An Autumn War(123)

"There's a war, Cehmai-kya," Maati said. "They killed the Dai-kvo and everyone in the village. The gods only know how many other men they've slaughtered. How many women they're raped. What's on those pages, they've earned."

"I know," Cehmai said. "I do know that. It's just I keep thinking of Stone-:MadeSoft. It was capable of terrible things. I can't count the times I had to hold it hack from collapsing a mine or a building. It had no respect for the lives of men. But there was no particular malice in it either. This ... Sterile ... it seems different."

Nlaati clamped his jaw. He was tired, that was all. "They both were. It was no reason to be annoyed with Cehmai, even if his criticism of the binding was something less than useful. Nlaati smiled the way he imagined a teacher at the school smiling. Or the I)ai-kvo. lie took a pose that offered instruction.

"Cutting shears and swords are both sharp. Before the war, you and I and the men like us? We made cutting shears," he said, and gestured to the papers. ""That's our first sword. It's only natural that you'd feel uneasy with it; we aren't men of violence. If we were, the I)ai-kvo would never have chosen us, would he? But the world's a different place now, and so we have to be willing to do things that we wouldn't have before."

""Then it makes you uneasy too?" Cehmai asked. Nlaati smiled. It didn't make him uneasy at all, but he could see it was what the man needed to hear.

"Of course it does," he said. "But I can't allow that to stop me. The stakes are too high."

Cehmai seemed to collapse on himself. The dark eyes flickered, searching, \Iaati thought, for some other path. But in the end, the man only sighed.

"I think you've found the thing, \laati-kvo. There are some passages I'd want to think about. 'T'here might be ways we can refine it. But I think we'll he ready to try it well before the thaw."

A tension that Nlaati hadn't known he was carrying released, and he grinned like a boy. Ile could imagine himself as the controller of the only andat in the world. He and Cehmai would become the new teachers, and under their protection, they would raise up a new generation of poets to hind more of the andat. The cities would be safe again. Nlaati could feel it in his bones.

The rest of the meeting went quickly, as if Cehmai wanted to be away from the library as quickly as lie could. \laati supposed the prospect of binding Sterile was more disturbing to Cehmai than to him. lie hoped, as he walked back tip the stairways and corridors to his rooms, that Cchmai would be able to adjust to the new way of things. It couldn't be easy for him. lie was at heart a gentle man, and the world was a darker place than it had been.

\Iaati's mind was still involved in its contemplation of darkness when he stepped into his room. At first, he didn't notice that Liat was there, seated on his bed. She coughed-a wet, close sound close to a sob. lie looked up.

"What's the matter, sweet?" he asked, hurrying to her. "What's happened?"

In the steady glow of the lantern, Liat's face seemed veiled by shadows. Her eyes were reddened and swollen, her skin flushed with recent tears. She attempted a smile.

"I need something, Nlaati-kya. I need you to speak with Nayiit."

"Of course. Of course. What's happened?"

"He's ..." Liat stopped, took a deep breath, and began again. "He isn't leaving with me. Whatever happens, he's decided to stay here and guard her children."

"What?"

"Kiyan," Liat said. "She set him to watch over Danat and Eiah, and now he's decided to keep to it. To stay in the North and watch over them instead of going home with me. He has a wife and a child, and Otah's family is more important to him than his own. And what if they see that he's ... what if they see whose blood he is? What if he and Danat have to kill each other?"

Maati sat beside Liat and folded her hand in his. The corners of her mouth twitched down, a mask of sorrow. lie kissed her palm.

"He's said this? That tic's staying in \Iachi?"

"I Ic doesn't have to," Liat said. "I've seen the way he looks at them. Whenever I talk about the spring and the South, he smiles that false, charming way he always smiles and changes the subject."

Nlaati nodded. The lantern flame hissed and shuddered, setting the shadows to sway.

"What is this really?" he asked, gently as he could. Liat pulled back her hand and took a pose that asked clarification. There was anger in her eyes. Maati chewed his lower lip, raised his eyebrows.

"He enjoys a duty that was designed, from what you told me, to he enjoyable for him. To give him the sense of redeeming himself. He's made friends with Otah's children-"

"I lis otherchildren," Liat said, but Nlaati had known her too long and too well to let the barb turn him aside.