sense of winter moving in.
With the journey to Pathai and back, along with the trading and
provisioning, he couldn't expect Eiah's return for another ten days. He
hadn't expected to feel that burden so heavily upon him, and so both
delight and dread touched him when Small Kae interrupted his halfdoze.
"She's come back. Vanjit's been watching from the classroom, and she
says Eiah's come back. She's already turned from the high road, and if
the path's not too muddy, she'll be here by nightfall."
Maati rose and opened the shutters, as if by squinting at the gray he
could match Vanjit's sight. A gust of cold and damp pulled at the
shutter in his hand. He was half-tempted to find a cloak of oiled silk
and go out to meet her. It would be folly, of course, and gain him
nothing. He ran a hand through the thin remnants of his hair, wondering
how many days it had been since he'd bathed and shaved himself, and then
realized that Small Kae was still there, waiting for him to speak.
"Well," he said, "whatever we have that's best, let's cook it up.
Eiahcha's going to have fresh supplies, so there's no point in saving it."
Small Kae grinned, took a pose that accepted his instruction, and
bustled out. Maati turned back to the open window. Ice and mud and
gloom. And set in it, invisible to him, Eiah and news.
There was no sunset; Eiah arrived shortly after the clouds had faded
into darkness. In the light of hissing torches, the cart's wheels were
beige with mud and clay. The horse trembled with exhaustion, driven too
hard through the wet. Large Kae, clucking her tongue in disapproval,
took the poor beast off to be rubbed down and warmed while the rest of
them crowded around Eiah. She wrung the water from her hair with pale
fingers, answering the first question before it was asked.
"Ashti Beg's left. She said she didn't want to come back. We were in a
low town just south of here off the high road. She said we could talk
about it, but when I got up in the morning, she'd already gone." She
looked at Maati when she finished. "I'm sorry."
He took a pose that forgave and also diminished the scale of the thing,
then waved her in. Vanjit followed, and then Irit and Small Kae. The
meal was laid out and waiting. Barley soup with lemon and quail. Rice
and sausage. Watered wine. Eiah sat near the brazier and ate like a
woman starved, talking between mouthfuls.
"We never reached Pathai. There was a trade fair halfway to the city.
Tents, carts, the wayhouse so full they were renting out space on the
kitchen floor. There was a courier there gathering messages from all the
low towns."
"So the letters were sent?" Irit asked. Eiah nodded and scooped up
another mouthful of rice.
"Ashti Beg," Maati said. "Tell me more about her. Did she say why she left?"
Eiah frowned. Color was coming back to her cheeks, but her lips were
still pale, her hair clinging to her neck like ivy.
"It was me," Vanjit said, the andat squirming in her lap. "It's my doing."
"Perhaps, but it wasn't what she said," Eiah replied. "She said she was
tired, and that she felt we'd all gone past her. She didn't see that she
would ever complete a binding of her own, or that her insights were
particularly helping us. I tried to tell her otherwise, give her some
perspective. If she'd stayed on until the morning, perhaps I could have."
Maati sipped his wine, wondering how much of what Eiah said was true,
how much of it was being softened because Vanjit and Clarity-ofSight
were in the room. It seemed more likely to him that Ashti Beg had taken
offense at Vanjit's misstep and been unable to forgive it. He recalled
the woman's dry tone, her cutting humor. She had not been an easy woman
or a particularly apt pupil, but he believed he would miss her.
"Was there other news? Anything of the Galts?" Vanjit asked. There was
something odd about her voice, but it might only have been that
Clarity-of-Sight had started its wordless, wailing complaint. Eiah
appeared to notice nothing strange in the question.
"There would have been if I'd reached Pathai, I'd expect," she said.
"But since there would have been nothing to do about it and our business
was done early, I wanted to come back quickly."
"Ah," Vanjit said. "Of course."
Maati tugged at his fingers. There was something near disappointment in
the girl's tone. As if she had expected someone that had not arrived.
"You're ready to work again?" Small Kae said. Irit flapped a cloth at
her, and Small Kae took a pose that unasked the question. Eiah smiled.
"I've had a few thoughts," she said. "Let me look them over tonight
after we unload the cart, and we can talk in the morning."
"Oh, there's no more work for you tonight," Irit said. "You've been on
the road all this time. We can hand a few things down from a cart."
"Of course," Vanjit said. "You should rest, Eiah-kya. We'll be happy to
help."
Eiah put down her soup and took a pose that offered gratitude. Something
in the cant of her wrists caught Maati's attention, but the pose was
gone as quickly as it had come and Eiah was sitting back, drinking wine
and leaning her still-wet hair toward the fire. Large Kae rejoined them,
smelling of wet horse, and Eiah told the whole story again for her
benefit and then left for her rooms. Maati felt the impulse to follow
her, to speak in private, but Vanjit took him by the hand and led him
out to the cart with the others.
The supplies were something less than Maati had expected. Two chests of
salted pork, a few jars of lard and flour and sweet oil. Bags of rice.
It wasn't inconsiderable-certainly there was enough to keep them all
well-fed for weeks, but likely not months. There were few spices, and no
wine. Large Kae made a few small remarks about the failures of low-town
trade fairs, and the others chuckled their agreement. The rain
slackened, and then, as Vanjit balanced the last bag of rice on one hip
and Clarity-of-Sight on the other, snow began to fall. Maati went back
to his rooms, heated a kettle over his fire, and debated whether to try
to boil enough water for a bath. Immersion was the one way he was sure
he could chase the cold from his joints, but the effort required seemed
worse than enduring the chill. And there was an errand he preferred to
complete.
Light glowed through the cracks around Eiah's door. Dim and flickering,
it was still more than a single night candle would have made. Maati
scratched at the door. For a moment, nothing happened. Perhaps Eiah had
taken to her cot. Perhaps she was elsewhere in the school. A soft sound,
no more than a whisper, drew him back to the door.
"Eiah-kya?" he said, his voice low. "It's me."
Her door opened. Eiah had changed into a simple robe of thick wool, her
hair tied back with a length of twine. She looked powerfully like her