Seasons of War

by Daniel Abraham

  ‘I thought I heard something,’ she said. ‘Someone was yelling.’

  A long, high shriek rang in the air. It was a woman’s voice, but he couldn’t guess whose. Eiah leaped from her stool and vanished into the dark hallways before Maati recovered himself. He followed, his heart pounding, his breath short. The shrieking didn’t stop, and as he came nearer the kitchen, he heard other sounds - clattering, banging, high voices urging calm or making demands that he couldn’t decipher, the andat’s infantile wail. And then Eiah’s commanding voice, with the single word stop.

  He rounded the last corner, his fist pressed to his chest, his heart hammering. The cooking areas were raw chaos come to earth. An earthenware jar of wheat flour had been overturned and cracked. The thin stone block Irit used for chopping plants lay in shards on the floor. Ashti Beg stood in the middle of the room, a knife in her hand, her chin held high like a statue of abstract vengeance. In the corner, Vanjit held the still-mewling andat close to her breast. Large Kae, Small Kae, and Irit were all cowering against the walls, their eyes wide and mouths hanging open. Eiah’s expression was calm and commanding at the same time, like a mother calling back her children from a cliff edge.

  ‘It’s done, Ashti-cha,’ Eiah said, walking slowly toward the woman. ‘I’ll have the knife.’

  ‘Not until I find that bitch and put it in her heart,’ Ashti Beg spat, turning toward Eiah’s voice. Maati saw for the first time that the woman’s eyes were as gray as storm clouds.

  ‘I’ll have the knife,’ Eiah said again. ‘Or I will beat you down and take it. You know you’re more likely to hurt the others than Vanjit.’

  The andat whimpered and Ashti Beg whirled toward it. Eiah stepped forward smoothly, took Ashti Beg’s elbow and wrist in her hands, and twisted. Ashti Beg yelped, the blade clattering to the floor.

  ‘What . . .’ Maati gasped. ‘What is happening?’

  Four voices answered at once, words tripping over each other. Only Eiah and Vanjit remained silent, the two poets considering each other silently in the center of the storm. Maati raised his hands in a pose that commanded silence, and all of them stopped except Ashti Beg.

  ‘. . . power over us. It isn’t right, it isn’t fair, and I will not simper and smile and lick her ass because she happened to be the one to go first!’

  ‘Enough!’ Maati said. ‘Enough, all of you. Gods. Gods. Vanjit. Come with me.’

  The girl looked over as if noticing him for the first time. The rage in her expression faltered. Her hands were shaking. Eiah stepped forward, keeping herself between Ashti Beg and her prey as Vanjit walked across the room.

  ‘Eiah, see to Ashti-cha,’ Maati said, taking Vanjit’s wrist. ‘The rest of you, clean this mess. I’d rather not eat food prepared in a child’s playpen.’

  He turned away, pulling Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight after him. The andat was silent now. Maati crossed the hallway and started down a flight of stone stairs that led to the sleeping rooms for the younger cohorts. The voices of the others rose behind them and faded. He wasn’t certain where he was taking her until he reached the branching hall that led to the slate-paved rooms where the teachers had once disciplined boys with the cutting slash of a lacquered rod. He stopped in the hallway instead, putting the reflexive impulse to violence aside. Vanjit bowed her head.

  ‘I would like an explanation of that,’ he said, his voice shaking with anger.

  ‘It was Ashti Beg,’ Vanjit said. ‘She can’t contain her jealousy any longer, Maati-kvo. I have tried to give her the time and consideration, but she won’t understand. I am a poet now. I have an andat to care for. I can’t be expected to work and toil like a servant.’

  The andat twisted in her grasp, looking up at Maati with tears in its black eyes. The tiny, toothless mouth gaped in what would have been distress if it had been a baby.

  ‘Tell me,’ Maati said. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Ashti Beg said that I had to clean the pots from breakfast. Irit offered to, but Ashti wouldn’t even let her finish her sentences. I explained that I couldn’t. I was very calm. I am patient with her, Maati-kvo. I’m always very patient.’

