Cehmai had marked the turnings to take with piles of stone. Hunters searching the mines would be unlikely to notice the marks, but they were easy enough for Maati to follow. He turned left at a crossing, and then bore right where the tunnel forked, one passage leading up into darkness, the other down into air just as black.
The only comfort that the andat had offered-the only faint sliver of grace-was that Maati was not wholly at fault. Otah-kvo bore some measure of this guilt as well. fie was the one who had come to Ntaati, all those years ago. He was the one who had hinted to Maati that the school to which they had both been sent had a hidden structure. If he hadn't, Maati might never have been a poet. Never have known Seedless or Heshai, Liat or Cehmai. Nayiit might never have been born. Even if the Galts had come, even if the world had fallen, it wouldn't have fallen on Maati's shoulders. Cehmai was right; the binding of Sterile had been a decision they had all made-Otah-kvo more than any of the rest. But it was Maati who was cast out to live in the dark and the cold. The sense of betrayal was as comforting as a candle in the darkness, and as he walked, Maati found himself indulging it.
The fault wasn't his alone, and the punishment was. There was nothing fair in that. Nothing right. The terrible thing that had happened seemed nearly inevitable now that he looked back on it. He'd been given hardly any hooks, not half the time he'd been promised, and the threat of death at the end of a Galtic sword unless he succeeded. It would have been astounding it he hadn't failed.
And for the price, that wasn't something he'd chosen. That had been Sterile. Once the binding had failed, he'd had no control over it. He would never have hurt Eiah if he'd had the choice. It had simply happened. And still, he felt it in the hack of his mind-the shape of the andat, the place in the realm of ideas that it had pressed down in him, like the flattened grass where a hunting cat has slept. Sterile came from him, was him, and even if she had only been brief, she had still learned her voice from him and visited her price upon the world through his mind and fears. The clever trick of pushing the price away from himself and onto the world had been his. The way in which the world had broken was his shadow-not him, not even truly shaped like him. But connected.
The tunnel before him came to a sudden end, and Nlaati had to follow his own track back to the turn he'd missed, angling up a steep slope and into the first breath of fresh, cold air, the first glimmer of daylight. Nlaati stood still a moment to catch his breath, then fastened all the tics on his cloak, pulled the furred hood up over his head, and began the long last climb.
The bolt-hole was perhaps half a hand's walk from the entrance to the mines in which the poets hid. The snow was dry as sand, and the icy breeze from the North would he enough to conceal what traces of his footsteps the sled didn't smooth over. \Iaati trudged through the world of snow and stone, his breath pluming out before him, his face stung and numbed. It was a hellish. His feet first burned then went numb, and frost began to form on the fur around his hood's mouth. AIaati dragged himself and his sled. The numbness and the pain felt a hit like penance, and he was so caught tip in them he nearly failed to notice the horse at the mouth of the bolt-hole.
It was a small animal, fit with heavy blankets and riding tack. Nlaati blinked at it, stunned by its presence, then scurried quickly behind a boulder, his heart in his mouth. Someone had come looking for them. Someone had found them. He turned to look back at the path he'd walked, certain that the footsteps in the snow were visible as blood on a wedding dress.
lie waited for what seemed half a day but couldn't have been more than half a hand's width in the arc of the fast winter sun. A figure emerged from the tunnels-thick black cloak, and wide, heavy hood. Mlaati was torn between poking his head out to watch it and pulling back to hide behind his boulder. In the end caution won out, and he waited blind while the sound of horse's hooves on snow began and then grew faint. tie chanced a look, and the rider had its back to him, heading back south to Machi, a twig of black on the wide field of mourning white. \laati waited until he judged the risk of being seen no greater than the risk of frostbite if he stayed still, then forced himself-all his limbs aching with the cold-to scramble the last stretch into the tunnel.
The bolt-hole was empty. He was surprised to find that he'd halfexpected it to be filled with men bearing swords, ready to take their vengeance out against him. He pulled off his gloves and lit a small fire to warm himself, and when his hands could move again without pain, he made an inventory of the place. Nothing seemed to be missing, nothing disturbed. Except this: a small wicker basket with two low stone wax-sealed jars where none had been before. Maati squatted over them, lifting them carefully. They were heavy-packed with something. And a length of scroll, curled like a leaf, had been nestled between them. Maati blew on his fingers and unfurled the scrap of parchment.