The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(48)

The others were on their feet, but he took a pose that commanded them to remain where they were. This was his. However bad it was, it was his. His belly twisted as he walked toward her corpse. He had seen the price a failed binding exacted: always different, always fatal. And yet Vanjit's ribs rose and fell, still breathing.

"Vanjit-kya?" he said, his voice no more than a murmur.

The girl shifted, turned her head, and looked up at him. Her eyes were bright with joy. In her lap, something squirmed. Maati saw the round, soft flesh, the tubby, half-formed hands and feet, a toothless mouth, and black eyes full of empty rage. Except for the eyes, it could have been a human baby.

"He's come," Vanjit said. "Look, Maati-kvo. We've done it. He's here."

As if freed from silence by the poet's words, Clarity-of-Sight opened its tiny throat and wailed.

Kiyan-kya-

I look athow longI carriedthe world, orthoughtI did, andl wonder how many times we have to learn the same lessons. Until we remember them, I suppose. It isn't that I've stopped worrying. The gods all know I crawl into my bed at night half-tempted to call for reports from Sinja and Danat and Ashua. Even if I had them dragged into my chambers to recount everything they'd seen and done, how would it change things? Would I need less sleep? Would I be able to remake the world through raw will like a poet? I'm only a man, however fancy the robes they put me in. I'm not more suited to lead a war fleet or root out a conspiracy or win a young girl's love than any of them.

Why is it so hard for me to believe that someone besides myself might be competent? Or did I ./ear that letting go of any one part would mean everything would all away?

No, love. Idaan was right. I have been punishing myself all this time for not saving the people I cared for most. I think some nights that I will never stop mourning you.

Otah's pen hung in the cool night air, the brass nib just above the paper. The night breeze smelled of the sea and the city, rich and heavy as an overripe grape whose skin has only just split. In Machi, they would already be moving down to the tunnels beneath the city. In Utani, where his central palace stood wrapped in cloth, awaiting his return, the leaves would have turned to red and yellow and gold. In Pathai, where Eiah worked with her latest pet physician and pointedly ignored all matters of politics and power, there might be frost in the mornings.

Here in Saraykeht, the change of seasons was only a difference of scent and the surprise that the sun, which had so plagued them at summer's height, could grow tired so early. He wrote a few more sentences, the pen sounding like bird's feet against the paper, and then blew on the ink to cure it, folded the letter, and put it in with all the others he had written to her.

His eyes ached. His back ached. The joints of his hands were stiff, and his spine felt carved from wood. For days, he had been poring over records and agendas, letters and accountancy reports, searching for some connection that would uncover Maati's suspected patron. There were patterns to be looked for-people who had traveled extensively in the past few years who might be moving with the poet, supplies that had vanished with no clear destination, opposition to the planned alliance with Galt. And, with that, Maati's boast of an ear in the palaces. And the gods all knew there were patterns to be found. The courts of the Khaiem were thick with petty intrigue. Flushing out any one particular scheme was like plucking a particular thread from a tapestry.

To make matters worse, the servants and high families that Idaan had chided him for not making better use of had no place here. Even if Maati didn't have the well-placed spy he'd claimed, Otah still couldn't afford the usual gossip. Maati had to be found and the situation resolved before he managed to bind some new andat, and no one-Galt, Westlander, no one-could hear of it for fear of the reaction it would bring.

That meant that the records and reports were brought to Otah's private chambers. Crate after crate until they piled near the ceiling. And the only eyes that he could trust to the task were his own and, through the twisted humor that gods seemed to enjoy, Idaan's.

She was stretched out on a long silk divan now, half a month's lading records from the harbor master's office arrayed about her. Her closed eyes shifted beneath their lids, but her breath was as steady as the tide. Otah found a thin wool blanket and draped it over her.

It had not particularly been his intention to embrace his exiled sister and make her a part of the hunt for Maati, but the work was more than he could manage on his own. The only other person who knew of the problem was Sinja, and he was busy with Balasar and the creation of the unlikely fleet whose mission was to save Chaburi-Tan. Idaan knew the workings of the poets as well as any woman alive; she had been the enemy of one, the lover of another. She knew a great deal about court intrigue and also the mechanics of living an unobtrusive life. There was no one better equipped for the investigation.

He did not trust her, but had resolved to behave as if he did. At least for the present. The future was as unpredictable as it had always been, and he'd given up hope of anticipating its changes.

He knew from long experience that he wouldn't sleep if he went to bed now. His mind might be in a deep fog, but his body was punishing him for sitting too long. As it would have punished him for working too hard. The range allowed to him was so much narrower than when he'd been young. A walk to loosen his joints, and he might be able to rest.

The armsmen at the door of his apartments took poses of obeisance as he stepped out. He only nodded and made his way south. He wore a simple robe of cotton. The cloth was of the first quality, but the cut was simple and the red and gray less than gaudy. Someone who didn't know him by sight might have mistaken him for a member of the utkhaiem, or even a particularly powerful servant. He made a game of walking with his head down, trying to pass as a functionary in his own house.