An Autumn War(137)

"Well, we aren't leaving the boy out here, whatever his name is," Eustin said. "Get him out where this idiot can see the price of attacking a Galt."

The soldier nearest the cart grabbed at the boy, and Danat yelped in fear. Eustin swung his blade in the air, his eyes locked on Nayiit's. Sinja nodded to the man at the cart when he spoke.

"Hold off there," he said, then turned to Eustin. "You're a good soldier, Eustin-cha. You're loyal and you're ruthless, and I want you to know I respect that."

Eustin cocked his head, confused.

"Thank you, I suppose," Eustin said, and Sinja drew his sword. Eustin's eyes went wide, and he barely blocked Sinja's thrust. Blood showed on his arm, and the other ten men pulled their own blades with a soft sound like a rake in gravel.

"What are you doing?" Eustin cried.

"Not betraying someone."

"What?"

This isn't how I'd hoped to die, Sinja thought. If the boy had any mother in the world besides Kiyan, he'd stand hack and let the thing take its course. Instead, he was going to be cut down like a dog. But if the men were watching him, Danat could slip away. A boy of five summers was no threat. The men might not bother tracking him. Danat might find his way to the tunnel or some low town or into friendly hands. There wasn't a better option.

"Call them off, Eustin. This is between the two of us."

"What's between the two of us?"

Sinja raised the tip of his sword by a hand's span in answer. Eustin nodded and dropped his own blade into guard position.

"He's mine," Eustin called. "Leave us be."

Sinja took a step hack, away from the cart, and smiled. Eustin let himself be drawn. In the corner of his vision, Sinja saw Danat drop from the cart's hack. He took a hard grip on his sword, grinned, and swung. Steel rang on steel. Eustin closed and Sinja darted back, the snow crackling under his boots. They were both smiling now, and one of the bowmen had pulled out his quiver, prepared to act in case Eustin should fail. Sinja took a deep breath of cold air, and felt strangely like shouting.

He'd been wrong before; this was exactly how he'd hoped to die.

NIAATi CHANTED UNTIL HIS MOUTH WAS DRY, HIS EYES LACKED ON THE scrawled note on the wall before him. Each time he began to feel his thoughts taking shape, it distracted him. He would think that the binding was beginning to work, and he would leap ahead to the battle outside and what he could do, the fate of Gait, the future, what Eiah and Cehmai were seeing, and the solidity that the binding had taken would slip away again. It was hard to put the world aside. It was hard not to care.

He didn't pause, but he closed his eyes, picturing the wall and his writing upon it. He knew the binding-knew the structures of it, the grammars that formed the thoughts that put together everything he had hoped and intended. And instead of reading it from the world, he read it from the image in his own mind. Dreamlike, the warehouse wall seemed more solid, more palpable, with his eyes closed. The sound of his voice began to echo, syllables from different phrases blending together, creating new words that also spoke to Maati's intention. The air seemed thicker, harder to breathe. The world had become dense. He began his chant again, though he could still hear himself speaking the words that came halfway through it.

The wall in his mind began to sway, the image fading into a seedpeach pit and flax seed and everything in between the two. And an egg. And a womb. And the three images became a single object, still halfformed in his mind. Bright as sunlight, but blasted, twisted. There was a scent like a wound gone rancid, the sulfur scent of bad eggs. His fingers seemed to touch the words, feeling them sliding out into the world and collapsing back; they were sticky and slick. The echo of the chant deepened until he found himself speaking the first phrase of the binding at the same moment his remembered voice spoke the same phrase and the whole grand complex, raucous song fell into him like a stone dropping into the abyss. He could still hear it, and feel it. The smell of it was thick in his nostrils, though he was also aware that the air smelled only of dust and hot iron. So it wasn't truly the thick smell of rot; only the idea of it, as compelling as the truth.

Maati balanced the storm in a part of his mind-hack behind his ears, even with the point at which his spine met his skull. It balanced there. He didn't know when he'd stopped chanting. He opened his eyes.

"Well, my dear," the andat said. "Who'd have thought we'd meet again?"

It sat before him, naked. The soft, androgynous face was the moonlight pale that Seedless' had been. The long, flowing hair so black it was blue. The rise and curve of a woman's body. Corrupting-the-Generative. Sterile. He hadn't thought she would look so much like Seedless, but now that he saw her, he found himself unsurprised.