“Quite well,” Liat said with a chuckle.
Kiyan leaned forward and scooped up Liat’s hand as if it were the most natural thing to do.
“You helped Otah when he asked it of you. Will you help me now?”
The assent came as far as Liat’s lips and then died there. She saw the distress in Kiyan’s eyes, but she couldn’t say it.
“Why?” Liat whispered. “Why me? Why, when we are what we are to each other.”
“When we’re what to each other?”
“Women who’ve loved the same man,” Liat said. “Mothers of…of our sons. How can you put that aside, even only for a little while?”
Kiyan smiled. It was a hard expression. Determined. She did not let go of Liat’s hand, but neither did she hold it captive.
“I want you with me because we can’t have other enemies now,” she said. “And because you and I aren’t so different. And because I think perhaps the distraction is something you need as badly as I do. There’s war enough coming. I want there to be peace between us.”
“I have a price,” Liat said.
Kiyan nodded that she continue.
“When Nayiit comes back, spend time with him. Talk with him. Find out who he is. Know him.”
“Because?”
“Because if you’re going to have me fall in love with your boy, you owe it to fall a little in love with mine.”
Kiyan grinned, tears glistening in her eyes. Her hand squeezed Liat’s. Liat closed her grip, fierce as a drowning man holding to a rope. She hadn’t understood until this moment how deep her fear ran or the loneliness that even Maati couldn’t assuage. She couldn’t say whether she had pulled Kiyan to her or if she herself had been pulled, but she found herself sobbing into the other woman’s shoulder. Otah’s wife wrapped fierce arms around her, embracing her as if she would protect Liat from the world.
“They would never understand this,” Liat managed when her breath was her own again.
“They’re men,” Kiyan said. “They’re simpler.”
For years, Otah had been a traveler by profession. He had worked the gentleman’s trade, traveling as a courier for a merchant house with business in half the cities of the Khaiem. He had spent days on horseback or hunkered down in the backs of wagons or walking. He remembered with fondness the feeling of resting at the end of a day, his limbs warm and weary, sinking into the woolen blanket that only half protected him from the ticks. He remembered looking up at the wide sky with something like contentment. It seemed fourteen years sleeping in the best bed in Machi had made a difference.
“Is there something I can bring you, Most High?” the servant boy asked from the doorway of the tent. Otah pulled open the netting and turned over in his cot, twisting his head to look at him. The boy was perhaps eighteen summers old, long hair pulled back and bound by a length of leather.
“Do I seem like I need something?”
The boy looked down, abashed.
“You were moaning again, Most High.”
Otah let himself lie back on the cot. The stretched canvas creaked under him like a ship in a storm. He closed his eyes and cataloged quietly all his reasons for moaning. His back ached like someone had kicked him. His thighs were chafed half raw. They were hardly ten days out from Machi, and it was becoming profoundly clear that he didn’t know how to march a military column across the rolling, forested hills that stretched from Machi almost to the mountains north of the Dai-kvo. The great Galtic army that had massed in the South was no doubt well advanced, and the Dai-kvo was in deadly danger, if he hadn’t been killed already. Otah closed his eyes. Right now, the throbbing sting of his abused thighs bothered him most.
“Go ask the physicians to send some salve,” he said.
“I’ll call for the physician.”
“No! Just…just get some salve and bring it here. I’m not infirm. And I wasn’t moaning. It was the cot.”
The boy took a pose of acceptance and backed out of the tent, shutting the door behind him. Otah let the netting fall closed again. A tent with a door. Gods.
The first few days hadn’t been this bad. The sense of release that came from taking real action at last had almost outweighed the fears that plagued him and the longing for Kiyan at his side, for Eiah and Danat. The northern summer was brief, but the days were long. He rode with the men of the utkhaiem, trotting on their best mounts, while the couriers ranged ahead and the huntsmen foraged. The wide, green world smelled rich with the season. The North Road ran only among the winter cities—AmnatTan, Cetani, Machi. There was no good, paved road direct from Machi to the village of the Dai-kvo, but there were trade routes that jumped from low town to low town. Mud furrows worn by carts and hooves and feet. Around them, grasses rose high as the bellies of their horses, singing a dry song like fingertips on skin when the wind stirred the blades. The feeling of the sure-footed animal he rode had been reassuring at first. Solid and strong.
But the joy of action had wearied while the dread grew stronger. The steady movement of the horse had become wearisome. The jokes and songs of the men had lost something of their fire. The epics and romances of the Empire included some passages about the weariness and longing that came of living on campaign, but they spoke of endless seasons and years without the solace of home. Otah and his men hadn’t yet traveled two full weeks. They were still well shy of the journey’s halfway mark, and already they were losing what cohesion they had.
With every day, most men were afoot while huntsmen and scouts and utkhaiem rode. Horsemen were called to the halt long before the night should have forced them to make camp, for fear that those following on foot would fail to reach the tents before darkness fell. And even so, men continued to straggle in long after the evening meals had been served, leaving them unrested and fed only on scraps when morning came. The army, such as it was, seemed tied to the speed of its slowest members. He needed speed and he needed men at his side, but there was no good way to have both. And the fault, Otah knew, was in himself.
