Rich and poor, utkhaiem and laborer, none had been spared. What
survivors there were had abandoned their city's grave, leaving it to the
birds. Udun had died, and with it-among unnumbered others-the poet
Vanjit's parents and siblings and some part of her soul.
And so, Maati argued, it was where she would return now.
"It's plausible," Eiah said. "Vanjit's always thought of herself as a
victim. This would help her to play the role."
"How far would it be from here?" Danat asked.
Otah, his mind already more than half in the past, calculated. They were
six days south of Utani on this steamcart for water. Udun had been a
week's ride or ten days walking south from Utani....
"She could reach it in three days," Otah said, "if she knew where she
was headed. There are more than enough streams and creeks feeding the
river here. Water wouldn't be a problem."
"If we go there now, we might reach it before she does," Idaan said,
looking out over the river.
"The camp's still the better wager," Danat said. "It's where she parted
ways with them. They left their sleeping tents, so there's shelter of a
sort. And it doesn't require walking anywhere."
Maati started to object, but Otah raised his hand.
"It's along the way," Otah said. "We'll stop there and look. If she's
been to the camp, we should be able to tell. If not, we won't have lost
more than half a day."
Maati straightened as if the decision were a personal insult, turned and
walked back to the stern of the boat. Time had not been gentle to the
man. Hard fat had thickened his chest and belly. His skin was gray where
it wasn't flushed. Maati's long, age-paled hair had an unhealthy yellow,
and his movements were labored as if he woke every morning tired. And
his mind ...
Otah turned back to the water, the trees, the soft wind. The white haze
of sky was darkening as the day wore on, the scent of rain on the air.
The others-Idaan, Danat, Eiah, Ana-moved away quietly, as if afraid
their conversation might move him to violence. Otah breathed in and out,
slow and deep, until both his disgust and his pity had faded.
Maati had lost the right to feel anger when his pupil had killed Galt,
and any sentimental connection between Otah and his once-friend had
drowned outside Chaburi-Tan. If Maati thought that stopping at the camp
was a poor decision, he could make his case or he could choke on it. It
was the same to Otah.
In the event, they lost more than half a day. Maati identified the wrong
stretches of river twice, and Eiah had no eyes to correct him. When at
last they found the abandoned campsite, a soft, misting rain had started
to fall and the daylight was beginning to fail them. Maati led the way
into the small clearing, walking slowly. Otah and two of the armsmen
were close behind. Eiah had insisted that she come as well, and Idaan
was helping her, albeit more slowly.
"Well," Otah said, standing in the middle of the ruins. "I think we can
fairly say that she's been here."
The camp was destroyed. The thick canvas sleeping tents lay in shreds
and knots. Stones and ashes from the fire pit had been strewn about, and
two leather bags lay empty in the mud. One of the armsmen crouched on
his heels and pointed to a slick of black mud. A footprint no longer
than Otah's thumb. Idaan's steps squelched as she paced near the ruined
fire pit. Maati sat on a patch of crushed grass, his hem dragging in the
mud, his face a mask of desolation.
"Back to the boat, I think," Otah said. "I can't see staying on here."
"We may still beat her to Udun," Idaan said, prying the gray wax shards
that had been Eiah's binding from the muck. "She spent a fair amount of
time doing this. Tents like those are hard to cut through."
One of the armsmen muttered something about the only thing worse than a
mad poet being a mad poet with a knife, but Otah was already on his way
back to the river.
The boatman and his second had fitted poles into thick iron rings all
along the boat's edge and raised a tarp that kept the deck near to dry.
As darkness fell and the rain grew heavier, the drops overhead sounded
like fingertips tapping on wood. The kiln had more than enough coal. The
wide-swung doors lit the boat red and orange, and the scent of pigeons
roasting on spits made the night seem warmer than it was.
Maati had returned last, and spent the evening at the edge of the light.
Otah saw Eiah approach him once, a few murmured phrases exchanged, and
she turned back to the sound of the group eating and talking in the
stern. If Idaan hadn't risen to lead her back, he would have. The
boatman's second handed her a tin bowl, bird's flesh gray and steaming
and glistening with fat. Otah shifted to sit at her side.
"Father," Eiah said.
"You knew it was me?"
"I'm blind, not dim," Eiah said tartly. She plucked a sliver of meat
from her bowl and popped it into her mouth. She looked tired, worn thin.
He could still see the girl she had been, hiding beneath the time and
age. He felt the urge to stroke her hair the way he had when she was an
infant, to be her father again.
"This is, I assume, when you point out how much better your plan was
than my own," she said.
"I didn't intend to, no," Otah said.
Eiah turned to him, shifting her weight as if she had some angry retort
that had stuck in her throat for want of opposition. When he spoke, he
was quiet enough to keep the conversation as near to between only the
two of them as the close quarters would allow.
"We each did our best," Otah said. "We did what we could."
He put his arm around her. She bit down on her lip and fought the sobs
that shook her body like tiny earthquakes. Her fingers found his own,
and squeezed as hard as a patient under a physician's blade. He made no
complaint.
"How many people have I killed, Papa-kya? How many people have I killed
with this?"
"Hush," Otah said. "It doesn't matter. Nothing we've done matters. Only
what we do next."
"The price is too high," Eiah said. "I'm sorry. Will you tell them that
I'm sorry?"
"If you'd like."
Otah rocked her gently, and she allowed him to do it. The others all
knew what they were saying, if not in specific, then at least the sketch
of it. Otah saw Danat's concern, and Idaan's cool evaluating glance. He
saw the armsmen turn their backs to him out of respect, and at the bow,
Maati turned his back for another reason. Otah felt a flicker of his
rage come back, a tongue of flame rising from old coals. Maati had done
this. None of it would have happened if Maati hadn't been so bent by his
own guilt or so deluded by his optimism that he ignored the dangers.
Or if Otah had found him and stopped him when that first letter had