held the stillmewling andat close to her breast. Large Kae, Small Kae,

and Irit were all cowering against the walls, their eyes wide and mouths

hanging open. Eiah's expression was calm and commanding at the same

time, like a mother calling back her children from a cliff edge.

"It's done, Ashti-cha," Eiah said, walking slowly toward the woman.

"I'll have the knife."

"Not until I find that bitch and put it in her heart," Ashti Beg spat,

turning toward Eiah's voice. Maati saw for the first time that the

woman's eyes were as gray as storm clouds.

"I'll have the knife," Eiah said again. "Or I will beat you down and

take it. You know you're more likely to hurt the others than Vanjit."

The andat whimpered and Ashti Beg whirled toward it. Eiah stepped

forward smoothly, took Ashti Beg's elbow and wrist in her hands, and

twisted. Ashti Beg yelped, the blade clattering to the floor.

"What. . ." Maati gasped. "What is happening?"

Four voices answered at once, words tripping over each other. Only Eiah

and Vanjit remained silent, the two poets considering each other

silently in the center of the storm. Maati raised his hands in a pose

that commanded silence, and all of them stopped except Ashti Beg.

". . . power over us. It isn't right, it isn't fair, and I will not

simper and smile and lick her ass because she happened to be the one to

go first!"

"Enough!" Maati said. "Enough, all of you. Gods. Gods. Vanjit. Come with

me."

The girl looked over as if noticing him for the first time. The rage in

her expression faltered. Her hands were shaking. Eiah stepped forward,

keeping herself between Ashti Beg and her prey as Vanjit walked across

the room.

"Eiah, see to Ashti-cha," Maati said, taking Vanjit's wrist. "The rest

of you, clean this mess. I'd rather not eat food prepared in a child's

playpen."

He turned away, pulling Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight after him. The andat

was silent now. Maati crossed the hallway and started down a flight of

stone stairs that led to the sleeping rooms for the younger cohorts. The

voices of the others rose behind them and faded. He wasn't certain where

he was taking her until he reached the branching hall that led to the

slate-paved rooms where the teachers had once disciplined boys with the

cutting slash of a lacquered rod. He stopped in the hallway instead,

putting the reflexive impulse to violence aside. Vanjit bowed her head.

"I would like an explanation of that," he said, his voice shaking with

anger.

"It was Ashti Beg," Vanjit said. "She can't contain her jealousy any

longer, Maati-kvo. I have tried to give her the time and consideration,

but she won't understand. I am a poet now. I have an andat to care for.

I can't be expected to work and toil like a servant."

The andat twisted in her grasp, looking up at Maati with tears in its

black eyes. The tiny, toothless mouth gaped in what would have been

distress if it had been a baby.

"Tell me," Maati said. "Tell me what happened."

"Ashti Beg said that I had to clean the pots from breakfast. Irit

offered to, but Ashti wouldn't even let her finish her sentences. I

explained that I couldn't. I was very calm. I am patient with her,

Maati-kvo. I'm always very patient."

"What happened?" Maati insisted.

"She tried to take him," Vanjit said. Her voice had changed. The

pleading tone was gone. Her words could have been shaved from ice. "She

said that she could look after him as well as anyone, and that I was

more than welcome to have him back once the kitchen had been cleaned."

Maati closed his eyes.

"She put her hands on him," Vanjit said. In her voice, it sounded like a

violation. Perhaps it was.

"And what did you do," Maati asked, though he knew the answer.

"What you told me," Vanjit said. "What you said about Wounded."

"Which was?" he said. Clarity-of-Sight gurgled and swung its thick arms

at Vanjit's ears, its dumb show of fear and distress forgotten.

"You said that Eiah-cha couldn't make an andat based on things being as

they're meant to, because the andat aren't meant to be bound. It's not

their nature. You said she had to bind Wounded and then withdraw it from

all the women who still can't bear babes. And so we withdrew from Ashti

Beg."

The andat cooed. It might have been Maati's imagination, but the thing

seemed proud. Clarity-of-Sight. And so also Blindness.

The warmth that bloomed in his breast, the tightening of his jaw, the

near-unconscious shaking of his head. They were not anger so much as a

bone-deep impatience.

"It is manipulating you," he said. "We've talked about this from the

beginning. The andat wants its freedom. Whatever else it is, it will

always struggle to be free. It has been courting Ashti Beg and the

others for days to precipitate exactly this. You have to know yourself

better than it does. You have to behave like a grown woman, not a

selfrighteous child."

"But she-"

Maati put two fingers against the girl's lips. The andat was silent now,

staring at him with silent anger.

"You have been entrusted with a power beyond any living person," Maati

said, his tone harsher than he'd intended. "You are responsible for that

power. You understand me? Responsible. I have tried to make you see

that, but now I think I've failed. Poets aren't simply men ... or women

... who have a particular profession. We aren't like sailors or

cabinetmakers or armsmen. Holding the andat is like holding small gods,

and there is a price you pay for that. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes, Maati-kvo," Vanjit whispered.

"I doubt that," he said. "After what I've seen today, I very much doubt it.

She was weeping silently. Maati opened his mouth, some cutting comment

ready to humiliate her further, and stopped. For a moment, he was a boy

again, in this same hallway. He could feel the thin robes and the winter

cold, and the tears on his own cheeks as the older boys mocked him or

Tahi-kvo-bald, cruel Tahi-kvo, who had later become the Dai- kvo-beat

him. He wondered if this fear and rage had been what drove his teachers

back then, or if it had been something colder.

"Fix it," Maati said. "Put Ashti Beg back as she was, and never, never

use the andat for petty infighting again."

"No, Maati-kvo."

"And wash the pots when your turn comes."