The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet #4)(94)

Otah laughed, and he thought he saw the darkness around Idaan shift as if she had smiled.

"I'm sorry I didn't have the chance to know her," Idaan said. "She sounds like a good woman."

"She was," Otah said. "I miss her."

"I know you do," Idaan said. "And now Ana-cha knows it too."

"Does it matter?" Otah said. "All the hopes I had for building Galt and the Khaiem together are in rags around my knees. We're on a hunt for a girl who can ruin the world. What she's done to Galt, she could do to us. Or to all the world, if she wanted it. How do we plan for a marriage between Danat and Ana when it's just as likely that we'll all be starving and blind by Candles Night?"

"We're all born to die, Most High," Idaan said, the title sounding like an endearment in her voice. "Every love ends in parting or death. Every nation ends and every empire. Every baby born was going to die, given enough time. If being fated for destruction were enough to take the joy out of things, we'd slaughter children fresh from the womb. But we don't. We wrap them in warm cloth and we sing to them and feed them milk as if it might all go on forever."

"You make it sound like something you've done," Otah said.

Idaan made a sound he couldn't interpret, part grunt, part whimper.

"What is it?" he asked the darkness.

The silence lasted for the length of five long breaths together. When she spoke, her voice was low and rich with embarrassment.

"Lambs," she said.

"Lambs?"

"I used to wrap up the newborn lambs and keep them in the house. I even had Cehmai build them a crib that I could rock them in. After a few years, we had to switch to goats. I couldn't slaughter the lambs after all that, could I? By the end, I think we had sixty."

Otah didn't know whether to laugh or put his arms around the woman. The thought of the hard-hearted killer of his own father, his own brothers, cuddling a baby lamb was as absurd as it was sorrowful.

"Is it like this for everyone?" he asked softly. "Does every woman suffer this? Is the need to care for something that strong?"

"Strong? When it strikes, yes. But everyone? No," Idaan said. "Of course not. As it happened, it struck me. I assume Maati's students all feel strongly enough about it to risk their lives. But not every woman needs a child, and, thank the gods, the madness sometimes passes. It did for me."

"You wouldn't be a mother now? If it were possible, you wouldn't choose to?"

"Gods, no. I'd have been terrible at it. But I miss them," Idaan said. "I miss my little lambs. And that brings us back to Ana-cha, doesn't it?"

Otah took a pose that asked clarification.

"Who am I," Idaan asked, "to say that falling in love is ridiculous just because it's doomed?"

The weeks spent at the school had let Maati forget the ways in which the world broadened when he was traveling, and also the ways in which it narrowed when he was traveling with company. Living in the same walls, the same gardens, and surrounded as he had been by only a few deeply familiar faces had begun to grate on him before they left, but there had still been a way to find a moment to steal away. On the road, all of them together, the chances for private conversation were few and precious.

Since the andat had spoken, he hadn't found himself alone with Eiah, or at least not so clearly so that he would risk speaking. He didn't want either of the Kaes or Irit to know what had happened. He was afraid that they would say something where Vanjit could hear them. He was afraid that Vanjit would find out what the andat had said and take some terrible action in her fear and in her own defense.

He was afraid because he was afraid, and he was half-certain that Vanjit knew he was.

They reached the lands surrounding the river sooner than he would have wanted; if the long days and nights on the road had kept him in close quarters with the others, the days ahead sharing a boat would be worse. He had to find a way to talk with Eiah before that, and the prospect of his lessening time made him anxious.

Cold and snow hadn't reached the river valley yet. It was as if their journey were moving backward in time. The leaves here clung to the trees, some of them with the gold and red and yellow still struggling to push out the last hints of green. As they approached the water, farms and low towns clustered closer and closer. The roads and paths began to cling to irrigation channels, and other travelers-most merely local, but some from the great cities-appeared more and more often. Maati sat at the front of the cart, his robes wrapped close around him, staring ahead and trying not to put himself anywhere that the andat could catch his eye.

He was, in fact, so preoccupied with the politics and dangers within his small party that he didn't see the Galts until his horses were almost upon them.

Three men, none of them older than thirty summers, sat at the side of the road. They wore filthy robes that had once been red or orange. The tallest had a leather satchel over his shoulder. They had stepped a few feet off the path at the sound of hooves, and the tall grass made them seem like apparitions from a children's epic. Their eyes were blue, the pupils gray. None of them had shaved in recent memory. Their gaunt faces turned to the road from habit. There was no expression in them, not even hunger. Maati didn't realize he had slowed the horses until he heard Eiah call out from the cart's bed behind him. At her word, he stopped. Large Kae and Irit, taking their turns on horseback, reined in. Vanjit and Small Kae moved to the side of the cart. Maati risked a glance at Clarity-of-Sight, but it was still and silent.