Seasons of War

by Abraham Daniel

  Danat was in his twentieth summer, his face a mixture of Otah’s long, northern features and Kiyan’s, thin and foxlike. The planes of his cheeks had sharpened since Otah had gone. He looked older, more handsome. He wore a robe of deep gray set off with a rich, red sash that suited him. And still, Otah could see all the boys that had made this man: the babe, the bumbling child new to his own feet, the long-ill boy kept in his bed, the awkward and sorrowful youth, and the young heir to the Empire. All of them stood before him, hands in a pose of formal welcome, a smile glittering in his eyes. Otah broke protocol, embracing his son. The boy’s arms were strong.

  ‘You’ve done well,’ Otah murmured.

  ‘None of the cities actually burned down while you were gone,’ Danat replied softly. There was pride in his voice, pleasure at the compliment.

  ‘But you sound too much like Sinja.’

  ‘You knew that was a risk.’

  Otah laughed and let the swarm of servants precede him to his chambers. There would be no end of ceremonies later. Welcomes would drag on for weeks, audiences, special pleadings, feasts, dances, negotiations, councils. It all lay before him like a life’s work started late. But now, sitting in the cool breeze of his private apartments with Sinja across from him and Danat pouring chilled water into stone bowls, the world was perfect.

  Except, of course, that it wasn’t.

  ‘Perhaps we can mend both breaks with the same nail,’ Sinja said. ‘A strong showing against the pirates protects Chaburi-Tan and warns Obar State to keep to its own house.’

  ‘And a weak showing against them?’ Otah asked.

  ‘Shows we’re weak, after which things go poorly,’ Sinja said. ‘But if we’re going to assume failure from the start, there’s not going to be anything of use that I can offer.’

  Otah propped up his feet. The palaces still felt as if they were swaying: the ghost motion of weeks aboard ship. The feeling was oddly pleasant.

  ‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘if we plan to decimate the enemy with a flower and a pillow, it’s not going to help us. How strong is our fleet? Do we have enough men to take the pirates in a fair fight?’

  ‘If we don’t have them now, we certainly won’t next year when all the sailors are a year older,’ Sinja said. ‘Even if you magically transport every fertile girl in Galt straight to some poor bastard’s bed, it will be ten years before they can deliver us anyone strong enough to coil rope, much less fight. If we’re going to do anything, it has to be now. We’re going to grow weaker before we’re strong.’

  ‘If we manage to get strong,’ Otah said. ‘And I don’t know that we can spare the ships. We have eleven cities and the gods alone know how many low towns. We’re talking about moving half a million of our men to Galt and bringing back as many of their women.’

  ‘Well, yes, shipping out anyone we have of fighting age now won’t help the matter,’ Sinja said.

  ‘Galt could do it,’ Danat said. ‘They have experience with sea wars. They have fighting ships and the veterans.’

  Otah saw the considering expression on Sinja’s face. He let the silence stretch.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Sinja said at last. ‘I don’t know why I don’t like it, but I don’t.’

  ‘We’re still thinking of our problems as our own,’ Danat said. ‘Asking Galt to fight our battles might seem odd, but they’d be protecting their own land too. In a generation, Chaburi-Tan is going to be as much their city as ours.’

  Otah felt an odd pressure in his chest. It was true, of course. It was what he had spent years working to accomplish. And still, when Danat put it in bare terms like that, it was hard for him to hear it.

  ‘It’s more than that,’ Sinja said.

  ‘Is it Balasar?’ Otah asked.

  Sinja leaned forward, his fingers laced on his knee, his mouth set in a scowl. At length, he spoke.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘He’s forgiven me,’ Otah said. ‘Perhaps the two of you—’

  ‘All respect, Otah-cha,’ Sinja said. ‘You were his enemy. That’s a fair position. I broke my oath, lied to him, and killed his best captain. He’s a man who loves loyalty, and I was one of his men. It’s not the same.’

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t,’ Otah agreed.

  ‘Balasar-cha doesn’t have to be the one to lead it,’ Danat said. ‘Or, all respect, Sinja-cha, for that.’

  ‘No, of course we don’t,’ Sinja said. ‘It’s not my head that’s struggling with the thought. It’s just . . . The boy’s right, Otah-cha. A mixed fleet, their ships and ours, sinking the pirates would be the best solution. I don’t know if we can negotiate the thing, but it’s worth considering.’

  Otah scratched his leg.

  ‘Farrer-cha,’ he said. ‘Danat’s new father. He has experience with sea fighting. I think he hates all of us together and individually for Ana-cha’s upcoming marriage, but he would still be the man to approach.’

  Danat took a long drink of water and grinned. It made him look younger.

