Seasons of War

by Daniel Abraham

  ‘How did you sleep, Vanjit-cha?’ Maati asked as she swept the hem of her robe aside and sat next to him.

  She took his hand and squeezed it, but didn’t answer his question. Large Kae brought her a bowl of tea, Irit a helping of the grain and butter already covered with apple. Vanjit took a pose of thanks somewhat hampered by the food and drink.

  While they all ate, the conversation looped around the one concern they all shared. The Galts, the Emperor, the weather, the supplies Eiah had brought from Pathai, the species of insect peculiar to the dry lands around the school. Anything was a fit topic except Vanjit’s binding and the fear that lay beneath all their merriment and pleasure.

  Vanjit alone seemed untouched by care. She was beautiful and, for the first time since Maati had met her, comfortable in her beauty. Her laughter seemed genuine and her movements relaxed. Maati thought he was seeing confidence in her, the assurance of a woman who was about to do a thing she had no thought might be beyond her. His opinion didn’t change until after all the bowls had been gathered and rinsed, the cored apples and spilled grain swept up and carried away to the pit in the back of the school, when she took him by the hand and led him gently aside.

  ‘I wanted to thank you,’ she said as they reached the bend of the wide hallway.

  ‘I can’t see I’ve done anything worth it,’ he said. ‘If anything, I should be offering you . . .’

  There were tears brimming in her eyes, the shining water threatening her kohl. Maati took the end of his sleeve and dabbed her eyes gently. The brown cloth came away stained black.

  ‘After Udun,’ Vanjit began, then paused. ‘After what the Galts did to my brothers . . . my parents. I thought I would never have a family again. It was better that there not be anyone in my life that I cared for enough that it would hurt me to lose them.’

  ‘Ah, now. Vanjit-kya. You don’t need to think of that now.’

  ‘But I do. I do. You are the closest thing I’ve had to a father. You are the most dedicated man I have ever known, and it has been an honor to be allowed a place in your work. And I’ve broken the promise I made myself. I will miss you.’

  Maati took a pose that both disagreed and asked for clarification. Vanjit smiled and shook her head, the beads and shells in her braids clicking like claws on stone. He waited.

  ‘We both know that the chances are poor that I’ll see the sunset,’ she said. Her voice was solemn and composed. ‘This grammar we’ve made is a guess. The forces at play are deadlier than fires or floods. If I were someone else, I wouldn’t wager a length of copper on my chances if you offered me odds.’

  ‘That isn’t true,’ Maati said. He hadn’t meant to shout, and lowered his voice when he spoke again. ‘That isn’t true. We’ve done good work here. The equal of anything I learned from the Dai-kvo. Your chances are equal to the best any poet has faced. I’ll swear to that if you’d like.’

  ‘There’s no call,’ she said. From down the hall, he heard voices in bright conversation. He heard laughter. Vanjit took his hand. He had never noticed how small her hands were. How small she was, hardly more than a child herself.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Whatever happens, thank you. If I die today, thank you. Do you understand?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve made living bearable,’ she said. ‘It’s more than I can ever repay.’

  ‘You can. You can repay all of it and more. Don’t die. Succeed.’

  Vanjit smiled and took a pose that accepted instruction, then moved forward, wrapping her arms around Maati in a bear hug. He cradled her head on his breast, his eyes pressed closed, his heart sick and anxious.

  The chamber they had set aside for the binding had once been the sleeping room for one of the younger cohorts. The lines of cots were gone now. The windows shone with the light of middle morning. Vanjit took a round of chalk and began writing out her binding on the wide south wall, ancient words and recent blending together in the new grammar they had all created. From Maati’s cushion at the back of the room, the letters were blurry and indistinct, but from their shape alone, he could see that the binding had shifted since the last time he’d seen it.

  Eiah sat at his side, her hand on his arm, her gaze fixed on the opposite wall. She looked half-ill.

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ Maati murmured.

  Eiah nodded once, her eyes never leaving the pale words taking over the far wall like a bright shadow. When Vanjit was finished, she walked to the beginning again, paced slowly down the wall reading all she’d written, and then, satisfied, put the chalk on the ground. A single cushion had been placed in the middle of the room for her. She stopped at it, her binding behind her, her face turned toward the small assembly at the back. She took a silent pose of gratitude, turned, and sat.

  Maati had a powerful urge to stand, to call out. He could wash the wall clean, talk through the binding again, check it for errors one last time. Vanjit began to chant, the cadences unlike anything he had heard before. Her voice was soft, coaxing, gentle; she was singing her andat into the world. He clenched his fists and stayed quiet. Eiah seemed to have stopped breathing.

  The sound of Vanjit’s voice filled the air, reverberating as if the building had grown huge. The chant began to echo, and Vanjit’s actual voice receded. Words and phrases combined, voice against echo, making new sentences and meanings. The lilt of the girl’s voice fell into harmony with itself, and Maati heard a third voice, neither Vanjit nor her echo, but something deep and sonorous as a bell. It was reciting syllables borrowed from the words of the binding, creating another layer of sound and intention. The air thickened, and Vanjit’s back - her shoulders hunched, her head bowed - seemed very far away. Maati smelled hot iron, or perhaps blood. His heart began to race with a fear he couldn’t express.

