The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(36)

"I'm not sorry," Otah said.

"And I am? It's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for me," Idaan said. "I mean that. And I'm here to repay the debt. You're in trouble, brother mine, and I'm the only one who can warn you. The andat are coming back to the world. And this time, the poets won't be answering to you."

Autumn came early on the high plains. Even though the leaves were as green, the grasses as thick, Maati felt the change. It wasn't a chill, but the presentiment of one: a sharpness to air that had been soft and torpid with summer heat. Another few weeks and the trees would turn to red and gold, the mornings would come late, the sunsets early. The endless change would change again. For the first time in years, Maati found himself pleased by the thought.

The days following his return had fallen into a rhythm. In the mornings, he and his students worked on the simple tasks of maintenance that the school demanded: mending the coops for the chickens they'd brought from Utani, weeding the paths, washing the webs and dust from the corners of the rooms. At midday, they stopped, made food, and rested in the shade of the gardens or on the long, sloping hills where he had taken lessons as a boy. Afterward, he would retire for the afternoon, preparing his lectures and writing in his book until his eyes ached and then taking a short nap to revive before the evening lecture. And always, whatever the day brought, the subject drew itself back to Vanjit and Clarity-ofSight.

"What about when you see things that aren't there?" Small Kae said.

"Dreams, you mean?" Eiah asked.

Maati leaned forward on the podium. The classroom was larger than they required, all six of his students sitting in the first row. The high, narrow windows that had never known glass let the evening breeze disturb their lanterns. He had ended his remarks early. He found there was less need to fill the time with his knowledge than there had once been. Now a few remarks and comments would spur conversation and analysis that often led far from where he had intended. But it was rarely unproductive and never dull.

"Dreams," Small Kae said. "Or when you mistake things for other things."

"My brother had a fever once," Ashti Beg said. "Saw rats coming through the walls for three days."

"I don't think that applies," Eiah said. "The definitions we've based the draft on are all physicians' texts. They have to do with the actual function of the eye."

"But if you see a thing without your eyes," Small Kae began.

"Then you're imagining them," Vanjit said, her voice calm and certain. "And the passages on clarity would prevent the contradiction."

"What contradiction?" Large Kae asked.

"Who can answer that?" Maati said, leaping into the fray. "It's a good question, but any of you should be able to think it through. Ashti-cha? Would you care to?"

The older woman sucked her teeth for a moment. A sparrow flew in through one window, its wings fluttering like a pennant in the wind, and then out again.

"Clarity," Ashti Beg said slowly. "The sense of clarity implies that it's reflecting the world as it is, ne? And if you see something that's not there to be seen, it's not the world as it is. Even if imagining something is like sight, it isn't like clarity."

"Very good," Maati said, and the woman smiled. Maati smiled back.

The binding had progressed more quickly than Maati had thought possible. For the greatest part, the advances had been made in moments like these. Seven minds prodding at the same thought, debating the nuances and structures, challenging one another to understand the issues at hand more deeply. Someone-anyone-would find a phrase or a thought that struck sparks, and Vanjit would pull pages from her sleeve and mark down whatever had pushed her one step nearer the edge.

It was happening less and less often. The binding, Maati knew, was coming near its final form. The certainty in Vanjit's voice and the angle of her shoulders told him as much about her chances of success as looking over the details of her binding.

As they ended the evening's session, reluctant despite yawns and heavy-lidded eyes, Maati realized that the work they were doing was less like his own training before the Dai-kvo and more like the long, arduous hours he had spent with Cehmai. Somehow, during his absence, they had all become equals. Not in knowledge-he was still far and away the best informed-but in status. Where he had once had a body of students, he was working now with a group of novice poets. A lizard scampered along before him and then up the rough wall and into the darkness. A nightingale sang.

He was exhausted, his body heavy, his mind beginning to spark and slip. And he was also elated. The wide night sky above him seemed rich with promise, the ground he walked upon eager to bear him up.

His bed, however, didn't invite sleep. Small pains in his knees and spine prodded him, and his mind failed to calm. The light of the halfmoon cast shadows on the walls that seemed to move of their own accord. The restlessness of age, as opposed, he thought with weary amusement, to the restlessness of youth. As he lay there, small doubts began to arise, gnawing at him. Perhaps Vanjit wasn't ready yet to take on the role of poet. Perhaps he and Eiah in their need and optimism were sending the girl to her death.

There was no way to know another person's heart. No way to judge. It might be that Vanjit herself was as afraid of this as he was, but held by her despair and anger and sense of obligation to the others to move forward as if she weren't.