The Price Of Spring

Otah stood in the ruins of the school's west garden. Half a century before, he'd been in this same spot, screaming at boys not ten summers old. Humiliating them. This was where, in a fit of childish rage, he had forced a little boy to eat clods of dirt. He'd been twelve summers old at the time, but he recalled it with a vividness like a cut. Maati's young eyes and blistered hands, tears and apologies. The incident had begun Maati's career as a poet and ended his own.



The stone walls of the school were lower than he remembered them. The crows that perched in the stark, leafless trees, on the other hand, were as familiar as childhood enemies. As a boy, he had hated this place. With all its changes and his own, he still did.



Ashti Beg had told them of Maati's clandestine school. Of Eiah's involvement, and the others'. Two women named Kae, another-Ashti Beg's particular confidante-named Irit. And the new poet, Vanjit. Ashti Beg had escaped the school and the increasingly dangerous poet and her false baby, the andat Blindness. Or Clarity-of-Sight.



Three days after Eiah had left her in one of the low towns, she had lost her sight without warning. The poet girl Vanjit taking revenge for whatever slight she imagined. In a spirit of vengeance, Ashti Beg had offered to lead Otah to them all. Under cover of night, if he wished.



There was no need. Otah knew the way.



The armsmen had gone first, scouting from what little cover there was. No sign of life had greeted them, and they had arrived to find the school cleaned, repaired, cared for, and empty. They had come too late, and the wind and snow had erased any clue to where Maati and Eiah and the other women had gone. Including the new poet.



Idaan emerged from the building, walking toward him with a determined gait. Otah could see the ghost of her breath. He took a pose that offered greeting. It seemed too formal, but he couldn't think of one more fitting and he didn't want to speak.



"I'd guess they left before you reached Pathai," Idaan said. "They've left very little. A few jars of pickled nuts and some dry cheese. Otherwise, it all matches what she said. Someone's been here for months. The kitchen's been used. And the graves are still fresh."



"How many boys died here, do you think?" Otah asked.



"In the war, or when the Dai-kvo ran the place?" Idaan asked, and then went on without waiting for his reply. "I don't know. Fewer than have died in Galt since you and ... the others left Saraykeht."



She had stumbled at mentioning Danat. He'd noticed more than once that it wasn't a name she liked saying.



"We have to find them," Otah said. "If we can't make her change this soon, the High Council will never forgive us."



Idaan smiled. It was an odd and catlike expression, gentle and predatory both. She glanced at him, saw his unease, and shrugged.



"I'm sorry," she said. "It's only that you keep speaking as if there was still a High Council. Or a nation called Galt, for that. If this Vanjit has done what for all the world it seems she's done, every city and town and village over there has been blinded for weeks now. It isn't winter yet, but it's cold enough. And even if they had gotten some of the harvest in before this, it would only help the people on the farms. You can't walk from town to town blind, much less steer one of these soup pots on wheels."



"They'll find ways."



"Some of them may have, but there'll be fewer tomorrow. And then the next day. The next," Idaan agreed. "It doesn't matter. However many there are, they aren't Galts anymore."



"No? Then what are they?"



"Survivors," Idaan said, and any amusement that had been in her voice was gone. "Just survivors."



They stood in silence, looking at nothing. The crows insulted one another, rose into the air, and settled again. The breeze smelled of new snow and the promise of frost.



Inside the stone walls, the armsmen had made camp. The kitchen was warm, and the smell of boiling lentils and pork fat filled the air. Ana Dasin and Ashti Beg sat side by side, talking to the air. Otah tried not to watch the two blind women, but he found he couldn't turn away. It was their faces that captured him. Their expressions, their gestures thrown into nothingness, were strangely intimate. It was as if by being cast into their personal darkness, they had lost some ability to dissemble. Ashti Beg's anger was carved into the lines around her mouth. Ana, by contrast, betrayed an unexpected serenity in every movement of her hands, every smile. Three empty bowls lay beside them, evidence of Ana's appetite. Their voices betrayed nothing, but their faces and their bodies were eloquent.



