Seasons of War

by Abraham Daniel

  ‘He’s not wrong.’

  The great stones of the palaces creaked as they cooled, the summer sun fallen behind the mountains. The scent of incense long since burned and the smoke of snuffed lanterns filled the air like a voice gone silent. Shadows touched the corners of the apartments, deepening the reds of the tapestries and giving the light a feeling of physical presence. Kiyan’s hand felt warm and lost in his own.

  ‘I know he’s not,’ Otah said.

  He left orders with the servants at his door that unless there was immediate threat to him or his family - fire or sudden illness or an army crossing the river - he was to be left alone for the night. He would speak with no one, he would read no letter or contract, he wished no entertainments. Only a simple meal for him and his wife, and the silence for the two of them to fill as they saw fit.

  They told stories - reminiscences of Old Mani and the wayhouse in Udun, the sound of the birds by the river. The time a daughter of one of the high families had snuck into the rooms her lover had taken and had to be smuggled back out. Otah told stories from his time as a courier, traveling the cities on the business of House Siyanti under his false name. They were all stories she’d heard before, of course. She knew all his stories.

  They made love seriously and gently and with a profound attention. He savored every touch, every scent and motion. He fought to remember them and her, and he felt Kiyan’s will to store the moment away, like food packed away for the long empty months after the last leaf of autumn has fallen. It was, Otah supposed, the kind of sex lovers had on the nights before wars, pleasure and fear and a sorrow that anticipated the losses ahead. And afterward, he lay against her familiar, beloved body and pretended to sleep until, all unaware, the pretense became truth and he dreamed of looking for a white raven that everyone else but him had seen, and of a race through the tunnels beneath Machi that began and ended at his father’s ashes. He woke to the cool light of morning and Kiyan’s voice.

  ‘Sweet,’ she said again. Otah blinked and stretched, remembering his body. ‘Sweet, there’s someone come to see you. I think you should speak with him.’

  Otah sat up and adopted a pose that asked the question, but Kiyan, half smiling, nodded toward the bedchamber’s door. Before the servants could come and dress him, Otah pulled on rose-red outer robes over his bare skin and, still tying the stays, walked out to the main rooms. Ashua Radaani sat at the edge of a chair, his hands clasped between his knees. His face was as pale as fresh dough, and the jewels set in his rings and sewn in his robes seemed awkward and lost.

  ‘Ashua-cha,’ Otah said, and the man was already on his feet, already in a pose of formal greeting. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Most High, my brother in Cetani . . . I received a letter from him last night. The Khai Cetani is keeping it quiet, but no one has seen poet or andat in the court in some time.’

  ‘Not since the day Stone-Made-Soft escaped,’ Otah said.

  ‘As nearly as we can reckon it,’ he agreed.

  Otah nodded, but took no formal pose. Kiyan stood in the doorway, her expression half pleasure and half dread.

  ‘May I have the men I asked of you, Ashua-cha?’

  ‘You may have every man in my employ, Most High. And myself as well.’

  ‘I will take whoever is ready at dawn tomorrow,’ Otah said. ‘I won’t wait past that.’

  Ashua Radaani bowed his way out, and Otah stood watching him leave. That would help, he thought. He’d want the word spread that Radaani was firmly behind him. The other houses and families might then change their opinions of what help could be spared. If he could double the men he’d expected to have . . .

  Kiyan’s low chuckle startled him. She still stood in the doorway, her arms crossed under her breasts. Her smile was gentle and amazed. Otah raised in hands in query.

  ‘I have just watched the Khai Machi gravely accept the apology and sworn aid of his servant Radaani. A day ago you were an annoyance to that man. Today, you’re a hero from an Old Empire epic. I’ve never seen things change around a man so quickly as they change around you.’

  ‘It’s only because he’s frightened. He’ll recover,’ Otah said. ‘I’ll be an incompetent again when he’s safe and the world’s back where it was.’

  ‘It won’t be, love,’ Kiyan said. ‘The world’s changed, and it’s not changing back, whatever we do.’

  ‘I know it. But it’s easier if I don’t think too much about it just yet. When the Dai-kvo’s safe, when the Galts are defeated, I’ll think about it all then. Before that, it doesn’t help,’ Otah said as he turned back toward the bed they had shared for years now, and would for one more night at least. Her hand brushed his cheek as he stepped past, and he turned to kiss her fingers. There were no tears in her eyes now, nor in his.

  12

  ‘I gave him too much and not enough men to do it,’ Balasar said as they walked through the rows of men and horses and steam wagons. Eustin shrugged his disagreement.

  Around them, the camps were being broken down. Men loaded rolled canvas tents onto mules and steam wagons. The washerwomen loaded the pans and stones of their trade into packs that they carried on bent shoulders. The last of the captured slaves helped to load the last of the ships for the voyage back to Galt. The gulls whirled and called one to another; the waves rumbled and slapped the high walls of the seafront; the world smelled of sea salt and fire. And Balasar’s mind was on the other side of the map, uneased and restless.

  ‘Coal’s a good man,’ Eustin said. ‘If anyone can do the thing, it’s him.’

