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.