The Price of Spring Page 7

  Many were things he had expected. The cities and towns had grown quieter, undisturbed by the laughter and games of children. The people were older, grayer. The streets felt too big, like the robes of a once-hale man who had grown thin with illness or age. And the scars of the war itself-the burned towns already half-reclaimed by foxes and saplings, the bright green swath from Utani all the way down to ruined Nantani on the southern coast where once an army had passed-had faded, but they had not disappeared.

  The distrust of the foreign was driven deep into the flesh here. He had heard stories of Westlands women coming to marry among the low towns, thinking their wombs would make them of greater value here than in their own lands. Instead, they were recognized as a slower kind of invasion. Driven out with threats or stones. The men who had had the temerity to marry outside their own kind punished in ways to rival the prices paid by failed poets. Joints broken, drowned in night pots, necks snapped, and bodies thrown into creeks to drown in half a hand's depth of water.

  And yet, the stories might only be stories. The more Maati traveled, the less certain he was.

  Twice, great belching steam wagons had passed him on the trail. The men at the controls had been locals, but the machines themselves were Galtic, remnants of the war. Once he had seen plumes of smoke and steam rising from the river itself, a flat barge sitting low to the water and driven by the same chuffing, tarnished bulb as the wagons. Even the fields below him now were cultivated in a pattern he had never seen before the Galts came. Perhaps Otah's betrayal of the cities colored all of Maati's perceptions now, but it felt as if the Galts were invading again, only slowly this time, burrowing under the ground and changing all they touched in small, insidious ways.

  Something tickled his arm. Maati plucked out the tick and cracked it between his thumbnails. He was wasting time. His feet ached from walking and his robe stuck to his back and legs, but the sooner this meeting happened, the sooner he would know where he stood. He emptied the last of the seeds into his hand, ate them, then put the pouch back in his sleeve and untied his mule.

  Seven years before, he and Cehmai had parted for the last time at a wayhouse three days' walk northwest of the farms and the river and catalpa-shaded hill. It had not been an entirely friendly parting, but they had agreed to leave letters of their whereabouts at that house, should the need ever arise to find each other.

  Maati had found the place easily. In the intervening years, the kitchens had burned, and the two huge trees in the courtyard. The boy who stabled the horses had grown to be a man. The bricks that had been brown and yellow had been painted white and blue. And the box they had paid the keeper to hold for them had a letter in it, sewn and sealed, with ciphered directions that would lead to the farmhouse Cehmai had taken under his new false name. Jadit Noygu.

  Jadit Noygu, and his wife Sian.

  Maati took the letter out again, consulting the deciphered text he'd marked in between the lines written in Cehmai's clean, clear hand. Forward down the track until he passed the ruin of an old mill, then the first east-turning pathway, and half a hand's walk to a low mud-and-straw farmhouse with a brick cistern in front. Maati clucked at the mule and resumed his walk.

  He arrived in the heat of the afternoon; even the shade beneath the trees sweltered. Maati helped himself to a bowl of water from the cistern, and then another bowl for the mule. No one came out to greet him, but the shutters on the windows looked recently painted and the track that led around the side of the house was well-tended. There was no sense that the farm stood empty. Maati made his way toward the back.

  A small herd of goats bleated at him from their pen, the disturbing, clever eyes considering him with as little joy as he had for them. The low sound of whistling came to him from a tall, narrow building set apart from both house and pen. A slaughterhouse.

  He stepped into the doorway, blocking the light. The air was thick with smoke to drive the flies away. The body of the sacrificed goat hung from a hook, buckets of blood and entrails at the butcher's feet. The butcher turned. Her hands were crimson, her leather apron sodden with blood. A hooked knife flashed in her hand.

