offered me odds."

"That isn't true," Maati said. He hadn't meant to shout, and lowered his

voice when he spoke again. "That isn't true. We've done good work here.

The equal of anything I learned from the Dai-kvo. Your chances are equal

to the best any poet has faced. I'll swear to that if you'd like."

"There's no call," she said. From down the hall, he heard voices in

bright conversation. He heard laughter. Vanjit took his hand. He had

never noticed how small her hands were. How small she was, hardly more

than a child herself.

"Thank you," she said. "Whatever happens, thank you. If I die today,

thank you. Do you understand?"

"No."

"You've made living bearable," she said. "It's more than I can ever repay.

"You can. You can repay all of it and more. Don't die. Succeed."

Vanjit smiled and took a pose that accepted instruction, then moved

forward, wrapping her arms around Maati in a bear hug. He cradled her

head on his breast, his eyes pressed closed, his heart sick and anxious.

The chamber they had set aside for the binding had once been the

sleeping room for one of the younger cohorts. The lines of cots were

gone now. The windows shone with the light of middle morning. Vanjit

took a round of chalk and began writing out her binding on the wide

south wall, ancient words and recent blending together in the new

grammar they had all created. From Maati's cushion at the back of the

room, the letters were blurry and indistinct, but from their shape

alone, he could see that the binding had shifted since the last time

he'd seen it.

Eiah sat at his side, her hand on his arm, her gaze fixed on the

opposite wall. She looked half-ill.

"It's going to be all right," Maati murmured.

Eiah nodded once, her eyes never leaving the pale words taking over the

far wall like a bright shadow. When Vanjit was finished, she walked to

the beginning again, paced slowly down the wall reading all she'd

written, and then, satisfied, put the chalk on the ground. A single

cushion had been placed in the middle of the room for her. She stopped

at it, her binding behind her, her face turned toward the small assembly

at the back. She took a silent pose of gratitude, turned, and sat.

Maati had a powerful urge to stand, to call out. He could wash the wall

clean, talk through the binding again, check it for errors one last

time. Vanjit began to chant, the cadences unlike anything he had heard

before. Her voice was soft, coaxing, gentle; she was singing her andat

into the world. He clenched his fists and stayed quiet. Eiah seemed to

have stopped breathing.

The sound of Vanjit's voice filled the air, reverberating as if the

building had grown huge. The chant began to echo, and Vanjit's actual

voice receded. Words and phrases combined, voice against echo, making

new sentences and meanings. The lilt of the girl's voice fell into

harmony with itself, and Maati heard a third voice, neither Vanjit nor

her echo, but something deep and sonorous as a bell. It was reciting

syllables borrowed from the words of the binding, creating another layer

of sound and intention. The air thickened, and Vanjit's back-her

shoulders hunched, her head bowed-seemed very far away. Maati smelled

hot iron, or perhaps blood. His heart began to race with a fear he

couldn't express.

Something's wrong. T' have to stop her, he said to Eiah, but though he

could feel the words vibrate in his throat, he couldn't hear them.

Vanjit's circling voice had made a kind of silence that Maati was

powerless to break. Another layer of echoes came, the words seeming to

come before Vanjit spoke them, echoing from the other direction in time.

Beside him, Eiah's face had gone white.

Vanjit's voice spoke a single word-the last of the binding-at the same

time as all the layered echoes, a dozen voices speaking as one. The

world itself chimed, pandemonium resolving into a single harmonious

chord. The room was only a room again. When Maati stood, he could hear

the hem of his robe whispering against the stone. Vanjit sat where she

had been, her head bowed. No new form stood before her. It should have

been there.

She's failed, Maati thought. It hasn't worked, and she's paid the price

of it.

The others were on their feet, but he took a pose that commanded them to

remain where they were. This was his. However bad it was, it was his.

His belly twisted as he walked toward her corpse. He had seen the price

a failed binding exacted: always different, always fatal. And yet

Vanjit's ribs rose and fell, still breathing.

"Vanjit-kya?" he said, his voice no more than a murmur.

The girl shifted, turned her head, and looked up at him. Her eyes were

bright with joy. In her lap, something squirmed. Maati saw the round,

soft flesh, the tubby, half-formed hands and feet, a toothless mouth,

and black eyes full of empty rage. Except for the eyes, it could have

been a human baby.

"He's come," Vanjit said. "Look, Maati-kvo. We've done it. He's here."

As if freed from silence by the poet's words, Clarity-of-Sight opened

its tiny throat and wailed.

11

Kiyan-kya-

I look athow longI carriedthe world, orthoughtI did, andl

wonder how many times we have to learn the same lessons.

Until we remember them, I suppose. It isn't that I've

stopped worrying. The gods all know I crawl into my bed at

night half-tempted to call for reports from Sinja and Danat

and Ashua. Even if I had them dragged into my chambers to

recount everything they'd seen and done, how would it change

things? Would I need less sleep? Would I be able to remake

the world through raw will like a poet? I'm only a man,

however fancy the robes they put me in. I'm not more suited

to lead a war fleet or root out a conspiracy or win a young

girl's love than any of them.

Why is it so hard for me to believe that someone besides

myself might be competent? Or did I ./ear that letting go of

any one part would mean everything would all away?

No, love. Idaan was right. I have been punishing myself all

this time for not saving the people I cared for most. I

think some nights that I will never stop mourning you.

Otah's pen hung in the cool night air, the brass nib just above the

paper. The night breeze smelled of the sea and the city, rich and heavy

as an overripe grape whose skin has only just split. In Machi, they

would already be moving down to the tunnels beneath the city. In Utani,

where his central palace stood wrapped in cloth, awaiting his return,

the leaves would have turned to red and yellow and gold. In Pathai,