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knew the tu
ventilation was good. They weren't in danger of the fire igniting the
mine air, as had sometimes happened. Or of the flames suffocating them.
The only thing they didn't have in quantity was water; that, they could
harvest. MMlaati or Cehmai could take one of the mine sleds out, fill it
with snow, and haul it down into the earth. A trip every day or two was
sufficient. They took turns sitting at the brazier, scooping handful
after handful of snow into the flat iron pans, watching the perfect
white collapse on itself and vanish into the black of the iron.
"We did what we could," Maati said. "It isn't as if we could have done
anything differently."
"I know," Cehmai said, settling deeper into his cloak.
The rough stone walls didn't make their voices echo so much as sound hollow.
"I couldn't just let the Galts roll through the city. I had to try,"
Maati said.
"We all agreed," Cehmai said. "It was a decision we all reached
together. It's not your fault. Let it go."
It was the conversation Maati always returned to in the handful of days
they'd spent in hiding. He couldn't help it. He could start with plans
for the spring-taking gold and gems from the bolt-hole and marching off
to Eddensea or the Westlands. He could start with speculations on what
was happening in Machi or reminiscences of his childhood, or what sort
of drum fit best with which type of court dance. He could begin
anywhere, and he found himself always coming hack to the same series of
justifications, and Cehmai agreeing by rote with each of them. The dark
season spread out before them-only one another for company and only one
conversation spoken over and over, its variations meaningless. Maati
took another handful of snow and dropped it into the iron melting pan.
"I've always wanted to go to Bakta," Cehmai said. "1 hear it's warm all
year."
"I've heard that too."
"Maybe next winter," Cehmai said.
"Maybe," Maati agreed. "I'he last icy island of snow melted and
vanished. Maati dropped another handful in.
"What part of the day is it, do you think?" Nlaati asked.
"After morning, I'd think. Maybe a hand or two either side of midday."
"You think so? I'd have thought later."
"Could be later," Cehmai said. "I lose track down here."
"I'm going to the bolt-hole again. Get more supplies."
They didn't need them, but Cehmai only raised his hands in a pose of
agreement, then curled into himself and shut his eyes. Maati pulled the
thick leather straps of the sled harness over his shoulders, lit a
lantern, and began the long walk through the starless dark. The wood and
metal flat-bottomed sled scraped and ground along the stone and dust of
the mine floor. It was light now. It would be heavier coming hack. But
at least laati was alone for a time, and the effort of pulling kept his
mind clear.
An instrument of slaughter, made in fear. Sterile had called herself
that. Maati could still hear her voice, could still feel the bite of her
words. He had destroyed Galt, but he had destroyed his own people as
well. He'd failed, and every doubt he had ever had of his own ability,
or his worthiness to be among the poets, stood justified. He would he
the most hated man in generations. And he'd earned it. The sled dragging
behind him, the straps pulling hack at his shoulders-they were the
simplest burden he carried. They were nothing.
Cehmai had marked the turnings to take with piles of stone. Hunters
searching the mines would be unlikely to notice the marks, but they were
easy enough for Maati to follow. He turned left at a crossing, and then
bore right where the tu
darkness, the other down into air just as black.
The only comfort that the andat had offered-the only faint sliver of
grace-was that Maati was not wholly at fault. Otah-kvo bore some measure
of this guilt as well. fie was the one who had come to Ntaati, all those
years ago. He was the one who had hinted to Maati that the school to
which they had both been sent had a hidden structure. If he hadn't,
Maati might never have been a poet. Never have known Seedless or Heshai,
Liat or Cehmai. Nayiit might never have been born. Even if the Galts had
come, even if the world had fallen, it wouldn't have fallen on Maati's
shoulders. Cehmai was right; the binding of Sterile had been a decision
they had all made-Otah-kvo more than any of the rest. But it was Maati
who was cast out to live in the dark and the cold. The sense of betrayal
was as comforting as a candle in the darkness, and as he walked, Maati
found himself indulging it.
The fault wasn't his alone, and the punishment was. There was nothing
fair in that. Nothing right. The terrible thing that had happened seemed
nearly inevitable now that he looked back on it. He'd been given hardly
any hooks, not half the time he'd been promised, and the threat of death
at the end of a Galtic sword unless he succeeded. It would have been
astounding it he hadn't failed.
And for the price, that wasn't something he'd chosen. That had been
Sterile. Once the binding had failed, he'd had no control over it. He
would never have hurt Eiah if he'd had the choice. It had simply
happened. And still, he felt it in the hack of his mind-the shape of the
andat, the place in the realm of ideas that it had pressed down in him,
like the flattened grass where a hunting cat has slept. Sterile came
from him, was him, and even if she had only been brief, she had still
learned her voice from him and visited her price upon the world through
his mind and fears. The clever trick of pushing the price away from
himself and onto the world had been his. The way in which the world had
broken was his shadow-not him, not even truly shaped like him. But
co
The tu
own track back to the turn he'd missed, angling up a steep slope and
into the first breath of fresh, cold air, the first glimmer of daylight.
Nlaati stood still a moment to catch his breath, then fastened all the
tics on his cloak, pulled the furred hood up over his head, and began
the long last climb.
The bolt-hole was perhaps half a hand's walk from the entrance to the
mines in which the poets hid. The snow was dry as sand, and the icy
breeze from the North would he enough to conceal what traces of his
footsteps the sled didn't smooth over. Iaati trudged through the world
of snow and stone, his breath pluming out before him, his face stung and
numbed. It was a hellish. His feet first burned then went numb, and
frost began to form on the fur around his hood's mouth. AIaati dragged