Price of Spring lpq-4

by Daniel Abraham

  Maati bit down, glancing to see if anyone had heard him. The music and the dance were the focus of the room.

  "The little one," Maati said, more quietly, "isn't what you'd hoped. But neither would the next one be."

  He might just as well have slapped her. Vanjit's face went white, and she stood so quickly the bench scraped out from under her. By the time Maati rose, she was halfway to the door leading out to the stables and courtyard, and when he reached her, they were outside in the chill. A thin fog blurred the lantern hanging above the wayhouse door.

  "Vanjit!" Maati called, and she turned back, her face a mask of pain.

  "How could you say that? How could you say those things to me?" she demanded. "You had as much to do with that binding as I did. You are just as much responsible for him. I offered to take Eiah's place because someone would have to, not because it's something that I want. I love him. He's my boy, and I love him. He is everything I'd hoped. Everything!"

  "Vanjit-"

  She was weeping openly now, her voice high, thin, and wailing.

  "And he loves me. No matter what you say, I know he does. He's my boy, and he loves me. How could you think that I'd want a second chance? I offered this for you!"

  He took her sleeve in his fist, and she pulled back, yelping. She tried to turn away, but he would not let her.

  "Listen to me," he said sternly. "You don't need to tell me how deeply you-

  Vanjit snarled, her lips pulled back from her teeth like a pit dog's. She pulled away sharply, and Maati stumbled, falling to his knees. When he rose, he could hear her running footsteps fading into the dark, but the fog had thickened so badly that he couldn't see his own hand in front of his face.

  Except that, of course, it hadn't.

  He stood still, heart racing, hands trembling. The raucous sounds of the dance came from behind him and to the left. The poorly played drums became his polestar. He turned and made his slow, careful way back toward the wayhouse. The ground was rough under his feet, gravel and weeds taking him at slightly different angles with every step.

  He shouldn't have tried to hold her. She was upset. He should have let her go. He cursed himself for his stubbornness and her for her lack of control. The drums had given way to a flute and a low, warbling singer. Maati's outstretched fingers found the rough planks of the wall. He leaned against it, unsure what to do next. If he went back to the main room, his sudden infirmity would call attention to him, to the others, to Vanjit. But if he didn't, what would he do? He couldn't navigate his way back to his room, couldn't reach shelter. His robes were damp with the fog, the wood under his palm slick. He could stay here, pressing against the wayhouse like he was holding it up, or he could move. If there was only some way to find Eiah…

  He began inching away from the door. He could follow the walls around the building, and find the deck. If he waited long enough, Eiah would come looking for him, and that might well be one of the first places she'd look. He tried to recall where the deck's railing began and ended. He had been there for hours earlier, but now he found the details escaped him.

  He stumbled over a log and bruised his knee, but he didn't cry out. The cold was beginning to numb him. He reached the corner and a set of stairs he didn't remember. The prospect of sitting in the cold at the edge of the unseen lake was becoming less and less sustainable. He started devising stories that would cover his blindness. He could go near the common room, cry out, and collapse. If he kept his eyes closed, he could feign unconsciousness. They would bring Eiah to him.

  He stepped in something wet and soft, like mud but with a sudden, billowing smell of rotting plants. Maati lifted his foot slowly to keep the muck from pulling off his boot. It occurred to him for the first time that they had done this-precisely this-to a nation.

  His boot was heavy and made a wet sound when he put weight on it, but it didn't slip. He started making his way back toward where he'd been. He thought he'd made it halfway there when the world suddenly clicked back into place. His hands pink and gray against the damp, black wood. The thin fog hardly worth noticing. He turned and found Vanjit sitting cross-legged on the stones of the courtyard. Her dark eyes were considering. He wondered how long she'd been watching.

  "What you said before? It was uncalled for," she said. Her voice was steady as stone, and as unforgiving.

  Maati took a pose that offered apology but also pointedly did not end the conversation. Vanjit considered him.