There had to be answers to this and the thousand other problems that came of leading a campaign. The Galts would know. Sinja could have told him, had he been there and not out in some Westlands garrison waiting for a flood of Galts that wasn’t coming. They were men that had experience in the field, who had more knowledge of war than the casual study of a few old Empire texts fit in between religious ceremonies and high court bickering.
The scratch came at the door, soft and apologetic. Otah swung his legs off the cot and sat up. He called out his permission as he parted the netting, but the one who came in wasn’t the servant boy. It was Nayiit.
He looked tired. His robes had been blue once, but from the hem to the knee they were stained the pale brown of the mud through which they had traveled. Otah considered the weight of their situation—the young man’s dual role as Maati’s son and his own, the threat he posed to Danat and the promise to Machi, the aid he might be in this present endeavor to prevent harm to the Dai-kvo—and dismissed it all. He was too tired and pained to chew everything a hundred times before he swallowed.
He took a pose of welcome, and Nayiit returned one of greater formality. Otah nodded to a camp chair and Nayiit sat.
“Your attendant wasn’t here. I didn’t know what the right etiquette was, so I just came through.”
“He’s running an errand. Once he’s back, I can have tea brought,” Otah said. “Or wine.”
Nayiit took a pose of polite refusal. Otah shrugged it away.
“As you see fit,” Otah said. “And what brings you?”
“There’s grumbling in the ranks, Most High. Even among some of the utkhaiem.”
“There’s grumbling in here, for that,” Otah said. “There’s just no one here to listen to me. Are there any suggestions? Any solutions that the ranks have seen that escaped me? Because, by all the gods that have ever been named, I’m not too proud to hear them.”
“They say you’re driving them too hard, Most High,” Nayiit said. “That the
men need a day’s rest.”
“Rest? Go slower? That’s the solution they have to offer? What kind of brilliance is that?”
Nayiit looked up. His face was long, like a Northerner’s. Like Otah’s. His eyes were Liat’s tea-with-milk brown. His expression, however, owed to neither of them. Where Liat would have kept her eyes down or Otah would have made himself charming, Nayiit’s face belonged on a man bearing a heavy load. Whatever was in his mind, in this moment it was clear that he would press until the world was the way he wanted it or it crushed him. It was something equal parts weariness and joy, like a man newly acquainted with certainty. Otah found himself curious.
“They aren’t wrong, Most High. These men aren’t accustomed to living on the road like this. You can’t expect the speed of a practiced army from them. And the walkers have been rising early to drill.”
“Have they?”
“They have the impression their lives may rest on it. And the lives of their families. And, forgive me Most High, but your life too.”
Otah leaned forward, his hands taking a questioning pose.
“They’re afraid of failing you,” Nayiit said. “It’s why no one would come to you and complain. I’ve been keeping company with a man named Saya. He’s a blacksmith. Plow blades, for the most part. His knees are swollen to twice their normal size, and he wakes before dawn to tie on leather and wool and swing sticks with the others. And then he walks until he can’t. And then he walks farther.”
Nayiit’s voice was trembling now, but Otah couldn’t say if it was with weariness or fear or anger.
“These aren’t soldiers, Most High. And you’re pushing them too hard.”
“We’ve been moving for ten days—”
“And we’re coming near to halfway to the Dai-kvo’s village,” Nayiit said. “In ten days. And drilling, and sleeping under thin blankets on hard ground. Not couriers and huntsmen, not men who are accustomed to this. Just men. I’ve spoken to the provisioners. We left Machi three thousand strong. Do you know how many have turned back? How many have deserted you?”
Otah blinked. It wasn’t a question he’d ever thought to ask.
“How many?”
“None.”
Otah felt something loosen in his chest. A warmth like the first drink of wine spread through him, and he felt tears beginning to well up in his eyes. If he had been less exhausted, it would never have pierced his reserve, and still…none.
“With every low town we pass, we take on a few more,” Nayiit was saying. “They’re afraid. The word has gone out that all the andat are gone, that the Galts are going to invade or are invading. It’s the thing every man had convinced himself would never happen. I hear the things they say.”
“The things they say?”
“That you were the only one who saw the danger. You were training men even before. You were preparing. They say that you’ve traveled the world when you were a boy, that you understand it better than any other Khai. Some of them are calling you the new Emperor.”
“They should stop that,” Otah said.
“Most High, they’re desperate and afraid, and they want a hero out of the old epics. They need one.”
“And you? What do you need?”
“I need Saya to stop walking for a day.”
Otah closed his eyes. Perhaps the right thing was to send the experienced men on ahead. They could clear spaces for the camps. Perhaps missing a single day would not be too much. And there was little point in running if it was only to be sure they came to the battle exhausted and ready for slaughter. The Dai-kvo would have gotten his warning by now. The poets might even now be in flight toward Otah and his ragtag army. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. Letting his body collapse with it.
“I’ll consider what you’ve said, Nayiit-cha,” Otah said. “It wasn’t where my mind had led me, but I can see there’s some wisdom in it.”
Nayiit took a pose of gratitude as formal as any at court. He looked nearly as spent as Otah felt. Otah raised his hands in a querying pose.
