Seasons Of War Part 70

'Right, then,' Maati said, and turned down the road before the woman could raise some fresh objection.

It was only a decade and a half since the war. It seemed like days ago that Maati had been the librarian of Machi. And yet the white-barked tree that split the road before them, street cobbles shattered and lifted by its roots, hadn't existed then. The ca.n.a.ls he walked past had run clean. There had been no moss on the walls. Udun had been alive, then. The forest and the river were eating the city's remains, and it seemed to have happened in the s.p.a.ce between one breath and the next. Or perhaps the library, the envoys from the Dai-kvo, the long conversations with Cehmai-kvo and Stone-Made-Soft had been part of some other lifetime.

The sound was low and violent - something thrashing against wood or stone. Maati looked around him. The square they'd come to was paved in wide, flat stones, tall gra.s.s a yellow gray at the joints. A ruined fountain with black muck where clear water had been squatted in the center. Idaan's bow was in her hands, an arrow between her fingers.

'What was that?' Maati asked.

Idaan's dark eyes swept over the ruins, and Maati tried to follow her gaze. They might have been houses or businesses or something of both. The sound came again. From his left and ahead. Idaan moved forward cat-quiet, her bow at the ready. Maati stayed behind her, but close. He remembered that he had a blade at his belt and drew it.

The buck was in a small garden with an iron fence overgrown now with flowering ivy. Its side was cut, the fur black with dried blood and flies. The n.o.ble rack of horns was broken on one side, ending in a cruel, jagged stump. As Idaan stepped near, it moved again, lashing out at the fence with its feet, and then hung its head. It was an image of exhaustion and despair.

And its eyes were gray and sightless.

'Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' Idaan said. The buck raised its head, snorting. Maati gripped the handle of his blade, readying himself for something, though he wasn't certain what. Idaan raised her bow with something akin to disgust on her face. The first arrow sunk deep into the neck of the once-proud animal. The buck bellowed and tried to run, fouling itself in the fence, the vines. It slipped to its knees as Idaan sank another arrow into its side. And then a third.

It coughed and went still.

'Well, I think we can say how your little poet girl was planning to get food,' Idaan said, her voice acid. 'Cripple whatever game she came across and then let it beat itself to death. She's quite the hunter.'

She slung the bow back over her shoulder, walking carefully into the trampled garden. Flies rose from the beast in a buzzing cloud. Idaan ignored them, putting her hand on the dead buck's flank.

'It's a waste,' she said. 'If I had rope and the right knife we could at least dress him and eat something fresh tonight. I hate leaving him for the rats and the foxes.'

'Why did you kill him then?'

'Mercy. You were right, though. Vanjit's in the city somewhere. That was a good call.'

'I'm half-sorry I said anything,' Maati said. 'You'd kill her just as quickly, wouldn't you?'

'You think you can romance her into taking back her curse. I'm no one to keep you from trying.'

'And then?'

'And then we follow the same plan each of us had. It's the one thing we agree upon. She's too dangerous. She has to die.'

'I know what I intended. I know what Eiah and I were planning. But that was the andat's scheme. I think there may be another way.'

Idaan looked up, then stood. The bow was still in her hand.

'Can you give her her parents back?' she asked. 'Can you give her the brothers and sisters she lost? Udun. Can you rebuild it?'

Maati took a pose that dismissed her questions, but Idaan stepped close to him. He could feel her breath against his face. Her eyes were cold and dark.

'Do you think that Galt died blind because of something you can remedy?' she demanded. 'What's happened, happened. You can't will her to be the woman you hoped she was. Telling yourself that you can is worse than stupidity.'

'If she puts it to rights,' Maati said, 'she shouldn't have to die.'

Idaan narrowed her eyes, tilted her head.

'I'll offer you this,' she said. 'If you can talk the girl into giving Galt back its eyes - and Eiah and Ashti Beg. Everyone. If you can do that and also have her release her andat, I won't be the one who kills her.'

'Would Otah let her live?' Maati asked.

'Ask him and he might,' Idaan said. 'Experience suggests he and I have somewhat different ideas of mercy.'

