At her feet, Clarity-of-Sight wailed as if heartbroken. Vanjit turned to it, her brow furrowed in concentration. The andat squirmed, shuddered, and became still. The tension in Maati's shoulders was spreading to his throat. He could see Eiah's hands clutching her bowl.
"The only family I've had," Vanjit said, as if finding her place in a practiced speech. And then softly, "Did you think I wouldn't know?"
Large Kae put down her bowl, her gaze shifting from Eiah to Vanjit and back. Maati shifted to the side, his throat almost too tight for words.
"Know what?" he asked. The words came out stilted and rough. Even he wasn't convinced by them. Vanjit stared at him, disappointment in her expression. No one moved, but Maati felt something shifting in his eyes. The andat's attention was on him, the tiny face growing more and more detailed with each heartbeat.
Vanjit held out the poisoned wine bowl. The color was wrong. No human would ever have seen the difference, but with the andat driving his vision and hers, there was no mistaking it. The deep red had a greenish taint that no other bowl suffered.
"What… what's that?" Maati squeaked.
"I don't know," Vanjit said in a voice that meant she did. "Perhaps you should drink it for me, and we could see. But no. You're too valuable. Eiah, perhaps?"
"I'm sorry. Did I not clean the bowl well enough?" Eiah asked.
Vanjit threw her bowl into the fire, flames hissing and smoke rushing up in a cloud. There was rage in her expression.
"Vanjit," Eiah said. "I don't think…"
Vanjit ignored them, untying her satchel with a fast scrabbling motion. When she lifted it, blocks of wax spilled out, gray and white, like rotten ice. Maati saw bits of Eiah's writing cut into them.
"You were going to kill me," Vanjit said.
Eiah took a pose that denied the charge. The firelight flickered over Vanjit's face, and for a moment, Maati thought the poet might believe the lie. He cleared his throat.
"We wouldn't do that," he said.
Vanjit turned to him, her expression empty and mad. At his feet, the andat made a sound that might have been a warning or a laugh.
"Do you think he only speaks to you?" Vanjit spat.
Maati sputtered, falling back a step when Vanjit lunged forward. She only scooped up the andat, turned, and ran into the darkness.
Maati scrambled after her, calling her name with a deepening sense of despair. The trees were shadows within the night's larger darkness. His voice seemed too weak to carry more than a few paces before him. It couldn't have been more than half a hand-less than that, certainlywhen he stopped to catch his breath. Leaning against an ancient ash, he realized that Vanjit was gone and he was lost, only the soft rushing of the river away to his left still there to guide him. He picked his way back, trying to follow the route he had taken and failing. A carpet of dry leaves made his steps loud. Something shifted in the branches overhead. The cold numbed his fingers and toes. The half-moon glimmering among the branches assured him that he had not been blinded. It was the only comfort he had.
In the end, he made his way east until he found the river, and then south to the wide mud where the boat still rested. It was simple enough to find the little camp after that. He tried to nurture some hope that he would step into the circle of firelight to find Vanjit returned and, through some unimagined turn of events, peace restored. The laughter and soft company of the first days of the school returned; time unwound, and his life ready to be lived again without the errors. He wanted it to be true so badly that when he stumbled into the clearing and found Eiah and the two Kaes seated by the fire, he almost thought they were well.
Eiah turned gray, fogged eyes toward him.
"Who's there?" she demanded at the sound of his approaching steps.
"It's me," Maati said, wheezing. "I'm fine. But Vanjit's gone."
Large Kae began to weep. Small Kae put an arm over the woman's shaking shoulders and murmured something, her eyes closed and tearstreaked. Maati sat at the fire. His bowl of soup had overturned.
"She's done for the three of us," Eiah said. "None of us can see at all."
"I'm sorry," Maati said. It was profoundly inadequate.
"Can you help me?" Eiah said, gesturing toward something Maati couldn't fathom. Then he saw the pile of wax fragments. "I think I have them all, but it's hard to be sure."
"Leave them," Maati said. "Let them go."
"I can't," Eiah said. "I have to try the thing. I can do it now. Tonight."
Maati looked at her. The fire popped, and she shifted her head toward the sound. Her jaw was set, her gray eyes angry. The cold wind made her robes flutter at her ankles like a flag.
"No," he said. "You can't."
"I have been studying this for weeks," Eiah said, her voice sharpening. "Only help me put these back together, and I can…"
"You can die," Maati said. "I know you've changed the binding. You won't do this. Not until we can study it. Too much rides on Wounded to rush into the binding in a panic. We'll wait. Vanjit may come back."
"Maati-kvo-" Eiah began.
"She is alone in the forest with nothing to sustain her. She's cold and frightened and betrayed," Maati said. "Put yourself in her place. She's discovered that the only friends she had in the world were planning to kill her. The andat must certainly be pushing for its freedom with all its power. She didn't even have the soup before she went. She's cold and hungry and confused, and we are the only place she can go for help or comfort."
"All respect, Maati-kvo," Small Kae said, "but that first part was along the lines that you were going to kill her. She won't come back."
"We don't know that," Maati said. "We can't yet be sure."
But morning came without Vanjit. The sky became a lighter black, and then gray. Morning birds broke into their chorus of chatters and shrieks; finches and day larks and other species Maati couldn't name. The trees deepened, rank after ragged rank becoming first gray and then brown and then real. Poet and andat were gone into the wild, and as the dawn crept up rosy and wild in the east, it became clear they were not going to return.
Maati built a small fire from last night's embers and brewed tea for the four of them still remaining. Large Kae wouldn't stop crying despite Small Kae's constant attentions. Eiah sat wrapped in her robes from the previous night. She looked drawn. Maati pressed a bowl of warm tea into her hand. Neither spoke.
At the end, Maati took the belts from their spare robes and used them to make a line. He led Eiah, Eiah led Small Kae, and Small Kae led Large Kae. It was the obscene parody of a game he'd played as a child, and he walked the path back to the boat, calling out the obstacles he passed-log, step down, be careful of the mud. They left the sleeping tents and cooking things behind.
To Maati's surprise, the boat was already floating. The boatman and his second were moving over the craft with the ease and silence of long practice. When he called out, the boatman stopped and stared. The man's mouth gaped in surprise; the first strong reaction Maati had seen from him.
"No," the boatman said. "This wasn't the agreement. Where's the other one? The one with the babe?"
"I don't know," Maati called out. "She left in the night."
The second, guessing the boatman's mind, started to pull in the plank that bridged boat and sticky, dark mud. Maati yelped, dropped Eiah's lead, and lumbered out into the icy flow, grabbing at the retreating wood.
"We didn't contract for this," the boatman said. "Missing girls, blinded ones? No, there wasn't anything about this."
"We'll die if you leave us," Eiah said.
"That one can see after you," the boatman called, gesturing pointlessly at Maati, hip deep in river mud. It would have been comic if it had been less terrible.