As the sun set, the cold grew. It seemed to radiate from the walls, sucking away the life and heat like a restless ghost. That night, they slept in the shelter of the school. Otah took the wide, comfortable room that had once belonged to Tahi-kvo, his first and least-loved teacher. The wool blankets were heavy and thick. The night wind sang empty, mindless songs against the shutters. In the dim flickering light from the fire grate, he let his mind wander.



It was uncomfortable to think of Eiah in this place. It wasn't only that she was angry with him, that she had chosen this path and not the one he preferred. All that was true, but it was also that this place was one part of his life and that she was another. The two didn't belong together. He tried to imagine what he would have said to her, had she and Maati and the other students in Maati's little school still been encamped there.



The truth he could not admit to anyone was that he was relieved to have failed.



The shadows at the fire grate seemed to grow solid, a figure crouching there. He knew it was an illusion. It wasn't the first time his mind had tricked itself into imagining Kiyan after her death. He smiled at the vision of his wife, but the dream of her had already faded. It was a sign, and since it was both intended for him and created by his mind, it was perfectly explicable. If killing his daughter was the price it took to save the world, then the world could die. He took little comfort in the knowledge.



In the morning, Danat woke him, grinning. A piece of paper flapped in the boy's hand like a moth as Danat threw open the shutters and let the morning light spill in. Otah blinked, yawned, and frowned. Dreams already half-remembered were fading quickly. Danat dropped onto the foot of Otah's cot.



"I've found them," Danat said.



Otah sat up, taking a pose that asked explanation. Danat held out the paper. The handwriting was unfamiliar to him, the characters wider than standard and softly drawn. He took the page and rubbed his eyes as if to clear them.



"I was sleeping in one of the side rooms," Danat said. "When I woke up this morning, I saw that. It was in a corner, not even hidden. I don't know how I missed it last night, except it was dark and I was tired."



Otah's eyes able now to focus, his mind more fully awake, he turned his attention to the letter.



Ashti-cha-



Me have decided to leave. Eiah says that Maati-kvo isn't well, so we're all going to Utani so that she can get help caring for him. Please, if you get this, you have to come back! Uanjit is just as bad as ever, and I'm afraid without you here to put her in her place, she'll only get worse. Small Kae has started having nightmares about her. And the baby! You should see the way it tries to get away. It slipped into my lap last night after the Great Poet had gone to sleep and curled up like a kitten.



They've almost finished loading the cart. I'm going to sneak back in once we're almost under way so that she won't find it. You have to come back! Meet us in Utani as soon as you can.



The letter was signed Irit Laatani. Otah folded the paper and tapped it against his lips, thinking. It was plausible. It could be a trick to send them off to Utani, but that would mean that they knew where Otah and his party were, and the errand they were on. If that was the case, there was no reason for misleading them. Vanjit and her little Blindness could stop any pursuit if she wanted it. Danat coughed expectantly.



"Utani," Otah said. "They're going north, just the way you'd planned. This is where you tell me how clever you were for heading there at the first?"



Danat laughed, shaking his head.



"You were right, Papa-kya. Coming here was the right thing. If Maati wasn't ill, they'd have been here."



"Still. It does mean they've stopped hiding. That's a risk if they've only got one poet."



Danat took a questioning pose.



"This poet," Otah said. "She's their protection and their power. As long as she has the andat in her control, they think that they're safe. In truth, though, she can only defend against things she knows. As long as there is only one poet, a well-placed man with a bow could end her before she could blind him. And then none of them are defended."



"Unless there's a second binding. Another andat," Danat said, and Otah took a confirming pose. Danat frowned. "But if there had been, then Irit would have said so, wouldn't she? If Eiah had managed to capture Wounded?"



"I'd expect her to, yes," Otah said.



"Then why would they go?"



Otah tapped the letter.



