The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(54)

Now it was not only possible but perhaps even wise. Another letter, sent by fast courier, announcing that Maati had succeeded and made himself the new Dai-kvo, and Otah would have no choice but to honor him. He could almost hear the apology now, sweeter for coming from the lips of an emperor.

"It's a kind thought, but no," Eiah said. "It's too big a risk."

"I don't see how," Maati said, frowning.

"Vanjit's one woman, and binding an andat doesn't mean that a good man and a sharp knife can't end you," Eiah said. "And she may slip, at which point half the world will want our heads on sticks, just to be sure it doesn't happen again. Once we've managed a few more, it will be safe. And Wounded can't wait."

"If you heal all the women of the cities, they'll know we've bound an andat," Maati said. "It will be just as clear a message as sending a letter. And by your argument, just as dangerous."

"If they wait until after I've given back the chance of bearing children, the Galts can kill me," Eiah said. "It will be too late to matter."

"You don't believe that," Maati said, aghast. Eiah smiled and shrugged.

"Perhaps not," she agreed. "Say rather, if I'm going to die, I'd rather it was after I'd finished this."

Maati put a hand on her shoulder, then let his arm fall to his side. Eiah described the issues of the binding that troubled her most. To pull a thought from abstraction into concrete form required a deep understanding of the idea's limits and consequences. To bind Wounded, Eiah needed to find the common features of a cut finger and a burned foot, the difference between a tattooing quill and a rose thorn, the definitions that kept the thought small enough for a single mind to encompass.

"Take Vanjit's work," Eiah said. "Your eyes were never burned. No one cut them or bruised them. But they didn't see as well as when you were young. So there must have been some damage to them. So are the changes of age wounds? White hair? Baldness? When a woman loses her monthly flow, is it because she's broken?"

"You can't consider age," Maati said. "For one thing, it muddies the water, and for another, I will swear to you that more than one poet has reached for Youth-Regained or some such."

"But how can I make that fit?" Eiah said. "What makes an old man's failing hip different from a young girl's bruised one? The speed of the injury?"

"The intention," Maati said, and touched a line of symbols. His finger traced the strokes of ink, pausing from time to time. He could feel Eiah's attention on him. "Here. Change ki to toyaki. Wounds are either intentional or accident. Toyaki includes both senses."

"I don't see what difference it makes," Eiah said.

"Ki also includes a nuance of proper function. Behavior that isn't misadventure or conscious intention, but a product of design," Maati said. "If you remove that ..."

He licked his lips, his fingers closing in the air above the page. Once, many years before, he had been asked to explain why the poets were called poets. He remembered his answer vaguely. That the bindings were the careful shaping of meaning and intention, that makers or thought-weavers were just as apt. It had been a true answer for as far as it went.

And also, sometimes, the grammar of a binding would say something unexpected. Something half-known, or half-acknowledged. A profound melancholy touched him.

"You see, Eiah-cha," he said, softly, "time is meant to pass. The world is meant to change. When people fade and die, it isn't a deviation. It's the way the world is made."

He tapped the symbol ki.

"And that," he said, "is where you make that distinction."

Eiah was silent for a moment, then drew a pen from her sleeve and a small silver ink box. With a soft pressure, gentler than rain on leaves, she added the strokes that remade the binding.

"You accept my argument, then?" Maati asked.

"I have to," Eiah said. "It's why we're here, isn't it? Sterile didn't add anything to the world, it only broke the way humanity renews itself. I've seen enough decline and death to recognize its proper place. I'm not here to stop time or death. Just to put back the balance so that new generations can come up fresh."

Maati nodded. When Eiah spoke, her voice sounded tired.

"I miss him," she said. He knew that she meant her father. "The last time I saw him, he looked so old. I still picture him with dark hair. It hasn't been like that in years, but it's what's in my mind."

"We're doing the right thing," Maati said. His voice was little more than a whisper.

"I don't doubt it," Eiah said. "He's turned his back on a generation of women as if their suffering were insignificant. Sexual indenture used to be restricted to bed slaves, and he would make an industry of it if he could. He would haul women across like bales of cotton. I hate everything about the scheme, but I miss him."

"I do too," Maati said.

"You also hate him," she said. There was no place in this room for half-truths.

"That too," Maati agreed.

Dinner that night was a brace of quail Large Kae had trapped. The flesh was soft and rich. Maati sat at the head of the long table, Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight at the far end, and plucked the delicate bones. The bright chattering voices of Small Kae and Irit seemed distant, the dry wit of Ashti Beg grim. Eiah also seemed subdued, but it might only have been that she was thinking of the binding. The meal seemed to last forever, and yet he found himself surprised when Ashti Beg gathered up the bowls and the talk shifted to cleanup chores.