At midday, they returned to their camp. The boat was tied up at an old quay slick with mold. The scent of the river was rich and not entirely pleasant. Two of the other scouting parties had returned before them; Danat and one of the armsmen were still in the city but expected back shortly. Otah, in a robe of woven silk under a thicker woolen outer robe, sat at a field table on the quayside, sketching maps of the city from memory. Idaan made her report, Maati silent at her side. He tried to imagine asking Otah for clemency on Vanjit's behalf. If Maati could persuade her to restore sight to everyone she'd injured and release the andat, would Otah honor Idaan's contract? Or, phrased differently, if Maati couldn't save the world, could he at least do something to redeem this one girl?

He didn't ask it, and Idaan didn't raise the issue.

After Danat and the armsman returned, they all ate a simple meal of bread and dried apples. Danat, Otah, and the captain of the guard consulted with one another over Otah's sketched maps, planning the afternoon's search. Idaan tended to Ana; their laughter seemed incongruous in the grim air of their camp. Eiah sat by herself at the water's edge, her face turned up toward the sun. Maati went to her side.

'Did you drink your tea this morning?' she asked.

'Yes,' he lied petulantly.

'You need to,' she said. Maati shrugged and tossed the last round of dried apple into the water. It floated for a moment, the pale flesh looking nearly white on the dark water. A turtle rose from beneath and bit at it. Eiah held out her hand, palm up, fingers beckoning. Maati was vaguely ashamed of the relief he felt taking her hand in his own.

'You were right,' Maati confessed. 'I still want to save Vanjit. I know better. I do, but the impulse keeps coming back.'

'I know it does,' Eiah said. 'You have a way of seeing things the way you'd prefer them to be rather than the way they are. It's your only vice.'

'Only?'

'Well, that and lying to your physician,' Eiah said, lightly.

'I drink too much sometimes.'

'When was the last time?'

Maati shrugged, a smile tugging at his mouth.

'I used to drink too much when I was younger,' he said. 'I still would, but I've been busy.'

'You see?' Eiah said. 'You had more vices when you were young. You've grown old and wise.'

'I don't think so. I don't think you can mention me and wisdom in the same breath.'

'You aren't dead. There's time yet.' She paused, then asked, 'Will they find her?'

'If Otah-kvo's right, and she wants us to,' Maati said. 'If she doesn't want to be found, we might as well go home.'

Eiah nodded. Her grip tightened for a moment, and she released his hand. Her brow was furrowed with thought, but it was nothing she chose to share. Don't leave me, he wanted to say. Don't go back to Otah and leave me by myself. Or worse, with only Vanjit. In the end, he kept his silence.

His second foray into the city came in the middle of the afternoon. This time they had set paths to follow, rough-drawn maps marked with each pair's route, and Maati was going out with Danat. They would come back three hands before sunset unless some significant discovery was made. Maati accepted Otah's instructions without complaint, though the resentment was still there.

The air was warmer now, and with the younger man's pace, Maati found himself sweating. They moved down smaller streets this time, narrow avenues that nature had not quite choked. The birds seemed to follow them, though more likely it was only that there were birds everywhere. There was no sign of Vanjit or Clarity-of-Sight, only racc.o.o.ns and foxes, mice and hunting cats, feral dogs on the banks and otters in the ca.n.a.ls. They were hardly a third of the way through the long, complex loop set out for them when Maati called a halt. He sat on a stonework bench, resting his head in his hands and waiting for his breath to slow. Danat paced, frowning seriously at the brush.

It struck Maati that the boy was the same age Otah had been in Saraykeht. Not as broad across the shoulders, but Otah had been Itani Noygu and a seafront laborer then. Maati himself had been born four years after the Emperor, hardly sixteen when he'd gone to study under Heshai and Seedless. Younger than Ana Dasin was now. It was hard to imagine ever having been that young.

'I meant to offer my congratulations to you,' Maati said. 'Ana-cha seems a good woman.'

Danat paused. The reflection of his father's rage warmed the boy's face, but not more than that.

'I didn't think an alliance with Galt would please you.'

'I didn't either,' Maati said, 'but I have enough experience with losing to your father that I'm learning to be generous about it.'

