The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(89)

"Because she should never have become a poet," he said. "She's too young and too angry and more than half mad. And that beast on her lap? We gave it to her."

Eiah's startled expression lasted only a moment before something both resignation and weariness took its place. She kissed Maati's cheek. They stood together, a silence within the storm. He had said what she had already known, and she too had wished it was not truth.

Large Kae and Small Kae quietly prepared the cart and horses. While the wayhouse and every man and woman within running distance came to pay homage to child, mother, and physician, Irit and Maati packed their things. Eiah saw to it that the wine flowed freely, that-near the end-the celebratory drinks were all laced with certain herbs.

It was still four hands before dawn when they made their escape. Maati and Eiah drove the cart. Large Kae rode ahead, leading the spare horses. The others slept in the cart, exhausted bodies fitted in among the crates and sacks. The moon had already set, and the road before them was black and featureless apart from Large Kae's guiding torch. The fog had cleared, but a deep cold kept Maati's cloak wrapped tight. His eyes wanted nothing more than to close.

"We can make the river in seven days if we go through the night. Large Kae will fight against it for the horses' sake," Maati said.

"I'll fight against it for yours," Eiah said. "There was a reason I was trying to make this journey restful."

"I'm fine. I'll last to Utani and years past it, you watch." He sighed. His flesh seemed about to drip off his bones from simple exhaustion. "You watch."

"Crawl back," Eiah said. "Rest. I can do this alone."

"You'd fall asleep," Maati said.

"And use you for a pillow, Uncle. I'm fine. Go."

He looked back. There was a place for him. Irit had made it up with two thick wool blankets. He couldn't see it in the night, but he knew it was there. He wanted nothing more than to turn to it and let the whole broken world fade for a while. He couldn't. Not yet.

"Eiah-kya," he said softly. "About your binding. About Wounded. .

She turned to him, a shadow within a shadow. He bent close to her, his voice as low as he could make it and still be heard over the clatter of hooves on stone.

"You know the grammar well? You have it all in mind?"

"Of course," she said.

"Could you do it without it being written? It's usual to write it all out, the way Vanjit-cha did. And it helps to have that there to follow, but you could do the thing without. Couldn't you?"

"I don't know," Eiah said. "Perhaps. It isn't something I'd thought about particularly. But why ... ?"

"We should postpone your binding," Maati said. "Until you are certain you could do it without the reference text."

Eiah was silent. Something fluttered by, the sound of wings against air.

"What are you saying?" Eiah said, her words low, clipped, and precise. Maati squeezed his hands together. The joints had started aching sometime earlier in the night. The ancient dagger scar in his belly itched the way it did when he'd grown too tired.

"If you were performing the binding, and something happened so that you couldn't see," Maati said. "If you were to go blind when you'd already started ... you should know the words and the thoughts well enough to keep to it. Not to slip."

"Not pay its price," Eiah said. Meaning, they both knew, die. A moment later, "She'd do that?"

"I don't know," Maati said. "I don't know anything anymore. But be ready if she does."

Eiah shifted the reins, the pattern of the horses' stride altered, and the cart rocked gently. She didn't speak again, and Maati imagined the silence to be thoughtful. He shifted his weight carefully, turned, and let himself slip down to the bed of the cart. The wool blankets were where he'd remembered them. Feeling his way through the darkness reminded him of his brush with blindness. He told himself that the shudder was only the cold of the morning.

The shifting of the cart became like the rocking of a ship or a cradle. Maati's mind softened, slipped. He felt his body sinking into the planks below him, heard the creak and clatter of the wheels. His heart, low and steady, was like the throbbing drum at the wayhouse. It didn't sound at all unwell.

On the shifting edge of sleep, he imagined himself capable of moving between spaces, folding the world so that the distance between himself and Otah-kvo was only a step. He pictured Otah's awe and rage and impotence. It was a fantasy Maati had cultivated before this, and it went through its phases like a habit. Maati's presentation of the poets, the women's grammar, the andat. Otah's abasement and apologies and humble amazement at the world made right. For years, Maati had driven himself toward that moment. He had brought on the sacrifice of ten women, each of them paying the price of a binding that wasn't quite correct.

He watched now as if someone else were dreaming it. Dispassionate, cold, thoughtful. He felt nothing-not disappointment or regret or hope. It was like being a boy again and coming across some iridescent and pincered insect, fascinating and beautiful and dangerous.

More than half asleep, he didn't feel the tiny body inching its way to him until it lay almost within his arms. With the reflex of a man who has cared for a baby, instincts long unused but never forgotten, he gathered the child close.