Daniel Abraham - THE

difficult in sunlight; by fire and candle, it might as well not have

been written. Frustrated, Maati turned the pages and an eye stared back

at him from the paper. He turned back and went more slowly. All the

diagrams were of eyes, some ripped from their sockets, some pierced by

careful blades. Comments accompanied each orb, laying, he assumed, its

secrets open.

"Sight," Eiah said. "The author is called Arran, but it was more likely

written by dozens of people who all used the same name. The wardens in

the north had a period four or five generations ago when there was some

brilliant work done. We ignored it, of course, because it wasn't by us.

But these are very, very good. Arran was brilliant."

"Whether he existed or not," Maati said. He meant it as a joke.

"Whether he existed or not," Eiah agreed with perfect seriousness. "I've

been working with these. And with Vanjit. We have a draft. You should

look at it."

Maati handed her back the book and she pulled a sheaf of papers from her

sleeve. Maati found himself almost hesitant to accept them. Vanjit, and

her dreamed baby. Vanjit, who had lost so much in the war. He didn't

want to see any of his students pay the price of a failed binding, but

especially not her.

He took the papers. Eiah waited. He opened them.

The binding was an outline, but it was well-considered. The sections and

relationships sketched in with commentary detailing what would go in

each, often with two or three notes of possible approaches. The andat

would be Clarity-of-Sight, and it would be based in the medical

knowledge of Westlands physicians and the women's grammar that Maati and

Eiah had been creating. Even if some Second Empire poet had managed to

hold the andat before, this approach, these descriptions and

sensibilities, was likely to be wholly different. Wholly new.

"Why Vanjit?" he asked. "Why not Ashti Beg or Small Kae?"

"You think she isn't ready?"

"I ... I wouldn't go so far as that," Maati said. "It's only that she's

young, and she's had a harder life than some. I wonder whether ..."

"None of us are perfect, Maati-kya," Eiah said. "We have to work with

the people we have. Vanjit is clever and determined."

"You think she can manage it? Bind this andat?"

"I think she has the best hope of any of us. Except possibly me."

Maati sighed, nodding as much to himself as to her. Dread thickened his

throat.

"Let me look at this," he said. "Let me think about it."

Eiah took a pose that accepted his command. Maati looked down again.

"Why didn't he come?" Eiah asked.

"Because," Maati began, and then found he wasn't able to answer as

easily as he'd thought. He folded the papers and began to tuck them into

his sleeve, remembered how wet the cloth was, and tossed them instead

onto his low, wood-framed bed. "Because he didn't want to," he said at last.

"And my aunt?"

"I don't know," Maati said. "I thought for a time that she might take my

side. She didn't seem pleased with how they were living. Or, no. That's

not right. She seemed to care more than he did about how they would live

in the future. But he wouldn't have any of it."

"He's given up," Eiah said.

Maati recalled the man's face, the lines and weariness. The authenticity

of his smile. When they'd first met, Cehmai had been little more than a

boy, younger than Eiah was now. This was what the world had done to that

boy. What it had done to them all.

"He has," Maati said.

"Then we'll do without him," Eiah said.

"Yes," Maati said, hoisting himself up. "Yes we will, but if you'll

forgive me, Eiah-kya, I think the day's worn me thin. A little rest, and

we'll begin fresh tomorrow. And where's that list of questions? Ah,

thank you. I'll look over all of this, and we'll decide where best to go

from here, eh?"

She took his hand, squeezing his knuckles gently.

"It's good to have you back," she said.

"I'm pleased to be here," he said.

"Did you have any news of my father?"

"No," he said. "I didn't ask. It's the first rule of running a race,

isn't it? Not to look back at who's behind you?"

Eiah chuckled, but didn't respond otherwise. Once she'd left and Maati

had banked the fire, he sat on the bed. The night candle stood straight

in its glass case, the burning wick marking the hours before dawn. It

wasn't to its first-quarter mark and he felt exhausted. He moved the

papers and the scroll safely off the bed, pulled the blanket up over

himself, and slept better than he had in weeks, waking to the sound of

morning birds and pale light before dawn.

He read over the list of questions on the scroll, only surveying them

and not bothering to think of answers just yet, and then turned to the

proposed binding. When he went out, following the smells of wood smoke

and warmed honey, his mind was turning at twice its usual speed.

They had made a small common room from what had once been the teachers'

cells, and Irit and Large Kae were sitting at the window that Maati

remembered looking out when he had been a child called before Tahi-kvo.

Bald, mean-spirited Tahi-kvo, who would not have recognized the world as

it had become; women studying the andat in his own rooms, the poets

almost vanished from the world, Galts on the way to becoming the nobles

of this new, rattling, sad, stumble-footed Empire. Nothing was the same

as it had been. Everything was different.

Vanjit, sitting with her legs crossed by the fire grate, smiled up at

him. Maati took a pose of greeting and lowered himself carefully to her

side. Irit and Large Kae both glanced at him, their eyes rich with

curiosity and perhaps even envy, but they kept to their window and their

conversation. Vanjit held out her bowl of cooked wheat and raisins, but

Maati took a pose that both thanked and refused, then changed his mind

and scooped two fingers into his mouth. The grain was rich and salted,

sweetened with fruit and honey both. Vanjit smiled at him; the

expression failed to reach her eyes.

"I looked over your work. Yours and Eiah-cha's," he said. "It's

interesting."

Vanjit looked down, setting the bowl on the stone floor at her side.

After a moment's hesitation, her hands took a pose that invited his

judgment.

"I . . ." Maati began, then coughed, looked out past Large Kae and Irit

to the bright and featureless blue of the western sky. "I don't want to

hurry this. And I would rather not see any more of you pay the price of

falling short."

Her mouth tightened, and her eyebrows rose as if she were asking a

question. She said nothing.

"You're sure you want this?" he asked. "You have seen all the women

we've lost. You know the dangers."

"I want this, Maati-kvo. I want to try this. And ... and I don't know

how much longer I can wait," she said. Her gaze rose to meet his. "It's

time for me. I have to try soon, or I think I never will."

"If you have doubts about-"

"Not doubts. Only a little despair now and then. You can take that from

me. If you let me try." Maati started to speak, but the girl went on,

raising her voice and speaking faster, as if she feared what he would

say next. "I've seen death. I won't say I'm not afraid of it, but I'm

not so taken by the fear that I can't risk anything. If it's called for."

"I didn't think you were," he said.

"And I helped bury Umnit. I know what the price can look like. But I

buried my mother and my brother and his daughter too, and they didn't