The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(83)

Otah broke the news as gently as he could, outlining his own halfknowledge of Maati's intentions, Idaan's appearance in Saraykeht, Eiah's appearance on the list of possible backers, and his own decision to set his sister to hunt down his daughter. Danat listened carefully, as if picking through the words for clues to some deeper mystery. When, at length, Otah went silent, Danat looked into the fire in its grate, wove his fingers together, and thought. The flames made his eyes glitter like jewels.

"It isn't her," he said at last. "She wouldn't do this."

"I know you love her, Danat-kya. I love her too, and I don't want to think this of her either, but-"

"I don't mean she didn't back Maati," Danat said. "We don't know that she did, but at least that part's plausible. I'm only saying that this blindness isn't her work."

His voice wasn't loud or strident. He seemed less like a man fighting an unpalatable truth than a builder pointing out a weakness in an archway's design. Otah took a pose that invited him to elaborate.

"Eiah hates your plan," Danat said. "She even came to me a few times to argue that I should refuse it."

"I didn't know that."

"I didn't tell you," Danat said, his hands taking a pose that apologized, though his voice held no regret. "I couldn't see that it would make things between the two of you any better. But my point is that her arguments were never against Galts. She couldn't stand to see a generation of our own women ignored. Their pain was what she lived in. When you started allowing the import of bed slaves as ... well ..."

"Brood mares," Otah said. "I do remember her saying that."

"Well, that," Danat agreed. "Eiah took that as saying that none of the women here mattered. That she didn't matter. If the problems of the Empire could be solved by hauling in wombs that would bear, then all that was important to you about women was the children they could yield."

"But if there's no children, there can't be-"

Danat shifted forward in his seat, putting his palm over Otah's mouth. The boy's eyes were dark, his mouth set in the half-smile Kiyan had often worn.

"You need to listen to me, Papa-kya. I'm not telling you that she's right. I'm not telling you she's wrong, for that. I'm telling you Eiah loves people and she hates pain. If she's been backing Uncle Maati, it's to take away the pain, not to ..."

Danat gestured at the shutters, and by implication at the world on the other side of them. The logs in the grate popped and the song of a single cricket, perhaps the last one alive before the coming winter, sang counterpoint to the ticking clock. Otah rubbed his chin, his mind turning his son's words over like a jeweler considering a gem.

"She may be part of this," Danat said. "I think you're right to find her. But the poet we want? It isn't her."

"I wish I could be certain of that," Otah said.

"Well, start with not being certain that she is," Danat said. "The world will carry you the rest of the way, if I'm right."

Otah smiled and put his hand on his son's head.

"When did you become wise?" Otah asked.

"It's only what you'd have said, if you weren't busy feeling responsible for all of it," Danat said. "You're a good man, Papa-kya. And we're doing what we can in unprecedented times."

Otah let his hand fall to his side. Danat smiled. The cricket, wherever it was, went silent.

"Go," Danat said. "Sleep. We've got a long ride tomorrow, and I'm exhausted."

Otah rose, his hands taking a pose that accepted the command. Danat chuckled; then as Otah reached the door, he sobered.

"Thank you, by the way, for what you said about Ana," Danat said. "You were right. We weren't treating her with the respect she deserved."

"It's a mistake we all make, one time and another," Otah said. "I'm glad it was an error we could correct."

Perhaps mine also will be, he thought. It terrified him in some fundamental and joyous way to think that possibly, possibly, this might still end without a sacrifice that was too great for him to bear. He hadn't realized how much he had tried to harden himself against the prospect of killing his own daughter, or how poorly he had managed it.

He crawled into his bed. Danat's certainty lightened the weight that bore him down. The poet wasn't Eiah. This blindness wasn't in her, wasn't who she was. The andat might have been bound by Maati or some other girl. Some girl whom he could bring himself to kill. He closed his eyes, considering how he might avoid having the power of the andat turned on him. The fear would return, he was sure of that. But now, for a moment, he could afford himself the luxury of being more frightened of loss than of the price of victory.

They left before sunrise with the steamcarts' supplies of wood, coal, and water refreshed, the horses replaced with well-rested animals, and the scent of snow heavy in the air. They moved faster than Otah had expected, not pausing to eat or rest. He himself took a turn at the kiln of the larger steamcart, keeping the fire hot and well-fueled. If the armsmen were surprised to see the Emperor working like a commoner, they didn't say anything. Two couriers passed them riding east, but neither bore a message from Idaan. Three came up behind them bearing letters for the Emperor from what seemed like half the court at Saraykeht and Utani.