The crude iron bolt turned with a sound like a dropped hammer, and the
small, human-size door beside the great sliding walls intended for carts
and wagons opened. A woman's figure was silhouetted against the soft
gray light. It was neither of the Kaes, but his eyes weren't strong
enough to make out features. When she came in, closing the door behind
her, he recognized Vanjit by her gait.
"You're early, Vanjit-cha," Maati said, turning back to the wall and chalk.
"I thought I might be able to help," she said. "Are you well, Maaticha?"
Vanjit had been with him for almost a year now. She had come to his
covert school, as all the others had, through a series of happy
accidents. Another of his students-Umnit-had fallen into conversation
with her, and something had sparked between them. Umnit had presented
Vanjit as a candidate to join in their work. Reluctantly, Maati had
accepted her.
The girl had a brilliant mind, no question. But she had been a child in
Udun, the only one of her family to survive when the Galts had come, and
the memory of that slaughter still touched her eyes from time to time.
She might laugh and talk and make music, but she bore scars on her body
and in her mind. In the months he had spent working with her, Maati had
come to realize what had first unnerved him about the girclass="underline" of all the
students he had taught, she was most like him.
He had lost his family in the war as well-his almost-son Nayiit, his
lover Liat, and the man he had once thought his dearest friend. Otah,
Emperor of the Khaiem. Otah, favored of the gods, who couldn't fall down
without landing on rose petals. They had not all died, but they were all
lost to him.
"Maati-cha?" Vanjit said. "Did I say something wrong?"
Maati blinked and took a pose of query.
"You looked angry," she said.
"Nothing," Maati said, shifting the chalk to his other hand and shaking
the ache from his fingers. "Nothing, Vanjit-kya, my mind was just
wandering. Come, sit. There's nothing that you need to do, but you can
keep me company while I get ready."
She sat on the bench, one leg tucked under her. He noticed that her hair
and robe were wet from the rain. There was mud on her boots. She'd been
walking out in the weather. Maati hesitated, chalk halfway back to the
stone.
"Or," he said slowly, "perhaps I should ask if you've been well?"
She smiled and took a pose that dismissed his concerns.
"Bad dream again," she said. "That's all."
"About the baby," Maati said.
"I could feel him inside of me," she said. "I could feel his heartbeat.
It's strange. I hate dreaming about him. The nightmares that I'm back in
the war-I may scream myself awake, but at least I'm pleased that the
dream's ended. When I dream about him, I'm happy. I'm at peace. And then
..."
She gestured at the childless world around them.
"It's worse, wishing I could sleep and dream and never awake."
Maati's heart rang in sympathy, like a crystal bowl taking up the
ringing of a great bell. How many times had he dreamed that Nayiit
lived? That the world had not been broken, or, if it had, not by him?
"We'll bring him," Maati said. "Have faith. Every week, we come closer.
Once the grammar is built solidly enough, anything will be possible."
"Are we coming closer?" she asked. "Be honest, Maati-cha. Every week we
spend on this, I think we're on the edge, and every week, there's more
after it."
He tucked the chalk into his sleeve and sat at the girl's side. She
leaned forward, and he thought there was something in her expressionnot
despair and not shame, but something related to both.
"We are coming near, and we are close," he said. "I know it isn't
something you can see, but each of you knows more about the andat and
the bindings right now than I did after a year with the Dai-kvo. You're
smart and dedicated and talented. And together, we can make this work.
It sounds terrible, I know, but as soon as Siimat failed her binding and
paid the price ... I won't say I was pleased. I can't say that. She was
a brave woman, and she had a wonderful mind. I miss her. But that she
and all the others died means we are very close."
Ten bindings, ending in ten failures and ten corpses. His fallen
soldiers, Maati thought. His girls who had sacrificed themselves. And
here, wet as a canal rat and sad to her bones, Vanjit impatient to make
her own try, risk her own life. Maati took her small hand in his own.
The girl smiled at the wall.
"This will happen," he said.
"I know it," she said, her voice soft. "It's just so hard to wait when
the dream keeps coming."
Maati sat with her for a moment, only the tapping of raindrops and the
songs of birds between them. He stood, fished the chalk from his sleeve,
and went back to the wall.
"If you'd like, you could light a fire in the office grate," Maati said.
"We could surprise the others with some fresh tea."
It wasn't called for, but it gave the girl something to do. He squinted
at the figure he'd drawn until the lines came into focus. Ah, yes. Four
categories of being.
The rain slackened as the others arrived. Large Kae checked the
coverings over the windows, careful that no stray light betray their
presence, as Irit fluttered sparrowlike lighting the lanterns. Small Kae
and Ashti Beg adjusted the seats and benches, the younger woman's light
voice contrasting with her elder's dry one.
The scents of wood smoke and tea made their warehouse classroom seem
less furtive. Vanjit poured bowls for each of his students as they took
their places. The soft light darkened the stone so that the chalk marks
almost seemed written on air. Maati took a moment to himself to think of
his teachers, of their lectures. He willed himself to become one of
their number.
"The world," Maati began, "has two essential structures. There's the
physical"-he slapped the stone wall behind him-"and there's the
abstract. Two and two are always four, regardless of whether you're
talking about grains of sand or racing camels. Twelve could always be
broken into two sets of six or three sets of four long before anybody
noticed the fact. Abstract structure, you see?"
They bent toward him like flowers toward the sun. Maati saw the hunger
in their faces and the set of their shoulders.
"Now," Maati said. "Does the physical require the abstract? Come on.