The Price Of Spring(18)

"That won't work," Cehmai said with a grunt. "Logic's wrong."

"I don't know about that," Maati said. "The girl's trained as a physician. She says that healing flesh is mostly a matter of letting it go back into the shape it tends toward anyway. The body actually helps the process that way, and-"

"But the logic, Maati-kvo," Cehmai said, using the honorific for a teacher as if by reflex. "It's a paradox. The natural balance of the andat is not to exist, and she wants to bind something whose essence is the return to its natural state? It's the same problem as Freedom-FromBondage. She should reverse it."

"How do you mean?"

The river gates creaked as they closed. The flow thinned and then stopped. Cehmai squatted, elbows resting on his knees, and pointed toward the water with his chin.

"WaterMoving-Down didn't only make water move down. She also stopped it. She withdrew her influence, ne? So she could make rain fall or she could keep it in the sky. She could stop a river from flowing as easily as making it run fast. Your physician can't bind Returning-to-Balance or however she planned to phrase it. But if she bound something like Wounded or Scarred-by-Illness, she could withdraw that from someone. She negates the opposite, achieves the same effect, and has something that isn't so slippery to hold."

Maati considered, then nodded.

"That's good," he said. "That's very good. And it's why I need you."

Cehmai smiled out at the waving green field, then glanced at the house and looked down.

"You'll stay the night?" Cehmai said.

Maati took a pose that accepted the invitation. He kept his trepidation at the thought of sleeping under Idaan's roof out of his stance and expression. It would have been too much to hope for that Cehmai would drop everything in his life and take to the road at once. And still, Maati had hoped for it....

Inside the thick stone walls of the farmhouse, the air was cooler and rich with the scent of dog and old curry. The afternoon faded slowly, the sun lingering in the treetops to the west, its light thick and golden and softened by Maati's failing eyes. Cicadas set up a choir. He sat on a low stone porch, watching everything and nothing.

Maati had known quite well that Idaan and Cehmai had been lovers once, even while Idaan had been married to another man and arranging the deaths of her family. Cehmai's betrayal of her had been the key that brought her down, that lifted Otah into the role of Khai Machi, and from there to Emperor. Cehmai had, in his fashion, created the world as it was with the decision to expose his lover's crimes.

Maati had thought the man mad for still harboring feelings for the woman; she was a murderer and a traitor to her city and her family. He'd thought him mad twice over for wanting to find her again after the andat had vanished from the world and the poets had fallen from grace. She would, he had expected, kill Cehmai on sight.

And yet.

As a boy, Maati had taken another man's lover as his own, and Otah had forgiven it. In gratitude or something like it, Maati had devoted himself to proving Otah's innocence and helped to bring Idaan's crimes to light. Seedless, the first andat Maati had known, had betrayed both the poet Heshai who had bound him and the Galtic house that had backed the andat's cruel scheme. And the woman-what had her name been?whose child died. Seedless had betrayed everyone, but had asked only Maati to forgive him.

The accrued weight of decades pressed upon him as the sun caught in the western branches. Dead children, war, betrayal, loss. And here, in this small nameless farm days' travel from even a low town of notable size, two lovers who had become enemies were lovers again. It made him angry, and his anger made him sad.

As the first stars appeared, pale ghost lights in the deepening blue before sunset, Idaan emerged from the house. With her leather gear gone, she looked less like a thing from a monster tale. She was a woman, only a woman. And growing old. It was only when she met his gaze that he felt a chill. He had seen her eyes set in a younger face, and the darkness in them had shifted, but it had not been unmade.

"There's food," she said.

The table was small and somehow more frail than Maati had expected. Three bowls were set out, each with rice and strips of browned meat. Cehmai was also pouring out small measures of rice wine from a bone carafe. It was, Maati supposed, an acknowledgment of the occasion and likely as much extravagance as Cehmai's resources would allow. Maati took a pose that offered thanks and requested permission to join the table. Cehmai responded with one of acceptance and welcome, but his movements were slow. Maati couldn't tell if it was from exhaustion or thought. Idaan added neither word nor pose to the conversation; her expression was unreadable.