The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(120)

There's something I'm trying to tell you, love. It's taking me more time than I'd expected to work up the courage. We all know it. Even Maati, even Ana, even Eiah. None of us can speak the words; not even me. You're the only one I can say this to, because, I suppose, you've already died and so you're safe from it.

Love. Oh, love. This meeting is all we can do, and it isn't going to work.

MAATI LEFT IN TWILIGHT. THE STARS SHONE IN THE EAST, THE DARKNESS RISing up like a black dawn as the western sky fell from blue to gold, from gold to gray. Birdsong changed from the trills and complaints of the day to the low cooing and complexities of the night. The river seemed to exhale, and its breath was green and rotting and cold. Maati had a small pack at his side. In the light of the failing day and the flickering orange of the torches, he looked older than Otah felt, and Otah felt ancient.

He tried to see something familiar in Maati's eyes. He tried to see the boy he'd gone drinking with in dark, lush Saraykeht, but that child was gone. Both of those children.

"I will do my best, Otah-kvo," Maati said.

Otah bit back his first reply, and then his second.

"Tomorrow's going to be a very different day, Maati-cha," Otah said. Maati nodded. After so much and so long, there should have been more. Sinja appeared for a moment in the back of Otah's mind. There had been no last good-bye for him. If this was to be the ending between the two of them, Otah thought he should say something. He should make this parting unlike the others that had come before. "I'm sorry it's come to this."

Maati took a pose that agreed but kept the meaning as imprecise as Otah had. One of the armsmen called out, pointing at the looming threat of the Khai Udun's palaces. In a wide window precisely above the river, a light had appeared, glittering like gold. Like a fallen star.

Ana and Danat were in a corner of the quay, their arms wrapped around each other. Idaan stood among the armsmen, her expression grim. Eiah sat alone by the water, listening. Otah saw Maati's gaze linger on her with something like sorrow.

With a lantern in his unsteady hand, Maati walked off along the ruined streets that ran beside the river. Otah guessed it would take him half a hand to reach the palaces.

"All right," Idaan said. "He's gone."

Otah turned to look at her, some pale attempt at wit on his lips, and saw that the comment hadn't been meant for him. Idaan crouched beside Eiah. His daughter's face was turned toward nothing, but her hands were digging through the physician's satchel. Danat glanced at Otah, confusion in his eyes. Eiah started drawing flat stones from her bag and laying them gently on the flagstones before her.

No, he was wrong. Not stones, but triangles of broken wax. The contents of old, broken tablets with symbols and words inscribed on them in Eiah's hand.

"You could try being of help," Idaan said and gestured toward the shards at his daughter's knees. "There's a piece that goes right here I haven't been able to find."

"You did enough," Eiah said, her hands shifting quickly, fitting the breaks together. Already the wax was taking the shape of five separate squares, the characters coming together. "Just going to the campsite and bringing back the bits you did was more than I could have asked."

"What is this?" Otah asked, though he already knew.

"My work," Eiah said. "My binding. I hoped I'd have time. Before we actually came across Vanjit-cha, there was the chance she was spying on us. She'd always planned to kill me by distracting me during the binding. But now, and for I think at least the next hand and a half, her attention is going to be on Maati-kvo. So..."

Idaan shook her head, clearing some thought away, and gestured to the captain of the guard.

"We'll need light," she said. "Eiah may be able to work puzzles in the dark, but I'm better if I can see what I'm doing."

"I thought you couldn't do this," Otah said, kneeling.

"Well, I haven't managed it yet," Eiah said with a wry smile. "On the other hand, I've studied to be a physician. Holding things in memory isn't so difficult, once you've had the practice. And there's enough here, I think, to guide me through it, no matter what Maati-kvo believes."

Idaan made a low grunt of pleasure, reached across Eiah and shifted a stray chunk of wax into place. Eiah's fingers caressed the new join, and she nodded to herself. Armsmen brought the wild, flickering light close, the waxwork lettering seeming to breathe in the shadows.

"Maati's warnings," Otah said. "You can't know what will happen if you pit your andat against hers."

"I won't have to," Eiah said. "I've thought this through, Papa-kya. I know what I'm doing. There was another section. It was almost square with one corner missing. Can anyone see that?"

"Check the satchel," Idaan said as Otah plucked the piece from the hem of Eiah's robe. He pressed it into her hand. Her fingertips traced its surface before she placed it at the bottom of the second almost-formed tablet. Her smile was gentler than he'd seen from her since he'd walked into the wayhouse. He touched her cheek.

"Maati doesn't know you're doing this, then?" Otah asked.

"We didn't think we'd ask him," Idaan said. "No disrespect to Eiahcha, but that man's about half again as cracked as his poet."