you."
8
Autumn came early on the high plains. Even though the leaves were as
green, the grasses as thick, Maati felt the change. It wasn't a chill,
but the presentiment of one: a sharpness to air that had been soft and
torpid with summer heat. Another few weeks and the trees would turn to
red and gold, the mornings would come late, the sunsets early. The
endless change would change again. For the first time in years, Maati
found himself pleased by the thought.
The days following his return had fallen into a rhythm. In the mornings,
he and his students worked on the simple tasks of maintenance that the
school demanded: mending the coops for the chickens they'd brought from
Utani, weeding the paths, washing the webs and dust from the corners of
the rooms. At midday, they stopped, made food, and rested in the shade
of the gardens or on the long, sloping hills where he had taken lessons
as a boy. Afterward, he would retire for the afternoon, preparing his
lectures and writing in his book until his eyes ached and then taking a
short nap to revive before the evening lecture. And always, whatever the
day brought, the subject drew itself back to Vanjit and Clarity-ofSight.
"What about when you see things that aren't there?" Small Kae said.
"Dreams, you mean?" Eiah asked.
Maati leaned forward on the podium. The classroom was larger than they
required, all six of his students sitting in the first row. The high,
narrow windows that had never known glass let the evening breeze disturb
their lanterns. He had ended his remarks early. He found there was less
need to fill the time with his knowledge than there had once been. Now a
few remarks and comments would spur conversation and analysis that often
led far from where he had intended. But it was rarely unproductive and
never dull.
"Dreams," Small Kae said. "Or when you mistake things for other things."
"My brother had a fever once," Ashti Beg said. "Saw rats coming through
the walls for three days."
"I don't think that applies," Eiah said. "The definitions we've based
the draft on are all physicians' texts. They have to do with the actual
function of the eye."
"But if you see a thing without your eyes," Small Kae began.
"Then you're imagining them," Vanjit said, her voice calm and certain.
"And the passages on clarity would prevent the contradiction."
"What contradiction?" Large Kae asked.
"Who can answer that?" Maati said, leaping into the fray. "It's a good
question, but any of you should be able to think it through. Ashti-cha?
Would you care to?"
The older woman sucked her teeth for a moment. A sparrow flew in through
one window, its wings fluttering like a pennant in the wind, and then
out again.
"Clarity," Ashti Beg said slowly. "The sense of clarity implies that
it's reflecting the world as it is, ne? And if you see something that's
not there to be seen, it's not the world as it is. Even if imagining
something is like sight, it isn't like clarity."
"Very good," Maati said, and the woman smiled. Maati smiled back.
The binding had progressed more quickly than Maati had thought possible.
For the greatest part, the advances had been made in moments like these.
Seven minds prodding at the same thought, debating the nuances and
structures, challenging one another to understand the issues at hand
more deeply. Someone-anyone-would find a phrase or a thought that struck
sparks, and Vanjit would pull pages from her sleeve and mark down
whatever had pushed her one step nearer the edge.
It was happening less and less often. The binding, Maati knew, was
coming near its final form. The certainty in Vanjit's voice and the
angle of her shoulders told him as much about her chances of success as
looking over the details of her binding.
As they ended the evening's session, reluctant despite yawns and
heavy-lidded eyes, Maati realized that the work they were doing was less
like his own training before the Dai-kvo and more like the long, arduous
hours he had spent with Cehmai. Somehow, during his absence, they had
all become equals. Not in knowledge-he was still far and away the best
informed-but in status. Where he had once had a body of students, he was
working now with a group of novice poets. A lizard scampered along
before him and then up the rough wall and into the darkness. A
nightingale sang.
He was exhausted, his body heavy, his mind beginning to spark and slip.
And he was also elated. The wide night sky above him seemed rich with
promise, the ground he walked upon eager to bear him up.
His bed, however, didn't invite sleep. Small pains in his knees and
spine prodded him, and his mind failed to calm. The light of the
halfmoon cast shadows on the walls that seemed to move of their own
accord. The restlessness of age, as opposed, he thought with weary
amusement, to the restlessness of youth. As he lay there, small doubts
began to arise, gnawing at him. Perhaps Vanjit wasn't ready yet to take
on the role of poet. Perhaps he and Eiah in their need and optimism were
sending the girl to her death.
There was no way to know another person's heart. No way to judge. It
might be that Vanjit herself was as afraid of this as he was, but held
by her despair and anger and sense of obligation to the others to move
forward as if she weren't.
Every poet that bound an andat came face-to-face with their own flaws,
their own failures. Maati's first master, Heshai-kvo, had made Seedless
the embodiment of his own self-hatred, but that was only one extreme
example. Kiai Jut three generations earlier had bound Flatness only to
find the andat bent on destroying the family the poet secretly hated.
Magar Inarit had famously bound Unwoven only to discover his own
shameful desires made manifest in his creation. The work of binding the
andat was of such depth and complexity, the poet's true self was
difficult if not impossible to hide within it. And what, he wondered,
would Vanjit discover about herself if she succeeded? With all the hours
they had spent on the mechanics of the binding, was it not also his
responsibility to prepare the girl to face her imperfections?
His mind worried at the questions like a dog at a bone. As the moon
vanished from his window and left him with only the night candle, Maati
rose. A walk might work the kinks from his muscles.
The school was a different place at night. The ravages of war and time
were less obvious, the shapes of the looming walls and hallways familiar
and prone to stir the ancient memories of the boy Maati had been. Here,
for instance, was the rough stone floor of the main hall. He had cleaned
these very stones when his hands had been smooth and strong and free
from the dark, liver-colored spots. He stood at the place where
Milah-kvo had first offered him the black robes. He remembered both the