What it all came to was this: Any mercenary company working for anyone besides Galt was likely to be on the losing side of the fight. The collected Wardens were putting out calls for free companies and garrison forces, preparing themselves as best they could. The fees that Sinja was offered would have been handsome for a band of veterans and siege captains, much less for a few hundred foreign sell-swords one step up from thugs. And so Sinja had considered the money, considered the offers and the stories and his own best instincts, then quietly packed up his men and headed south to Aren to sell their services at a fourth of the price, but to the winners.
The men had grumbled. Wide, square Westland coins had been dancing in their minds. Morale had started to fail. So Sinja had paused in the Ward of Castin, made contact with a free company who’d taken contract there, and challenged their veterans to a day of games. Once Sinja’s men had understood and accepted his point, they bound their ribs and continued to the south. No one had questioned his judgment again.
Aren was one of the wards farthest to the south. Low hills covered with rich green grasses, towns of stone buildings with thatched roofs, elk and deer so wise to the ways of men that the bowmen he sent ahead to forage never caught one of them. Wherever they went, Sinja saw the signs of an army having passed—ruined crops, abandoned campsites with the ashes of a half hundred fires churned into the mud. But even with this, he had been shocked when they topped one of the many hills and caught first sight of the city of Aren.
No city under siege had ever seen so many troops at its wall. Tents and low pavilions were laid out around it on all sides, dark oiled cloth shining in row after row after row. The smoke of cook fires left a low haze through the valley that even the rain could not wholly dispel, the strange bulbous steam wagons the Galts used to move supplies and leave their men unburdened seemed as numerous as horses in the fields, and the squirming, streaming activity of men moving through each of the opened gates made the city seem like a dead sparrow overrun by ants.
His men set camp at a polite distance from the existing companies while Sinja dared the city itself. He entered the gates at midday. It wasn’t more than three hands later he was being escorted through the halls of the Warden’s palace to the library and the general himself. He’d surrendered his blades and the garrote he kept at his waist before being permitted to speak with the great man. Either Balasar Gice felt this unprecedented mass of men was too little for whatever task lay ahead of him and was grabbing at every spare sword and dagger in the world, or else Sinja was, for reasons that passed imagining, of particular interest to him.
Either way, Sinja disliked it.
Balasar Gice turned out to be a smallish man, mouse-brown hair running to white at the temples. He wore the gray tunic of command that Sinja had seen before when he’d been in the field as a young man fighting against the Galts or else with them. He might have been anyone, to look at him. A farmer or a merchant seaman or a seafront customs agent.
“Bad weather for traveling,” the general said, amiably, as if they were simply two men who’d met at a wayhouse. He spoke the Khaiate tongue clearly, his accent flavoring the words rather than obscuring them.
“It’s always wet in the South this time of year,” Sinja agreed in Galtic. “Not always so cold, but that’s why the gods made wool. That or as a joke against sheep.”
The general smiled, either at the words or the language they were in, Sinja wasn’t certain. Sinja kept his expression pleasant and empty. They both knew he was here to sell the use of his men, but only the general knew why the meeting was here and not with some low captain. Sinja opted to wait and see what came of it. Balasar Gice seemed to read his intention; he nodded and walked to a side table, where he poured them both clear wine from a cut-glass carafe. No, not wine. Water.
“I hear the Khai Machi turned you out,” the general said in Galtic as he passed a cup to Sinja. That wasn’t true. Sinja had told the captain that they were out from Machi, but perhaps there had been some misunderstanding. Sinja shrugged. It was too early in the game to correct anyone’s misconceptions.
“It’s his right,” he said. “Some of the men were causing trouble. Too long in a quiet place. I’m sure you understand.”
Balasar chuckled. It was a warm sound, and Sinja found himself liking the man. Balasar nodded to a couch beside the brazier. Sinja made a small bow and sat, the general leaning casually against the table.
“You left on good terms?”
“We didn’t turn back and burn the city,” Sinja said, “if that’s what you mean.”
“Do you owe the Khai Machi loyalty? Or are you a free company?”
The truth was that any silver he took would find its way back to Otah Machi’s coffers. The company was no more free than the Galtic armies outside the city. And yet there was something in the general’s voice when he asked the question, something in his eyes.
“We’re mercenaries. We follow whoever pays us,” Sinja said.
“And if someone should offer to pay you more? No offense, but the one thing you can say of loyalty for hire is that it’s for hire.”
“We’ll finish out a contract,” Sinja said. “I’ve been through enough to know what happens to a company with a reputation for switching sides mid-battle. But I won’t lie, the boys I have are green, most of them. They haven’t seen many campaigns.”
It was a softening of these poor bastards hardly know which end’s the sharp one but the meaning was much the same. The general waved the concern aside, which was fascinating. Balasar Gice wasn’t interested in their field prowess. Which meant he either wanted them to lead the charges and soak up a few enemy spears and arrows—hardly a role that asked the general’s presence at the negotiation—or there was something more, something that Sinja was still missing.
“How many of them speak Galt?”
“A third,” Sinja said, inventing the number on the spot.
“I may have use for them. How loyal are they to you?”
“How loyal do they need to be?”
