"'T'hat would be lovely," Liat said. "I'll talk with Nlaati about it."

"Would you be so good as to get the stiff brushes from the back and wash

them for me, Eiah-cha?" the physician said. "Famiya's anxious to be done

with us, I'm sure."

Eiah dropped into a pose of confirmation for less than a breath before

darting off to her task. Liat watched the physician, the amusement and

fondness in his expression. He shook his head.

"She is a force," he said. "But the powder. I wanted to say, it can be

habit-forming. You shouldn't have it more than once in a week. So if the

pain returns, we may have to find another approach."

"I'm sure this will be fine," Liat said as she rose. "And ... thank you.

For what you've done with Eiah, I mean."

"She needs it," the man said with a shrug. "Her father's ridden off to

die, her mother and her friend the poet are too busy trying to keep us

all alive to take time to comfort her. She buries herself in this, and

so even if she slows us down, how can I do anything but welcome her?"

Liat felt her heart turn to lead. The physician's smile slipped, and for

a moment the dread showed from behind the mask. When he spoke again, it

was softly and the words were as gray as stones.

"And, after all, we may need our children to know how to care for the

dying before all that's coming is done."

MAAT1 RIBBED HIS EYES wlTH THE PALMS OF HIS HANDS, SQUINTED, blinked.

The world was blurry: the long, rich green of the grass on which they

lay was like a single sheet of dyed rice paper; the towers of Machi were

reduced to dark blurs that the blue of the sky shone through. It was

like fog without the grayness. He blinked again, and the world moved

nearer to focus.

"How long was I sleeping?" he asked.

"Long enough, sweet," Liat said. "I could have managed longer, I think.

The gods all know we've been restless enough at night."

The sun was near the top of its arc, the remains of breakfast in

lacquered boxes with their lids shut, the day half gone. Liat was right,

of course. He hadn't been sleeping near enough-late to bed, waking

early, and with troubled rest between. He could feel it in his neck and

hack and see it in the slowness with which his vision cleared.

"Where's F,iah got to?" he asked.

"Back to her place with the physicians, I'd guess. I offered to wake you

so that she could say her good-byes, but she thought it would be better

if you slept." Liat smiled. "She said it would be restorative. Can you

imagine her using that kind of language a season ago? She already sounds

like a physician's apprentice."

Maati grinned. He'd resisted the idea of this little outing at first,

but Cehmai had joined F,iah's cause. A half-day's effort by a rested man

might do better for them than the whole day by someone drunk with

exhaustion and despair. And even now the library seemed to call to

him-the scrolls he had already read, the codices laid out and put away

and pulled out to look over again, the wax tablets with their notes cut

into them and smoothed clear again. And in the end, he had never been

able to refuse Eiah. Her good opinion was too precious and too fickle.

Liat slid her hand around his arm and leaned against him. She smelled of

grass and cherry paste on apples and musk. He turned without thinking

and kissed the crown of her head as if it were something he had always

done. As if there had not been a lifetime between the days when they had

first been lovers and now.

"How badly is it going?" she asked.

"Not well. We have a start, but Cehmai's notes are only beginnings. And

they were done by a student. I'm sure they all seemed terribly deep and

insightful when he was still fresh from the school. But there's less

there than I'd hoped. And ..."

"And?"

Maati sighed. The towers were visible now. The blades of grass stood out

one from another.

"He's not a great inventor," Maati said. "He never was. It's part of why

he was chosen to take over an andat that had already been captured

instead of binding something new. And I'm no better."

"You were chosen for the same thing."

"Cehmai's clever. I'm clever too, if it comes to that, but we're the

second pressing. There's no one we can talk with who's seen a binding

through from first principles to a completion. We need someone whose

mind's sharper than ours."

There were birds wheeling about the towers-tiny specks of black and gray

and white wheeling though the air as if a single mind drove them. Maati

pretended he could hear their calls.

"Perhaps you could train someone. "There's a whole city to choose from."

""There isn't time," Maati said. He wanted to say that even if there

were, he wouldn't. The andat were too powerful, too dangerous to be

given to anyone whose heart wasn't strong or whose conscience couldn't

be trusted. That was the lesson, after all, that had driven his own life

and Cehmai's and the Dai-kvo himself. It was what elevated each of the

poets from boy children cast out by their parents to the most honored

men in the world. And yet, if there were someone bright enough to hand

the power to, he suspected he would. If it brought the army back from

the field and put the world back the way it had been, the risk would be

worth it.

"Maybe one of the other poets will come," Liat said, but her voice had

gone thin and weary.

"You don't have hope for the Dai-kvo?"

Liat smiled.

"Hope? Yes, I have hope. Just not faith. The Galts know what's in play.

If we don't recapture the andat, the cities will all fall. If we do,

we'll destroy Galt and everyone in her. "They'll be as ruthless as we will."

"And Otah-kvo? Nayiit?"

Liat's gaze met his, and he nodded. The knot in her chest, he was

certain, was much like his own.

"They'll be fine," Liat said, her tone asking for her own belief in the

words as much as his. "It's always the footmen who die in battles, isn't

it? The generals all live. And he'll keep Nayiit safe. He said he would."

"They might not even see battle. If they arrive before the Galts and

come back quickly enough, we might not lose a single man."

"And the moon may come down and get itself trapped in a teabowl," Liat

said. "But it would be nice, wouldn't it? For us, I mean. Not so much

for the Galts."

"You care what happens to them?"