  ‘What happened?’ Maati insisted.

  ‘She tried to take him,’ Vanjit said. Her voice had changed. The pleading tone was gone. Her words could have been shaved from ice. ‘She said that she could look after him as well as anyone, and that I was more than welcome to have him back once the kitchen had been cleaned.’

  Maati closed his eyes.

  ‘She put her hands on him,’ Vanjit said. In her voice, it sounded like a violation. Perhaps it was.

  ‘And what did you do,’ Maati asked, though he knew the answer.

  ‘What you told me,’ Vanjit said. ‘What you said about Wounded.’

  ‘Which was?’ he said. Clarity-of-Sight gurgled and swung its thick arms at Vanjit’s ears, its dumb show of fear and distress forgotten.

  ‘You said that Eiah-cha couldn’t make an andat based on things being as they’re meant to, because the andat aren’t meant to be bound. It’s not their nature. You said she had to bind Wounded and then withdraw it from all the women who still can’t bear babes. And so we withdrew from Ashti Beg.’

  The andat cooed. It might have been Maati’s imagination, but the thing seemed proud. Clarity-of-Sight. And so also Blindness.

  The warmth that bloomed in his breast, the tightening of his jaw, the near-unconscious shaking of his head. They were not anger so much as a bone-deep impatience.

  ‘It is manipulating you,’ he said. ‘We’ve talked about this from the beginning. The andat wants its freedom. Whatever else it is, it will always struggle to be free. It has been courting Ashti Beg and the others for days to precipitate exactly this. You have to know yourself better than it does. You have to behave like a grown woman, not a self-righteous child.’

  ‘But she—’

  Maati put two fingers against the girl’s lips. The andat was silent now, staring at him with silent anger.

  ‘You have been entrusted with a power beyond any living person,’ Maati said, his tone harsher than he’d intended. ‘You are responsible for that power. You understand me? Responsible. I have tried to make you see that, but now I think I’ve failed. Poets aren’t simply men . . . or women . . . who have a particular profession. We aren’t like sailors or cabinetmakers or armsmen. Holding the andat is like holding small gods, and there is a price you pay for that. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes, Maati-kvo,’ Vanjit whispered.

  ‘I doubt that,’ he said. ‘After what I’ve seen today, I very much doubt it.’

  She was weeping silently. Maati opened his mouth, some cutting comment ready to humiliate her further, and stopped. For a moment, he was a boy again, in this same hallway. He could feel the thin robes and the winter cold, and the tears on his own cheeks as the older boys mocked him or Tahi-kvo - bald, cruel Tahi-kvo, who had later become the Dai-kvo - beat him. He wondered if this fear and rage had been what drove his teachers back then, or if it had been something colder.

  ‘Fix it,’ Maati said. ‘Put Ashti Beg back as she was, and never, never use the andat for petty infighting again.’

  ‘No, Maati-kvo.’

  ‘And wash the pots when your turn comes.’

  Vanjit took a pose that was a promise and an expression of gratitude. The quiet sobs as she walked away made Maati feel smaller. If they had been in a city, he would have gone to a bathhouse or some public square, listened to beggars singing on the corners and bought food from the carts. He would have tried to lose himself for a while, perhaps in wine, perhaps in music, rarely in gambling, and never in sex. At the school, there was no escape. He walked out, leaving the stone walls and memories behind him. Then the gardens. The low hills that haunted the land west of the buildings.

  He sat on the wind-paved hillside, marking the passage of the sun across the afternoon sky, his mind tugged a hundred different ways. He had been too harsh with Vanjit, or not harsh enough. Th
e binding of Wounded was overworked or not deeply enough considered, doomed or on the edge of being perfected. Ashti Beg had been in the wrong or justified or both. He closed his eyes and let the sunlight beat down on them, turning the world to red.