“The utkhaiem didn’t feel comfortable bringing these concerns to me,” he said. “Why did you?”
“I think, Most High, there’s a certain…reluctance in the higher ranks to second-guess you again. And the footmen wouldn’t think of approaching you. I grew up with stories about you and Maati-cha, so I suppose I can bring myself to think of you as one of my mother’s friends. That, and I’m desperately tired. If you had me sent back in disgrace, I could at least get a day’s rest.”
Otah smiled, and saw his own expression reflected back at him. He had never known this boy, had never lifted him over his head the way he had Danat. He had had no part in teaching Nayiit wisdom or folly. Even now, seeing himself in his eldest son’s movements and expressions, he could hardly think of him with the bone-deep protectiveness that shook him when he thought of Eiah and Danat. And yet he was pleased that he had accepted Nayiit’s offer to join him in this half-doomed campaign. Otah leaned forward, his hand out. It was the gesture of friendship that one seafront laborer might offer another. Nayiit only looked shocked for a moment, then clasped Otah’s hand.
“Whenever they’re too nervous to tell me what I’m doing wrong, you come to me, Nayiit-cha. I haven’t got many people I can trust to do that, and I’ve left most of them back in Machi.”
“If you’ll promise not to have me whipped for impertinence,” the boy said.
“I won’t have you whipped, and I won’t have you sent back.”
“Thank you,” Nayiit said, and again Otah was moved to see that the gratitude was genuine. After Nayiit had gone, Otah was left with the aches in his body and the unease that came with having a man with a wife and child thank you for leading him toward the real chance of death. The life of the Khai Machi, he thought, afforded very few opportunities to be humbled, but this was one. When the attendant returned, Otah didn’t recognize the sound of his scratching until the man’s voice came.
“Most High?”
“Yes, come in. And bring that ointment here. No, I can put it on myself. But bring me the captains of the houses. I’ve decided to take a day to rest and send the scouts ahead.”
“Yes, Most High.”
“And when you’ve done with that, there’s a man named Saya. He’s on foot. A blacksmith from Machi, I think.”
“Yes, Most High?”
“Ask him to join me for a bowl of wine. I’d like to meet him.”
MAATI WOKE to find Liat already gone. His hand traced the indentation in the mattress at his side where she had slept. The world outside his door was already bright and warm. The birds whose songs had filled the air of spring were busy now teaching their hatchlings to fly. The pale green of new leaves had deepened, the trees as rich with summer as they would ever be. High summer had come. Maati rose from his bed with a grunt and went about his morning ablutions.
The days since the ragged, improvised army of Machi began its march to the east had been busy. The loss of Stone-Made-Soft would have sent the court and the merchant houses scurrying like mice before a flood even if nothing more had happened. Word of the other lost andat and of the massed army of Galt made what in other days would have been a cataclysm seem a side issue. For half a week, it seemed, the city had been paralyzed. Not from fear, but from the simple and profound lack of any ritual or ceremony that answered the situation. Then, first from the merchant houses below and Kiyan-cha’s women’s banquets above and then seemingly everywhere at once, the utkhaiem had flushed with action. Often disorganized, often at crossed purpose, but determined and intent. Maati’s own efforts were no less than any others.
Still, he left it behind him now—the books stacked in distinct piles, scrolls unfurled to particular passages as if waiting for the copyist’s attention—and walked instead through the wide, bright paths of the palaces. There were fewer singing slaves, more stretches where the gravel of the path had scattered and not yet been raked back into place, and the men and women of t
he utkhaiem who he passed seemed to carry themselves with less than their full splendor. It was as if a terrible wind had blown through a garden and disarrayed those blossoms it did not destroy.
The path led into the shade of the false forest that separated the poet’s house from the palaces. There were old trees among these, thick trunks speaking of generations of human struggle and triumph and failure since their first tentative seedling leaves had pushed away this soil. Moss clothed the bark and scented the air with green. Birds fluttered over Maati’s head, and a squirrel scolded him as he passed. In winter, with these oaks bare, you could see from the porch of the poet’s house out almost to the palaces. In summer, the house might have been in a different city. The door of the poet’s house was standing open, and Maati didn’t bother to scratch or knock.
Cehmai’s quarters suffered the same marks as his own—books, scrolls, codices, diagrams all laid out without respect to author or age or type of binding. Cehmai, sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, held a book open in his hand. With the brown robes of a poet loose around his frame, he looked, Maati thought, like a young student puzzling over an obscure translation. Cehmai looked up as Maati’s shadow crossed him, and smiled wearily.
“Have you eaten?” Maati asked.
“Some bread. Some cheese,” Cehmai said, gesturing to the back of the house with his head. “There’s some left, if you’d like it.”
It hadn’t occurred to Maati just how hungry he was until he took up a corner of the rich, sweet bread. He knew he’d had dinner the night before, but he couldn’t recall what it had been or when he’d eaten it. He reached into a shallow ceramic bowl of salted raisins. They tasted rich and full as wine. He took a handful and sat on the chair beside Cehmai to look over the assorted results of their labor.
An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet) Page 22