"Just what the woman said. Because Maati's ill," he said. "And because Eiah decided that caring for him was worth the risk. If he's bad enough 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 them. The fastest route to Utani would be overland to the Qiit, then by boat up the river. Any hope they had of overtaking Maati and Eiah would come on the roads, where the steamcarts gave Otah an advantage. They would have to sleep in the open more than if they had kept to wider roads, and the rough terrain increased the possibility of the carts breaking or getting stuck. Even of the boiler bursting and killing anyone too near it. But Idaan's voice spoke in Otah's mind of the next day, and the next, and the next, so he pushed them and himself.



Four of the armsmen rode ahead in the lowering gloom of night to scout out the next day's path. The others prepared a simple meal of pork and rice, Ashti Beg sitting with them and trading jokes. Danat's slow cir cling of their camp took the name of defense but seemed more to be avoiding the still-closed shed where Idaan and Ana rested. Otah sat alone near the steamcart's kiln, reflecting that it was very much like his son to shift between noble dedication in the morning and childish pouting as night came on. He had been much the same as a young man, or imagined that he had.



The door opened, Ana's laughter spilling out into the night. Idaan led the girl forward, letting Ana keep a careful grip on her. Her dark eyes and Ana's unfocused gray ones were both light and merry. Ana's hair had been combed and braided in the style of children in the winter cities. In the dim moonlight, it made Ana seem hardly more than a girl.



Idaan steered the girl to the cart's front and helped her sit beside Otah. He coughed once to make sure the girl knew he was there, but she seemed unsurprised at the sound. Idaan placed a hand on the back of the girl's neck.



"I'll go get some food," Idaan said. "My brother here should be able to keep you out of trouble for that long."



Ana took a pose that offered thanks. She did a creditable job of it. Idaan snorted, patted the girl's neck, and lowered herself to the ground. Otah heard her footsteps crushing the snow as she walked away.



"Ana-cha," Otah said. His voice was more tentative than he liked. "I hope you're well?"



"Fine," she said. "Thank you. I'm sorry I delayed things today. It won't happen again."



"Hardly worth thinking about," Otah said, relieved that her infirmity had passed. Grief, he suspected, over what the poet had done to her, to her family, her nation.



"I misjudged you," Ana said. "I know it seems like everything we do is another round of apology, but I am sorry for it."



"It might be simpler to agree to forgive each other in advance," Otah said, and Ana laughed. It was a warmer sound than he'd expected. A tension he hadn't known he felt lessened and he smiled into the glowing coals of the kiln. "It is fair to ask in what manner you judged me poorly?"



"I thought you were cold. Hard. You have to understand, I grew up with monster stories about the Khaiem and the andat."



"I do," Otah said, sighing. "I look back, and I suspect that more than half of the problems between Galt and the Khaiem came from ignorance. Ignorance and power are a poor combination."



"Tell me ..." Ana said, and then stopped. Her brow furrowed, and in the dim light he thought she was blushing. Otah put his hand over hers. She shook her head, and then turned her milky eyes to him. "You've forgiven me in advance if this is too much to ask. Tell me about Danat's mother."



"Kiyan?" Otah said. "Well. What do you want to know about her?"



"Anything. Just tell me," the girl said.



Otah collected himself, and then began to pluck stories. The night they'd met. The night he'd told her that he was more than a simple courier and she'd thrown him out of her wayhouse. The ways she had helped to smooth things as he learned how to become first Khai Machi and then Emperor. He didn't tell the hard stories. The conflict over Sinja's feelings for her, and Otah's poor response to them. The long fears they suffered together when Danat was young and weak in the lungs. Her death. Still, he didn't think he kept all the sorrow from his voice.



Idaan returned halfway through one story, four bowls in her hands like a teahouse servant juggling food for a full table. Otah took one without pausing, and Idaan squatted on the boards at Ana's feet and pressed another into the girl's hands. Otah went on with other little stories- Kiyan's balancing the combined populations of Machi and Cetani with Balasar Gice's crippled army in the wake of the war. Her refusal to allow servants to bathe her. The story of when the representative of Eddensea had mistaken something she'd said and thought she'd invited him to bed with her.