  In time, the turmoil in his heart calmed. A small, blue-tailed lizard scrambled past him. He had chased lizards like it when he’d been a boy. He hadn’t recalled that in years.

  It was folly to think of poets as different from other men. Other women, now that Vanjit had proved their grammar effective. It was that mistake which had made the school what it was, which had deformed the lives of so many people, his own included. Of course Vanjit was still subject to petty jealousy and pride. Of course she would need to learn wisdom, just the same as anyone else. The andat had never changed who someone was, only what they could do.

  He should have taught them that along with all the rest. Every now and again, he could have spent an evening talking about what power was, and what responsibility it carried. He’d never thought to do it, he now realized, because when he imagined a woman wielding the power of the andat, that woman was always Eiah.

  Maati made his way back as the cold afternoon breeze set the trees and bushes rustling. He found the kitchen empty but immaculate. The broken cutting stone had been replaced with a length of polished wood, but otherwise everything was as it had been. His students, he found under Eiah’s command in the courtyard. They were raking the fallen leaves into a pit for burning and resetting a half-dozen flagstones that had broken from years of frost, tree roots, and neglect. Vanjit knelt with Large Kae, lifting the stones from the ground. Clarity-of-Sight nestled in Irit’s lap, its eyes closed and its mouth a perfect O. Ashti Beg, her vision clearly restored, was by Small Kae’s side, a deep pile of russet leaves before them.

  ‘Maati-kvo,’ Eiah said, taking a pose of greeting, which he returned. The others acknowledged him with a smile or simple pose. Vanjit turned away quickly, as if afraid to see anger still in his expression.

  He trundled to a rough boulder, resting against it to catch his breath. Irit joined him and, without a word, passed the andat to him. It stirred, groaned once, and then turned to nestle its face into his robes. The andat had no need of breath. Maati had known that since he had first met Seedless over half a century earlier. Clarity-of-Sight’s deep, regular sighs were manipulations, but Maati welcomed them. To hold something so much like a child but as still as the dead would have unnerved him.

  Irit especially talked in light tones, but no one seeing them would have guessed that one of the group had been swinging a knife at another earlier in the day. Apart from a mutually respected distance between Ashti Beg and Vanjit, there was no sign of unease.

  Large Kae and Small Kae left to prepare a simple meal just as Eiah put the torch to the pit of leaves. The flames rose, dancing. Pale smoke filled the air with the scent of autumn, then floated into the sky while the rest of them watched: Vanjit and Eiah, Ashti Beg, Irit, Maati and Clarity-of-Sight, who was also Blindness. The andat seemed captivated by the flames. Maati stretched his palm out to the fire and felt the heat pushing gently back.

  They ate roasted chicken and drank watered wine. By the end of the meal, Vanjit was smiling again. When the last wine bowl was empty, the last thin, blood-darkened bone set bare on its plate, she was the first to rise and gather the washing. Maati felt a relief that surprised him. The trouble had passed; whether it had been Vanjit’s pride or Ashti Beg’s jealousy, it didn’t matter.

  To show his approval, Maati joined in the cleaning himself, sweeping the kitchen and building up the fire. In place of the usual lecture, they discussed the difficulties of looking too long at a binding. It came out that all of them had felt some disquiet at the state of Eiah’s work. Even that was reassuring.

  He and Eiah sat together after the session ended. A small kettle smelled equally of hot iron and fresh tea. The wind was picking up outside, cold and fragrant with the threat of rain or snow. By the warm light of the fire grate, Eiah looked tired.

  ‘I’ll leave in the morning,’ Eiah said. ‘I want to beat the worst of the weather, if I can.’

  ‘That seems wise,’ Maati said and sipped his tea. It was still scalding hot, but its taste was comforting.

  ‘Ashti Beg wants to come with me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to do about that.’

  He put down his bowl.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

  ‘That she might leave. After today, I’m afraid she’s been soured on the work.’

  Maati snorted and waved the concern away.

