steamcarts, packing what little equipment they had used, and preparing
themselves for the road. The sky was white where it wasn't gray, the
snow blurring the horizon. Ashti Beg sat alone beside the great bronze
doors that had once opened only for the Dai-kvo. They were stained with
verdigris and stood ajar. No one besides Otah saw the significance of it.
Midmorning saw a thinning of the clouds, a weak, pale blue forcing its
way through the very top of the sky's dome. The horses were in harness,
the carts showing their billows of mixed smoke and steam, and everything
was at the ready except Idaan and Ana. The armsmen waited, ready to
leave. Otah and Danat went back.
Otah found the pair in a large room. Ana, sitting on an ancient bench,
had bent forward. Tears streaked the girl's cheeks, her hair was a wild
tangle, and her hands clasped until the fingertips were red and the
knuckles white. Idaan stood beside her, arms crossed and eyes as bleak
as murder. Before Otah could announce himself, Idaan saw him. His sister
leaned close to the Galtic girl, murmured something, listened to the
soft reply, and then marched to the doorway and Otah's side.
"Is there ... is something the matter?" Otah asked.
"Of course there is. How long have you been traveling with that girl?"
"Since Saraykeht," Otah said.
"Have you noticed yet that she isn't a man?" Idaan's voice was sharp as
knives. "Tell the armsmen to stand down. Then bring me a bowl of snow."
"What's the matter?" Otah demanded. And then, "Is it her time of the
month? Does she need medicine?"
Idaan looked at him as if he had asked what season came after spring:
pitying, incredulous, disgusted.
"Get me some snow. Or, better, some ice. Tell your men that we'll be
ready in a hand and a half, and for all the gods there ever were, keep
your son away from her until we can put her back together. The last
thing she needs is to feel humiliated."
Otah took a pose that promised compliance, but then hesitated. Idaan's
dark eyes flashed with something that wasn't anger. When she spoke, her
voice was lower but no softer.
"How have you spent a lifetime in the company of women and learned
nothing?" she asked, and, shaking her head, turned back to Ana.
True to her word, a hand and a half later, Ana and Idaan emerged from
the school as if nothing strange had happened. Ana's outer robe was
changed to a dark wool, and she leaned on Idaan's arm as she stepped up
to the bed of the steamcart. Danat moved forward, but Idaan's scowl
drove him back. The two women made their slow way to the shed, where
Idaan closed the door behind them.
The men steering the carts called out to one another, voices carrying
like crows' calls in the empty landscape. The carts stuttered and
lurched, and turned to the east, tracking back along the path to the
high road between ruined Nantani and Pathai, from which they'd come.
Otah rode down the path he'd walked as a boy, searching his mind for
some feeling of kinship with his past, but the world as it was demanded
too much of him. He searched for some memory deep within him of the
first time he'd walked away from the school, of leaving everything he'd
known, rejected, behind him.
His mind was knotted with questions of how to find the poet, how to
persuade her to do as he asked, what Idaan had meant, what was wrong
with Ana, whether the steamcarts had enough fuel, and a growing ache in
his spine that came from too many days riding horses he didn't know.
There was no effort to spare for the past. Whatever he didn't remember
now of his original flight from the school he likely never would. The
past would be lost, as it always was. Always. He didn't bother trying to
hold it.
They made better time than he had expected, starting as late as they
had. By the time they stopped for the night, the high road was behind
them. The fastest route to Utani would be overland to the Qiit, then by
boat up the river. Any hope they had of overtaking Maati and Eiah would
come on the roads, where the steamcarts gave Otah an advantage. They
would have to sleep in the open more than if they had kept to wider
roads, and the rough terrain increased the possibility of the carts
breaking or getting stuck. Even of the boiler bursting and killing
anyone too near it. But Idaan's voice spoke in Otah's mind of the next
day, and the next, and the next, so he pushed them and himself.
Four of the armsmen rode ahead in the lowering gloom of night to scout
out the next day's path. The others prepared a simple meal of pork and
rice, Ashti Beg sitting with them and trading jokes. Danat's slow cir
cling of their camp took the name of defense but seemed more to be
avoiding the still-closed shed where Idaan and Ana rested. Otah sat
alone near the steamcart's kiln, reflecting that it was very much like
his son to shift between noble dedication in the morning and childish
pouting as night came on. He had been much the same as a young man, or
imagined that he had.
The door opened, Ana's laughter spilling out into the night. Idaan led
the girl forward, letting Ana keep a careful grip on her. Her dark eyes
and Ana's unfocused gray ones were both light and merry. Ana's hair had
been combed and braided in the style of children in the winter cities.
In the dim moonlight, it made Ana seem hardly more than a girl.
Idaan steered the girl to the cart's front and helped her sit beside
Otah. He coughed once to make sure the girl knew he was there, but she
seemed unsurprised at the sound. Idaan placed a hand on the back of the
girl's neck.
"I'll go get some food," Idaan said. "My brother here should be able to
keep you out of trouble for that long."
Ana took a pose that offered thanks. She did a creditable job of it.
Idaan snorted, patted the girl's neck, and lowered herself to the
ground. Otah heard her footsteps crushing the snow as she walked away.
"Ana-cha," Otah said. His voice was more tentative than he liked. "I
hope you're well?"
"Fine," she said. "Thank you. I'm sorry I delayed things today. It won't
happen again."
"Hardly worth thinking about," Otah said, relieved that her infirmity
had passed. Grief, he suspected, over what the poet had done to her, to
her family, her nation.
"I misjudged you," Ana said. "I know it seems like everything we do is
another round of apology, but I am sorry for it."
"It might be simpler to agree to forgive each other in advance," Otah
said, and Ana laughed. It was a warmer sound than he'd expected. A
tension he hadn't known he felt lessened and he smiled into the glowing
coals of the kiln. "It is fair to ask in what manner you judged me poorly?"
"I thought you were cold. Hard. You have to understand, I grew up with
monster stories about the Khaiem and the andat."
"I do," Otah said, sighing. "I look back, and I suspect that more than