The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(23)

"We didn't have time. The Galts were at our door. We did what we had to do. And now we can correct our errors."

"Does my brother know about this?" Idaan asked.

"He refused me," Maati said.

"Is that why you hate him?"

The air around the table seemed to clench. Maati stared at the woman. Idaan met his gaze with a level calm.

"He is selling us," Maati said. "He is turning away from a generation of women whose injuries are as much his fault as ours."

"And is that why you hate him?" Idaan asked again. "You can't tell me that you don't, Maati-cha. I know quite a lot about hatred."

He let my son die to save his, Maati thought but did not say. There were a thousand arguments against the statement: Otah hadn't been there when Nayiit died; it wasn't Danat's fault that his protector failed to fend off the soldiers; Nayiit wasn't truly his son. He knew them all, and that none of them mattered. Nayiit had died, Maati had been sent into the wilderness, and Otah had risen like a star in the sky.

"What I feel toward your brother doesn't change what needs to be done," Maati said, "or the help I'll need to do it."

"Who's backing you?" Idaan said.

Maati felt a flash of surprise and even fear. An image of Eiah flickered in his mind and was banished.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Someone's feeding you," she said. "Someone's hiding you and your students. If the word got out that you'd been found, half the world would send armsmen to cut you down for fear you'd do exactly what you're doing now. And half of the rest would kick you to death for petty vengeance. If it's not Otah protecting you, who is it? One of the high families of the utkhaiem? A trading house? Who?"

"I have strong backing," Maati said. "But I won't tell you more than that."

"Every danger you face, my husband faces too," Idaan said. "If you want him to take your risks, you have to tell him what protection you can offer."

"I have an ear in the palaces anytime I need it. Otah won't be able to mount any kind of action against me without warning finding me. You can trust to that."

"You have to tell us more," Idaan said.

"He doesn't," Cehmai said, sharply. "He doesn't have to offer me protection because I'm not going to do the work. I'm done, love. I'm finished. I want a few more years with you and a quiet death, and I'll be quite pleased with that."

"The world needs you," Maati said.

"It doesn't," Cehmai said. "You've come a long way, Maati-kvo, and I've disappointed you. I'm sorry for that, but you have my answer. I used to be a poet, but I'm not anymore. I can reconsider as long as we both keep breathing, and we'll come to the same place."

"We can't stay on here," Idaan said. Her voice was soft. "I've loved it here too. This place, these years ... we've been lucky to have them. But Maati-cha's right. This season, and perhaps five or ten after it, we'll make do. But eventually the work will pass us. We're not getting younger, and we can't hire on hands to help us. There aren't any."

"Then we'll leave," Cehmai said. "We'll do something else, only not that."

"Why not?" Maati asked.

"Because I don't want to kill any more people," Cehmai said. "Not the girls you're encouraging to try this, not the foreigners who would try to stop us, not whatever army came in the next autumn's war."

"It doesn't have to be like that," Maati said.

"It does," Cehmai said. "We held the power of gods, and the world envied us and turned against us, and they always will again. I can't say I think much of where we stand now, but I remember what happened to bring us here, and I don't see how making poets of women instead of men will make a world any different or better than the one we had then."

"It may not," Maati said, "but it will be better than the one we have now. If you won't help me, then I'll do without you, but I'd thought better of you, Cehmai. I'd thought you had more spine."

"Rice is getting cold," Idaan said. Her voice was controlled rage. "Perhaps we should eat it before it goes bad."

They finished the meal alternating between artificially polite conversation and strained silence. After, Cehmai took the bowls away to clean and didn't return. Idaan led Maati to a small room near the back with a straw pallet and a night candle already burning. Maati slept poorly and found himself still upset when he woke. He left in the dark of the morning without speaking again to either of his hosts, one from disappointment and shame and the other, though he would never have said it, from fear.

Nantani was the nearest port to the lands of Galt, but the scars of war were too fresh there and too deep. Instead, the gods had conspired to return Otah to the city of his childhood: Saraykeht.

The fastest ships arrived several days before the great mass of the fleet. They stood out half a hand's travel from the seafront, and Otah took in the whole city. He could see the masts at the farthest end of the seafront, berthed in order to leave the greatest space for the incoming traffic. Bright cloth hung from every window Otah could see, starting with the dock master's offices nearest the water to the towers of the palaces, high and to the north where the vibrant colors were grayed by humidity.