The Price of Spring

10

Dawn crept over the school. The dark walls gained detail; the fragile lacing of frost burned away almost before it was visible. Birdsong that had begun in darkness grew in volume and complexity. The countless stars faded into the pale blue and rose of the east. Maati Vaupathai walked the perimeter of the school, his memory jogged with every new corner he turned. Here was the classroom where he'd first heard of the andat. There, the walkway where an older boy had beaten him for not taking the proper stance. The stables, empty now but for the few animals Eiah had brought, which Maati had made the younger boys clean with their bare hands after he had been elevated to the black robes of the older boys.

Ever since his return, Maati had suffered moments when his mind would spiral back through time, unearthing memories as fresh as yesterday. This morning in particular, the past seemed present. He walked past the long-dead echoes of boys crying in their cots, the vanished scent of the caustic soap they'd used to wash the stone floors, the almostforgotten smell of young bodies and old food and misery. And then, just as memory threatened to sweep him away, he heard one of the girls. Large Kae singing, Irit's laughter, anything. The walls themselves shifted. The school became something new again, never seen in the world. Women poets, working together as the risen sun washed the haze from the air.

When he stepped into the kitchen, the warmth of the fire and the damp of the steam made him feel like he was walking into summer. Eiah and Ashti Beg sat at the wide table, carving apples into slivers. An iron pot of rough-ground wheat, rice, and millet burped to itself over the fire. The gruel was soft and rich with buttercream and honey.

"Maati-kvo!" Small Kae called, and he took a pose of welcome that the others matched. "There's fresh tea in the green pot. And that bowl there is clean. The blue one."

"Eiah was just telling us about the news from Pathai," Ashti Beg said.

"Little that there was of it," Eiah said. "Nothing to compare with what you were all doing here."

"Nothing we did while you were away is going to compare with what we'll do next," Small Kae said. Her face was bright, her smile taut. She covered her fear with an unwillingness to conceive of defeat. Maati poured himself the tea. It smelled like fresh-picked leaves.

"Have we seen Vanjit?" he asked and lowered himself to a cushion beside the fire. He grunted only a little bit.

"Not yet," Eiah said. "Large Kae went to wake her."

"Perhaps it would be better to let her sleep," Small Kae said. "It is her day, after all. It seems rude to make demands on her just because we all want to share it with her."

Eiah smiled, but her gaze was on Maati. A private conversation passed between them, no longer than three heartbeats together. More would be decided today than Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight. Likely they all knew as much, but no one would say the words. Maati filled a fresh bowl with the sweet grain, holding it out for Ashti Beg to cover with apple. He didn't answer Eiah's unspoken question: What will we do if she fails?

Vanjit arrived before he had finished half the bowl. She wore a robe of deep blue shot with red, and her hair was woven with glass beads and carved shells. Her face was painted, her lips widened and red, her eyes touched by kohl. Maati hadn't even known she'd brought paints and baubles to the school. She had never worn them before, but this morning, she looked like the daughter of a Khai. When no one was looking, he took a pose of congratulation to Eiah. She replied with an inclination of the head and a tiny smile that admitted the change was her doing.

"How did you sleep, Vanjit-cha?" Maati asked as she swept the hem of her robe aside and sat next to him.

She took his hand and squeezed it, but didn't answer his question. Large Kae brought her a bowl of tea, Irit a helping of the grain and butter already covered with apple. Vanjit took a pose of thanks somewhat hampered by the food and drink.

While they all ate, the conversation looped around the one concern they all shared. The Galts, the Emperor, the weather, the supplies Eiah had brought from Pathai, the species of insect peculiar to the dry lands around the school. Anything was a fit topic except Vanjit's binding and the fear that lay beneath all their merriment and pleasure.

Vanjit alone seemed untouched by care. She was beautiful and, for the first time since Maati had met her, comfortable in her beauty. Her laughter seemed genuine and her movements relaxed. Maati thought he was seeing confidence in her, the assurance of a woman who was about to do a thing she had no thought might be beyond her. His opinion didn't change until after all the bowls had been gathered and rinsed, the cored apples and spilled grain swept up and carried away to the pit in the back of the school, when she took him by the hand and led him gently aside.

"I wanted to thank you," she said as they reached the bend of the wide hallway.

"I can't see I've done anything worth it," he said. "If anything, I should be offering you…"

There were tears brimming in her eyes, the shining water threatening her kohl. Maati took the end of his sleeve and dabbed her eyes gently. The brown cloth came away stained black.

"After Udun," Vanjit began, then paused. "After what the Galts did to my brothers… my parents. I thought I would never have a family again. It was better that there not be anyone in my life that I cared for enough that it would hurt me to lose them."

"Ah, now. Vanjit-kya. You don't need to think of that now."