  Something’s wrong. We have to stop her; he said to Eiah, but though he could feel the words vibrate in his throat, he couldn’t hear them. Vanjit’s circling voice had made a kind of silence that Maati was powerless to break. Another layer of echoes came, the words seeming to come before Vanjit spoke them, echoing from the other direction in time. Beside him, Eiah’s face had gone white.

  Vanjit’s voice spoke a single word - the last of the binding - at the same time as all the layered echoes, a dozen voices speaking as one. The world itself chimed, pandemonium resolving into a single harmonious chord. The room was only a room again. When Maati stood, he could hear the hem of his robe whispering against the stone. Vanjit sat where she had been, her head bowed. No new form stood before her. It should have been there.

  She’s failed, Maati thought. It hasn’t worked, and she’s paid the price of it.

  The others were on their feet, but he took a pose that commanded them to remain where they were. This was his. However bad it was, it was his. His belly twisted as he walked toward her corpse. He had seen the price a failed binding exacted: always different, always fatal. And yet Vanjit’s ribs rose and fell, still breathing.

  ‘Vanjit-kya?’ he said, his voice no more than a murmur.

  The girl shifted, turned her head, and looked up at him. Her eyes were bright with joy. In her lap, something squirmed. Maati saw the round, soft flesh, the tubby, half-formed hands and feet, a toothless mouth, and black eyes full of empty rage. Except for the eyes, it could have been a human baby.

  ‘He’s come,’ Vanjit said. ‘Look, Maati-kvo. We’ve done it. He’s here.’

  As if freed from silence by the poet’s words, Clarity-of-Sight opened its tiny throat and wailed.

  11

  Kiyan-kya—

  I look at how long I carried the world, or thought I did, and I wonder how many times we have to learn the same lessons. Until we remember them, I suppose. It isn’t that I’ve stopped worrying. The gods all know I crawl into my bed at night half-tempted to call for reports from Sinja and Danat and Ashua. Even if I had them dragged into my chambers to recount everything they’d seen and done, how would it change things? Would I need less sleep? Would I be abl
e to remake the world through raw will like a poet? I’m only a man, however fancy the robes they put me in. I’m not more suited to lead a war fleet or root out a conspiracy or win a young girl’s love than any of them.

  Why is it so hard for me to believe that someone besides myself might be competent? Or did I fear that letting go of any one part would mean everything would fall away?

  No, love. Idaan was right. I have been punishing myself all this time for not saving the people I cared for most. I think some nights that I will never stop mourning you.

  Otah’s pen hung in the cool night air, the brass nib just above the paper. The night breeze smelled of the sea and the city, rich and heavy as an overripe grape whose skin has only just split. In Machi, they would already be moving down to the tunnels beneath the city. In Utani, where his central palace stood wrapped in cloth, awaiting his return, the leaves would have turned to red and yellow and gold. In Pathai, where Eiah worked with her latest pet physician and pointedly ignored all matters of politics and power, there might be frost in the mornings.

  Here in Saraykeht, the change of seasons was only a difference of scent and the surprise that the sun, which had so plagued them at summer’s height, could grow tired so early. He wrote a few more sentences, the pen sounding like bird’s feet against the paper, and then blew on the ink to cure it, folded the letter, and put it in with all the others he had written to her.

  His eyes ached. His back ached. The joints of his hands were stiff, and his spine felt carved from wood. For days, he had been poring over records and agendas, letters and accountancy reports, searching for some connection that would uncover Maati’s suspected patron. There were patterns to be looked for - people who had traveled extensively in the past few years who might be moving with the poet, supplies that had vanished with no clear destination, opposition to the planned alliance with Galt. And, with that, Maati’s boast of an ear in the palaces. And the gods all knew there were patterns to be found. The courts of the Khaiem were thick with petty intrigue. Flushing out any one particular scheme was like plucking a particular thread from a tapestry.

  To make matters worse, the servants and high families that Idaan had chided him for not making better use of had no place here. Even if Maati didn’t have the well-placed spy he’d claimed, Otah still couldn’t afford the usual gossip. Maati had to be found and the situation resolved before he managed to bind some new andat, and no one - Galt, Westlander, no one - could hear of it for fear of the reaction it would bring.

  That meant that the records and reports were brought to Otah’s private chambers. Crate after crate until they piled near the ceiling. And the only eyes that he could trust to the task were his own and, through the twisted humor that gods seemed to enjoy, Idaan’s.

  She was stretched out on a long silk divan now, half a month’s lading records from the harbor master’s office arrayed about her. Her closed eyes shifted beneath their lids, but her breath was as steady as the tide. Otah found a thin wool blanket and draped it over her.

