When she lifted it, blocks of wax spilled out, gray and white, like
rotten ice. Maati saw bits of Eiah's writing cut into them.
"You were going to kill me," Vanjit said.
Eiah took a pose that denied the charge. The firelight flickered over
Vanjit's face, and for a moment, Maati thought the poet might believe
the lie. He cleared his throat.
"We wouldn't do that," he said.
Vanjit turned to him, her expression empty and mad. At his feet, the
andat made a sound that might have been a warning or a laugh.
"Do you think he only speaks to you?" Vanjit spat.
Maati sputtered, falling back a step when Vanjit lunged forward. She
only scooped up the andat, turned, and ran into the darkness.
Maati scrambled after her, calling her name with a deepening sense of
despair. The trees were shadows within the night's larger darkness. His
voice seemed too weak to carry more than a few paces before him. It
couldn't have been more than half a hand-less than that, certainlywhen
he stopped to catch his breath. Leaning against an ancient ash, he
realized that Vanjit was gone and he was lost, only the soft rushing of
the river away to his left still there to guide him. He picked his way
back, trying to follow the route he had taken and failing. A carpet of
dry leaves made his steps loud. Something shifted in the branches
overhead. The cold numbed his fingers and toes. The half-moon glimmering
among the branches assured him that he had not been blinded. It was the
only comfort he had.
In the end, he made his way east until he found the river, and then
south to the wide mud where the boat still rested. It was simple enough
to find the little camp after that. He tried to nurture some hope that
he would step into the circle of firelight to find Vanjit returned and,
through some unimagined turn of events, peace restored. The laughter and
soft company of the first days of the school returned; time unwound, and
his life ready to be lived again without the errors. He wanted it to be
true so badly that when he stumbled into the clearing and found Eiah and
the two Kaes seated by the fire, he almost thought they were well.
Eiah turned gray, fogged eyes toward him.
"Who's there?" she demanded at the sound of his approaching steps.
"It's me," Maati said, wheezing. "I'm fine. But Vanjit's gone."
Large Kae began to weep. Small Kae put an arm over the woman's shaking
shoulders and murmured something, her eyes closed and tearstreaked.
Maati sat at the fire. His bowl of soup had overturned.
"She's done for the three of us," Eiah said. "None of us can see at all."
"I'm sorry," Maati said. It was profoundly inadequate.
"Can you help me?" Eiah said, gesturing toward something Maati couldn't
fathom. Then he saw the pile of wax fragments. "I think I have them all,
but it's hard to be sure."
"Leave them," Maati said. "Let them go."
"I can't," Eiah said. "I have to try the thing. I can do it now. Tonight."
Maati looked at her. The fire popped, and she shifted her head toward
the sound. Her jaw was set, her gray eyes angry. The cold wind made her
robes flutter at her ankles like a flag.
"No," he said. "You can't."
"I have been studying this for weeks," Eiah said, her voice sharpening.
"Only help me put these back together, and I can ..."
"You can die," Maati said. "I know you've changed the binding. You won't
do this. Not until we can study it. Too much rides on Wounded to rush
into the binding in a panic. We'll wait. Vanjit may come back."
"Maati-kvo-" Eiah began.
"She is alone in the forest with nothing to sustain her. She's cold and
frightened and betrayed," Maati said. "Put yourself in her place. She's
discovered that the only friends she had in the world were planning to
kill her. The andat must certainly be pushing for its freedom with all
its power. She didn't even have the soup before she went. She's cold and
hungry and confused, and we are the only place she can go for help or
comfort."
"All respect, Maati-kvo," Small Kae said, "but that first part was along
the lines that you were going to kill her. She won't come back."
"We don't know that," Maati said. "We can't yet be sure."
But morning came without Vanjit. The sky became a lighter black, and
then gray. Morning birds broke into their chorus of chatters and
shrieks; finches and day larks and other species Maati couldn't name.
The trees deepened, rank after ragged rank becoming first gray and then
brown and then real. Poet and andat were gone into the wild, and as the
dawn crept up rosy and wild in the east, it became clear they were not
going to return.
Maati built a small fire from last night's embers and brewed tea for the
four of them still remaining. Large Kae wouldn't stop crying despite
Small Kae's constant attentions. Eiah sat wrapped in her robes from the
previous night. She looked drawn. Maati pressed a bowl of warm tea into
her hand. Neither spoke.
At the end, Maati took the belts from their spare robes and used them to
make a line. He led Eiah, Eiah led Small Kae, and Small Kae led Large
Kae. It was the obscene parody of a game he'd played as a child, and he
walked the path back to the boat, calling out the obstacles he
passed-log, step down, be careful of the mud. They left the sleeping
tents and cooking things behind.
To Maati's surprise, the boat was already floating. The boatman and his
second were moving over the craft with the ease and silence of long
practice. When he called out, the boatman stopped and stared. The man's
mouth gaped in surprise; the first strong reaction Maati had seen from him.
"No," the boatman said. "This wasn't the agreement. Where's the other
one? The one with the babe?"
"I don't know," Maati called out. "She left in the night."
The second, guessing the boatman's mind, started to pull in the plank
that bridged boat and sticky, dark mud. Maati yelped, dropped Eiah's
lead, and lumbered out into the icy flow, grabbing at the retreating wood.
"We didn't contract for this," the boatman said. "Missing girls, blinded
ones? No, there wasn't anything about this."
"We'll die if you leave us," Eiah said.
"That one can see after you," the boatman called, gesturing pointlessly
at Maati, hip deep in river mud. It would have been comic if it had been
less terrible.
"He's old and he's dying," Eiah said, and lifted her physician's satchel
as if to prove the gravity of her opinion. "If he has an attack, you'll
be leaving all the women out here to die."
The boatman scowled, looking from Maati to Eiah and back. He spat into
the river.
"To the first low town," he said. "I'll take you that far, and no farther."