Daniel Abraham - THE

Maati took a strip of the meat from his bowl. The flesh was pleasantly

rich and well-salted. He chewed slowly to give himself time to think,

but his hesitation was answer enough.

"I don't think I can join you," Cehmai said. "This battle I've ... I've

lost my taste for it."

Maati felt his own frown like an ache.

"Reconsider," he said, but Cehmai shook his head.

"I've given too much of my life to the world already. I'd like to keep

the rest of my years for myself. No more great struggles, no more cities

or nations or worlds resting on what I do or don't do. What I have here

is enough."

Maati wiped his fingers on his sleeve and took a pose of query that

bordered on accusation. Cehmai's eyes narrowed.

"Enough for what?" Maati demanded. "Enough for the pair of you? It'll be

more than enough before many years have passed. It'll be too much. How

much do you work in a day? Raising your own food, tending your crop and

your animals, making food and washing your robes and gathering wood for

your fires? Does it give you any time at all to think? To rest?"

"It isn't as easy as living in the courts, that's truth," Cehmai said.

His smile was the same as ever, even set in this worn face. "There are

nights it would be good to leave the washing to a servant."

"It won't get easier," Maati said. "You'll get older. Both of you. The

work will stay just as difficult, and you'll get tired faster. When you

take sick, you'll recover slowly. One or the other of you will strain

something or break an old bone or catch fever, and your children won't

be there to care for you. The next farm over? His children won't be

there for you either. Or the next. Or the next."

"He's not wrong, love," Idaan said. Maati blinked. Of all the people in

the world, Idaan was the last he'd expected support from.

"I know all that," Cehmai said. "It doesn't mean that I should go back

to being a poet."

"What else would you do?" Maati said. "Sell the land rights? Who is

there to buy them? Take up some new trade? Who will there be to teach

you? Binding the andat is the thing you've trained for. Your mind is

built for the work. These girls ... you should see them. The dedication,

the engagement, the drive. If this thing can be done, they will do it.

We can remake the world."

"We've done that once already," Cehmai said. "It didn't go well."

"We didn't have time. The Galts were at our door. We did what we had to

do. And now we can correct our errors."

"Does my brother know about this?" Idaan asked.

"He refused me," Maati said.

"Is that why you hate him?"

The air around the table seemed to clench. Maati stared at the woman.

Idaan met his gaze with a level calm.

"He is selling us," Maati said. "He is turning away from a generation of

women whose injuries are as much his fault as ours."

"And is that why you hate him?" Idaan asked again. "You can't tell me

that you don't, Maati-cha. I know quite a lot about hatred."

He let my son die to save his, Maati thought but did not say. There were

a thousand arguments against the statement: Otah hadn't been there when

Nayiit died; it wasn't Danat's fault that his protector failed to fend

off the soldiers; Nayiit wasn't truly his son. He knew them all, and

that none of them mattered. Nayiit had died, Maati had been sent into

the wilderness, and Otah had risen like a star in the sky.

"What I feel toward your brother doesn't change what needs to be done,"

Maati said, "or the help I'll need to do it."

"Who's backing you?" Idaan said.

Maati felt a flash of surprise and even fear. An image of Eiah flickered

in his mind and was banished.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Someone's feeding you," she said. "Someone's hiding you and your

students. If the word got out that you'd been found, half the world

would send armsmen to cut you down for fear you'd do exactly what you're

doing now. And half of the rest would kick you to death for petty

vengeance. If it's not Otah protecting you, who is it? One of the high

families of the utkhaiem? A trading house? Who?"

"I have strong backing," Maati said. "But I won't tell you more than that."

"Every danger you face, my husband faces too," Idaan said. "If you want

him to take your risks, you have to tell him what protection you can offer."

"I have an ear in the palaces anytime I need it. Otah won't be able to

mount any kind of action against me without warning finding me. You can

trust to that."

"You have to tell us more," Idaan said.

"He doesn't," Cehmai said, sharply. "He doesn't have to offer me

protection because I'm not going to do the work. I'm done, love. I'm

finished. I want a few more years with you and a quiet death, and I'll

be quite pleased with that."

"The world needs you," Maati said.

"It doesn't," Cehmai said. "You've come a long way, Maati-kvo, and I've

disappointed you. I'm sorry for that, but you have my answer. I used to

be a poet, but I'm not anymore. I can reconsider as long as we both keep

breathing, and we'll come to the same place."

"We can't stay on here," Idaan said. Her voice was soft. "I've loved it

here too. This place, these years ... we've been lucky to have them. But

Maati-cha's right. This season, and perhaps five or ten after it, we'll

make do. But eventually the work will pass us. We're not getting

younger, and we can't hire on hands to help us. There aren't any."

"Then we'll leave," Cehmai said. "We'll do something else, only not that."

"Why not?" Maati asked.

"Because I don't want to kill any more people," Cehmai said. "Not the

girls you're encouraging to try this, not the foreigners who would try

to stop us, not whatever army came in the next autumn's war."

"It doesn't have to be like that," Maati said.

"It does," Cehmai said. "We held the power of gods, and the world envied

us and turned against us, and they always will again. I can't say I

think much of where we stand now, but I remember what happened to bring

us here, and I don't see how making poets of women instead of men will

make a world any different or better than the one we had then."

"It may not," Maati said, "but it will be better than the one we have

now. If you won't help me, then I'll do without you, but I'd thought

better of you, Cehmai. I'd thought you had more spine."

"Rice is getting cold," Idaan said. Her voice was controlled rage.

"Perhaps we should eat it before it goes bad."

They finished the meal alternating between artificially polite

conversation and strained silence. After, Cehmai took the bowls away to

clean and didn't return. Idaan led Maati to a small room near the back

with a straw pallet and a night candle already burning. Maati slept

poorly and found himself still upset when he woke. He left in the dark

of the morning without speaking again to either of his hosts, one from

disappointment and shame and the other, though he would never have said

it, from fear.

Nantani was the nearest port to the lands of Galt, but the scars of war

were too fresh there and too deep. Instead, the gods had conspired to

return Otah to the city of his childhood: Saraykeht.

The fastest ships arrived several days before the great mass of the

fleet. They stood out half a hand's travel from the seafront, and Otah

took in the whole city. He could see the masts at the farthest end of

the seafront, berthed in order to leave the greatest space for the

incoming traffic. Bright cloth hung from every window Otah could see,