  It had not particularly been his intention to embrace his exiled sister and make her a part of the hunt for Maati, but the work was more than he could manage on his own. The only other person who knew of the problem was Sinja, and he was busy with Balasar and the creation of the unlikely fleet whose mission was to save Chaburi-Tan. Idaan knew the workings of the poets as well as any woman alive; she had been the enemy of one, the lover of another. She knew a great deal about court intrigue and also the mechanics of living an unobtrusive life. There was no one better equipped for the investigation.

  He did not trust her, but had resolved to behave as if he did. At least for the present. The future was as unpredictable as it had always been, and he’d given up hope of anticipating its changes.

  He knew from long experience that he wouldn’t sleep if he went to bed now. His mind might be in a deep fog, but his body was punishing him for sitting too long. As it would have punished him for working too hard. The range allowed to him was so much narrower than when he’d been young. A walk to loosen his joints, and he might be able to rest.

  The armsmen at the door of his apartments took poses of obeisance as he stepped out. He only nodded and made his way south. He wore a simple robe of cotton. The cloth was of the first quality, but the cut was simple and the red and gray less than gaudy. Someone who didn’t know him by sight might have mistaken him for a member of the utkhaiem, or even a particularly powerful servant. He made a game of walking with his head down, trying to pass as a functionary in his own house.

  The halls of the palaces were immense and ornate. Many small items - statues, paintings, jeweled decoration - had vanished during the brief occupation by Galt, but the huge copper-sheathed columns and the high, clear glass of the unshuttered windows spoke of greater days. The wood floors shone with lacquer even where they were scraped and pitted.

  Incense burned in unobtrusive brass bowls, filling the air with the scent of sandalwood and desert sage. Even this late at night, singing slaves carried their harmonies in empty chambers. Crickets, Otah thought, would have been as beautiful.

  His back had begun to relax and his feet to complain when the illusion of traveling the palaces unnoticed was broken. A servant in a gold robe appeared at the far end of the hall, walking purposefully toward him. Otah stopped. The man took a pose of obeisance and apology as he drew near.

  ‘Most High, I am sorry to interrupt. Ana Dasin has come to request an audience. I would have turned her away, but under the circumstances . . .’ ‘You did well,’ he said. ‘Take her to the autumn garden.’

  The servant took a pose that accepted the command, but then hesitated.

  ‘Should I send for an outer robe, Most High?’

  Otah looked down at the wrinkled fabric and wondered what Ana would see if he met her like this: a man of great power and consequence at the end of a long day’s work, or an old slob in a cotton robe.

  ‘Yes,’ he said with a sigh. ‘An outer robe would be welcome. And tea. Bring us fresh tea. She might not care for it, but I want some.’

  The man scurried away. They had known where he was, and that he didn’t wish to be disturbed. And they had known when to disturb him. To be the Emperor of the Khaiem was above all else to be known by people he did not know. He had discovered that truth a thousand times before, and likely would do so a thousand times again, and each one discomforted him.

  The autumn garden was nestled within the palaces. Trees and vines hid the stone walls, and paper lanterns gave the flagstone path a soft light. Near the center, a small brass fountain, long given to verdigris, chuckled to itself and a small wooden pavilion rested in the darkness. Otah walked down the path, still tugging the black and silver outer robe into place. Ana Dasin sat in the pavilion, her gaze on the water sluicing over bronze. The tea, set on a lacquered tray, had preceded him as if the servants had anticipated that he would ask for it as well and had had it ready.

  Otah gathered himself. He was almost certain that Danat had already had his second meeting with the girl. Hanchat Dor, Danat’s rival, was set to be freed in the morning. Otah found himself curious to see who Ana Dasin was in these circumstances.

  ‘Ana,’ he said in her language. ‘I had not expected your company.’

  The girl stood. The soft light made her face rounder than it was, her eyes darker. She was wearing a dress of Galtic cut with pearls embroidered down the sleeves. Her hair, which had been pulled back into a severe formality, was escaping. Locks hung at the side of her face like silken banners draped from towers’ windows.

  ‘Emperor Machi. I have to thank you for seeing me so late,’ she said. Her voice was hard, but not accusatory. Otah caught the faint scent of distilled wine. The girl was fortified with drink, but not yet dulled by it.

  ‘I am an old man,’ Otah said as he poured pale tea into two porcelain bowls. ‘I need less sleep than I once did. Here, take one.’

  His little act of kindness seemed to make her stiffer and less pleased, but she acce
pted the bowl. Otah sat, blowing across the tea’s steaming surface.

  ‘I’ve come . . .’

  He waited.

  ‘I’ve come to apologize,’ she said. She spoke the words as if she were vomiting.

  Otah sipped his tea. It was perfectly brewed, the leaves infusing the water with a taste like summer sun and cut grass. It made the moment even more pleasant, and he wondered if he was being unkind by taking pleasure in Ana’s predicament.

  ‘May I ask what precisely you wish to apologize for,’ Otah said. ‘I would hate to have any further misunderstandings between us.’

  Ana sat, putting the bowl on the bench at her side. The porcelain clicked against the stone.