Daniel Abraham - THE

"It's a dry year," Cehmai said. "You wouldn't know it, but it's a dry

year. The last two crops, I was afraid that they'd mold in the field.

This one, I'm out here every other week, opening the ditch gates."

"I need your help, Cehmai-cha," Maati said.

The man nodded, squinted out over the field as if judging something

Maati couldn't see, and sighed.

"Of course you do," Cehmai said. "Come on, then. Walk with me."

The fields were not the largest Maati had seen, and reminded him of the

gardens he'd worked as a child in the school. The dark soil of the

riverfed lowlands was unlike the dry, pale soil of the high plains

outside Pathai, but the scent of wet earth, the buzzing of small

insects, the warmth of the high sun, and the subtle cool rising from the

water all echoed moments of his childhood. Not all those memories were

harsh. For a moment, he imagined slipping off his sandals and sinking

his toes into the mud.

As they walked, he told Cehmai all he'd been doing in the years since

they'd met. The idea of a women's grammar was one they had discussed

before, so it required little more than to remind him of it. He outlined

the progress he had made, the insights that had taken the project far

enough to begin the experimental bindings. They paused under the broad

shade of a catalpa and Cehmai shared a light meal of dried cherries and

dense honey bread while Maati recounted his losses.

He did not mention Eiah or the school. Not yet. Not until he knew better

which way his old colleague's opinions fell.

Cehmai listened, nodding on occasion. He asked few questions, but those

he did were to the point and well-considered. Maati felt himself falling

into familiar habits of conversation. When, three hands later, Cehmai

rose and led the way back to the river gate, it was almost as if the

years had not passed. They were the only two people in the world who

shared the knowledge of the andat and the Dai-kvo. They had suffered

through the long, painful nights of the war, working to fashion a

binding that might save them. They had lived through the long, bitter

winter of their failure in the caves north of Machi. If it had not made

them friends, they were at least intimates. Maati found himself

outlining the binding of Returning-to-Natural-Equilibrium as Cehmai

turned the rough iron mechanism that would slow the water.

"That won't work," Cehmai said with a grunt. "Logic's wrong."

"I don't know about that," Maati said. "The girl's trained as a

physician. She says that healing flesh is mostly a matter of letting it

go back into the shape it tends toward anyway. The body actually helps

the process that way, and-"

"But the logic, Maati-kvo," Cehmai said, using the honorific for a

teacher as if by reflex. "It's a paradox. The natural balance of the

andat is not to exist, and she wants to bind something whose essence is

the return to its natural state? It's the same problem as

Freedom-FromBondage. She should reverse it."

"How do you mean?"

The river gates creaked as they closed. The flow thinned and then

stopped. Cehmai squatted, elbows resting on his knees, and pointed

toward the water with his chin.

"Water-Moving-Down didn't only make water move down. She also stopped

it. She withdrew her influence, ne? So she could make rain fall or she

could keep it in the sky. She could stop a river from flowing as easily

as making it run fast. Your physician can't bind Returning-to-Balance or

however she planned to phrase it. But if she bound something like

Wounded or Scarred-by-Illness, she could withdraw that from someone. She

negates the opposite, achieves the same effect, and has something that

isn't so slippery to hold."

Maati considered, then nodded.

"That's good," he said. "That's very good. And it's why I need you."

Cehmai smiled out at the waving green field, then glanced at the house

and looked down.

"You'll stay the night?" Cehmai said.

Maati took a pose that accepted the invitation. He kept his trepidation

at the thought of sleeping under Idaan's roof out of his stance and

expression. It would have been too much to hope for that Cehmai would

drop everything in his life and take to the road at once. And still,

Maati had hoped for it....

Inside the thick stone walls of the farmhouse, the air was cooler and

rich with the scent of dog and old curry. The afternoon faded slowly,

the sun lingering in the treetops to the west, its light thick and

golden and softened by Maati's failing eyes. Cicadas set up a choir. He

sat on a low stone porch, watching everything and nothing.

Maati had known quite well that Idaan and Cehmai had been lovers once,

even while Idaan had been married to another man and arranging the

deaths of her family. Cehmai's betrayal of her had been the key that

brought her down, that lifted Otah into the role of Khai Machi, and from

there to Emperor. Cehmai had, in his fashion, created the world as it

was with the decision to expose his lover's crimes.

Maati had thought the man mad for still harboring feelings for the

woman; she was a murderer and a traitor to her city and her family. He'd

thought him mad twice over for wanting to find her again after the andat

had vanished from the world and the poets had fallen from grace. She

would, he had expected, kill Cehmai on sight.

And yet.

As a boy, Maati had taken another man's lover as his own, and Otah had

forgiven it. In gratitude or something like it, Maati had devoted

himself to proving Otah's innocence and helped to bring Idaan's crimes

to light. Seedless, the first andat Maati had known, had betrayed both

the poet Heshai who had bound him and the Galtic house that had backed

the andat's cruel scheme. And the woman-what had her name been?whose

child died. Seedless had betrayed everyone, but had asked only Maati to

forgive him.

The accrued weight of decades pressed upon him as the sun caught in the

western branches. Dead children, war, betrayal, loss. And here, in this

small nameless farm days' travel from even a low town of notable size,

two lovers who had become enemies were lovers again. It made him angry,

and his anger made him sad.

As the first stars appeared, pale ghost lights in the deepening blue

before sunset, Idaan emerged from the house. With her leather gear gone,

she looked less like a thing from a monster tale. She was a woman, only

a woman. And growing old. It was only when she met his gaze that he felt

a chill. He had seen her eyes set in a younger face, and the darkness in

them had shifted, but it had not been unmade.

"There's food," she said.

The table was small and somehow more frail than Maati had expected.

Three bowls were set out, each with rice and strips of browned meat.

Cehmai was also pouring out small measures of rice wine from a bone

carafe. It was, Maati supposed, an acknowledgment of the occasion and

likely as much extravagance as Cehmai's resources would allow. Maati

took a pose that offered thanks and requested permission to join the

table. Cehmai responded with one of acceptance and welcome, but his

movements were slow. Maati couldn't tell if it was from exhaustion or

thought. Idaan added neither word nor pose to the conversation; her

expression was unreadable.

"I've been thinking," Cehmai said. "Your plan. I have a few questions

about it."

"Anything," Maati said.

"Would your scheme to undo what Sterile did include restoring the Galts?"