  "I love Eiah-cha," she said, frowning. "I would never, never wish her ill. Suggesting that I want her to fail just so I could remain the only poet… it's madness. It hurts me that you would say it."

  "I never did," Maati said. "I never said anything like it. If that's what you heard, then something else is happening here."

  Vanjit shifted back, surprise and dismay in her expression. Her hands moved toward some formal pose, but never reached it. The shriek came from within the wayhouse. The music stopped. Vanjit stood up muttering something violent and obscene, but Maati was already moving to the door.

  The large room was silent, drums and flute abandoned where they had fallen. The woman who'd screamed was sitting on a stool, her hands still pressed to her mouth, her face bloodless, and her gaze fixed on the archway that led to the private rooms. No one spoke. Clarity-of-Sight stood in the archway, its hands on the wall, its tiny hips swaying crazily as it lost and regained and lost its balance. It saw Vanjit, let out a high squeal, and waved its tiny arms before sitting down hard and suddenly. The delight never left its face.

  "It is," someone said in a voice woven from awe and tears. "It's a baby."

  And as if the word had broken a dam, chaos flowed through the wayhouse. Vanjit dashed forward, her hands low to scoop up the andat, and the crowd surged with her. The chorus of questions and shouts rose, filling the air. Maati started forward, then stopped. The older of the drummers appeared from amid the throng and embraced him, tears of joy in the man's eyes.

  Through the press of the crowd, Maati saw Eiah standing alone. Her expression was cold. Maati pulled back from his grinning companion and struggled toward her. He heard Vanjit talking high and fast behind him, but couldn't make out the words. There were too many voices layered over it.

  "Apparently we've decided not to travel quietly," Eiah said in tone of cold acid.

  "Get the others," he said. "I'll prepare the cart. We can leave in the night."

  "You think anyone here is going to sleep tonight?" Eiah said. "There's a baby. A full-blooded child of the cities, and Vanjit the mother. If the gods themselves walked in the door right now, they'd have to wait for a room. They'll think it's to do with me. The physician who has found a way to make women bear. They'll hound me like I've stolen their teeth."

  "I'm sorry," Maati said.

  "Word of this is going to spread. Father's going to hear of it, and when he does, he'll be on our heels."

  "Why would he think it was you?"

  "Galt went blind, and he headed west. For Pathai. For me," Eiah said.

  "He can't know you're part of this," Maati said.

  "Of course he can," Eiah said. "I am, and he isn't dim. I didn't think it was a problem when no one knew who or where we were."

  A round of cheering broke out, and the wayhouse keeper appeared as if from nowhere, two bottles of wine in each hand. Vanjit had been ushered to a seat by the fire grate. Clarity-of-Sight was in her arms, beaming at everyone who came close. Vanjit's cheeks were flushed, but she seemed pleased. Proud. Happy.

  "This was my mistake," Maati said. "My failure as much as anything. I distracted her from the thing. It has more freedom when her mind is elsewhere."

  Eiah turned her head to look at him. There was nothing soft in her eyes. Maati drew himself up, frowning. Anger bloomed in his breast, but he couldn't say why or with whom.

  "Why is it so important to you," Eiah asked, "that nothing she does be wrong?"

  And with a sensation that was almost physical, Maati knew what he had been trying for mon
ths to ignore. A wave of vertigo shook him, but he forced himself to speak.

  "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.

  "You have to kill her," it whispered.

  21

  Otah stood in the ruins of the school's west garden. Half a century before, he'd been in this same spot, screaming at boys not ten summers old. Humiliating them. This was where, in a fit of childish rage, he had forced a little boy to eat clods of dirt. He'd been twelve summers old at the time, but he recalled it with a vividness like a cut. Maati's young eyes and blistered hands, tears and apologies. The incident had begun Maati's career as a poet and ended his own.

  The stone walls of the school were lower than he remembered them. The crows that perched in the stark, leafless trees, on the other hand, were as familiar as childhood enemies. As a boy, he had hated this place. With all its changes and his own, he still did.