  She was not the only reason that Maati and Cehmai had parted company, but she would have been sufficient. Idaan Machi, outcast sister to the Emperor. As a girl no older than Vanjit was now, Idaan had plotted the slaughter of her own family in a bloody-minded attempt to win Machi for herself and her husband. Otah had come near to being executed for her crimes, Cehmai had been seduced and used by her, and Maati still had a thick scar on his belly where her assassin had tried to gut him. Otah, for reasons that passed beyond Maati's understanding, had spared the murderess. Even less comprehensible, Cehmai had found her, and in their shared exile, they had once again become lovers. Only Maati still saw her for what she was.

  Age had thickened her. Her hair, tied back in a ferocious knot, was more gray than black. Her long, northern face showed curiosity, then surprise, then for less than a heartbeat something like contempt.

  "You'll want to see him, then," said Otah's exiled sister: the woman who had once set an assassin to kill Maati. Who had blamed Otah for the murders she and her ambitious lover had committed.

  She sank the gory knife into the dead animal's side, setting the corpse swinging, and walked forward.

  "Follow me," she said.

  "Tell me where to find him," Maati said. "I can just as well. . ."

  "The dogs don't know you," Idaan said. "Follow me."

  Once Maati saw the dogs-five wide-jawed beasts as big as ponies, lazing in the rich dirt at the back of the house-he was glad she was there to guide him. She walked with a strong gait, leading him past the house, past a low barn where chickens scattered and complained, to a wide, low field of grass, its black soil under half an inch of water. At the far side of the field, a thin figure stood. He wore the canvas trousers of a workman and a rag the color of old blood around his head. By the time the man's face had ceased to be a leather-colored blur, they were almost upon him. There were the bright, boyish eyes, the serious mouth. The sun had coarsened his skin and complicated the corners of his eyes. He smiled and took a pose of greeting appropriate for one master of their arcane trade to another. Idaan snorted, turned, and walked back toward the slaughterhouse, leaving them alone.

  "It's a dry year," Cehmai said. "You wouldn't know it, but it's a dry year. The last two crops, I was afraid that they'd mold in the field. This one, I'm out here every other week, opening the ditch gates."

  "I need your help, Cehmai-cha," Maati said.

  The man nodded, squinted out over the field as if judging something Maati couldn't see, and sighed.

  "Of course you do," Cehmai said. "Come on, then. Walk with me."

  The fields were not the largest Maati had seen, and reminded him of the gardens he'd worked as a child in the school. The dark soil of the riverfed lowlands was unlike the dry, pale soil of the high plains outside Pathai, but the scent of wet earth, the buzzing of small insects, the warmth of the high sun, and the subtle cool rising from the water all echoed moments of his childhood. Not all those memories were harsh. For a moment, he imagined slipping off his sandals and sinking his toes into the mud.

  As they walked, he told Cehmai all he'd been doing in the years since they'd met. The idea of a women's grammar was one they had discussed before, so it required little more than to remind him of it. He outlined the progress he had made, the insights that had taken the project far enough to begin the experimental bindings. They paused under the broad shade of a catalpa and Cehmai shared a light meal of dried cherries and dense honey bread while Maati recounted his losses.

  He did not mention Eiah or the school. Not yet. Not until he knew better which way his old colleague's opinions fell.

  Cehmai listened, nodding on occasion. He asked few questions, but those he did were to the point and well-considered. Maati felt himself falling into familiar habits of conversation. When, three hands later, Cehmai rose and led the way back to the river gate, it was almost a
s if the years had not passed. They were the only two people in the world who shared the knowledge of the andat and the Dai-kvo. They had suffered through the long, painful nights of the war, working to fashion a binding that might save them. They had lived through the long, bitter winter of their failure in the caves north of Machi. If it had not made them friends, they were at least intimates. Maati found himself outlining the binding of Returning-to-Natural-Equilibrium as Cehmai turned the rough iron mechanism that would slow the water.

  "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.

  "Water-Moving-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.

  "I've been thinking," Cehmai said. "Your plan. I have a few questions about it."

  "Anything," Maati said.

  "Would your scheme to undo what Sterile did include restoring the Galts?"

  Maati took a strip of the meat from his bowl. The flesh was pleasantly rich and well-salted. He chewed slowly to give himself time to think, but his hesitation was answer enough.

