"Your color is bad," she said. "Your pulses aren't symmetric. Your blood is thick and dark. This is what I do, Uncle. I find people who are sick, and I look at the signs, and I think about them and their bodies. I look at you, here, now, and I see a man whose blood is slow and growing slower."
"You're imagining things," Maati said. "I'm fine. I only haven't slept well. I would never have guessed that you of all people would mistake a little lost rest for a weak heart."
"I'm not-"
"I am fine!" Maati shouted, pounding the arm of the chair. "And we cannot afford to run off into the teeth of winter. You aren't a physician any longer. That's behind you. You are a poet. You are the poet who's going to save the cities."
She took his hand in both of hers. For a moment, there was no sound but the low murmur of the fire and the nearly inaudible sound of her palm stroking the back of his hand. One of the threatened tears fell, streaking her cheek black. He hadn't realized she wore kohl.
"You," he said softly, "are the most important poet there is. The most important one there ever was."
"I'm just one woman," Eiah said. "I'm doing the best I can, but I'm tired. And the world keeps getting darker around me. If I can't take care of everything, at least let me take care of you."
"I will be fine," Maati said. "I'm not young anymore, but I'm a long way from death. We'll finish your binding, and then if you want to haul me to half the baths in the Empire, I'll submit."
Another tear marked her face. Maati took his sleeve and wiped her cheek dry.
"I'll be fine," he said. "I'll rest more if you like. I'll pretend my bones are made of mud brick and glass. But you can't stop now to concern yourself with me. Those people out there. They're the ones who need your care. Not me."
"Let me go to Pathai," she said. "I can get teas there."
"No," Maati said. "I won't do that."
"Let me send Large Kae, then. I can't stand by and do nothing."
"All right," Maati said, holding up a placating hand. "All right. Let's wait until morning, and we can talk to Large Kae. And perhaps you'll see that I'm only tired and we can move past this."
She left in the end without being convinced. As darkness fell, Maati found himself slipping into a soft despair. The world was quiet and still and utterly unaware of him.
His son was dead. The people he had counted as his friends had become his enemies, and he was among the most despised men in the world. Eiah was wrong, of course. His health was fine. But someday, it would fail. All men died, and most were forgotten. The few that the world remembered were not always celebrated.
He lit the night candle by holding it to the fire, the wax hissing where it dripped on the coals. He found his book and settled close to the fire grate before opening the cover and considering the words.
I, Maati Vaupathai, am one of the two men remaining in the world who has wielded the power of the andat.
Already, it was not true. There were three living poets now, and one of them a woman. Between the time he had touched a pen to this page and this moment, reading it in the early night, the world had moved on. He wondered how much of the rest was already old, already the property of a past that could never be regained. He read slowly, tracing the path his own mind had taken. The candle lent the pages an orange glow, the ink seeming to retreat into the pages, as if they were much larger and much farther away. The fire warmed his ankles and turned strong, solid wood into ashes softer than snow.
He was surprised to see the anger and bitterness in the book. There was a thread, he thought, of hatred in these words. He didn't think he'd meant it to be there, and yet sitting alone with his slowing blood, it could not be denied. Hatred of Otah and the Galts, of course, but also of Cehmai. Of Liat, whom he mentioned more frequently than he remembered and in terms that he knew she didn't deserve. Hatred toward the gods and the world. And thus, he had to think, toward himself. Before he reached the last page, Maati was weeping quietly.
He found an ink brick and a fresh pen, lit all the lanterns and candles he could find, and sat at his desk. He drew a line across the middle of the last page, marking a change in the book and in himself that he could not yet describe. He freshened the ink and did not know precisely what he intended to write until the nib touched the page, tracing out letters with a sound as dry and quiet as a lizard on stones.
If it were within my power, I would begin again. I would begin as a boy again, and live my life a different way. I have been told tonight that my heart is growing weak. Looking back upon the man I have been until now, I think it always has been. I think it was shattered one time too many and put back without all the shards in place.