The general smiled. There was a touch of sorrow in his eyes and a long, thoughtful pause. Sinja felt a decision being made, though he couldn’t say what the issue was.
“Enough to go against their own kind. Not in the field, but I’ll want them as translators and agents. And whatever you can tell me of the winter cities. I’ll want that as well.”
Sinja smiled knowingly to cover his racing mind. Gice wasn’t taking his army North. He was going east, into the cities of the Khaiem, with something close to every able-bodied man in Galt behind him. Sinja chuckled to hide a rush of fear.
“They’ll follow you any place you care to go, so long as they’re on the winning side,” Sinja said. “Are you sure that’s going to be you?”
“Yes,” the general said, and the bare confidence in his voice was more persuasive than any reasoned argument he might have given. If the man had been trying to convince himself, he would have had a speech ready—why this insanity would work, how the army could overpower the andat, something. But Balasar was certain. The general sipped his water, waiting the space of five long breaths together. Then he spoke again. “You’re thinking something?”
“You’re not stupid,” Sinja said. “So you’re either barking mad, or you know something I don’t. No one can take on the Khaiem.”
“You mean no one can face the andat.”
“Yes,” Sinja agreed. “That’s what I mean.”
“I can.”
“Forgive me if I keep my doubts about me,” Sinja said.
The general nodded, considered Sinja for a long moment, then gestured toward the table. Sinja put down his bowl and stepped over as the general unrolled a long cloth scroll with a map of the cities of the Khaiem on it. Sinja stepped back from it as if there were an asp on it.
“General,” he said, “if you’re about to tell me your plans for this campaign, I think we might be ahead of where we should be.”
Balasar put a hand on Sinja’s arm. The Gal
t’s gaze was firm and steady, his voice low and strangely intimate. Sinja saw how a personality like his own could command an army or a nation. Possibly, he thought, a world.
“Captain Ajutani, I don’t share these plans with every mercenary captain who walks through my door. I don’t trust them. I don’t show them to my own captains, barring the ones in my small Council. The others I expect to trust me. But we’re men of the world, you and I. You have something I think I could use.”
“And you have nothing to lose by telling me,” Sinja said, slowly. “Because I’m not leaving this building, am I?”
“Not even to go speak to your men,” the general said. “You’re here as my ally or my prisoner.”
Sinja shook his head.
“That’s a brave thing to say, General. It’s only the two of us in here.”
“If you attacked me, I’d kill you where you stood,” Balasar said in the same tone of voice he’d used before, and Sinja believed him. Balasar smiled gently and nudged him forward, toward the table.
“Let me show you why ally would be the better choice.”
Still, Sinja held back.
“I’m not an idiot,” he said. “If you tell me you plan to take over the Khaiem by flying through the sky on winged dogs, I’ll still clap you on the back and swear I’m your ally.”
“Of course you will. You’ll say you’re my dearest friend and solidly behind me. I’ll thank you and distrust you and keep you unarmed and under guard. We’ll each avoid turning our backs on the other. I think we can take that all as given,” Balasar said with a dismissive wave. “I don’t care what you say or do, Captain. I care what you think”
Sinja felt a genuine smile blooming on his lips. When he laughed, Balasar laughed with him.
“Well,” Sinja said. “As long as we’re agreed on all that. Go ahead. Convince me that you’re going to prevail against the poets.”
They talked for what seemed like the better part of the evening. Outside, the storm slackened, the clouds broke. By the time a servant boy came to light the lanterns, a moon so full it seemed too heavy to rise glowed in the indigo sky. Gnats and midges buzzed through the open windows, ignored by both men as they discussed Balasar’s intentions and strategies. The general was open and forthcoming and honest, and with every unfolding scheme, Sinja understood that his life was worth whatever Balasar Gice said it was worth. It was up to him to convince the general that letting him live after he’d heard all this wouldn’t be a mistake. It was a clever tactic, all the more so because once Sinja understood the trick, it lost none of its power.
Afterward, armsmen escorted him to a small, well-appointed bedchamber with windows too narrow to crawl out and a bar on the outside of the door. Sinja lay in the bed, listening to the nearly inaudible hiss and tick of the candle flame. His body felt poorly attached, likely to slip free of his mind at any moment. Light-headed, he washed his face in cold water, cracked his knuckles, anything to bring his mind to something real and immediate. Something the Galtic general had not just torn away.
It was as if he had fallen into a nightmare, or woken to something worse than one. He felt as if he’d just watched a man he knew well die by violence. The Galt’s plan would end the world he had known. If it worked. And in his bones, he knew it would.
The hours passed, the night seeming to stretch on without end. Sinja paced his room or sat or lay sleepless on the bed, remembering the illness he had felt after his first battle. This was the same disease, back again. But the more he thought about it, the more his mind tracked across the maps he and the general had considered, the more his conviction grew.
The turncoat poet and the army were only a part of it—in some ways the least. It was the general’s audacity and certainty and caution. It was the force of his personality. Sinja had seen commanders and wardens and kings, and he could tell the sort that fated themselves to lose. Balasar Gice was going to win.
And so, Sinja supposed with a sense of genuine regret, the right thing was to work for him.
