Seasons of War

Maybe longer. Call it two.’
    ‘Thank you, miss,’ one of the other two said.
    ‘I don’t suppose we could ride on the back of your cart?’ the tall man said, hope in his smile.
    ‘No,’ Maati said. There was a limit to what Vanjit would allow, and he wasn’t ready for that confrontation. ‘We’ve spent too long at this. Eiah.’
    Without a word, without meeting his gaze, Eiah turned back, climbed into the cart, and went back to the wax writing tablets she’d spent her morning over. Maati climbed back up into the cart and started them back down the road, Vanjit at his side.
    ‘She shouldn’t have done that,’ Vanjit murmured. Soft as the words were, he knew Eiah would hear them.
    ‘There’s no harm in it,’ Maati said. ‘Let it pass.’
    Vanjit frowned, but let the subject go. She spent the rest of the day beside him, as if guarding him from Eiah. For her part, Eiah might have been alone with her tablets. Even when the rest of them sang to pass the time, she kept to her work, steady and focused. When the conversation turned to whether they should keep riding after sunset in hopes of reaching the river, she spoke for stopping on the road. She didn’t want Maati to be tired any more than was needed. Large Kae sided with her for the horses’ sake.
    The women made a small camp, dividing the night into watches since they were so near the road. Vanjit sharpened their sight in the evenings but insisted on returning them to normal when dawn came. She, of course, didn’t have a turn at watch. Neither did Maati. Instead, he watched the moon as it hung in the tree branches, listened to the low call of owls, and drank the noxious tea. Vanjit, Irit, and Small Kae lay in the bed of the cart, their robes wrapped tightly around them. The andat sat beside its poet, as still as a stone. Eiah and Large Kae had taken the first watch, and were sitting with their backs to the fire to keep their unnaturally sharp eyes well-adapted to the darkness.
    You have to kill her ; it had said, and when Maati had reared back, his fragile heart racing, the andat had only looked at him. Its childish eyes had seemed older, like something ancient wearing the mask of a baby. It had nodded to itself and then turned and crawled awkwardly away. The message had been delivered. The rest, it seemed to imply, was Maati’s.
    He looked at the bowl of dark tea in his hands. The warmth of it was almost gone. Small bits of leaf and root shifted in the depths. An idea occurred to him. Not, perhaps, a brilliant one, but they would reach the river and hire a boat in the morning. It was a risk worth taking.
    ‘Eiah-kya,’ he said softly. ‘Something’s odd with this tea. Could you . . . ?’
    Eiah looked over at him. She looked old in the dim light of moon and fire. She came to the tree where he sat. Large Kae’s gaze followed her. The sleepers in the cart didn’t stir, but the andat’s eyes were on him. Maati held out the bowl, and Eiah sipped from it.
    ‘We need to speak,’ Maati said under his breath. ‘The others can’t know.’
    ‘It seems fine. Give me your wrists,’ Eiah said in a conversational tone. Then, softly, ‘What’s happened?’
    ‘It’s the andat. Blindness. It spoke to me. It told me to kill Vanjit-cha. This is all its doing.’
    Eiah switched to compare pulses in both wrists, her eyes closed as if she were concentrating.
    ‘How do you mean?’ she whispered.
    ‘The babe was always clinging to Ashti Beg. It made Ashti-cha feel that it cared for her. Vanjit grew jealous. The conflict between them was the andat’s doing. Now that it thinks we’re frightened of it, it’s trying to use me as well. It’s Stone-Made-Soft encouraging Cehmai-cha into distracting conflicts. It’s Seedless again.’
    Eiah put down his wrists, pressing her fingertips against his palms with the air of a buyer at a market.
    ‘Does it matter?’ Eiah murmured. ‘Say that the andat has been manipulating us all. What does that change?’
    Eiah put down his hands. Her smile was thin and humorless. Something scurried in the bushes, small and fast. A mouse, perhaps.
    ‘Is all well?’ Large Kae called from the fire. In the cart, someone moaned and stirred.
    ‘Fine,’ Maati said. ‘We’re fine. Only adjusting something.’ Then, quietly, ‘I doubt it changes anything. Vanjit’s more likely to side with Clarity-of-Sight than with us. If it is scheming against her - and, really, I can’t see why it wouldn’t be - it’s better placed