  ‘Six cities,’ he said. ‘I set him six cities. It’s too much. And he’s got far fewer men than we do.’

  ‘We’ll get finished here in time to help him with the last few,’ Eustin said. ‘Besides, one of them’s just a glorified village, and Chaburi-Tan was likely burning before we were out of Aren. So that’s only four and a half cities left.’

  There was something in that. Coal’s men had been on the island and in the city and in ships off the coast, waiting for the signal that would follow the andat’s vanishing. Even now, Coal and his men - between five thousand and six - were sailing fast to Yalakeht. A handful more waited there in the warehouses of Galtic traders, preparing for the trip upstream to the village of the Dai-kvo and the libraries at the heart of the Khaiem. The other cities would have their scrolls and codices, but only there, in the palaces carved from the living rock, were the great secrets of the fallen Empire kept. His war turned on that fire and on the deaths of the men who knew what those soon-burned books said.

  And he wouldn’t be there for it.

  ‘The southern legions are ready, sir,’ Eustin said. ‘Eight thousand for Shosheyn-Tan, Lachi, and Saraykeht. My legion’s two thousand strong. Should be enough for Pathai and that school out on the plains. That’ll leave you a full half of the forces for the river cities. Udun and Utani and Tan-Sadar.’

  Balasar struggled with the impulse to send more of the men with Eustin. It was the illusion he always suffered when tactics required that he split his forces. He would make do with less in order to keep his best men safe. Pathai was only half the size of Nantani, but Eustin was taking only a tenth of the men. It was unlikely that word had traveled fast enough for the Khai Pathai to hire some fleet-footed mercenary company out of the Westlands, but unlikely wasn’t impossible. Two thousand more men might make the difference if something went wrong.

  But he had the longest journey ahead of him - Nantani to Udun, and some of it over plains where there were no good roads and the steam wagons would have to be pulled. On rough ground, the boilers were too likely to explode. The journey would take time, and so Udun and Utani and Tan-Sadar would have the longest time to prepare. They would be the hardest to capture or destroy. It was why he had chosen them for himself. Except, of course, for what he had tasked to Coal. Five thousand men to take six cities. Five cities, now. Four and a half.

  ‘We’ll get there in time to help him if he needs us, sir,’ Eustin said, rea
ding his face. ‘And keep in mind, there’s not a fighting force anywhere in the Khaiem. Coal’s in more danger of tripping on his spear than of facing an enemy worth sneezing at.’

  Balasar laughed. Two armsmen busy folding a tent looked up, saw him and Eustin, and grinned.

  ‘It’s like me, isn’t it?’ Balasar said. ‘Here we have just made the greatest sack of a city in living history, captured enough gold to keep us both fed the best food and housed in the best brothels for the rest of our lives, and I can’t bring myself to enjoy a minute of it.’

  ‘You do tend to worry most when things are going well, sir.’

  They reached a place where the mud path split, one way to the west, the other to the north. Balasar put out his hand, and Eustin took it. For a moment, they weren’t general and captain. They were friends and conspirators in the plot to save the world. Balasar found his anxiety ebbing, felt the grin on his face and saw it mirrored in his man’s.

  ‘Meet me in Tan-Sadar before the leaves turn,’ Balasar said. ‘We’ll see then whether Coal has use for us or if it’s time to go home.’

  ‘I’ll be there, sir,’ Eustin said. ‘Rely on it. And as a favor to me? Keep an eye on Ajutani.’

  ‘Both, when I can spare them,’ Balasar promised. And then they parted. Balasar walked through the thin mud and low grass to the camp at the head of the first legion. His groom stood waiting, a fresh horse munching contentedly at the roadside weeds. A second horse stood beside it, a rider in the saddle looking out bemused at the men and the rolling hills and the horizon beyond.

  ‘Captain Ajutani,’ Balasar said, and the rider turned and saluted. ‘You’re ready for the march?’

  ‘At your command, General.’

  Balasar swung himself up onto the horse and accepted the reins from his groom.

  ‘Then let’s begin,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a war to finish.’

  It had taken a few lengths of copper to convince the keepers of the wide platforms to unhook their chains and haul her skyward, but Liat didn’t care. The dread in her belly made small considerations like money seem trivial. Money or food or sleep. She stood now at the open sky doors and looked out to the south and east, where the men of Machi made their way through the high green grasses of summer. From this distance, they looked like a single long black mark on the landscape. She could no more make out an individual wagon or rider than she could take to the air and fly. And still she strained her eyes, because one part of that distant mark was her only son.

  He had only told her when it was already done. She had been in her apartments - the apartments given her by the man who had once been her lover. She had been thinking of how a merchant or tradesman who took in an old lover so casually would have been the subject of gossip - even a member of the utkhaiem would have had answers to make - but the Khai was above that. She had gone as far as wondering, not for the first time, what Kiyan-cha thought and felt on the matter, when Nayiit had scratched at her door and let himself in.

  She knew when she saw his face that something had happened. There was a light in his eyes brighter than candles, but his smile was the too-charming one he always employed when he’d done something he feared she’d fault him for. Her first thought was that he’d offered to marry some local girl. She took a pose that asked the question even before he could speak.