The poet’s house was warm, the scent of trees thick in the air. The false dawn, prolonged by the mountains to the east, had just come, the sun making its way above the peaks to bathe the world in light. Through the opened door, Maati could hear the songs of birds deep in the yearly quest to draw mates to their nests. The dances and parties of the utkhaiem were much the same—who had the loveliest plumage, the more enticing song. There were fewer differences between men and birds than men liked to confess.
He sat on a couch, watching Cehmai at one side of the small table and Stone-Made-Soft at the other. Between them was the game board with its worn lines and stones. The game had been central to the binding Manat Doru had performed generations ago that first brought Stone-Made-Soft into existence, and as part of the legacy he bore, Cehmai had to play the game again—white stones moving forward against the black—as a reaffirmation of his control over the spirit. Fortunately, Manat Doru had also made Stone-Made-Soft a terrible player. Cehmai tapped his fingertips against the wood and shifted a black stone in the center of the board toward the left. Stone-Made-Soft frowned, its wide face twisted in concentration.
“No word yet,” Cehmai said. “It’s early days, though.”
“What do you think he’ll do?” Maati asked.
“I’m trying to think, please,” the andat rumbled. They ignored it.
Cehmai leaned back in his seat. The years had treated him kindly. The fresh-faced, talented young man Maati had met when he first came to Machi was still there. If there was the first dusting of gray in the boy’s hair, if the lines at the corners of his mouth were deeper now, and less prone to vanish when he relaxed, it did nothing to take away from the easy smile or the deep, grounded sense of self that Cehmai had always had. And even the respect he had for Maati—no longer a dread-touched awe, but still profound in its way—had never failed with familiarity.
“I’m afraid he’ll do the thing,” Cehmai said. “I suppose I’m also afraid that he won’t. There’s not a good solution.”
“He could take a middle course,” Maati said. “Demand that the Galts hand back Riaan on the threat of taking action. If the Dai-kvo tells them that he knows, it might be enough.”
The andat lifted a thick-fingered hand, gently touched a white stone, and slid it forward with a hiss. Cehmai glanced over, considered, and pushed the black stone he’d moved before back into the space it had come from. The andat coughed in frustration and set its head on balled fists, staring at the board.
“It’s odd,” Cehmai said. “There was a time when I was at the school—before I’d even taken the black robes, so early on. There was a pigeon that had taken up residence in my cohort’s rooms. Nasty thing. It would flap around through the air and drop feathers and shit on us all, and every time we waved it outside, it would come back. Then one day, one of the boys got lucky. He threw a boot at the poor thing and broke its wing. Well, we knew we were going to have to kill it. Even though it had been nothing but annoyance and filth, it was hard to break its neck.”
“Were you the one that did it?” Maati asked.
Cehmai took a pose of acknowledgment.
“It felt like this,” the younger poet said. “I won’t enjoy this, if it’s what we do.”
The andat looked up from the board.
“Has it ever struck you people how arrogant you are?” it asked, huge hands taking an attitude of query that bordered on accusation. “You’re talking of slaughtering a nation. Thousands of innocent people destroyed, lands made barren, mountains leveled and the sea pulled up over them like a blanket. And you’re feeling sorry for yourself that you had to wring a bird’s neck as a boy? How can anyone have feelings that delicate and that numbed both at the same time?”
“It’s your move,” Cehmai said.
Stone-Made-Soft sighed theatrically—it had no need for breath, so every sigh it made was a comment—and turned back toward the game. It was essentially over. The andat had lost again as it always did, but they played
to the last move, finishing the ritual humiliation once again.
“We’re off to the North,” Cehmai said as he put the stones back into their trays. “There’s a new vein the Radaani want to explore, but I’m not convinced it’s possible. Their engineers are swearing that the structure won’t collapse, but those mountains are getting near lacework.”
“Eight generations is a long time,” Maati agreed. “Even without help, the mines would have become a maze by now.”
“I fear the day an earthquake comes,” Cehmai said as he stood and stretched. “One shake, and half these mountains will fold up flat, I’d swear it.”
“Then I suppose we’d have to spend months digging up the bodies,” Maati said.
“Not really,” the andat said. Its voice was placid again, now that the game was ended. “If we make it soft enough, the bodies will float up through it. If stone is water, almost anything floats. We could have a whole field of stone flat as a lake, with mine dogs and men popping up out of it like bubbles.”
“What a pleasant thought,” Cehmai said, gently sarcastic. “And here I was wondering why we weren’t invited to more dinners. And you, Maati-kvo? What’s your day?”
“More work in the library,” Maati said. “I want the place in order. If the Dai-kvo calls for me…”
“He will,” Cehmai said. “You can count on that.”
“If he does, I want the place left in order. A sane order that someone else could make sense of. Baarath had the thing put together like a puzzle. Took me three years just to make sense of it, and even then some of it I just went through book by book and made my own classifications.”
“Well, he had a different opinion than yours,” Cehmai said. “He wanted the library to be a place to bury secrets, not display them. It was how he made himself feel as if he mattered. I don’t suppose I can blame him too much for that.”
An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet) Page 10