Seasons of War

of them crowded around Eiah. She wrung the water from her hair with pale fingers, answering the first question before it was asked.
    ‘Ashti Beg’s left. She said she didn’t want to come back. We were in a low town just south of here off the high road. She said we could talk about it, but when I got up in the morning, she’d already gone.’ She looked at Maati when she finished. ‘I’m sorry.’
    He took a pose that forgave and also diminished the scale of the thing, then waved her in. Vanjit followed, and then Irit and Small Kae. The meal was laid out and waiting. Barley soup with lemon and quail. Rice and sausage. Watered wine. Eiah sat near the brazier and ate like a woman starved, talking between mouthfuls.
    ‘We never reached Pathai. There was a trade fair halfway to the city. Tents, carts, the wayhouse so full they were renting out space on the kitchen floor. There was a courier there gathering messages from all the low towns.’
    ‘So the letters were sent?’ Irit asked. Eiah nodded and scooped up another mouthful of rice.
    ‘Ashti Beg,’ Maati said. ‘Tell me more about her. Did she say why she left?’
    Eiah frowned. Color was coming back to her cheeks, but her lips were still pale, her hair clinging to her neck like ivy.
    ‘It was me,’ Vanjit said, the andat squirming in her lap. ‘It’s my doing.’
    ‘Perhaps, but it wasn’t what she said,’ Eiah replied. ‘She said she was tired, and that she felt we’d all gone past her. She didn’t see that she would ever complete a binding of her own, or that her insights were particularly helping us. I tried to tell her otherwise, give her some perspective. If she’d stayed on until the morning, perhaps I could have.’
    Maati sipped his wine, wondering how much of what Eiah said was true, how much of it was being softened because Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight were in the room. It seemed more likely to him that Ashti Beg had taken offense at Vanjit’s misstep and been unable to forgive it. He recalled the woman’s dry tone, her cutting humor. She had not been an easy woman or a particularly apt pupil, but he believed he would miss her.
    ‘Was there other news? Anything of the Galts?’ Vanjit asked. There was something odd about her voice, but it might only have been that Clarity-of-Sight had started its wordless, wailing complaint. Eiah appeared to notice nothing strange in the question.
    ‘There would have been if I’d reached Pathai, I’d expect,’ she said. ‘But since there would have been nothing to do about it and our business was done early, I wanted to come back quickly.’
    ‘Ah,’ Vanjit said. ‘Of course.’
    Maati tugged at his fingers. There was something near disappointment in the girl’s tone. As if she had expected someone that had not arrived.
    ‘You’re ready to work again?’ Small Kae said. Irit flapped a cloth at her, and Small Kae took a pose that unasked the question. Eiah smiled.
    ‘I’ve had a few thoughts,’ she said. ‘Let me look them over tonight after we unload the cart, and we can talk in the morning.’
    ‘Oh, there’s no more work for you tonight,’ Irit said. ‘You’ve been on the road all this time. We can hand a few things down from a cart.’
    ‘Of course,’ Vanjit said. ‘You should rest, Eiah-kya. We’ll be happy to help.’
    Eiah put down her soup and took a pose that offered gratitude. Something in the cant of her wrists caught Maati’s attention, but the pose was gone as quickly as it had come and Eiah was sitting back, drinking wine and leaning her still-wet hair toward the fire. Large Kae rejoined them, smelling of wet horse, and Eiah told the whole story again for her benefit and then left for her rooms. Maati felt the impulse to follow her, to speak in private, but Vanjit took him by the hand and led him out to the cart with the others.
    The supplies were something less than Maati had expected. Two chests of salted pork, a few jars of lard and flour and sweet oil. Bags of rice. It wasn’t inconsiderable - certainly there was enough to keep them all well-fed for weeks, but likely not months. There were few spices, and no wine. Large Kae made a few small remarks about the failures of low-town trade fairs, and the others chuckled their agreement. The rain slackened, and then, as Vanjit balanced the last bag of rice on one hip and Clarity-of-Sight on the other, snow began to fall. Maati went back to his rooms, heated a kettle over his fire, and debated whether to try to