  ‘She’ll move past it,’ Maati said. ‘It’s finished. Vanjit overstepped, and she’s seen it. I don’t think Ashti’s so petty as to hold things past that.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Eiah said. ‘You think I should take her with me, then?’

  ‘Certainly. There’s no reason not to, and it will give you another pair of hands on the road. And besides, we’re a school, not a prison. If she truly wants to leave, she should be able to.’

  ‘Even now?’ Eiah asked.

  ‘What option do we have?’ Maati asked. ‘Chain her to a tree? Kill her? No, Eiah-kya. Ashti Beg won’t abandon the work, but if she does, we have no choice but to let her.’

  Eiah was silent for five slow breaths together. When she looked up, he was surprised by her grim expression.

  ‘I still can’t quite bring myself to believe Vanjit did that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Eiah frowned, her hands clasped together. Some distant shutter’s ties had slipped; wood clapping against stone. A soft wind pushed at the windows and unsettled the fire in the grate.

  ‘She’s a poet,’ Eiah said. ‘She’s the poet.’

  ‘Poets are human,’ Maati said. ‘We err. We can be petty on occasion. Vindictive. Small. Her world has been turned on its head, and she hasn’t come yet to understand all that means. Well, of course she hasn’t. I’d have been more surprised if she’d never made a misstep.’

  ‘You don’t think we have a problem then?’ Eiah said.

  ‘She’s a reasonable girl. Given power, she’s misbehaved once. Once.’ Maati shook his head. ‘Once is as good as never.’

  ‘And if it becomes twice?’ Eiah asked. ‘If it becomes every time?’

  ‘It won’t,’ Maati said. ‘That isn’t who she is.’

  ‘But she’s changed. You said it just now. The binding gave her power, and power changes people.’

  ‘It changes their situation,’ Maati said. ‘It changes the calculations of what things they choose to do. What they forbear. It doesn’t change their souls.’

  ‘I’ve cut through a hundred bodies, Uncle. I’ve never weighed out a soul. I’ve never judged one. When I picked Vanjit, I hope I did the right thing.’

  ‘Don’t kill yourself with worry,’ Maati said. ‘Not yet, at any rate.’

  Eiah nodded slowly. ‘I’ve been thinking about who to send letters to. I’ve picked half-a-dozen names. I’ll hire a courier when we reach Pathai. I won’t be there long enough to bring back replies.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Maati said. ‘All we need is enough time to perfect Wounded.’

  Eiah took a pose that agreed and also ended the conversation. She walked away into the darkened hall, her shoulders bent, her head bowed. Maati felt a pang of guilt. Eiah was tired and sorrowful and more fearful than she let on. He was sending her to announce to the world that she had betrayed her father. He could have been gentler about her concerns over Vanjit and Clarity-of-Sight. He didn’t know why he’d been so harsh.

  He made his evening ablutions and prepared himself to write a few pages in his book, scratching words onto paper by the light of the fluttering night candle, thanks in no small part to Vanjit. He was less than surprised when a soft scratching came at his door.

  Vanjit looked small and young. The andat held in the crook of her arm looked around the dim room, gurgling to itself almost like a baby. Maati gestured for her to sit.

  ‘I heard Eiah-cha
speaking to Ashti Beg,’ Vanjit said. ‘They’re leaving?’

  ‘Eiah is taking the cart to Pathai for supplies and to send off some letters for me. Ashti Beg is going to help. That’s all,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not because of me?’

  ‘No, Vanjit-kya,’ Maati said warmly. ‘No. It was planned before anything happened between you and Ashti-cha. It’s only . . . we need time. Eiah needs time away from her binding to clear her mind. And we need to be sure that the Emperor and his son can’t make a half-Galtic heir before we’ve done what needs doing. So we’re asking help. Eiah is the daughter of the Empire. Her word carries weight. If she tells a few people well-placed in the utkhaiem what we’ve done and what we intend to do, they can use their influence to stop the Galts. And then . . .’