  ‘Sit with me,’ he said and took her by the hand.

  They sat on a low stone bench near the window. The shutters were opened, and the evening breeze had smelled of forge smoke. He kept her hand in his as he spoke.

  ‘I’ve been to see the Khai,’ Nayiit said. ‘You know he believes what Maati-cha . . . what Father said. About the Galts.’

  ‘Yes,’ Liat said. She still hadn’t understood what she was seeing. His next words came like a blow.

  ‘He’s taking men, all the men he can find. They’re going overland to the Dai-kvo. I’ve asked to go with them, and he’s accepted me. He’s finding me a sword and something like armor. He says we’ll leave before the week’s out,’ he said, then paused. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She knew that her grip on his hand had gone hard because he winced, but not because she felt it. This hadn’t been their plan. This had never been their plan.

  ‘Why?’ she managed, but she already knew.

  He was young and he was trapped in a life he more than half regretted. He was finding what it meant to him to be a man. Riding out to war was an adventure, and a statement - oh, by all the gods - it was a statement that he had faith in Maati’s guess. It was a way to show that he believed in his father. Nayiit only kissed her hand.

  ‘I know the Dai-kvo’s village,’ he said. ‘I can ride. I’m at least good enough with a bow to catch rabbits along the way. And someone has to go, Mother. There’s no reason that I shouldn’t.’

  You have a wife, she didn’t say. You have a child. You have a city to defend, and it’s Saraykeht. You’ll be killed, and I cannot lose you. The Galts have terrorized every nation in the world that didn’t have the andat for protection, and Otah has a few armsmen barely competent to chase down thieves and brawl in the alleys outside comfort houses.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said.

  She sat now, looking out over the wide, empty air as the mark grew slowly smaller. As her son left her. Otah had managed more men than she’d imagined he would. At the last moment, the utkhaiem had rallied to him. Three thousand men, the first army fielded in the cities of the Khaiem in generations. Untried, untested. Armed with whatever had come to hand, armored with leather smith’s aprons. And her little boy was among them.

  She wiped her eyes with the cloth of her sleeve.

  ‘Hurry,’ she said, pressing the word out to the distant men. Get the Dai-kvo, retrieve the poets and their books, and come back to me. Before they find you, come back to me.

  The sun had traveled the width of two hands together before she stepped out onto the platform and signaled the men far below her to bring her down. The chains clattered and the platform lurched, but Liat only held the rail and waited for it to steady in its descent. She knew she would not fall. That would have been too easy.

  She had done a poor job of telling Maati. Perhaps she’d assumed Nayiit would already have told him. Perhaps she’d been trying to punish Maati for beginning it all. It had been the next night, and she had accepted Maati’s invitation to dinner in the high pavilion. Goose in honey lacquer, almonds with cinnamon and raisin sauce, rice wine. Not far away, a dance had begun - silk streamers and the glow of torches, the trilling of pipes and the laughter of girls drunk with flirtation. She remembered it all from the days after Saraykeht had fallen. There was only so long that the shock of losing the andat could restrain the festivals of youth.

  The young are blind and stupid, she’d said, and their breasts don’t sag. It’s the nearest thing they’ve got to a blessing.

  Maati had chuckled and tried to take her hand, but she couldn’t stand the touch. She’d seen the surprise in his expression, and the hurt. That was when she’d told him. She’d said it lightly, acidly, fueled by her anger and her despair. She had been too wrapped up in herself to pay attention to Maati’s shock and horror. It was only later, when he’d excused himself and she was walking alone in the dim paths at the edge of the dance, that she understood she’d as much as accused him of sending Nayiit to his death.

  She had gone by Maati’s apartments that night and again the next day, but he had gone and no one seemed to know where. By the time she found him, he had spoken with Otah and Nayiit. He accepted her apology, he cradled her while they both confessed their fears, but the damage had been done. He was as haunted as she was, and there was nothing to be done about it.

  Liat realized she’d almost reached the ground, startled to have come so far so quickly. Her mind, she supposed, had been elsewhere.

  Machi in the height of summer might almost have been a southern city. The sun made its slow, stately way across the sky. The nights had grown so short, she could fall asleep with a glow still br
ight over the mountains to the west and wake in daylight, unrested. The streets were full of vendors at their carts selling fresh honey bread almost too hot to eat or sausages with blackened skins or bits of lamb over rice with a red sauce spicy enough to burn her tongue. Merchants passed over the black-cobbled streets, wagon wheels clattering. Beggars sang before their lacquered boxes. Firekeepers tended their kilns and saw to the small business of the tradesmen - accepting taxes, witnessing contracts, and a hundred other small duties. Liat pulled her hands into her sleeves and walked without knowing her destination.

  It might only have been her imagination that there were fewer men in the streets. Surely there were still laborers and warehouse guards and smiths at their forges. The force marching to the west could account for no more than one man in fifteen. The sense that Machi had become a city of women and old men and boys could only be her mind playing tricks. And still, there was something hollow about the city. A sense of loss and of uncertainty. The city itself seemed to know that the world had changed, and held its breath in dread anticipation, waiting to see whether this transformed reality had a place for Machi in it.