The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(6)

The servant finished his work and with a deferential nod to Eiah, made his way to the servants' house. It was less than half a hand before he emerged with a thin woman and a sandy-haired Westlands boy trailing him. Eiah pushed her hands back through her sleeves and made her way to the small, rough shack.

He was sitting beside the fire, frowning into the flames and eating a mush of rice and raisins from a small wooden bowl. The years hadn't been kind to him. He was thicker than he'd been when she knew him, an unhealthy fatness that had little to do with indulgence. His color was poor; what remained of his hair was white stained yellow by neglect. He looked angry. He looked lonesome.

"Uncle Maati," she said.

He startled. His eyes flashed. Eiah couldn't tell if it was anger or fear. But whatever it was had a trace of pleasure to it.

"Don't know who you mean," he said. "Name's Daavit."

Eiah chuckled and stepped into the small room. It smelled of bodies and smoke and the raisins in Maati's food. Eiah found a small chair and pulled it to the fire beside the old poet, her chosen uncle, the man who had destroyed the world. They sat silently for a while.

"It was the way they died," Eiah said. "All the stories you told me when I was young about the prices that the andat exacted when a poet's binding failed. The one whose blood turned dry. The one whose belly swelled up like he was pregnant, and when they cut him open it was all ice and seaweed. All of them. I started to hear stories. What was that, four years ago?"

At first she thought he wouldn't answer. He cupped two thick fingers into the rice and ate what they lifted out. He swallowed. He sucked his teeth.

"Six," he said.

"Six years," she said. "Women started appearing here and there, dead in strange ways."

He didn't answer. Eiah waited for the space of five slow breaths together before she went on.

"You told me stories about the andat when I was young," she said. "I remember most of it, I think. I know that a binding only works once. In order to bind the same andat again, the poet has to invent a whole new way to describe the thought. You used to tell me about how the poets of the Old Empire would bind three or four andat in a lifetime. I thought at the time you envied them, but I saw later that you were only sick at the waste of it."

Maati sighed and looked down.

"And I remember when you tried to explain to me why only men could be poets," she said. "As I recall, the arguments weren't all that convincing to me."

"You were a stubborn girl," Maati said.

"You've changed your mind," Eiah said. "You've lost all your books. All the grammars and histories and records of the andat that have come before. They're gone. All the poets gone but you and perhaps Cehmai. And in the history of the Empire, the Second Empire, the Khaiem, the one thing you know is that a woman has never been a poet. So perhaps, if women think differently enough from men, the bindings they create will succeed, even with nothing but your own memory to draw from."

"Who told you? Otah?"

"I know my father had letters from you," Eiah said. "I don't know what was in them. He didn't tell me."

"A women's grammar," Maati said. "We're building a women's gram? mar.

Eiah took the bowl from his hands and put it on the floor with a clatter. Outside, a gust of wind shrilled past the shack. Smoke bellied out from the fire, rising into the air, thinning as it went. When he looked at her, the pleasure was gone from his eyes.

"It's the best hope," Maati said. "It's the only way to ... undo what's been done."

"You can't do this, Maati-kya," Eiah said, her voice gentle.

Maati started to his feet. The stool he'd sat on clattered to the floor. Eiah pulled back from his accusing finger.

"Don't you tell that to me, Eiah," Maati said, biting at the words. "I know he doesn't approve. I asked his help. Eight years ago, I risked my life by sending to him, asking the Emperor of this pisspot empire for help. And what did he say? No. Let the world be the world, he said. He doesn't see what it is out here. He doesn't see the pain and the ache and the suffering. So don't you tell we what to do. Every girl I've lost, it's his fault. Every time we try and fall short, it's because we're sneaking around in warehouses and low towns. Meeting in secret like criminals-"

"Maati-kya-"

"I can do this," the old poet continued, a fleck of white foam at the corner of his mouth. "I have to. I have to retrieve my error. I have to fix what I broke. I know I'm hated. I know what the world's become because of me. But these girls are dedicated and smart and willing to die if that's what's called for. Willing to die. How can you and your great and glorious father tell me that I'm wrong to try?"

"I didn't say you shouldn't try," Eiah said. "I said you can't do it. Not alone."

Maati's mouth worked for a moment. His fingertip traced an arc down to the fire grate as the anger left him. Confusion washed through his expression, his shoulders sagging and his chest sinking in. He reminded Eiah of a puppet with its strings fouled. She rose and took his hand as she had the dead woman's.

"I haven't come here on my father's business," Eiah said. "I've come to help."