While they all ate, the conversation looped around the one concern they
all shared. The Galts, the Emperor, the weather, the supplies Eiah had
brought from Pathai, the species of insect peculiar to the dry lands
around the school. Anything was a fit topic except Vanjit's binding and
the fear that lay beneath all their merriment and pleasure.
Vanjit alone seemed untouched by care. She was beautiful and, for the
first time since Maati had met her, comfortable in her beauty. Her
laughter seemed genuine and her movements relaxed. Maati thought he was
seeing confidence in her, the assurance of a woman who was about to do a
thing she had no thought might be beyond her. His opinion didn't change
until after all the bowls had been gathered and rinsed, the cored apples
and spilled grain swept up and carried away to the pit in the back of
the school, when she took him by the hand and led him gently aside.
"I wanted to thank you," she said as they reached the bend of the wide
hallway.
"I can't see I've done anything worth it," he said. "If anything, I
should be offering you ..."
There were tears brimming in her eyes, the shining water threatening her
kohl. Maati took the end of his sleeve and dabbed her eyes gently. The
brown cloth came away stained black.
"After Udun," Vanjit began, then paused. "After what the Galts did to my
brothers ... my parents. I thought I would never have a family again. It
was better that there not be anyone in my life that I cared for enough
that it would hurt me to lose them."
"Ah, now. Vanjit-kya. You don't need to think of that now."
"But I do. I do. You are the closest thing I've had to a father. You are
the most dedicated man I have ever known, and it has been an honor to be
allowed a place in your work. And I've broken the promise I made myself.
I will miss you."
Maati took a pose that both disagreed and asked for clarification.
Vanjit smiled and shook her head, the beads and shells in her braids
clicking like claws on stone. He waited.
"We both know that the chances are poor that I'll see the sunset," she
said. Her voice was solemn and composed. "This grammar we've made is a
guess. The forces at play are deadlier than fires or floods. If I were
someone else, I wouldn't wager a length of copper on my chances if you
offered me odds."
"That isn't true," Maati said. He hadn't meant to shout, and lowered his
voice when he spoke again. "That isn't true. We've done good work here.
The equal of anything I learned from the Dai-kvo. Your chances are equal
to the best any poet has faced. I'll swear to that if you'd like."
"There's no call," she said. From down the hall, he heard voices in
bright conversation. He heard laughter. Vanjit took his hand. He had
never noticed how small her hands were. How small she was, hardly more
than a child herself.
"Thank you," she said. "Whatever happens, thank you. If I die today,
thank you. Do you understand?"
"No."
"You've made living bearable," she said. "It's more than I can ever repay.
"You can. You can repay all of it and more. Don't die. Succeed."
Vanjit smiled and took a pose that accepted instruction, then moved
forward, wrapping her arms around Maati in a bear hug. He cradled her
head on his breast, his eyes pressed closed, his heart sick and anxious.
The chamber they had set aside for the binding had once been the
sleeping room for one of the younger cohorts. The lines of cots were
gone now. The windows shone with the light of middle morning. Vanjit
took a round of chalk and began writing out her binding on the wide
south wall, ancient words and recent blending together in the new
grammar they had all created. From Maati's cushion at the back of the
room, the letters were blurry and indistinct, but from their shape
alone, he could see that the binding had shifted since the last time
he'd seen it.
Eiah sat at his side, her hand on his arm, her gaze fixed on the
opposite wall. She looked half-ill.
"It's going to be all right," Maati murmured.
Eiah nodded once, her eyes never leaving the pale words taking over the
far wall like a bright shadow. When Vanjit was finished, she walked to
the beginning again, paced slowly down the wall reading all she'd
written, and then, satisfied, put the chalk on the ground. A single
cushion had been placed in the middle of the room for her. She stopped
at it, her binding behind her, her face turned toward the small assembly
at the back. She took a silent pose of gratitude, turned, and sat.
Maati had a powerful urge to stand, to call out. He could wash the wall
clean, talk through the binding again, check it for errors one last
time. Vanjit began to chant, the cadences unlike anything he had heard
before. Her voice was soft, coaxing, gentle; she was singing her andat
into the world. He clenched his fists and stayed quiet. Eiah seemed to
have stopped breathing.
The sound of Vanjit's voice filled the air, reverberating as if the
building had grown huge. The chant began to echo, and Vanjit's actual
voice receded. Words and phrases combined, voice against echo, making
new sentences and meanings. The lilt of the girl's voice fell into
harmony with itself, and Maati heard a third voice, neither Vanjit nor
her echo, but something deep and sonorous as a bell. It was reciting
syllables borrowed from the words of the binding, creating another layer
of sound and intention. The air thickened, and Vanjit's back-her
shoulders hunched, her head bowed-seemed very far away. Maati smelled
hot iron, or perhaps blood. His heart began to race with a fear he
couldn't express.
Something's wrong. T' have to stop her, he said to Eiah, but though he
could feel the words vibrate in his throat, he couldn't hear them.
Vanjit's circling voice had made a kind of silence that Maati was
powerless to break. Another layer of echoes came, the words seeming to
come before Vanjit spoke them, echoing from the other direction in time.
Beside him, Eiah's face had gone white.
Vanjit's voice spoke a single word-the last of the binding-at the same
time as all the layered echoes, a dozen voices speaking as one. The
world itself chimed, pandemonium resolving into a single harmonious
chord. The room was only a room again. When Maati stood, he could hear
the hem of his robe whispering against the stone. Vanjit sat where she
had been, her head bowed. No new form stood before her. It should have
been there.
She's failed, Maati thought. It hasn't worked, and she's paid the price
of it.
The others were on their feet, but he took a pose that commanded them to
remain where they were. This was his. However bad it was, it was his.
His belly twisted as he walked toward her corpse. He had seen the price
a failed binding exacted: always different, always fatal. And yet