infant, to be her father again.

"This is, I assume, when you point out how much better your plan was

than my own," she said.

"I didn't intend to, no," Otah said.

Eiah turned to him, shifting her weight as if she had some angry retort

that had stuck in her throat for want of opposition. When he spoke, he

was quiet enough to keep the conversation as near to between only the

two of them as the close quarters would allow.

"We each did our best," Otah said. "We did what we could."

He put his arm around her. She bit down on her lip and fought the sobs

that shook her body like tiny earthquakes. Her fingers found his own,

and squeezed as hard as a patient under a physician's blade. He made no

complaint.

"How many people have I killed, Papa-kya? How many people have I killed

with this?"

"Hush," Otah said. "It doesn't matter. Nothing we've done matters. Only

what we do next."

"The price is too high," Eiah said. "I'm sorry. Will you tell them that

I'm sorry?"

"If you'd like."

Otah rocked her gently, and she allowed him to do it. The others all

knew what they were saying, if not in specific, then at least the sketch

of it. Otah saw Danat's concern, and Idaan's cool evaluating glance. He

saw the armsmen turn their backs to him out of respect, and at the bow,

Maati turned his back for another reason. Otah felt a flicker of his

rage come back, a tongue of flame rising from old coals. Maati had done

this. None of it would have happened if Maati hadn't been so bent by his

own guilt or so deluded by his optimism that he ignored the dangers.

Or if Otah had found him and stopped him when that first letter had

come. Or if Eiah hadn't made common cause with Maati's clandestine

school. Or if Vanjit hadn't been mad, or Balasar ambitious, or the world

and everything in it made from the first. Otah closed his eyes, letting

the darkness create a space large enough for the woman in his arms and

his own complicated heart.

Eiah murmured something he couldn't make out. He made a small

interrogative sound in the back of his throat, and she coughed before

repeating herself.

"There was no one at the school I could talk with," she said. "I got so

tired of being strong all the time."

"I know," he said. "Oh, love. That, I know."

Otah slept deeply that night, lulled by exhaustion and the soft sounds

of familiar voices and of the river. He slept as if he had been ill and

the fever had only just broken. As if he was weak, and gaining strength.

The dreams that possessed him faded with his first awareness of light

and motion, less substantial than cobwebs, less lasting than mist.

The air itself seemed cleaner. The early-morning haze burned off in

sunlight the color of water. They ate boiled wheat and honey, dried

apples, and black tea. The boatman's second made his call, the boatman

responded, and they nosed out again into the flow. Maati, sulking, kept

as nearly clear of Otah as he could but kept casting glances at Eiah.

Jealous, Otah assumed, of the conversation between father and daughter

and unsure of her allegiance. Eiah for her part seemed to be making a

point of speaking with her brother and her aunt and Ana Dasin, sitting

with them, eating with them, making conversation with the jaw-clenched

determination of a horse laboring uphill.

The character of the river itself changed as they went farther north.

Where the south was wide and slow and gentle, the stretch just south of

Udun was narrower-sometimes no more than a hundred yards acrossand

faster. The boatman kept his kiln roaring, the boiler bumping and

complaining. The paddle wheel spat up river water, slicking the deck

nearest the stern. Otah would have been concerned if the boatman and his

second hadn't appeared so pleased with themselves. Still, whenever the

boiler chimed after some particularly loud knock, Otah eyed it with

suspicion. He had seen boilers burst their seams.

The miles passed slowly, though still faster than the poet girl could

have walked. Every now and then, a flicker of movement on the shore

would catch Otah's attention. Bird or deer or trick of the light. He

found himself wondering what they would do if she appeared, andat in her

arms, and struck them all blind. His fears always took the form of

getting Danat and Eiah and Ana to safety, though he knew that his own

danger would be as great as theirs and their competence likely greater.

The spitting waterwheel slowly drove them toward the bow. Near midday,

the captain of the guard brought them tin bowls of raisins and bread and

cheese. They all sat in a clump, and even Maati haunted the edges of the

conversation. Ana and Eiah sat hand in hand on a long, low bench; Danat,

cross-legged on the deck. Otah and Idaan kept to leather and canvas

stools that creaked when sat upon and resisted any attempt to rise. The

cheese was rich and fragrant, the bread only mildly stale, and the topic

a council of war.

"If we do find her," Idaan said, answering Otah's voiced concerns, "I'm

not sure what we do with her. Can she be made to see reason?"

"A month ago, I'd have said it was possible," Eiah said. "Not simple,

but possible. I'm half-sorry we didn't kill her in her sleep when we

were still at the school."

"Only half?" Danat asked.

"There's Galt," Eiah said. "As it stands now, she's the only one who can

put it back. It's harder for her to do that dead."

Danat looked chagrined, and, as if sensing it, Idaan put a hand on his

shoulder. Eiah squeezed Ana's hand, then gently bent it at the wrist, as

if testing something.

"She's alone. She's hurt and she's sad. I'm not saying that's all

certain to work in our favor," Maati said, "but it's something." Otah

thought he sounded petulant, but none of the others appeared to hear it

that way.

Eiah's voice cut the conversation like a blade. Even before he took the

sense of the words, Otah was halfway to his feet.

"How long?" Eiah asked.

Her hands were around Ana's wrists, her fingers curled as if measuring

the girl's pulses. Eiah's face was pale.

"Ah," Idaan said. "Well. Sitting those two together was a mistake."

"Tell me," Eiah said. "How far along?"

"A third, perhaps," Ana said softly.

"We hadn't mentioned it to the men," Idaan said. "I understand the first

ones don't always take."

It took him less than a breath to understand.