Danat arrived out of the darkness, drawn by their voices. Idaan gave him the last bowl, and he sat at Otah's side, then shifted, then shifted again until his back rested against Ana's shin. He added stories of his own. His mother's sharp tongue and wayhouse keeper's vocabulary, the songs she'd sung, all the scraps and moments that built up a boy's memory of his mother. It was beautiful to listen to. It wasn't something Otah himself had ever had.



In the end, Ana let Danat lead her back to her shelter, leaving Otah and his sister alone by the black and cooling kiln. The armsmen had prepared sleeping tents for them, but Idaan seemed content to sit up drinking watered wine in the cold night air, and Otah found himself pleased enough to join her.



"I don't suppose you'd care to explain to your poor idiot brother what happened today?" he said at length.



"You haven't put it together?" Idaan said. "This Vanjit creature has destroyed the only home Ana-cha had to go to. She's had to look long and hard at what her life could be in the place she's found herself, crippled in a foreign land, and it shook her."



"She's in love with Danat?"



"Of course she is," Idaan said. "It would have happened in half the time if you and her mother hadn't insisted on it. I think that's more frightening for her than the poet killing her nation."



"I don't know what you mean," he said.



"She's spent her life watching her mother linked with her father," Idaan said. "There are only so many years you can soak in the regrets of others before you start to think that all the world's that way."



"I had the impression that Farrer-cha loved his wife deeply," Otah said.



"And I had it that there's more than a husband to make a marriage," Idaan said. "It isn't her mother she fears being, it's Farrer-cha. She's afraid of having her love merely tolerated. I spent most of the day talking about Cehmai. I told her that if she really wanted to know what spending a life with Danat would be like, she should see what sort of man you were. If she wanted to know how Danat would see her, to find how you saw your wife."



Otah laughed, and he thought he saw the darkness around Idaan shift as if she had smiled.



"I'm sorry I didn't have the chance to know her," Idaan said. "She sounds like a good woman."



"She was," Otah said. "I miss her."



"I know you do," Idaan said. "And now Ana-cha knows it too."



"Does it matter?" Otah said. "All the hopes I had for building Galt and the Khaiem together are in rags around my knees. We're on a hunt for a girl who can ruin the world. What she's done to Galt, she could do to us. Or to all the world, if she wanted it. How do we plan for a marriage between Danat and Ana when it's just as likely that we'll all be starving and blind by Candles Night?"



"We're all born to die, Most High," Idaan said, the title sounding like an endearment in her voice. "Every love ends in parting or death. Every nation ends and every empire. Every baby born was going to die, given enough time. If being fated for destruction were enough to take the joy out of things, we'd slaughter children fresh from the womb. But we don't. We wrap them in warm cloth and we sing to them and feed them milk as if it might all go on forever."



"You make it sound like something you've done," Otah said.



Idaan made a sound he couldn't interpret, part grunt, part whimper.



"What is it?" he asked the darkness.



The silence lasted for the length of five long breaths together. When she spoke, her voice was low and rich with embarrassment.



"Lambs," she said.



"Lambs?"



"I used to wrap up the newborn lambs and keep them in the house. I even had Cehmai build them a crib that I could rock them in. After a few years, we had to switch to goats. I couldn't slaughter the lambs after all that, could I? By the end, I think we had sixty."



Otah didn't know whether to laugh or put his arms around the woman. The thought of the hard-hearted killer of his own father, his own brothers, cuddling a baby lamb was as absurd as it was sorrowful.



"Is it like this for everyone?" he asked softly. "Does every woman suffer this? Is the need to care for something that strong?"



"Strong? When it strikes, yes. But everyone? No," Idaan said. "Of course not. As it happened, it struck me. I assume Maati's students all feel strongly enough about it to risk their lives. But not every woman needs a child, and, thank the gods, the madness sometimes passes. It did for me."



"You wouldn't be a mother now? If it were possible, you wouldn't choose to?"



"Gods, no. I'd have been terrible at it. But I miss them," Idaan said. "I miss my little lambs. And that brings us back to Ana-cha, doesn't it?"



Otah took a pose that asked clarification.



"Who am I," Idaan asked, "to say that falling in love is ridiculous just because it's doomed?"