The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(62)

He rounded the last corner, his fist pressed to his chest, his heart hammering. The cooking areas were raw chaos come to earth. An earthenware jar of wheat flour had been overturned and cracked. The thin stone block Irit used for chopping plants lay in shards on the floor. Ashti Beg stood in the middle of the room, a knife in her hand, her chin held high like a statue of abstract vengeance. In the corner, Vanjit held the stillmewling andat close to her breast. Large Kae, Small Kae, and Irit were all cowering against the walls, their eyes wide and mouths hanging open. Eiah's expression was calm and commanding at the same time, like a mother calling back her children from a cliff edge.

"It's done, Ashti-cha," Eiah said, walking slowly toward the woman. "I'll have the knife."

"Not until I find that bitch and put it in her heart," Ashti Beg spat, turning toward Eiah's voice. Maati saw for the first time that the woman's eyes were as gray as storm clouds.

"I'll have the knife," Eiah said again. "Or I will beat you down and take it. You know you're more likely to hurt the others than Vanjit."

The andat whimpered and Ashti Beg whirled toward it. Eiah stepped forward smoothly, took Ashti Beg's elbow and wrist in her hands, and twisted. Ashti Beg yelped, the blade clattering to the floor.

"What. . ." Maati gasped. "What is happening?"

Four voices answered at once, words tripping over each other. Only Eiah and Vanjit remained silent, the two poets considering each other silently in the center of the storm. Maati raised his hands in a pose that commanded silence, and all of them stopped except Ashti Beg.

". . . power over us. It isn't right, it isn't fair, and I will not simper and smile and lick her ass because she happened to be the one to go first!"

"Enough!" Maati said. "Enough, all of you. Gods. Gods. Vanjit. Come with me."

The girl looked over as if noticing him for the first time. The rage in her expression faltered. Her hands were shaking. Eiah stepped forward, keeping herself between Ashti Beg and her prey as Vanjit walked across the room.

"Eiah, see to Ashti-cha," Maati said, taking Vanjit's wrist. "The rest of you, clean this mess. I'd rather not eat food prepared in a child's playpen."

He turned away, pulling Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight after him. The andat was silent now. Maati crossed the hallway and started down a flight of stone stairs that led to the sleeping rooms for the younger cohorts. The voices of the others rose behind them and faded. He wasn't certain where he was taking her until he reached the branching hall that led to the slate-paved rooms where the teachers had once disciplined boys with the cutting slash of a lacquered rod. He stopped in the hallway instead, putting the reflexive impulse to violence aside. Vanjit bowed her head.

"I would like an explanation of that," he said, his voice shaking with anger.

"It was Ashti Beg," Vanjit said. "She can't contain her jealousy any longer, Maati-kvo. I have tried to give her the time and consideration, but she won't understand. I am a poet now. I have an andat to care for. I can't be expected to work and toil like a servant."

The andat twisted in her grasp, looking up at Maati with tears in its black eyes. The tiny, toothless mouth gaped in what would have been distress if it had been a baby.

"Tell me," Maati said. "Tell me what happened."

"Ashti Beg said that I had to clean the pots from breakfast. Irit offered to, but Ashti wouldn't even let her finish her sentences. I explained that I couldn't. I was very calm. I am patient with her, Maati-kvo. I'm always very patient."

"What happened?" Maati insisted.

"She tried to take him," Vanjit said. Her voice had changed. The pleading tone was gone. Her words could have been shaved from ice. "She said that she could look after him as well as anyone, and that I was more than welcome to have him back once the kitchen had been cleaned."

Maati closed his eyes.

"She put her hands on him," Vanjit said. In her voice, it sounded like a violation. Perhaps it was.

"And what did you do," Maati asked, though he knew the answer.

"What you told me," Vanjit said. "What you said about Wounded."

"Which was?" he said. Clarity-of-Sight gurgled and swung its thick arms at Vanjit's ears, its dumb show of fear and distress forgotten.

"You said that Eiah-cha couldn't make an andat based on things being as they're meant to, because the andat aren't meant to be bound. It's not their nature. You said she had to bind Wounded and then withdraw it from all the women who still can't bear babes. And so we withdrew from Ashti Beg."

The andat cooed. It might have been Maati's imagination, but the thing seemed proud. Clarity-of-Sight. And so also Blindness.

The warmth that bloomed in his breast, the tightening of his jaw, the near-unconscious shaking of his head. They were not anger so much as a bone-deep impatience.

"It is manipulating you," he said. "We've talked about this from the beginning. The andat wants its freedom. Whatever else it is, it will always struggle to be free. It has been courting Ashti Beg and the others for days to precipitate exactly this. You have to know yourself better than it does. You have to behave like a grown woman, not a selfrighteous child."

"But she-"

Maati put two fingers against the girl's lips. The andat was silent now, staring at him with silent anger.