnasts performing before a
banquet.
"I'm sorry," Maati said. "This wasn't what I intended."
"Isn't it? I thought the hope was to undo the damage we did with
Sterile, no matter what the price."
Maati started to object, then stopped himself. Outside the great window,
a star fell. The smear of light vanished as quickly as it had come.
"I didn't know how far it would go."
"Would it have mattered? If you had known everything it would take,
would you have been able to abandon the project?" Otah asked. He didn't
sound angry or accusing. Only like a man who didn't know the answer to a
question. Maati found he didn't either.
"If I asked your forgiveness ..."
Otah was silent, then sighed deeply, his head hanging low.
"Maati-kya, we've been a hundred different people to each other, and
tonight I'm too old and too tired. Everything in the world has changed
at least twice since I woke up this morning. I think about forgiving
you, and I don't know what the word means."
"I understand."
"Do you? Well, then you've outpaced me."
The litter came forward. Eiah helped him onto the makeshift seat, rope
and wood creaking under his weight, but solid. The gait of the armsmen
swayed him like a branch in the breeze. The Emperor, they left behind to
follow in the darkness.
31
The formal joining of Ana Dasin and Danat Machi took place on Candles
Night in the high temple of Utani. The assembled nobility of Galt along
with the utkhaiem from the highest of families to the lowest firekeeper
filled every cushion on the floor, every level of balcony. The air
itself was hot as a barn, and the smell of perfume and incense and
bodies was overwhelming. Otah sat on his chair, looking out over the
vast sea of faces. Many of the Galts wore mourning veils, and, to his
surprise, the fashion had not been lost on the utkhaiem. He worried that
the mourning was not entirely for fallen Galt, but also a subterranean
protest of the marriage itself. It was only a small concern, though. He
had thousands more like it.
The Galtic ceremony-a thing of dirgelike song and carefully measured
wine spilled over rice, all to a symbolic end that escaped him-was over.
The traditional joining of his own culture was already under way. Otah
shifted, trying to be unobtrusive in his discomfort despite every eye in