  Ashti Beg had told them of Maati's clandestine school. Of Eiah's involvement, and the others'. Two women named Kae, another-Ashti Beg's particular confidante-named Irit. And the new poet, Vanjit. Ashti Beg had escaped the school and the increasingly dangerous poet and her false baby, the andat Blindness. Or Clarity-of-Sight.

  Three days after Eiah had left her in one of the low towns, she had lost her sight without warning. The poet girl Vanjit taking revenge for whatever slight she imagined. In a spirit of vengeance, Ashti Beg had offered to lead Otah to them all. Under cover of night, if he wished.

  There was no need. Otah knew the way.

  The armsmen had gone first, scouting from what little cover there was. No sign of life had greeted them, and they had arrived to find the school cleaned, repaired, cared for, and empty. They had come too late, and the wind and snow had erased any clue to where Maati and Eiah and the other women had gone. Including the new poet.

  Idaan emerged from the building, walking toward him with a determined gait. Otah could see the ghost of her breath. He took a pose that offered greeting. It seemed too formal, but he couldn't think of one more fitting and he didn't want to speak.

  "I'd guess they left before you reached Pathai," Idaan said. "They've left very little. A few jars of pickled nuts and some dry cheese. Otherwise, it all matches what she said. Someone's been here for months. The kitchen's been used. And the graves are still fresh."

  "How many boys died here, do you think?" Otah asked.

  "In the war, or when the Dai-kvo ran the place?" Idaan asked, and then went on without waiting for his reply. "I don't know. Fewer than have died in Galt since you and… the others left Saraykeht."

  She had stumbled at mentioning Danat. He'd noticed more than once that it wasn't a name she liked saying.

  "We have to find them," Otah said. "If we can't make her change this soon, the High Council will never forgive us."

  Idaan smiled. It was an odd
and catlike expression, gentle and predatory both. She glanced at him, saw his unease, and shrugged.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "It's only that you keep speaking as if there was still a High Council. Or a nation called Galt, for that. If this Vanjit has done what for all the world it seems she's done, every city and town and village over there has been blinded for weeks now. It isn't winter yet, but it's cold enough. And even if they had gotten some of the harvest in before this, it would only help the people on the farms. You can't walk from town to town blind, much less steer one of these soup pots on wheels."

  "They'll find ways."

  "Some of them may have, but there'll be fewer tomorrow. And then the next day. The next," Idaan agreed. "It doesn't matter. However many there are, they aren't Galts anymore."

  "No? Then what are they?"

  "Survivors," Idaan said, and any amusement that had been in her voice was gone. "Just survivors."

  They stood in silence, looking at nothing. The crows insulted one another, rose into the air, and settled again. The breeze smelled of new snow and the promise of frost.

  Inside the stone walls, the armsmen had made camp. The kitchen was warm, and the smell of boiling lentils and pork fat filled the air. Ana Dasin and Ashti Beg sat side by side, talking to the air. Otah tried not to watch the two blind women, but he found he couldn't turn away. It was their faces that captured him. Their expressions, their gestures thrown into nothingness, were strangely intimate. It was as if by being cast into their personal darkness, they had lost some ability to dissemble. Ashti Beg's anger was carved into the lines around her mouth. Ana, by contrast, betrayed an unexpected serenity in every movement of her hands, every smile. Three empty bowls lay beside them, evidence of Ana's appetite. Their voices betrayed nothing, but their faces and their bodies were eloquent.

  As the sun set, the cold grew. It seemed to radiate from the walls, sucking away the life and heat like a restless ghost. That night, they slept in the shelter of the school. Otah took the wide, comfortable room that had once belonged to Tahi-kvo, his first and least-loved teacher. The wool blankets were heavy and thick. The night wind sang empty, mindless songs against the shutters. In the dim flickering light from the fire grate, he let his mind wander.