The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(63)

"You have been entrusted with a power beyond any living person," Maati said, his tone harsher than he'd intended. "You are responsible for that power. You understand me? Responsible. I have tried to make you see that, but now I think I've failed. Poets aren't simply men ... or women ... who have a particular profession. We aren't like sailors or cabinetmakers or armsmen. Holding the andat is like holding small gods, and there is a price you pay for that. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes, Maati-kvo," Vanjit whispered.

"I doubt that," he said. "After what I've seen today, I very much doubt it.

She was weeping silently. Maati opened his mouth, some cutting comment ready to humiliate her further, and stopped. For a moment, he was a boy again, in this same hallway. He could feel the thin robes and the winter cold, and the tears on his own cheeks as the older boys mocked him or Tahi-kvo-bald, cruel Tahi-kvo, who had later become the Dai- kvo-beat him. He wondered if this fear and rage had been what drove his teachers back then, or if it had been something colder.

"Fix it," Maati said. "Put Ashti Beg back as she was, and never, never use the andat for petty infighting again."

"No, Maati-kvo."

"And wash the pots when your turn comes."

Vanjit took a pose that was a promise and an expression of gratitude. The quiet sobs as she walked away made Maati feel smaller. If they had been in a city, he would have gone to a bathhouse or some public square, listened to beggars singing on the corners and bought food from the carts. He would have tried to lose himself for a while, perhaps in wine, perhaps in music, rarely in gambling, and never in sex. At the school, there was no escape. He walked out, leaving the stone walls and memories behind him. Then the gardens. The low hills that haunted the land west of the buildings.

He sat on the wind-paved hillside, marking the passage of the sun across the afternoon sky, his mind tugged a hundred different ways. He had been too harsh with Vanjit, or not harsh enough. The binding of Wounded was overworked or not deeply enough considered, doomed or on the edge of being perfected. Ashti Beg had been in the wrong or justified or both. He closed his eyes and let the sunlight beat down on them, turning the world to red.

In time, the turmoil in his heart calmed. A small, blue-tailed lizard scrambled past him. He had chased lizards like it when he'd been a boy. He hadn't recalled that in years.

It was folly to think of poets as different from other men. Other women, now that Vanjit had proved their grammar effective. It was that mistake which had made the school what it was, which had deformed the lives of so many people, his own included. Of course Vanjit was still subject to petty jealousy and pride. Of course she would need to learn wisdom, just the same as anyone else. The andat had never changed who someone was, only what they could do.

He should have taught them that along with all the rest. Every now and again, he could have spent an evening talking about what power was, and what responsibility it carried. He'd never thought to do it, he now realized, because when he imagined a woman wielding the power of the andat, that woman was always Eiah.

Maati made his way back as the cold afternoon breeze set the trees and bushes rustling. He found the kitchen empty but immaculate. The broken cutting stone had been replaced with a length of polished wood, but otherwise everything was as it had been. His students, he found under Eiah's command in the courtyard. They were raking the fallen leaves into a pit for burning and resetting a half-dozen flagstones that had broken from years of frost, tree roots, and neglect. Vanjit knelt with Large Kae, lifting the stones from the ground. Clarity-of-Sight nestled in Irit's lap, its eyes closed and its mouth a perfect O. Ashti Beg, her vision clearly restored, was by Small Kae's side, a deep pile of russet leaves before them.

"Maati-kvo," Eiah said, taking a pose of greeting, which he returned. The others acknowledged him with a smile or simple pose. Vanjit turned away quickly, as if afraid to see anger still in his expression.

He trundled to a rough boulder, resting against it to catch his breath. Irit joined him and, without a word, passed the andat to him. It stirred, groaned once, and then turned to nestle its face into his robes. The andat had no need of breath. Maati had known that since he had first met Seedless over half a century earlier. Clarity-of-Sight's deep, regular sighs were manipulations, but Maati welcomed them. To hold something so much like a child but as still as the dead would have unnerved him.

Irit especially talked in light tones, but no one seeing them would have guessed that one of the group had been swinging a knife at another earlier in the day. Apart from a mutually respected distance between Ashti Beg and Vanjit, there was no sign of unease.

Large Kae and Small Kae left to prepare a simple meal just as Eiah put the torch to the pit of leaves. The flames rose, dancing. Pale smoke filled the air with the scent of autumn, then floated into the sky while the rest of them watched: Vanjit and Eiah, Ashti Beg, Irit, Maati and Clarityof-Sight, who was also Blindness. The andat seemed captivated by the flames. Maati stretched his palm out to the fire and felt the heat pushing gently back.

They ate roasted chicken and drank watered wine. By the end of the meal, Vanjit was smiling again. When the last wine bowl was empty, the last thin, blood-darkened bone set bare on its plate, she was the first to rise and gather the washing. Maati felt a relief that surprised him. The trouble had passed; whether it had been Vanjit's pride or Ashti Beg's jealousy, it didn't matter.