Authors: Daniel Abraham
As he pushed back into the city, following in the path the wagons had opened, he heard bits and snatches from the people he passed. The Khai had taken the utkhaiem and ridden for Cetani. The Galts weren't far behind. The I)ai-kvo was dead. The village of the Dai-kvo was burned. 'T'here had been a blood-soaked farce of a battle. As many men were dead as still standing.
Rumor, Maati told himself. Everything is rumor and speculation until I hear it from Nayiit. Or Otah-kvo. But his chest was tight and his hands balled in fists so tight they ached when, out of breath and ears ringing, he made his way back to the library. A man in a travel-stained robe squatted beside his door, a tarp-covered crate on the ground at his side.
Nayiit. It was Nayiit. Maati found the strength to embrace his boy, and allowed himself at last to weep. He felt Nayiit's arms around him, felt the boy soften in their shared grief, and then pull away. Maati forced himself to step hack. Nayiit's expression was grim.
"Come in," Nlaati said. "Then tell me."
It was had. The Galts were not on Machi's door and Otah-kvo lived, but these were the only bright points in Nayiit's long, quiet recitation. They sat in the dimming front room, shutters closed and candles unlit, while Nayiit told the tale. Maati clasped his hands together, squeezing his knuckles until they ached. The Dai-kvo was dead. The men whom Maati had known in the long years he had lived in the village were memories now. ITe found himself trying to remember their names, their faces. 't'here were fewer fresh to his mind than he would have thoughtthe firekeeper whose kiln had been at the corner nearest Maati's cell, the old man who'd run the bathhouse, a few others. They were gone, fallen into the forgetfulness of history. The records of their names had been burned.
"We searched. We searched through everything," Nayiit said. "I brought you what we found."
With a thick rustle, he pulled the thick waxed cloth from out of the crate. Two stacks of books lay beneath it, and Maati, squatting on the floor, lifted the ancient texts out one at a time with trembling hands. Fourteen books. The library of the Dai-kvo reduced to fourteen hooks. He opened them, smelling the smoke in their pages, feeling the terrible lightness of the bindings. There was no unity to them-a sampling of what had happened to be in a dark corner or hidden beneath something unlikely. A history of agriculture before the First Empire. An essay on soft grammars. Jantan Noya's Fourth 7i-eatrse on Form, which Maati had two copies of among his own hooks. None of these salvaged volumes outlined the binding of an andat, or the works of ancient poets.
StoneMade-Soft wouldn't be bound with these. And so StoneMade-Soft wouldn't be bound, because these were all that remained. Maati felt a cold, deep calm descend upon him. Grunting, he stood tip and then began pacing his rooms. His hands went through the movements of lighting candles and lanterns without his conscious participation. His mind was as clear and sharp as broken ice.
StoneMade-Soft could not be bound-not without years of workand so he put aside that hope. If he and Cehmai failed to hind an andat, and quickly, the Gaits would destroy them all. Nayiit, Liat, Otah, Eiah. Everyone. So something had to be done. Perhaps they could trick the Gaits into believing that an andat had been hound. Perhaps they could delay the armies arrayed against them until the cold shut Machi against invasion. If he could win the long, hard months of winter in which he could scheme ...
When the answer came to him, it was less like discovering something than remembering it. Not a flash of insight, but a familiar glow. He had, perhaps, known it would come to this.
"I think I know what to do, but we have to find Cehmai," he began, but when he turned to Nayiit, his son was curled on the floor, head pillowed by his arms. His breath was as deep and regular as tides, and his eyes were sunken and hard shut. Weariness had paled the long face, sharpening his cheeks. Maati walked as softly as he could to his bedchamber, pulled a thick blanket from his bed, and brought it to drape over Nayiit. The thick carpets were softer and warmer than a traveler's cot. There was no call to wake him.
What had happened out there-the battle, the search through the village, the trek back to Machi with this thin gift of useless bookswould likely have broken most men. It had likely scarred Nayiit. Maati reached to smooth the hair on Nayiit's brow, but held back and smiled.
