Seasons of War

by Abraham Daniel

  And so she prepared herself, prepared her arguments and her negotiating strategies, and told herself it would end well. They were all together, allies against the Galts. There would be no need. She told herself there would be no need.

  At her apartments, no candles were lit, but a fire burned in the grate: old pine, rich with sap that popped and hissed and filled the air with its scent. When she entered, her son looked up from the flames and took a pose of welcome, gesturing to a divan beside him. Liat hesitated, surprised by a sudden embarrassment, then gathered her sense of humor and sat beside him. He smelled of wine and smoke, and his robes hung as loose on him as her own did on her.

  ‘You’ve been to the teahouses,’ Liat said, trying to keep any note of disapproval from her voice.

  ‘You’ve been with my father,’ he replied.

  ‘I’ve been with Maati,’ Liat said as if it were an agreement and not a correction.

  Nayiit leaned forward and took up a length of iron, prodding the burning logs. Sparks rose and vanished like fireflies.

  ‘I haven’t been able to see him,’ Nayiit said. ‘We’ve been here weeks now, and he hasn’t come to speak with me. And every time I go to the library he’s gone or he’s with you. I think you’re trying to keep us from each other.’

  Liat raised her eyebrows and ran her tongue across the inside of her teeth, weighing the coppery taste that sprang to her mouth, thinking what it meant. She coughed.

  ‘You aren’t wrong,’ she said at last. ‘I’m not ready for it. Maati’s not who he was back then.’

  ‘So instead of letting us face each other and see what it is we see, you’ve decided to start up an affair with him and take all his time and attention?’ There was no rancor in his voice, only sadness and amusement. ‘It doesn’t seem the path of wisdom, Mother.’

  ‘Well, not when you say it that way,’ Liat said. ‘I was thinking of it as coming to know him again before the conflict began. I did love him, you know.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘And still. I still love him, in my fashion,’ Liat said, her voice rueful. ‘I know I’m not what he wants. I’m not the person he wants me to be, and I doubt I ever have been, truly. But we enjoy each other. There are things we can say to each other that no one else would understand. They weren’t there, and we were. And he’s such a little boy. He’s carried so much and been so disappointed, and there’s still the possibility in him of this . . . joy. I can’t explain it.’

  ‘If I ask you as a favor, will you let me know him as well? We may not actually fight like pit dogs if you let us in the same room together. And if there’s conflict at all, it’s between us. Not you.’

  Liat opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head. She sighed.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course, I’m sorry. I’ve been an old hen, and I’m sorry for it, but . . . I know it’s not a trade. We aren’t negotiating, not really. But Nayiit-kya, you can’t say you haven’t been with a woman since we’ve come here. You didn’t choose to go south, even when I asked you to. Sweet, is it so bad at home?’

  ‘Bad?’ he said, speaking slowly. As if tasting the word. ‘I don’t know. No. Not bad. Only not good. And yes, I know I haven’t been keeping to my own bed. Do you think my darling wife has been keeping to hers?’

  Liat’s mind turned, searching for words, making sense as best she could of what he had asked and what he had meant by it. It was true enough that Tai had come into the world at an odd time, but he was a first child, and wombs weren’t made to be certain. She rushed through her memory, looking for signs she might have missed, suggestions back in their lives in Saraykeht that would have pointed at some venomous question, and slowly she began, if not to understand, then at least to guess.

  ‘You think he isn’t yours,’ she said. ‘You think Tai is another man’s child.’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ Nayiit said. ‘It’s only that you can make a child from love or from anger. Or inattention. Or only from not knowing what better to do. A baby isn’t proof of anything between the father and mother beyond a few moments’ pressure.’

  ‘It isn’t the child’s fault.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Nayiit said.

  ‘This is why you came, then? To Nantani, and then up here? To be away from them?’

  ‘I came because I wanted to. Because it was the world, and when was I going to see it again? Because you wanted someone to carry your bags and wave off dogs. It was only partly that I couldn’t stay. And then when you were going to see him, Maati-cha . . . How could I not come along for that too? The chance to see my father again. I remember him, you know? I do, from when I was small, I remember a day we were all in a small hut. There was an iron stove, and it was raining, and you were singing while he bathed me. I don’t know when that was, I can’t put a time on it. But I remember his face.’

  ‘You would have known him, if you’d seen him in passing. You’d have known who he was.’

  Nayiit took a pose of affirmation. He pursed his lips and chuckled ruefully.

  ‘I don’t know what it is to be a father. I’m only working from—’

  ‘Nayiit-kya?’ came a voice from the shadows behind them. A soft, feminine voice. ‘Is everything well?’

  She stepped toward the light. A young woman, twenty summers, perhaps as many as twenty-two. She wore bedding tied around her waist, her breasts bare, her hair still wild from the pillows.

  ‘Jaaya-cha, this is my mother. Mother, Jaaya Biavu.’