Danat almost started. Maati wondered what nerve he had touched, but before he could ask, a flock of birds a more violent blue than anything Maati had seen burst from a treetop down the avenue. They wheeled around one another, black beaks and wet eyes and tiny tongues pink as a fingertip. Maati closed his eyes, disturbed, and when he opened them, Danat was kneeling before him. The boy's face was a webwork of tiny lines like the cracked mud in a desert riverbed. Fine, dark whiskers rose from Danat's pores. His eyelashes crashed together when he blinked, interweaving or pressing one another apart like trees in a mudslide. Maati closed his eyes again, pressing his palms to them. He could see the tiny vessels in each eyelid, layer upon layer almost out to the skin.

'Maati-cha?'

'She's seen us,' Maati said. 'She knows I'm here.'

In spite of the knowledge, it took Maati half a hand to find her. He swept the horizon and from east to west and back again. He could see half-a-hundred rooftops. He found her at last near the top of the palaces of the Khai Udun on a balcony of bricks enameled the color of gold. At this distance, she was smaller than a grain of sand, and he saw her perfectly. Her hair was loose, her robe ripped at the sleeve. The andat was on her hip, its black, hungry eyes on his own. Vanjit nodded and put the andat down. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, she took a pose of greeting. Maati returned it.

'Where? Where is she?' Danat asked. Maati ignored him.

Vanjit shifted her hands and her body into a pose that was both a rebuke and an accusation. Maati hesitated. He had imagined a thousand scenarios for this meeting, but they had all involved the words he would speak, and what she would say in return. His first impulse now was toward apology, but something in the back of his mind resisted. Her face was a mask of self-righteous anger, and, to his surprise, he recognized the expression as one he himself had worn in a thousand fantasies. In his dreams, he had been facing Otah, and Otah had been the one to beg forgiveness.

Like a voice speaking in his ear, he knew why his hands would not take an apologetic pose. She is here to see you abased. Do it now, and you have nothing left to offer her. Maati pulled his shoulders back, lifted his chin, and took a pose that requested an audience. Its nuances didn't claim his superiority as a teacher to a student but neither did they cede it. Vanjit's eyes narrowed. Maati waited, his breath short and anxiety plucking at him.

Vanjit took a pose appropriate to a superior granting a servant or slave an indulgence. Maati didn't correct her, but neither did he respond. Vanjit looked down as if the andat had cried out or perhaps spoken, then shifted her hands and her body to a pose of formal invitation appropriate for an evening's meal. Only then did Maati accept, shifting afterward to a pose of query. Vanjit indicated the balcony on which she stood, and then made a gesture that implied either intimacy or solitude.

Meet me here. In my territory and on my terms. Come alone.

Maati moved to an accepting pose, smiling to himself as much as to the girl in the palaces. With a physical sensation like that of a gnat flying into his eye, Maati's vision blurred back to merely human acuity. He turned his attention back to Danat.

The boy looked half-frantic. He held his blade as if prepared for an attack, his gaze darting from tree to wall as if he could see the things that Maati had seen. The moons that pa.s.sed around the wandering stars, the infinitesimal animals that made their home in a drop of rain, or the girl on her high balcony halfway across the city. Maati had no doubt she was still watching them.

'Come along, then,' he said. 'We're done here.'

'You saw her,' Danat said.

'I did.'

'Where is she? What did she want?'

'She's at the palaces, and there's no point in rushing over there like a man on fire. She can see everything, and she knows to watch. We could no more take her by surprise than fly.'

Maati took a deep breath and turned back along the path they'd just come. There was no reason to follow Otah's route now, and Maati wanted to sit down for a while, perhaps drink a bowl of wine, perhaps speak to Eiah for a time. He wanted to understand better why the dread in his breast was mixed with elation, the fear with pleasure.

'What does she want?' Danat asked, trotting to catch up to Maati.

'I suppose that depends upon how you look at things,' Maati said. 'In the greater scheme, she wants what any of us do. Love, a family, respect. In the smaller, I believe she wants to see me beg before I die. The odd thing is that even if she had that, it wouldn't bring her any lasting peace.'

'I don't understand.'