  "I don't think I can join you," Cehmai said. "This battle I've ... I've lost my taste for it."

  Maati felt his own frown like an ache.

  "Reconsider," he said, but Cehmai shook his head.

  "I've given too much of my life to the world already. I'd like to keep the rest of my years for myself. No more great struggles, no more cities or nations or worlds resting on what I do or don't do. What I have here is enough."

  Maati wiped his fingers on his sleeve and took a pose of query that bordered on accusation. Cehmai's eyes narrowed.

  "Enough for what?" Maati demanded. "Enough for the pair of you? It'll be more than enough before many years have passed. It'll be too much. How much do you work in a day? Raising your own food, tending your crop and your animals, making food and washing your robes and gathering wood for your fires? Does it give you any time at all to think? To rest?"

  "It isn't as easy as living in the courts, that's truth," Cehmai said. His smile was the same as ever, even set in this worn face. "There are nights it would be good to leave the washing to a servant."

  "It won't get easier," Maati said. "You'll get older. Both of you. The work will stay just as difficult, and you'll get tired faster. When you take sick, you'll recover slowly. One or the other of you will strain something or break an old bone or catch fever, and your children won't be there to care for you. The next farm over? His children won't be there for you either. Or the next. Or the next."

  "He's not wrong, love," Idaan said. Maati blinked. Of all the people in the world, Idaan was the last he'd expected support from.

  "I know all that," Cehmai said. "It doesn't mean that I should go back to being a poet."

  "What else would you do?" Maati said. "Sell the land rights? Who is there to buy them? Take up some new trade? Who will there be to teach you? Binding the andat is the thing you've trained for. Your mind is built for the work. These girls ... you should see them. The dedication, the engagement, the drive. If this thing can be done, they will do it. We can remake the world."

  "We've done that once already," Cehmai said. "It didn't go well."

  "We didn't have time. The Galts were at our door. We did what we had to do. And now we can correct our errors."

  "Does my brother know about this?" Idaan asked.

  "He refused me," Maati said.

  "Is that why you hate him?"

  The air around the table seemed to clench. Maati stared at the woman. Idaan met his gaze with a level calm.

  "He i
s selling us," Maati said. "He is turning away from a generation of women whose injuries are as much his fault as ours."

  "And is that why you hate him?" Idaan asked again. "You can't tell me that you don't, Maati-cha. I know quite a lot about hatred."

  He let my son die to save his, Maati thought but did not say. There were a thousand arguments against the statement: Otah hadn't been there when Nayiit died; it wasn't Danat's fault that his protector failed to fend off the soldiers; Nayiit wasn't truly his son. He knew them all, and that none of them mattered. Nayiit had died, Maati had been sent into the wilderness, and Otah had risen like a star in the sky.

  "What I feel toward your brother doesn't change what needs to be done," Maati said, "or the help I'll need to do it."

  "Who's backing you?" Idaan said.

  Maati felt a flash of surprise and even fear. An image of Eiah flickered in his mind and was banished.

  "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "Someone's feeding you," she said. "Someone's hiding you and your students. If the word got out that you'd been found, half the world would send armsmen to cut you down for fear you'd do exactly what you're doing now. And half of the rest would kick you to death for petty vengeance. If it's not Otah protecting you, who is it? One of the high families of the utkhaiem? A trading house? Who?"

  "I have strong backing," Maati said. "But I won't tell you more than that."

  "Every danger you face, my husband faces too," Idaan said. "If you want him to take your risks, you have to tell him what protection you can offer."

  "I have an ear in the palaces anytime I need it. Otah won't be able to mount any kind of action against me without warning finding me. You can trust to that."

  "You have to tell us more," Idaan said.

  "He doesn't," Cehmai said, sharply. "He doesn't have to offer me protection because I'm not going to do the work. I'm done, love. I'm finished. I want a few more years with you and a quiet death, and I'll be quite pleased with that."