strained, he could still read what he'd written, and when the ink seemed
to blur, he had the memory of what he had put there. He reached the
blank pages sooner than he expected, and sat on his stairs, fingertips
moving over the smooth paper with a sound like skin against skin. There
was so much to say, so many things he'd thought and considered. Often,
he would come back from a particularly good lecture to his students full
of fire and intentions, prepared to write a fresh section. Sometimes his
energy lasted long enough to do so. Sometimes not.
It will be a sad legacy to die with this half-finished, he thought as he
let the cover close.
He needed a real school, the school needed a teacher, and he himself
could manage only so much. There wasn't time to lecture all his students
and write his manual and slink like a criminal through the dark corners
of the Empire. If he'd been younger, perhaps-fifty, or better yet forty
years old-he might have made the attempt, but not now. And with this mad
scheme of Otah's, time had grown even dearer.
"Maati-cha?"
Maati blinked. Vanjit came toward him, her steps tentative. He tucked
his book into its box and took a pose of welcome.
"The door wasn't bolted," she said. "I was afraid something had happened?"
"No," Maati said, rising and hoisting himself up the stairs. "I forgot
it last night. An old man getting older is all."
The girl took a pose that was both an acceptance and a denial. She
looked exhausted, and Maati suspected there were dark smudges under his
own eyes to match hers. The scent of eggs and beef caught his attention.
A small lacquer box hung at Vanjit's side.
"Ah," Maati said. "It that what I hope it is?"
She smiled at that. The girl did have a pleasant smile, when she used
it. The eggs were fresh; whipped and steamed in bright orange blocks.
The beef was rich and moist. Vanjit sat beside him in the echoing, empty
space of the warehouse as the morning light pressed in at the high,
narrow windows, blue then yellow then gold. They talked about nothing
important: the wayhouse where she was staying, his annoyance with his
failing eyes, the merits of their present warehouse as compared to the
half-dozen other places where Maati had taken up his chalk. Vanjit asked
him questions that built on what they'd discussed the night before: How
did the different forms of being relate to time? How did a number exist
differently than an apple or a man? Or a child?
Maati found himself holding forth on matters of the andat and the poets,
his time with the Dai-kvo, and even before that at the school. Vanjit
sat still, her gaze on him, and drank his words like water.
She had lost her family when she was barely six years old. Her mother,
father, younger sister, and two older brothers cut down by the gale of
Galtic blades. The pain of it had faded, perhaps. It had never gone.
Maati felt, as they sat together, that perhaps she had begun, however
imperfectly, to build a new family. Perhaps she would have sat at her
true father's knee, listening to him with this same intensity. Perhaps
Nayiit would have treated him with the same attention that Vanjit did
now. Or perhaps their shared hunger belonged to people who had lost the
first object of their love.
By the time Eiah and the others arrived in the late morning, Maati had
reached the decision that he'd fought against the whole night. He took
Eiah aside as soon as she came in.
"I have need of you," Maati said. "How much can you spirit away without
our being noticed? We'll need food and clothing and tools. Lots of
tools. And if there's a servant or slave you can trust ..."
"There isn't," Eiah said. "But things are in disarray right now. Half
the court in Nantani would chew their tongues out before offering
hospitality to a Galt. The other half are whipped to a froth trying to
get to Saraykeht before the rest. A few wagonloads here and there would
be easy to overlook."
Maati nodded, more than half to himself. Eiah took a pose of query.
"You're going to build me a school. I know where there's one to be had,
and with the others helping, it shouldn't take terribly long to have it
in order. And we need a teacher."
"We have a teacher, Maati-kya," Eiah said.
Maati didn't answer, and after a moment, Eiah looked down.
"Cehmai?" she asked.
"He's the only other living poet. The only one who's truly held one of
the andat. He could do more, I suspect, than I can manage."
"I thought you two had fallen out?"
"I don't like his wife," Maati said sourly. "But I have to try. The two
of us agreed on a way to find one another, if the need arose. I can hope
he's kept to it better than I have."
"I'll come with you."
"No," Maati said, putting a hand on Eiah's shoulder. "I need you to
prepare things for us. There's a place-I'll draw you a map to it. The
Galts attacked it in the war, killed everyone, but even if they dropped
bodies down the well, the water'll be fresh again by now. It's off the
high road between Pathai and Nantani...."
"That school?" Eiah said. "The place they sent the boys to train as
poets? That's where you want to go?"
"Yes," Maati said. "It's out of the way, it's built for itinerant poets,
and there may be something there-some book or scroll or engravings on
the walls-that the twice-damned Galts overlooked. Regardless, it's where
it all began. It's where we are going to take it all back."
3
The voyage returning Otah to the cities of the Khaiem took weeks to
prepare, and if the ships that had left Saraykeht all those months
before had looked like an invading fleet, the ones returning were a city
built on the water. The high-masted Galtic ships with their great
billowing sails dyed red and blue and gold took to the sea by the
dozens. Every great family of Galt seemed bent on sending a ship greater
than the others. The ships of the utkhaiem-lacquered and delicate and
low to the water-seemed small and awkward beside these, their newest
seafaring cousins. Birds circled above them, screaming confusion as if a
part of the coast itself had set out for foreign lands. The trees and
hills of Otah's onetime enemies fell away behind them. That first night,
the torches and lanterns made the sea appear as full of stars as the sky.
One of the small gifts the gods had granted Otah was a fondness for
travel by ship. The shifting of the deck under his feet, the vast scent
of the ocean, the call of the gulls were like visiting a place he had
once lived. He stood at the prow of the great Galtic ship given him by
the High Council for his journey home and looked out at the rising sun.
He had spent years in the eastern islands as a boy. He'd been a middling
fisherman, a better midwife's assistant, a good sailor. He had come