The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(80)

"You," he said softly, "are the most important poet there is. The most important one there ever was."

"I'm just one woman," Eiah said. "I'm doing the best I can, but I'm tired. And the world keeps getting darker around me. If I can't take care of everything, at least let me take care of you."

"I will be fine," Maati said. "I'm not young anymore, but I'm a long way from death. We'll finish your binding, and then if you want to haul me to half the baths in the Empire, I'll submit."

Another tear marked her face. Maati took his sleeve and wiped her cheek dry.

"I'll be fine," he said. "I'll rest more if you like. I'll pretend my bones are made of mud brick and glass. But you can't stop now to concern yourself with me. Those people out there. They're the ones who need your care. Not me."

"Let me go to Pathai," she said. "I can get teas there."

"No," Maati said. "I won't do that."

"Let me send Large Kae, then. I can't stand by and do nothing."

"All right," Maati said, holding up a placating hand. "All right. Let's wait until morning, and we can talk to Large Kae. And perhaps you'll see that I'm only tired and we can move past this."

She left in the end without being convinced. As darkness fell, Maati found himself slipping into a soft despair. The world was quiet and still and utterly unaware of him.

His son was dead. The people he had counted as his friends had become his enemies, and he was among the most despised men in the world. Eiah was wrong, of course. His health was fine. But someday, it would fail. All men died, and most were forgotten. The few that the world remembered were not always celebrated.

He lit the night candle by holding it to the fire, the wax hissing where it dripped on the coals. He found his book and settled close to the fire grate before opening the cover and considering the words.

I, Maati Vaupathai, am one of the two men remaining in the world who has wielded the power of the andat.

Already, it was not true. There were three living poets now, and one of them a woman. Between the time he had touched a pen to this page and this moment, reading it in the early night, the world had moved on. He wondered how much of the rest was already old, already the property of a past that could never be regained. He read slowly, tracing the path his own mind had taken. The candle lent the pages an orange glow, the ink seeming to retreat into the pages, as if they were much larger and much farther away. The fire warmed his ankles and turned strong, solid wood into ashes softer than snow.

He was surprised to see the anger and bitterness in the book. There was a thread, he thought, of hatred in these words. He didn't think he'd meant it to be there, and yet sitting alone with his slowing blood, it could not be denied. Hatred of Otah and the Galts, of course, but also of Cehmai. Of Liat, whom he mentioned more frequently than he remembered and in terms that he knew she didn't deserve. Hatred toward the gods and the world. And thus, he had to think, toward himself. Before he reached the last page, Maati was weeping quietly.

He found an ink brick and a fresh pen, lit all the lanterns and candles he could find, and sat at his desk. He drew a line across the middle of the last page, marking a change in the book and in himself that he could not yet describe. He freshened the ink and did not know precisely what he intended to write until the nib touched the page, tracing out letters with a sound as dry and quiet as a lizard on stones.

If it were within my power, I would begin again. I would begin as a boy again, and live my life a different way. I have been told tonight that my heart is growing weak. Looking back upon the man I have been until now, I think it always has been. I think it was shattered one time too many and put back without all the shards in place.

And, though I think this is the cry of a coward, I do not want to die. I want to see the world made right. I want to live that long, at least.

He paused, looking at the words where they grew fainter, the ink running thin.

He found Eiah asleep on her cot, still wearing the robes she'd worn all day. Her door stood ajar, and his scratch woke her.

"Uncle," she said, yawning. "What's happened? Is something wrong?"

"You're certain. What you said about my blood. You're sure."

"Yes," she said. There was no hesitation in her.

"Perhaps," he said, then coughed. "Perhaps we should go to Utani."

Tears came to her eyes again, but with them a smile. The first true smile he'd seen from her since her journey to the low town. Since Vanjit's blinding of the Galts.

"Thank you, Uncle," she said.

In the morning, the others were shocked, and yet before the sun broke through the midday clouds, the cart was loaded with food and books, wax tables and wineskins. The horses were fitted with their leads and burdens, and all six of the travelers, seven if he counted Clarity-of-Sight, were wrapped in warm robes and ready for the road. The only delay was Irit scrambling back at the last moment to find some small, forgotten token.

Maati pulled himself deep into the enfolding wool as the cart shifted under him, and the low buildings with snow on the roofs and the cracks between stones receded. His breath plumed before him, rubbing out the division between sky and snow.

Vanjit sat beside him, the andat wrapped in her cloak. Her expression was blank. Dark smudges of fatigue marked her eyes, and the andat squirmed and fussed. The wide wheels tossed bits of hard-packed snow up into the cart, and Maati brushed them away idly. It would be an hour or more to the high road, and then perhaps a day before they turned into the network of tracks and roads that connected the low towns that would take them to the grand palaces of Utani, center of the Empire. Maati found himself wondering whether Otah-kvo would have returned there, to sit on the gold-worked seat. Or perhaps he would still be in Saraykeht, scheming to haul countless thousands of blinded women from Kirinton, Acton, and Marsh.