expressing hope that these might help. There was no mention of the Galts
or the Dai-kvo or the dead. Otah seemed to assume that Maati would
understand how dire the situation was, how much depended on him and on
Cehmai.
He was right. Maati understood.
He'd left Cehmai in the library, looking over their new acquisitions,
while he sat in the main room of his apartments, marking out grammars
and forms. How Heshai had hound Seedless, what he would have done
differently in retrospect, and the variations that Maati could
makedifferent words and structures, images and metaphors that would
serve the same purpose without coming too near the original. His
knuckles ached, and his mind felt woolly. It was hard to say how far
into the work they'd come. Perhaps as much as a third. Perhaps less. The
hardest part would come at the end; once the binding was mapped out and
drafted, there was the careful process of going through, image by image,
and checking to see that there were no ambiguities, no unintended
meanings, no contradictions where the power of the andat might loop hack
upon itself and break his hold and himself.
Outside, the wind was blowing cold as it had since the middle morning.
The city of tents that had sprung up at Machi's feet would be an
unpleasant place tonight. Liat had been entirely absent these last four
days, helping to find Cetani a place within Machi. It was just as well,
he supposed. If she were here, he'd only want to talk with her. Speak
with her. He'd want to hold her. Enough time for those little pleasures
when Seedless was bound and the world was set right. Whatever that meant
anymore.
The scratch at his door was an annoyance and a relief both. lie called
out his permission, and the door swung open. Nayiit ducked into the
room, an apologetic smile on his face. Behind him, a small figure
waddled-Danat wrapped in robes and cloaks until he seemed almost as wide
as tall. Maati rose, his back and knees protesting from having been too
long in one position.
"I'm sorry, Father," Nayiit said. "I told Danat-cha that you might be
busy...."
"Nothing that can't wait a hand or two," Maati said, waving them in. "It
might he best, really, if I step away from it all. After a while, it all
starts looking the same."
Nayiit chuckled and took a pose that expressed his sympathy. Danat,
red-cheeked, shifted his gaze shyly from one man to the other. Maati
nodded a question to Nayiit.
"Danat wanted to ask you something," Nayiit said, and squatted down so
that his eyes were on a level with the child's. His smile was gentle,
encouraging. A favorite uncle helping his nephew over some simple
childhood fear. Maati felt the sudden powerful regret that he had never
met Nayiit's wife, never seen his child. "Go ahead, Danat-kya. We came
so that you could ask, and Maati-cha's here. Do it like we practiced."
Danat turned to Maati, blushing furiously, and took a pose of respect
made awkward by the thickness of cloth around his small arms; then he
began pulling books out from beneath his robes and placing them one by
one in a neat pile before Maati. When the last of them had appeared,
Danat shot a glance at Nayiit who answered with an approving pose.
"Excuse me, Nlaati-cha," Danat said, his face screwed into a knot of
concentration, his words choppy from being rehearsed. "Papa-kya's still
not back. And I've finished all these. I wondered ..
The words fell to a mumble. \laati smiled and shook his head.
"You'll have to speak louder," Nayiit said. "Hc can't hear you."
"I wondered if you had any others I could read," the boy said, staring
at his own feet as if he'd asked for the moon on a ribbon and feared to
he mocked for it.
Behind him, where the boy couldn't see, Nayiit grinned. This is who he
would be, Nlaati thought. This is the kind of father my boy would be.
"\V'ell," he said aloud. "We might be able to find something. Come with me."
He led them out and along the gravel path to the library's entrance. The
air had a bite to it. I Ic could feel the color coming to his own
checks. When he'd been young, a child-poet younger than Nayiit, he'd
spent his terrible winter in Saraykeht with Seedless and Otah and Liat.
In the summer cities, this chill would have been the depth of winter. In
the North, it was only the first breath of autumn.
Cehmai looked tip when they came in, a scroll case of shattered silk in
his hand. A smear of dust marked his check like ashes. Boxes and crates
lay about the main room, stacked man-high. One of the couches was piled
with scrolls that hadn't been looked over, two others with the ones that
had. The air was thick with the smells of dust and parchment and old
binder's paste. Uanat stood in the doorway, his eyes wide, his mouth
open. Nayiit stepped around him and drew the boy in, sliding the doors
closed behind them. Cehmai nodded his question.
"Uanat was asking if we had any other hooks," NIaati said.
"You have nll of them," the boy said, awe in his voice.
Maati chuckled, and then felt the mirth and simple pleasure fade. The
shelves and crates, boxes and piled volumes surrounded them.
"Yes," lie said. "Yes, we have all of them."
19
"I low many do we have?" Otah asked.
The bows had been made for killing bears. Each one stood taller than a
man, the bow itself made of ash and horn, the drawstring of wire. It
took a man sitting down and using both legs to draw it back. The arrows
were blackened oak shafts as long as short spears. The tips-usually a
wide, crossed head like twined knives-had been replaced by hard steel
points made to punch through metal. The chief huntsman of the Khai
Cetani nudged one with his toe, spat, and looked out through the trees
toward the road below them.
"'Iwo dozen," he said. His voice had a \Vestern drawl. "Sixty shafts,
more or Tess."
"More or less the Khai Cetani demanded.
"We're fashioning more, Most I ligh," the huntsman said.
"I low many men do we have who can use them?" (bah asked. "It won't
matter if we have a thousand bows if there's only five men who can aim
them."
"Bear hunters are rare," the huntsman said. ""There aren't any old ones."
"I low many?"
"Fight who are good. "Twice that who know how the bow works. With
practice ..."
The Khai Cetani frowned deeply, and turned to Otah. Otah chewed at the
inside of his lip and looked down and to the east. The trees here were