to need other physicians' help, they may well be going slowly. Keeping

him rested."

"So we go," Danat said. "We go now, and as fast as we can manage. And

attack the poet before she can blind us."

"Yes," Otah said. "Burn the books, stop them from binding the andat. Go

back, and try to put the world back together again."

"Only ... only then how do we fix the people in Galt? How do we cure Ana?"

"There's a decision to make," Otah said. "Doing this quickly and well

means letting Galt remain sightless."

"Then we can't kill the poet," Danat said.

Otah took a long breath.

"Think about that before you say it," he said. "This is likely the only

chance we'll have to take them by surprise. The Galts in Saraykeht are

safe enough. The ones in their own cities are likely dead already. The

others could be sacrificed, and it would keep us alive."

"And childless, so what would the advantage be?" Danat said. "Everything

you'd tried to do would be destroyed."

"Everything I wanted to do has already been destroyed," Otah said.

"There isn't a solution to this. Not anymore. I'm reduced to looking for

the least painful way that it can end. I don't see how we take these

pieces and make a world worth living in."

Danat was silent and still, then took Otah's hand.

"I can," Danat said. "There's hope. There's still hope."

"This poet? Everything Ashti Beg says paints her as angry and petty and

cruel at heart. She hates the Galts and thinks little enough of me.

That's the woman we would be trying to reason with. And if she chooses,

there is more than Galt to lose."

Danat took a pose that accepted the stakes like a man at a betting

table. He would put the world and everything in it at risk for the

chance that remained to save Ana's home. Otah hesitated, and then

replied with a pose that stood witness to the decision. A feeling of

pride warmed him.

Kiyan-kya, he thought, we have raised a good man. Please all the gods

that we've also raised a wise one.

"I'll go tell the others," Danat said.

He rose and walked for the door, pausing only when Otah called after

him. Danat, at the doorway, looked back.

"It's the right choice," Otah said. "No matter how poorly this happens,

you made the right choice."

"There wasn't an option," Danat said.

It had been clear enough that no matter what the next step was, it

wouldn't involve staying at the school. Under Idaan's direction, the

armsmen were already refilling the water and coal stores for the

steamcarts, packing what little equipment they had used, and preparing

themselves for the road. The sky was white where it wasn't gray, the

snow blurring the horizon. Ashti Beg sat alone beside the great bronze

doors that had once opened only for the Dai-kvo. They were stained with

verdigris and stood ajar. No one besides Otah saw the significance of it.

Midmorning saw a thinning of the clouds, a weak, pale blue forcing its

way through the very top of the sky's dome. The horses were in harness,

the carts showing their billows of mixed smoke and steam, and everything

was at the ready except Idaan and Ana. The armsmen waited, ready to

leave. Otah and Danat went back.

Otah found the pair in a large room. Ana, sitting on an ancient bench,

had bent forward. Tears streaked the girl's cheeks, her hair was a wild

tangle, and her hands clasped until the fingertips were red and the

knuckles white. Idaan stood beside her, arms crossed and eyes as bleak

as murder. Before Otah could announce himself, Idaan saw him. His sister

leaned close to the Galtic girl, murmured something, listened to the

soft reply, and then marched to the doorway and Otah's side.

"Is there ... is something the matter?" Otah asked.

"Of course there is. How long have you been traveling with that girl?"

"Since Saraykeht," Otah said.

"Have you noticed yet that she isn't a man?" Idaan's voice was sharp as

knives. "Tell the armsmen to stand down. Then bring me a bowl of snow."

"What's the matter?" Otah demanded. And then, "Is it her time of the

month? Does she need medicine?"

Idaan looked at him as if he had asked what season came after spring:

pitying, incredulous, disgusted.

"Get me some snow. Or, better, some ice. Tell your men that we'll be

ready in a hand and a half, and for all the gods there ever were, keep

your son away from her until we can put her back together. The last

thing she needs is to feel humiliated."

Otah took a pose that promised compliance, but then hesitated. Idaan's

dark eyes flashed with something that wasn't anger. When she spoke, her

voice was lower but no softer.

"How have you spent a lifetime in the company of women and learned

nothing?" she asked, and, shaking her head, turned back to Ana.

True to her word, a hand and a half later, Ana and Idaan emerged from

the school as if nothing strange had happened. Ana's outer robe was

changed to a dark wool, and she leaned on Idaan's arm as she stepped up

to the bed of the steamcart. Danat moved forward, but Idaan's scowl

drove him back. The two women made their slow way to the shed, where

Idaan closed the door behind them.

The men steering the carts called out to one another, voices carrying

like crows' calls in the empty landscape. The carts stuttered and

lurched, and turned to the east, tracking back along the path to the

high road between ruined Nantani and Pathai, from which they'd come.

Otah rode down the path he'd walked as a boy, searching his mind for

some feeling of kinship with his past, but the world as it was demanded

too much of him. He searched for some memory deep within him of the

first time he'd walked away from the school, of leaving everything he'd

known, rejected, behind him.

His mind was knotted with questions of how to find the poet, how to

persuade her to do as he asked, what Idaan had meant, what was wrong

with Ana, whether the steamcarts had enough fuel, and a growing ache in

his spine that came from too many days riding horses he didn't know.

There was no effort to spare for the past. Whatever he didn't remember

now of his original flight from the school he likely never would. The

past would be lost, as it always was. Always. He didn't bother trying to

hold it.

They made better time than he had expected, starting as late as they

had. By the time they stopped for the night, the high road was behind