The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(69)

"Then perhaps Ana is a lucky woman," Issandra said. He was surprised to hear something wistful in the woman's voice. The moon passed behind a high cloud, deepening the darkness around them, and then was gone. Issandra stood before him, her head high and proud, her mouth in a half-smile. She was, he thought, an interesting woman. Not beautiful in the traditional sense, and all the more attractive for that.

"A marriage is what you make of it," she said.

Otah considered the words, then took a pose that both agreed and expressed a gentle sorrow. He did not know how much of his meaning she understood. She nodded and strode off, leaving him with his armsmen.

Otah suffered through the rest of the banquet and returned to his apartments, sure he would not sleep. The night air had cooled. The fire in the grate warmed his feet. The fear that had dogged him all these last months didn't vanish, but its hold upon him faded. Somewhere under the stars just then, Danat and Ana were playing out their drama in touches and whispers; Issandra and Fatter Dasin in silences and the knowledge of long association. Idaan was hunting, Ashua Radaani was hunting, Sinja was hunting. And he was alone and sleepless with nothing to do.

He closed his eyes and tried to feel Kiyan's presence, tried to bring some sense of her out of the scent of smoke and the sound of distant singing. He tricked himself into thinking that she was here, but not so well that he could forget it was a trick.

Tomorrow, there would be another wide array of men and women requesting his time. Another schedule of ritual and audience and meeting. Perhaps it would all go as well as today had, and he would end the day in his rooms, feeling old and maudlin despite his success. There were so many men and women in the court-in the world-who wanted nothing more than power. Otah, who had it, had always known how little it changed.

He slept deeply and without dreams. When he woke, every man and woman of Galt had gone blind.

It had been raining for two full days. Occasionally the water changed to sleet or hail, and small accumulations of rotten ice had begun to form in the sheltered corners of the courtyard. Maati closed his shutters against the low clouds and sat close to the fire, the weather tapping on wood like fingers on a table. It might almost have been pleasant if it hadn't made his spine stiffen and ache.

The cold coupled with Eiah's absence had turned life quiet and slow, like a bear preparing to sleep through the winter. Maati went down to the kitchen in the morning and ate with the others. Large Kae and Irit had started rehearsing old songs together to pass the time. They sang while they cooked, and the harmonies were prettier than Maati would have imagined. When Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight were there, the andat would grow restive, its eyes shifting from one singer to the next and back again until Vanjit started to fidget and took her charge away. Small Kae had no ear for music, so instead spent her time reading the old texts that Clarity-of-Sight had been built from and asking questions about the finer points of their newly re-created grammar.

Most of the day, Maati spent alone in his rooms, or dressed in several thick robes, walking through the halls. He would not say it, but the space had begun to feel close and restricting. Likely it was only the sense of winter moving in.

With the journey to Pathai and back, along with the trading and provisioning, he couldn't expect Eiah's return for another ten days. He hadn't expected to feel that burden so heavily upon him, and so both delight and dread touched him when Small Kae interrupted his halfdoze.

"She's come back. Vanjit's been watching from the classroom, and she says Eiah's come back. She's already turned from the high road, and if the path's not too muddy, she'll be here by nightfall."

Maati rose and opened the shutters, as if by squinting at the gray he could match Vanjit's sight. A gust of cold and damp pulled at the shutter in his hand. He was half-tempted to find a cloak of oiled silk and go out to meet her. It would be folly, of course, and gain him nothing. He ran a hand through the thin remnants of his hair, wondering how many days it had been since he'd bathed and shaved himself, and then realized that Small Kae was still there, waiting for him to speak.

"Well," he said, "whatever we have that's best, let's cook it up. Eiahcha's going to have fresh supplies, so there's no point in saving it."

Small Kae grinned, took a pose that accepted his instruction, and bustled out. Maati turned back to the open window. Ice and mud and gloom. And set in it, invisible to him, Eiah and news.

There was no sunset; Eiah arrived shortly after the clouds had faded into darkness. In the light of hissing torches, the cart's wheels were beige with mud and clay. The horse trembled with exhaustion, driven too hard through the wet. Large Kae, clucking her tongue in disapproval, took the poor beast off to be rubbed down and warmed while the rest of them crowded around Eiah. She wrung the water from her hair with pale fingers, answering the first question before it was asked.

"Ashti Beg's left. She said she didn't want to come back. We were in a low town just south of here off the high road. She said we could talk about it, but when I got up in the morning, she'd already gone." She looked at Maati when she finished. "I'm sorry."

He took a pose that forgave and also diminished the scale of the thing, then waved her in. Vanjit followed, and then Irit and Small Kae. The meal was laid out and waiting. Barley soup with lemon and quail. Rice and sausage. Watered wine. Eiah sat near the brazier and ate like a woman starved, talking between mouthfuls.