"All the years I should have done this," he murmured to himself. "Putting my boy to bed."
lie softly closed the door to his apartments. The night was deep and dark, stars shining like diamonds on velvet, and a distant, eerie green aurora dancing far to the North. Maati stopped at the library proper, tucked the book he needed into his sleeve, and then-though the urge to find Cehunai instantly was hard to resist-made his way to the palaces, and to the apartments that Otah had given Liat.
A servant girl showed him into the main chamber. The only light was the fire in the grate, the shadows of flame dancing on the walls and across Liat's brow as she stared into them. Her hair was disarrayed, wild as a bird's nest. Her hands were in claws, trembling.
"I haven't ... I haven't found-"
"He's fine," Maati said. "He's in my apartments, asleep."
Liat's cry startled him. She didn't walk to him so much as flow through the air, and her arms were around Maati's shoulders, embracing him. And then she stepped hack and struck his shoulder hard enough to sting.
"How long has he been there?"
"Since the army came hack," Maati said, rubbing his bruised flesh. "EIe brought books that they salvaged from the Dai-kvo. I was looking them over when-"
"And you didn't send me a runner? There are no servants in the city who you could have told to come to me? I've been sitting here chewing my own heart raw, afraid he was dead, afraid he was still out with Otah chasing the Galts, and he was at your apartments talking about books?"
"He's fine," Maati said. "I put a blanket over him and came to you. But he'll need food. Soup. Some wine. I thought you could take it to him."
Liat wiped away a tear with the back of her hand.
"He's all right?" she asked. Her voice had gone small.
"I Ic's exhausted and hungry. But it's nothing a few days' rest won't heal."
"And ... his heart? You talked with him. Is he ... ?"
"I don't know, sweet. I'm not his mother. 'lake him soup. "talk with him. You'll know him better than I can."
Liat nodded. There were tears on her cheeks, but Nlaati knew it was only the fear working its way through. Seeing their boy would help more than anything else.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"I'he poet's house."
The night air was chill, both numbing his skin and making him more acutely aware of it. Summer was failing, autumn clearing its throat. The few men and women Nlaati passed seemed to haunt the palaces, more spirit than flesh. They took poses of deference to him, more formal or less depending upon their stations, but the stunned expressions spoke of a single thought. The news from the broken army had spread, and everyone knew that the I)ai-kvo was gone, the Galts triumphant. With even the last glow of twilight long vanished, the paths were dimmer than usual, lanterns unlit, torches burned to coal. The great halls and palaces loomed, the glimmering from behind closed shutters the only sign that they had not been abandoned. Twists of dry herbs tied with mourning cloth hung from the trees as offering to the gods. The red banner that had announced the army's arrival still hung from the high tower, grayed by the darkness. Colorless.
hlaati passed through the empty gardens, and found himself smiling. He felt separate from the city around him, untouched by its despair. Perhaps even invigorated by it. "There was nothing the citizens of Nlachi could do, no path for them to take that might somehow make things right. That was his alone. He would save the cite, if it were to be saved, and if Machi fell, it would find Nlaati working to the end. It was that hope and the clarity of the path that lay before him that made his steps lighter and kept his blood warm.
He wondered if this strange elation was something like what ()tali had felt, all those years he had lived under his false name. Perhaps holding himself at a distance from the world was how Otah had learned his confidence.
But no. That thought was an illusion. I lowever much this felt like joy, Nlaati's rational mind knew it was only fear in brighter robes.
'['he door of the poet's house stood open. The candlelight from within glowed gold. Maati hauled himself up the stairs and through the doorway without scratching or calling out to announce his presence. The air within smelled of distilled wine and a deep earthy incense of the sort priests burned in the temples. He found Cehmai at the back of the house, eyes bloodshot and wine bowl cupped in his hands. He sat cross-legged on the floor contemplating a linked sigil of order and chaos-mother-of-pearl inlay in a panel of dark-stained rosewood. He glanced up at Maati and made an awkward attempt at some pose Maati could only guess at.
"You've found religion?" Maati asked.
"Chaos comes out of order," Cehmai said. "I can't think of a better time to contemplate the fact. And gods are all we have left now, aren't they?"