Maati stopped. It occurred to him that if he had taken the wrong pose, made the wrong decision just now, he and the boy would be trying to find their way back to camp by smell. He put a hand on Danat's shoulder.

'I've asked Vanjit to meet with me tonight. She's agreed, but it can only be the two of us,' Maati said. 'I believe that once it's done I'll be able to tell you whether the world is still doomed.'

29.

'No,' Otah said. 'Absolutely not.'

'All respect,' Maati said. 'You may be the Emperor, but this isn't your call to make. I don't particularly need your permission, and Vanjit's got no use for it at all.'

'I can have you kept here.'

'You won't,' Maati said. The poet was sure of himself, Otah thought, because he was right.

When Danat and Maati had returned early, he had known that something had happened. The quay they had adopted as the center of the search had been quiet since the end of the afternoon meal. Ana and Eiah sat in the shadow of a low stone wall, sleeping or talking when Eiah wasn't going through the shards of her ruined binding, arranging the shattered wax in an approximation of the broken tablets. The boatman and his second had taken apart the complex mechanism connecting boiler to wheel and were cleaning each piece, the bra.s.s and bronze, iron and steel laid out on gray tarps and shining like jewelry. The voices of the remaining armsmen joined with the low, constant lapping of the river and the songs of the birds. At another time, it might have been soothing. Otah, sitting at his field table, fought the urge to pace or shout or throw stones into the water. Sitting, racking his brain for details of a place he'd lived three decades ago, and pushing down his own fears both exhausted him and made him tense. He felt like a Galtic boiler with too hot a fire and no release; he could feel the solder melting at his seams.

If they had followed his plan, Danat and Maati would have returned to the quay from a path that ran south along the river. They came from the west, down the broad stone steps. Danat held a naked blade forgotten in his hand, his expression set and unnerved. Maati, walking more slowly, seemed on the verge of collapse, but also pleased. Otah put down his pen.

'You've found her?'

'She's found us,' Maati said. 'I think she's been watching us since we stepped off the boat.'

The armsmen cl.u.s.tered around them. Eiah and Ana rose to their feet, touching each other for support. Maati lumbered into the center of the quay as if it were a stage and he was declaiming a part. He told them of the encounter, of Vanjit's appearance, of the andat at her side. He took the poses he'd adopted and mimicked Vanjit's. In the end, he explained that Vanjit would see him - would see only him - and that it was to happen that evening.

'She doesn't know you,' Maati continued, 'and what little she does know, she doesn't have a use for. To her, you're the man who turned against his own people. And I am the teacher who gave her the power of a small G.o.d.'

'And then plotted to kill her,' Otah said, but he knew this battle was lost. Maati was right: neither of them had the power here. The poet and her andat were their masters whether he liked it or not. She could dictate any terms she wished, and Maati was important to her in a way that Otah himself was not.

It was a meeting with the potential to end the world or save it. He would have given it to a stranger before he trusted it to Maati.

'What are you going to tell her?' Ana asked. Her voice sounded hungry. Weeks - months now - Ana had been living in shadows, and here was the chance to make herself whole.

'I'll apologize,' Maati said. 'I'll explain that the andat manipulated us, playing on our fears. Then, if Vanjit will allow it, I'll have Eiah brought so that she can offer her apologies as well.'

Eiah, standing where Otah could see her face, lifted her chin as if something had caught her attention. Something ghosted across her face - alarm or incredulity - and then was gone. She became a statue of herself, a mask. She had no more faith in Maati than he did. And, to judge from her silence, no better idea of what to do either.

'She has killed thousands of innocent people,' Otah said. 'She's crippled women she had numbered among her friends. Are you sure that apologizing is entirely appropriate?'

'What would you have me do?' Maati asked, his hands taking a pose that was both query and challenge. 'Should I go to her swinging accusations? Should I tell her she's not safe and never will be?'

The voice that answered was Idaan's.

'There's nothing you can say to her. She's gone mad, and you talk about her as if she weren't. Whatever words you use, she's going to hear what she wants. You might just as well send her a puppet and let her speak both parts.'

'You don't know her,' Maati said, his face flushing. 'You've never met her.'