"But I do. I do. You are the closest thing I've had to a father. You are the most dedicated man I have ever known, and it has been an honor to be allowed a place in your work. And I've broken the promise I made myself. I will miss you."

Maati took a pose that both disagreed and asked for clarification. Vanjit smiled and shook her head, the beads and shells in her braids clicking like claws on stone. He waited.

"We both know that the chances are poor that I'll see the sunset," she said. Her voice was solemn and composed. "This grammar we've made is a guess. The forces at play are deadlier than fires or floods. If I were someone else, I wouldn't wager a length of copper on my chances if you offered me odds."

"That isn't true," Maati said. He hadn't meant to shout, and lowered his voice when he spoke again. "That isn't true. We've done good work here. The equal of anything I learned from the Dai-kvo. Your chances are equal to the best any poet has faced. I'll swear to that if you'd like."

"There's no call," she said. From down the hall, he heard voices in bright conversation. He heard laughter. Vanjit took his hand. He had never noticed how small her hands were. How small she was, hardly more than a child herself.

"Thank you," she said. "Whatever happens, thank you. If I die today, thank you. Do you understand?"

"No."

"You've made living bearable," she said. "It's more than I can ever repay.

"You can. You can repay all of it and more. Don't die. Succeed."

Vanjit smiled and took a pose that accepted instruction, then moved forward, wrapping her arms around Maati in a bear hug. He cradled her head on his breast, his eyes pressed closed, his heart sick and anxious.

The chamber they had set aside for the binding had once been the sleeping room for one of the younger cohorts. The lines of cots were gone now. The windows shone with the light of middle morning. Vanjit took a round of chalk and began writing out her binding on the wide south wall, ancient words and recent blending together in the new grammar they had all created. From Maati's cushion at the back of the room, the letters were blurry and indistinct, but from their shape alone, he could see that the binding had shifted since the last time he'd seen it.

Eiah sat at his side, her hand on his arm, her gaze fixed on the opposite wall. She looked half-ill.

"It's going to be all right," Maati murmured.

Eiah nodded once, her eyes never leaving the pale words taking over the far wall like a bright shadow. When Vanjit was finished, she walked to the beginning again, paced slowly down the wall reading all she'd written, and then, satisfied, put the chalk on the ground. A single cushion had been placed in the middle of the room for her. She stopped at it, her binding behind her, her face turned toward the small assembly at the back. She took a silent pose of gratitude, turned, and sat.

Maati had a powerful urge to stand, to call out. He could wash the wall clean, talk through the binding again, check it for errors one last time. Vanjit began to chant, the cadences unlike anything he had heard before. Her voice was soft, coaxing, gentle; she was singing her andat into the world. He clenched his fists and stayed quiet. Eiah seemed to have stopped breathing.

The sound of Vanjit's voice filled the air, reverberating as if the building had grown huge. The chant began to echo, and Vanjit's actual voice receded. Words and phrases combined, voice against echo, making new sentences and meanings. The lilt of the girl's voice fell into harmony with itself, and Maati heard a third voice, neither Vanjit nor her echo, but something deep and sonorous as a bell. It was reciting syllables borrowed from the words of the binding, creating another layer of sound and intention. The air thickened, and Vanjit's back-her shoulders hunched, her head bowed-seemed very far away. Maati smelled hot iron, or perhaps blood. His heart began to race with a fear he couldn't express.

Something's wrong. T' have to stop her, he said to Eiah, but though he could feel the words vibrate in his throat, he couldn't hear them. Vanjit's circling voice had made a kind of silence that Maati was powerless to break. Another layer of echoes came, the words seeming to come before Vanjit spoke them, echoing from the other direction in time. Beside him, Eiah's face had gone white.

Vanjit's voice spoke a single word-the last of the binding-at the same time as all the layered echoes, a dozen voices speaking as one. The world itself chimed, pandemonium resolving into a single harmonious chord. The room was only a room again. When Maati stood, he could hear the hem of his robe whispering against the stone. Vanjit sat where she had been, her head bowed. No new form stood before her. It should have been there.

She's failed, Maati thought. It hasn't worked, and she's paid the price of it.

The others were on their feet, but he took a pose that commanded them to remain where they were. This was his. However bad it was, it was his. His belly twisted as he walked toward her corpse. He had seen the price a failed binding exacted: always different, always fatal. And yet Vanjit's ribs rose and fell, still breathing.

"Vanjit-kya?" he said, his voice no more than a murmur.

The girl shifted, turned her head, and looked up at him. Her eyes were bright with joy. In her lap, something squirmed. Maati saw the round, soft flesh, the tubby, half-formed hands and feet, a toothless mouth, and black eyes full of empty rage. Except for the eyes, it could have been a human baby.

"He's come," Vanjit said. "Look, Maati-kvo. We've done it. He's here."

As if freed from silence by the poet's words, Clarity-of-Sight opened its tiny throat and wailed.