Nlaati reached out, brushing the panel with his fingers before tipping it backward. It slapped the floor with a sound like a book dropped from a table. Cehmai blinked, half shocked, half amused. Before he could speak, Maati fished in his sleeve, brought out the small brown volume, its leather covers worn soft as cloth by the years, and dropped it into Cchmai's lap. He didn't wait for ("ehmai to pick it up before he strode back into the front room, closed the door, and dropped two fresh lumps of coal onto the fire in the grate. He found a pan, a flask of fresh water, and a brick of pressed tea leaves. That was good. They'd want that before the night was out. He also found the spent incense-ashes lighter than fresh snow on a black stone burner. He dumped them outside.
A high slate table held their notes. Thoughts and diagrams charting the new and doomed binding of StoneMade-Soft. Maati scooped up the pages of cramped writing and put them outside as well, with the ashes. "l'hen he carefully smoothed the writing from the wax tablets until they were smooth again, pristine. He took up the bronze-tipped stylus and scored two long vertical lines in the wax, dividing it into three equal columns. Cehmai walked into the room, his head bent over the open hook. He was already more than halfway through it.
"You aren't the only one who was ever chosen to bind one of the andat," Maati said. "I even began the binding once, a long time ago. Liatcha talked me out of trying. She was right. It would have killed me."
"You mean this?" Cehmai said. "You're going to bind Seedless?"
"It was what the I)ai-kvo chose me for. Heshai wrote his binding, and his analysis of its flaws. It's too close to the original. I know that. But with the changes we'll need to make in order to include my scheme for avoiding the price of a failed binding and your fresh perspective, we can find another way."
In the first column of the wax tablet, Maati wrote Seedless.
"Forgive me, Maatikvo, but will this really help? StoneMade-Soft could have dropped their army half into the ground. Water-Moving- I)own might have flooded them. But Seedless? Removingthe-PartThat-Continues doesn't have much power to stop an army."
"I can offer to kill all their crops," Maati said, writing Heshai-ko at the top of the second column. "I can threaten to make every cow and pig and lamb barren. I can make every Galtic woman who's bearing a child lose it. Faced with that, they'll turn hack."
His stylus paused over the head of the third column, and then he wrote his own name. He and Cehmai could outline the major points here; they could add and remove aspects of Heshai's first vision, interpret the corrections the old poet would have made, had he been given the chance. They could remake the binding, because the binding was already half-remade. If there was time. If they could find a way. If they were clever enough to save the world from the armies of Galt.
"And if they don't turn hack?" Cehmai said.
"Then we'll all die. Their cities and ours. Check to see if that tea's ready to brew up, will you? I need your help with this, and it will go better if you're sober."
THE SCULPTURE GARDEN OF CETANI WAS THE WONDER OF THE CITY. TWO bronze men in the dress of the Emperor's guard stood at the entrances at its Northwest end, staring to the south and east, as if still looking to the Empire they had failed to protect. In their great, inhuman shadows, the finest work of the cities of the Khaiem had been gathered over the span of generations. There were hundreds of them, each astounding in its own fashion, under the wide branches of ash and oak with leaves the color of gold. The dragons of Chaos writhed along one long wall, their scales shining with red lacquer and worked silver, chips of lapis and enamel white as milk. In a shadowed niche, Shian Sho, last of the E111-perors, sat worked in white marble on a high dais, his head stink despairingly in his hands. It was a piece done after the Empire's fall. If the Emperor had seen himself shown with such little dignity, the sculptor would have been lucky to have a fast death. But the drape of the final Emperor's robes made the stone seem supple as linen, and the despair and thoughtfulness of the dead man's expression spoke of a time nine generations past when the world had torn itself apart. The sculptor who had found Shian Sho in this stone had lived through that time and had put the burden of his heart into this monument; this empty sepulcher for his age. Otah suspected that no man since then had looked upon it and understood. Not until now.
The Khai Cetani stood at the foot of a life-size bronze of a robed woman with eagle's wings rising wide-spread from her shoulders. He was younger than Otah by perhaps five years, gray only beginning to appear in his night-black hair. His gaze flickered over Otah, giving no sign of the thoughts behind his eyes. Otah felt a moment's selfconsciousness at his travel-worn robes and incipient, moth-eaten beard. He took a pose of greeting appropriate for two people of equal status and saw the Khai Cetani hesitate for a moment before returning it. It was likely it was the first time in years anyone had approached him with so little reverence.