The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(55)

"I don't think I can," Vanjit said, her voice apologetic. "I assumed that we had changed the rotation."

"We skipped you last time, if that's what you mean," Ashti Beg said. "I don't know if that's the same as agreeing to wait on you."

There was laughter in the older woman's voice, but it had teeth. Small Kae was smiling a fixed smile and staring at the table. If he hadn't been so distracted, Maati would have seen this coming before it arrived.

"I don't think I can, though," Vanjit said, still firmly in her seat. The thing on her lap shifted its gaze from the poet to Ashti Beg and back as if fascinated.

"I seem to recall my mother keeping the house even when she had a babe on her hip," Ashti Beg said. "But she always was unusually talented."

"I have the andat. That's more work than washing dishes," Vanjit said. "At court, poets are forgiven other duties, aren't they, Maati-kvo?"

"The smallest brat of the utkhaiem is forgiven their duties," Ashti Beg said before Maati could frame a reply. "That's why it's court. Because some people set themselves above others."

The air was suddenly heavy. Maati stood, unsure what he was about to say. Irit's sudden chirp saved him.

"Oh, it isn't much. No need to fuss about it. I'll be happy to do the thing. No, Vanjit-cha, don't get up. If you don't feel up to doing it, you ought not strain yourself."

The last words rose at the end as if they were a question. Maati nodded as if something had been decided, then walked out of the hall. Vanjit followed without speaking, and took herself and her small burden down a side hall and out to the gardens. Maati could hear the voices of the others as they cleaned away the remnants of the small, fallen birds.

They met as they always did, sitting in a rough circle and discussing the fine points of binding the andat. There was no sign of the earlier conflict; Vanjit and Ashti Beg treated each other with their customary kindness and respect. Eiah explained the difference between accident, intention, and consequence of design to Irit and Small Kae and, Maati thought, learned by the experience. By the warm, soft light of the lanterns, they might have been talking of anything. By the end, there was even real laughter.

It should have been a good evening, but as he went back toward his bed, Maati was troubled and couldn't quite say why. It had to do with Otah-kvo and Eiah, Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight. The Galts and his own unsettling if unsurprising insight into the nature of time and decay.

He opened his book, reading his own handwriting by the light of the night candle. Even the quality of his script had changed since Vanjit had sharpened his vision. The older entries had been ... not sloppy, never that. But not so crisp as he was capable of now. It had been an old man's handwriting. Now it was something different. He picked up his pen, touched nib to ink, but found nothing coherent to say.

He wiped the pen clean and put the book aside. Somewhere far to the south, Otah was dining with the men who had destroyed the Khaiem. He was sleeping on a bed of silk and drinking wine from bowls of beaten gold, while here in the dry plains his own daughter prepared to risk her life to make right what he had done.

What they had done together. Otah, Cehmai, and Maati himself. One was crawling into bed with the enemy, another turning away and hiding his face. Only Maati had even tried to make things whole again. Vanjit's success meant it had not been wasted effort. Eiah's fear reminded him that it was not yet finished.

He made his way down the corridors in the near darkness. Only candles and a half-moon lit his way. He was unsurprised to see Vanjit sitting alone in the gardens. Unlike the courtyard where they had spoken before, the gardens were bleak and bare. They had come too late to plant this season. Eiah's occasional journeys to Pathai provided food enough, and they didn't have the surplus of spare hands that had once held up the school. The wilderness encroached on the high stone walls here, young trees growing green and bold in plots where Maati had sown peas and harvested pods.

She heard him approaching and glanced back over her shoulder. She shifted, adjusting her robes, and Maati saw the small, black eyes of the andat appear from among the folds of cotton. She had been nursing it. It shocked him for a moment, though on reflection it shouldn't have. The andat had no need of milk, of course, but it was a product of Vanjit's conceptions. Stone-Made-Soft had been involved with the game of stones. Three-Bound-as-One had been fascinated by knots. The relationship of poet and andat was modeled on mother and child as it had never been before in all of history. The nursing was, Maati supposed, the physical emblem of it.

"Maati-kvo," she said. "I didn't expect anyone to be here."

He took a pose of apology, and she waved it away. In the cold light, she looked ghostly. The andat's eyes and mouth seemed to eat the light, its skin to glow. Maati came nearer.

"I was worried, I suppose," he said. "It seemed ... uncomfortable at dinner this evening."

"I'd been thinking about that," Vanjit said. "It's hard for them. Ashti Beg and the others. I think it must be very hard for them."

"How do you mean?"

She shrugged. The andat in her lap gurgled to itself, considering its own short, pale fingers with fascination.

"They have all put in so much time, so much work. Then to see another woman complete a binding and gain a child, all at once. I imagine it must gnaw at her. It isn't that she intends to be rude or cruel. Ashti is in pain, and she lashes out. I knew a dog like that once. A cart had rolled over it. Snapped its spine. It whined and howled all night. You would have thought it was begging aid, except that it tried to bite anyone who came near. Ashti-cha is much the same."