The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(128)

"What's happened?" Otah asked.

"He fell out of a window and onto a stick," Eiah said. "I'm fairly sure we've gotten all the splinters out of him."

"He'll live, then?"

"If he doesn't go septic," Eiah said. "He's a man with a hole in his side. You can't ask better odds than that."

The wounded man stuttered out his gratitude in his own language while Eiah, letting him hold one of her hands, gestured with the other for an assistant.

"Bind the wound, give him three measures of poppy milk, and put him somewhere safe until morning. I'll want to see his wound again before we send him back to his people."

The assistant took a pose that accepted instruction, and Eiah walked to the wide stone basins on the back wall to wash the blood from her hands. A woman screamed and retched, but he couldn't see where she was. Eiah was unfazed.

"We'll have forty more like him by morning," she said. "Too drunk and happy to think of the risks. There was a woman here earlier who wrenched her knee climbing a rope they'd strung over the street. Almost fell on Danat's head, to hear her say it. She may walk with a cane the rest of her life, but she's all smiles tonight."

"Well, she won't be dancing," Otah said.

"If she can hop, she will."

"Is there a place we can speak?" Otah asked.

Eiah dried her hands on a length of cloth, leaving it dark with water and pink with blood. Her expression was closed, but she led the way through a wide door and down a hall. Someone was moaning nearby. She turned off into a small garden, the bushes as bare as sticks, a widebranched tree empty. If there had been snow, it would have been lovely.

"I'm calling a meeting with the Galtic High Council tomorrow," he said. "And my own as well. It's the beginning of unification. I wanted you to hear it from me."

"That seems wise," Eiah said.

"The poets. The andat. They can't be kept out of that conversation."

"I know," she said. "I've been thinking about it."

"I don't suppose there are any conclusions you'd want to share," he asked, trying to keep his tone light. Eiah pulled at her fingers, one hand and then the other.

"We can't be sure there won't be others," she said. "The hardest thing about binding them is the understanding that they can be bound. They burned all the books, they killed every poet they could find, and we remade the grammar. We bound two andat. Other people are going to try to do what we did. Work from the basic structures and find a way."

"You think they'll do it?"

"History doesn't move backward," she said. "There's power in them. And there are people who want power badly enough to kill and die. Eventually, someone will find a way."

"Without Maati? Without Cehmai?"

"Or Irit, or Ashti Beg, or the two Kaes?" Eiah said. "Without me? It will be harder. It will take longer. The cost in lives and failed bindings may be huge."

"You're talking about generations from now," Otah said.

"Yes," Eiah said. "Likely, I am."

Otah nodded. It wasn't what he'd hoped to hear, but it would do. He took a pose that thanked Eiah. She bowed her head.

"Are you well?" he asked. "It isn't an easy thing, killing."

"Vanjit wasn't the first person I've killed, Father. Knowing when to help someone leave is part of what I do," Eiah said. She looked up, staring at the moon through the bare branches that couldn't shelter them, even from light. "I'm more troubled by what I could have done and didn't."

Otah took a pose that asked her to elaborate. Eiah shook her head, and then a moment later spoke softly, as if the words themselves were delicate.

"I could have held all our enemies at bay just by the threat of Wounded," she said. "What army would take the field, knowing I could blow out their lives like so many candles? Who would conspire against us knowing that if their agents were discovered, I could slaughter their kings and princes without hope of defense?"

"It would have been convenient," Otah agreed carefully.

"I could have slaughtered the men who killed Sinja-kya," Eiah said. "I could have ended every man who had ever taken a woman against her will or hurt a child. Between one breath and the next, I could have wiped them from the world."

Eiah turned her gaze to him. In the cool moonlight, her eyes seemed lost in shadow.

"I look at those things-all the things I might have done-and I wonder whether I would have. And if I had, would they have been wrong?"

"And what do you believe?"

"I believe I saved myself when I set that perversion free," she said. "I only hope the price the rest of the world pays isn't too high."

Otah stepped forward and took her in his arms. Eiah held back for a moment, and then relaxed into the embrace. She smelled of herbs and vinegar and blood. And mint. Her hair smelled of mint, just as her mother's had done.

"You should go see him," she said. He knew who she meant.

"Is he well?"

"For now," she said. "He's weathered the attacks so far. But his blood's still slowing. I expect he'll be fine until he isn't, and then he'll die."