"Maybe one of the other poets will come," Liat said, but her voice had gone thin and weary.
"You don't have hope for the Dai-kvo?"
Liat smiled.
"Hope? Yes, I have hope. Just not faith. The Galts know what's in play. If we don't recapture the andat, the cities will all fall. If we do, we'll destroy Galt and everyone in her. "They'll be as ruthless as we will."
"And Otah-kvo? Nayiit?"
Liat's gaze met his, and he nodded. The knot in her chest, he was certain, was much like his own.
"They'll be fine," Liat said, her tone asking for her own belief in the words as much as his. "It's always the footmen who die in battles, isn't it? The generals all live. And he'll keep Nayiit safe. He said he would."
"They might not even see battle. If they arrive before the Galts and come back quickly enough, we might not lose a single man."
"And the moon may come down and get itself trapped in a teabowl," Liat said. "But it would be nice, wouldn't it? For us, I mean. Not so much for the Galts."
"You care what happens to them?"
"Is that wrong?" Liat asked.
"You're the one who came to Otah-kvo asking that they all be killed."
"I suppose I did, didn't I? I don't know what's changed. Something to do with having my boy out there, I suppose. Slaughtering a nation isn't so much to think about. It's when I start feeling that it all goes confused. I wonder why we do it. I wonder why they do. Do you think if we gave them our gold and our silver and swore we would never hind a fresh andat ... do you think they'd let our children live?"
It took a few breaths to realize that Liat was actually waiting for his answer, and several more before he knew what he believed.
"No," Maati said. "I don't think they would."
"Neither do I. But it would he good, wouldn't it? A world where it wasn't a choice of our children or theirs."
"It would be better than this one."
As if by common consent, they changed the subject, talking of food and the change of seasons, Eiah's new half-apprenticeship with the physicians and the small doings of the women of the utkhaiem now that their men had gone. It was only reluctantly that Maati rose. The sun was two and a half hands past where it had been when he woke, the shadows growing oblong. They walked back to the library, hand in hand at first, and then only walking beside each other. Nlaati felt his heart growing heavier as they came down the familiar paths, paving stones turning to sand turning to crushed white gravel bright as snow.
"You could come in," Nlaati said when they reached the wide front doors.
In answer, she kissed him lightly on the mouth, gave his hand a gentle squeeze, and turned away. Maati sighed and turned to lumber up the steps. Inside, Cehmai was sitting on a low couch, three scrolls spread out before him.
"I think I've found something," Cehmai said. "There's reference in Nlanat-kvo's notes to a grammatic schema called threefold significance. If we have something that talks about that, perhaps we can find a way to shift the binding from one kind of significance to another."
"We don't," Nlaati said. "And if I recall correctly, the three significators all require unity. "There's not a way to pick between them."
"Well. "Then we're still stuck."
"Yes."
Cehmai stood and stretched, the popping of his spine audible from across the wide room.
"We need someone who knows this better than we do," Maati said as he lowered himself onto a carved wooden chair. "We need the Daikvo."
"We don't have him."
"I know it."
"So we have to keep trying," Cehmai said. "The better prepared we are when the Dai-kvo comes, the better he'll he able to guide us."
"And if he never comes?"
"He will," Cehmai said. "He has to."
Chapter 16
Otah's mount whickered beneath him as he looked up at the Dal-kvo's body. It had been tied to a stake at the entrance to his high offices; the man had been dead for days. The brown-robed corpses of the poets lay at his feet, stacked like cordwood.
They had taken it all as granted. The andat, the poets, the continuity of one generation following upon another as they always had. It grew more difficult, yes. An andat would escape and for a time and the city it had left would suffer, yes. They had not conceived that everything might end. Otah looked at the slaughtered poets, and he saw the world he had known.
The morning after the battle had been tense. He had risen before dawn and paced through the camps. Several of the scouts vanished, and at first there was no way to know whether they had been captured by the Galts or killed or if they had simply taken their horses, set their eyes on the horizon, and fled. It was only when the reports began to filter back that the shape of things came clear.