wishing for his son to be alive, or Liat at his side, or any of the
thousand regrets of his past to be unmade.
Now it was not only possible but perhaps even wise. Another letter, sent
by fast courier, announcing that Maati had succeeded and made himself
the new Dai-kvo, and Otah would have no choice but to honor him. He
could almost hear the apology now, sweeter for coming from the lips of
an emperor.
"It's a kind thought, but no," Eiah said. "It's too big a risk."
"I don't see how," Maati said, frowning.
"Vanjit's one woman, and binding an andat doesn't mean that a good man
and a sharp knife can't end you," Eiah said. "And she may slip, at which
point half the world will want our heads on sticks, just to be sure it
doesn't happen again. Once we've managed a few more, it will be safe.
And Wounded can't wait."
"If you heal all the women of the cities, they'll know we've bound an
andat," Maati said. "It will be just as clear a message as sending a
letter. And by your argument, just as dangerous."
"If they wait until after I've given back the chance of bearing
children, the Galts can kill me," Eiah said. "It will be too late to
matter."
"You don't believe that," Maati said, aghast. Eiah smiled and shrugged.
"Perhaps not," she agreed. "Say rather, if I'm going to die, I'd rather
it was after I'd finished this."
Maati put a hand on her shoulder, then let his arm fall to his side.
Eiah described the issues of the binding that troubled her most. To pull
a thought from abstraction into concrete form required a deep
understanding of the idea's limits and consequences. To bind Wounded,
Eiah needed to find the common features of a cut finger and a burned
foot, the difference between a tattooing quill and a rose thorn, the
definitions that kept the thought small enough for a single mind to
encompass.
"Take Vanjit's work," Eiah said. "Your eyes were never burned. No one
cut them or bruised them. But they didn't see as well as when you were
young. So there must have been some damage to them. So are the changes
of age wounds? White hair? Baldness? When a woman loses her monthly
flow, is it because she's broken?"
"You can't consider age," Maati said. "For one thing, it muddies the
water, and for another, I will swear to you that more than one poet has
reached for Youth-Regained or some such."
"But how can I make that fit?" Eiah said. "What makes an old man's
failing hip different from a young girl's bruised one? The speed of the
injury?"
"The intention," Maati said, and touched a line of symbols. His finger
traced the strokes of ink, pausing from time to time. He could feel
Eiah's attention on him. "Here. Change ki to toyaki. Wounds are either
intentional or accident. Toyaki includes both senses."
"I don't see what difference it makes," Eiah said.
"Ki also includes a nuance of proper function. Behavior that isn't
misadventure or conscious intention, but a product of design," Maati
said. "If you remove that ..."
He licked his lips, his fingers closing in the air above the page. Once,
many years before, he had been asked to explain why the poets were
called poets. He remembered his answer vaguely. That the bindings were
the careful shaping of meaning and intention, that makers or
thought-weavers were just as apt. It had been a true answer for as far
as it went.
And also, sometimes, the grammar of a binding would say something
unexpected. Something half-known, or half-acknowledged. A profound
melancholy touched him.
"You see, Eiah-cha," he said, softly, "time is meant to pass. The world
is meant to change. When people fade and die, it isn't a deviation. It's
the way the world is made."
He tapped the symbol ki.
"And that," he said, "is where you make that distinction."
Eiah was silent for a moment, then drew a pen from her sleeve and a
small silver ink box. With a soft pressure, gentler than rain on leaves,
she added the strokes that remade the binding.
"You accept my argument, then?" Maati asked.
"I have to," Eiah said. "It's why we're here, isn't it? Sterile didn't
add anything to the world, it only broke the way humanity renews itself.
I've seen enough decline and death to recognize its proper place. I'm
not here to stop time or death. Just to put back the balance so that new
generations can come up fresh."
Maati nodded. When Eiah spoke, her voice sounded tired.
"I miss him," she said. He knew that she meant her father. "The last
time I saw him, he looked so old. I still picture him with dark hair. It
hasn't been like that in years, but it's what's in my mind."
"We're doing the right thing," Maati said. His voice was little more
than a whisper.
"I don't doubt it," Eiah said. "He's turned his back on a generation of
women as if their suffering were insignificant. Sexual indenture used to
be restricted to bed slaves, and he would make an industry of it if he
could. He would haul women across like bales of cotton. I hate
everything about the scheme, but I miss him."
"I do too," Maati said.
"You also hate him," she said. There was no place in this room for
half-truths.
"That too," Maati agreed.
Dinner that night was a brace of quail Large Kae had trapped. The flesh
was soft and rich. Maati sat at the head of the long table, Vanjit and
Clarity-of-Sight at the far end, and plucked the delicate bones. The
bright chattering voices of Small Kae and Irit seemed distant, the dry
wit of Ashti Beg grim. Eiah also seemed subdued, but it might only have
been that she was thinking of the binding. The meal seemed to last
forever, and yet he found himself surprised when Ashti Beg gathered up
the bowls and the talk shifted to cleanup chores.
"I don't think I can," Vanjit said, her voice apologetic. "I assumed
that we had changed the rotation."
"We skipped you last time, if that's what you mean," Ashti Beg said. "I
don't know if that's the same as agreeing to wait on you."
There was laughter in the older woman's voice, but it had teeth. Small
Kae was smiling a fixed smile and staring at the table. If he hadn't
been so distracted, Maati would have seen this coming before it arrived.
"I don't think I can, though," Vanjit said, still firmly in her seat.
The thing on her lap shifted its gaze from the poet to Ashti Beg and
back as if fascinated.
"I seem to recall my mother keeping the house even when she had a babe
on her hip," Ashti Beg said. "But she always was unusually talented."
"I have the andat. That's more work than washing dishes," Vanjit said.
"At court, poets are forgiven other duties, aren't they, Maati-kvo?"