The script was small and cramped, the ink pale. It would have been difficult in sunlight; by fire and candle, it might as well not have been written. Frustrated, Maati turned the pages and an eye stared back at him from the paper. He turned back and went more slowly. All the diagrams were of eyes, some ripped from their sockets, some pierced by careful blades. Comments accompanied each orb, laying, he assumed, its secrets open.
"Sight," Eiah said. "The author is called Arran, but it was more likely written by dozens of people who all used the same name. The wardens in the north had a period four or five generations ago when there was some brilliant work done. We ignored it, of course, because it wasn't by us. But these are very, very good. Arran was brilliant."
"Whether he existed or not," Maati said. He meant it as a joke.
"Whether he existed or not," Eiah agreed with perfect seriousness. "I've been working with these. And with Vanjit. We have a draft. You should look at it."
Maati handed her back the book and she pulled a sheaf of papers from her sleeve. Maati found himself almost hesitant to accept them. Vanjit, and her dreamed baby. Vanjit, who had lost so much in the war. He didn't want to see any of his students pay the price of a failed binding, but especially not her.
He took the papers. Eiah waited. He opened them.
The binding was an outline, but it was well-considered. The sections and relationships sketched in with commentary detailing what would go in each, often with two or three notes of possible approaches. The andat would be Clarityof-Sight, and it would be based in the medical knowledge of Westlands physicians and the women's grammar that Maati and Eiah had been creating. Even if some Second Empire poet had managed to hold the andat before, this approach, these descriptions and sensibilities, was likely to be wholly different. Wholly new.
"Why Vanjit?" he asked. "Why not Ashti Beg or Small Kae?"
"You think she isn't ready?"
"I ... I wouldn't go so far as that," Maati said. "It's only that she's young, and she's had a harder life than some. I wonder whether ..."
"None of us are perfect, Maati-kya," Eiah said. "We have to work with the people we have. Vanjit is clever and determined."
"You think she can manage it? Bind this andat?"
"I think she has the best hope of any of us. Except possibly me."
Maati sighed, nodding as much to himself as to her. Dread thickened his throat.
"Let me look at this," he said. "Let me think about it."
Eiah took a pose that accepted his command. Maati looked down again.
"Why didn't he come?" Eiah asked.
"Because," Maati began, and then found he wasn't able to answer as easily as he'd thought. He folded the papers and began to tuck them into his sleeve, remembered how wet the cloth was, and tossed them instead onto his low, wood-framed bed. "Because he didn't want to," he said at last.
"And my aunt?"
"I don't know," Maati said. "I thought for a time that she might take my side. She didn't seem pleased with how they were living. Or, no. That's not right. She seemed to care more than he did about how they would live in the future. But he wouldn't have any of it."
"He's given up," Eiah said.
Maati recalled the man's face, the lines and weariness. The authenticity of his smile. When they'd first met, Cehmai had been little more than a boy, younger than Eiah was now. This was what the world had done to that boy. What it had done to them all.
"He has," Maati said.
"Then we'll do without him," Eiah said.
"Yes," Maati said, hoisting himself up. "Yes we will, but if you'll forgive me, Eiah-kya, I think the day's worn me thin. A little rest, and we'll begin fresh tomorrow. And where's that list of questions? Ah, thank you. I'll look over all of this, and we'll decide where best to go from here, eh?"
She took his hand, squeezing his knuckles gently.
"It's good to have you back," she said.
"I'm pleased to be here," he said.
"Did you have any news of my father?"
"No," he said. "I didn't ask. It's the first rule of running a race, isn't it? Not to look back at who's behind you?"
Eiah chuckled, but didn't respond otherwise. Once she'd left and Maati had banked the fire, he sat on the bed. The night candle stood straight in its glass case, the burning wick marking the hours before dawn. It wasn't to its first-quarter mark and he felt exhausted. He moved the papers and the scroll safely off the bed, pulled the blanket up over himself, and slept better than he had in weeks, waking to the sound of morning birds and pale light before dawn.
He read over the list of questions on the scroll, only surveying them and not bothering to think of answers just yet, and then turned to the proposed binding. When he went out, following the smells of wood smoke and warmed honey, his mind was turning at twice its usual speed.