  The girl blanched, then flushed. She took a pose of welcome, not bothering to cover herself, but her gaze was on Nayiit. It spoke of both humiliation and contempt. Nayiit didn’t look at her. The woman turned and stalked away.

  ‘That wasn’t kind,’ Liat said.

  ‘Very little of what she and I do involves kindness,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect I’ll see her again. By which I mean, I don’t suppose she’ll see me.’

  ‘Is she politically connected? If her family is utkhaiem . . .’

  ‘I don’t think she is,’ Nayiit said, his face in his hands. It was hard to be sure in the firelight, but she thought the tips of his ears were blushing. ‘I suppose I should have asked.’

  He struggled for a moment, trying to speak and failing. His brow furrowed and Liat had to resist the urge to reach over and smooth it with her thumb, the way she had when he’d been a babe.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You know that I’m sorry.’

  ‘For what?’ she asked, her voice low and stern. As if there were any number of things for which he might be.

  ‘For not being a better man,’ he said.

  The fire popped, as if in comment. Liat took her son’s hand, and for a long moment, they were silent. Then:

  ‘I don’t care what you do with your marriage, Nayiit-kya. If you don’t love her, end it. Or if you don’t trust her. As you see fit. People come together and they part. It’s what we do. But the boy. You can’t leave the boy. That isn’t fair.’

  ‘It’s what Maati-cha did to us.’

  ‘No,’ Liat said, giving his hand the smallest pressure, and then releasing it. ‘We left him.’

  Nayiit turned to her slowly, his hands folding into a pose that asked confirmation. It was as if the words were too dangerous to speak.

  ‘I left him,’ Liat said. ‘I took you when you were still a babe, and I was the one to leave him.’

  She saw a moment’s shock in his expression, gone as fast as it had come. His face went grave, his hands as still as stones. As still as a man bending his will to keep them still.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. His voice was low and thready.

  ‘Oh, love. It was so long ago. I was someone else, then,’ she said, and knew as she said it that it wasn’t enough. ‘I did because he was only half there. And because I couldn’t see to all of his needs and all of yours and have no one there to look after me.’

  ‘It was better without him?’

  ‘I thought it would be. I thought I was cutting my losses. And then,
later, when I wasn’t so certain anymore, I convinced myself it had been the right thing, just so I could tell myself I hadn’t been wrong.’

  He was shaken, though he tried to cover it. She knew him too well to be fooled.

  ‘He wasn’t there, Nayiit. But he never left you.’

  And part of me never left him, she thought. What would the world have been if I had chosen otherwise? Where would we all be now if that part of him and of me had been enough? Still in that little hut in the low town near the Dai-kvo? Would they all have lived together in the library these past years as Maati had?

  Those other, ghostlike people made a pretty dream, but then there would have been no one to hear of the Galts and the missing poet, no one to travel to Nantani. And little Tai would not have been born, and she would never have seen Amat Kyaan again. Someone else would have been with the old woman when she died - someone else or no one. And Liat would never have taken House Kyaan, would never have proven herself competent to the world and to her own satisfaction.

  It was too much. The changes, the differences were too great to think of as good or as bad. The world they had now was too much itself, good and evil too tightly woven to wish for some other path. And still it would be wrong to say she found herself without regrets.

  ‘Maati loves you,’ she said, softly. ‘You should see him. I won’t interfere again. But first, you should go tend to your guest. Smooth things over.’

  Nayiit nodded, and then a moment later, he smiled. It was the same charming smile she’d known when she was a girl and it had been on different lips. Nayiit would charm the girl, say something sweet and funny, and the pain would be forgotten for a time. He was his father’s son. Son of the Khai Machi. Eldest son, and doomed to the fratricidal struggle of succession that stained every city in each generation. She wondered how far Otah would go to avoid that, to keep his boy safe from her schemes. That conversation had to come, and soon. Perhaps it would be best if she took it to the Khai herself, if she stopped waiting for him to find a right moment.

  Nayiit took a querying pose, and Liat shook herself. She waved his concern away.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I’ve come all this way back to have my own bed to myself, and I’m still not in it. I’m too old to sleep in a lover’s arms. They twitch and snore and keep me awake all night.’

  ‘They do, don’t they?’ Nayiit said. ‘Does it get better, do you think? With enough time, would you be so accustomed to it, you’d sleep through?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Liat said. ‘I’ve never made the attempt.’

  ‘Like mother, like son, I suppose,’ Nayiit said as he rose. He bent and kissed the crown of her head before he retreated back into the shadows.

  Like mother, like son.

  Liat pulled her robe tighter and sat near the fire, as if touched by a sudden chill.

  7

  The jeweler was a small man, squat but broad. To his credit, he seemed truly ill at ease. It took courage, Otah thought as he listened, to bring a matter such as this before a Khai. He wondered how many others had seen something of the sort and looked away. Any merchant has to expect some losses from theft. And after all, she was the daughter of the Khai . . .

  When it was over - and it seemed to take half a day, though it couldn’t have lasted more than half a hand - Otah thanked the man, ordered that payment be made to him, and waited calm and emotionless until the servants and court followers had gone. Only the body servants remained, half a dozen men and women of the utkhaiem who dedicated their lives to bringing him a cracker if he felt like one, or a cup of limed water.

  ‘Find Eiah and take her to the blue chamber. Bring her under guard if you have to.’

  ‘Under guard?’ the eldest of the servants said.

  ‘No, don’t. Just bring her. See that she gets there.’

  ‘Most High,’ the man said, taking a pose that accepted the command. Otah rose and walked out of the room without replying. He stalked the halls of the palace, ignoring the Master of Tides and his ineffectual flapping papers, ignoring the poses of obeisance and respect turned to him wherever he went, looking only for Kiyan. The rest of these people were unimportant.

  He found her in the great kitchens, standing beside the chief cook with a dead chicken in her hands. The cook, a woman of not less than sixty summers who had served Otah’s father and grandfather, met his eyes and went pale. He wondered belatedly how many times the previous Khaiem of Machi had visited their kitchens, great or low.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Kiyan asked instead of a greeting.

  ‘Not here,’ Otah said. His wife nodded, passed the bird’s carcass back to the cook, and followed Otah to their rooms. As calmly as he could, Otah related the audience. Eiah and two of her friends - Talit Radaani and Shoyen Pak - had visited a jeweler’s shop in the goldsmiths’ quarter. Eiah had stolen a brooch of emerald and pearl. The jeweler and his boy had seen it, had come to the court asking for payment.

  ‘He was quite polite about the whole thing,’ Otah said. ‘He cast it as a mistake. Eiah-cha, in her girlish flights of attention, forgot to arrange for payment. He was sorry to bother me with it, but he hadn’t been sure who I would prefer such issues be taken to and on and on and on. Gods!’

  ‘How much was it?’ Kiyan asked.

  ‘Three lengths of gold,’ Otah said. ‘Not that it matters. I’ve got the whole city to put on for taxes and half a thousand bits of jewelry in boxes that no one’s worn in lifetimes. It’s . . . She’s a thief! She’s going through the city, taking whatever catches her eye and . . .’

  Otah ran out of words and had to make do with a rough, frustrated grunt. He threw himself down on a couch, shaking his head.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ he said. ‘I’ve been too busy with the court. I haven’t been a decent father to her. All the time she’s spent with the daughters of the utkhaiem, playing idiot court games about who has the prettiest dress or the most servants—’

  ‘Or the highest marriage,’ Kiyan said.

  Otah put his hand over his eyes. That was more than he could think about just now. How to correct his daughter, how to show her what she’d done wasn’t right, how to try to be a father to her; yes, that he could sit with. That it was too late, that she was already old enough to be another man’s wife; that was too much to bear.

  ‘It’s a problem, love, yes,’ Kiyan said. ‘But sweet. She’s fourteen summers old. She stole a pretty thing to see if she could. It’s not actually unusual. I was a year older than her when my father caught me sneaking apples off the back of a farmer’s cart.’

  ‘And did he marry you off to the farmer in punishment?’

  ‘I’m sorry I brought up the marriage. I only meant that Eiah’s world’s no simpler than ours. It only seems that way from here. To her, it’s just as confused and difficult as anything you deal with. She’s only half a girl, and not quite half a woman.’

  Kiyan frowned. Her eyes were rueful and resigned, and she stretched her arms until the elbows cracked.

  ‘My father made me apologize to the farmer and work for the man until I’d earned back twice the cost of what I’d taken. I don’t know that’s much guidance for us, though. I don’t think any of these girls could do work worth three lengths of gold.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, love. As long as she’s clear that what she did didn’t end the way she’d hoped, we’ll have come as close as we can. I’d say restrict her from seeing Talit Radaani for a week’s time, but that hardly seems equal to the stakes.’

  ‘She could assist the physicians,’ Otah said. ‘Carry out the night pans, wash dressings for the hurt. A week of that to pay back the city for what it bought her.’

  Kiyan chuckled.

  ‘So long as she doesn’t start enjoying it. She plays at being repulsed by blood because it’s expected of her. I think at heart, there’s nothing she’d like more than to cut a body apart and see how it’s built. She’d have made a fine physician if she’d been born a
bit lower.’

  They talked a bit longer, and Otah felt his rage and uncertainty fade. Kiyan’s quiet, sane, thoughtful voice was the most soothing thing he knew. She was right. It wasn’t strange, it wasn’t a sign that Eiah would grow up to be her aunt Idaan, scheming and killing and lying for the pleasure of it. It was a girl of fourteen summers seeing how far she could go, and the answer was not so far as this. Otah kissed Kiyan before they left, his lips on her cheek. She smiled. There were crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes now. White strands had shot her hair since she’d been young, but there were more now. Her eyes still glittered as they had when he’d met her in Udun when she’d been the keep of a wayhouse and he had been a courier. She seemed to sense his thoughts, and put her hand to his cheek.