  ‘After the ceremony’s done with,’ Sinja said. ‘We’ll get the man drunk and happy and see if we can’t make him sign something binding before he sobers up.’

  ‘If it were only so simple,’ Otah said. ‘With the High Council and the Low Council and the Conclave, every step they take is like putting cats in a straight line. Watching it in action, it’s amazing they ever put together a war.’

  ‘You should talk to Balasar,’ Sinja said.

  ‘I will,’ Otah replied.

  They moved on to other topics. Some were more difficult: weavers and stonemasons on the coasts had started offering money to apprentices, so the nearby farms were losing hands; the taxes from Amnat-Tan had been lower than expected; the raids in the northern passes were getting worse. Others were innocuous: court fashions had shifted toward robes with a more Galtic drape; the shipping traffic on the rivers was faster now that they’d figured out how to harness boilers to do the rowing; and finally, Eiah had sent word that she was busy assisting a physician in Pathai and would not attend her brother’s wedding.

  Otah paused over this letter, rereading his daughter’s neat, clear hand. The words were all simple, the grammar formal and appropriate. She made no accusations, leveled no arguments against him. It might have been better if she had. Anger was, at least, not distance.

  He considered the implications of her absence. On one hand, it could hardly go unnoticed that the imperial family was not all in attendance. On the other, Eiah had broken with him years ago, when his present plan had still been only a rough sketch. If she was there, it might have served only to remind the women of the cities that they had in a sense been discarded. The next generation would have no Khaiate mothers, and the solace that neither would they have Galtic fathers would be cold comfort at best. He folded his daughter’s letter and tucked it into his sleeve, his heart heavy with the thought that not having her near was likely for the best.

  After, Otah retired to his rooms, sent his servants away, and lay on his bed, watching the pale netting shift in a barely felt breeze. It was strange being home, hearing his own language in the streets, smelling the air he’d breathed as a youth.

  Ana and her parents would be settled in by now, sitting, perhaps, on the porch that looked out over the koi pond and its bridge. Perhaps putting back the hinged walls to let in the air. Otah had spent some little time at the poet’s house of Saraykeht once, back when he’d been Danat’s age and the drinking companion and friend of Maati Vaupathai. Back in some other life. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the rooms as they’d been when Seedless and the poet Heshai had still been in the world. The confusion of scrolls and books, the ashes piled up in the grate, the smell of incense and old wine. He didn’t realize that he was falling asleep until Seedless smirked and turned away, and Otah knew he was in dreams.

  A human voice woke him. The angle of the sun had shifted, the day almost passed. Otah sat up, struggling to focus his eyes. The servant spoke again.
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br />   ‘Most High, the welcoming ceremonies are due in a hand and a half. Shall I tell the Master of Tides to postpone them?’

  ‘No,’ Otah said. His voice sounded groggy. He wondered how long the servant had been trying to rouse him. ‘No, not at all. Send me clean robes. Or . . . no, send them to the baths. I’ll be there.’

  The servant fell into a pose that accepted the command as law. It seemed a little overstated to Otah, but he’d grown accustomed to other people taking his role more seriously than he did himself. He refreshed himself, met with the representatives of two high families and a trading house with connections in Obar State and Bakta, and allowed himself to be swept along to the grand celebration. They would welcome their onetime invaders with music and gifts and intrigue and, he suspected, the equivalent weight of the palaces in wine and food.

  The grandest hall of his palaces stood open on a wide garden of night-blooming plants. A network of whisperers stood on platforms, ready to repeat the ceremonial greetings and ritual out to the farthest ear. Otah didn’t doubt that runners were waiting at the edge of the gardens to carry reports of the event even farther. The press of bodies was intense, the sound of voices so riotous that the musicians and singers set to wander the garden in serenade had all been sent home.

  Otah sat on the black lacquer chair of the Khai Saraykeht, his spine straight and his hands folded as gracefully as he could manage. Cushions for Danat and Sinja and all of Otah’s highest officers were arrayed behind him, perhaps two-thirds filled. The others were, doubtless, in the throng of silk and gems. There was nowhere else to be tonight. Not in Saraykeht. Perhaps not in the world.

  Danat brought him a bowl of cold wine, but it was too loud to have any conversation beyond the trading of thanks and welcome. Danat took his place on the cushion at Otah’s side. Farrer Dasin, Otah saw, had been given not a chair but a rosewood bench. Issandra and Ana were on cushions at his feet. All three looked overwhelmed about the eyes. Otah caught Issandra’s gaze and adopted a pose of welcome, which she returned admirably.

  He turned his attention to her husband. Farrer Dasin, stern and gray. Otah found himself wondering how best to approach the man about this new proposal. Though he knew better, he could not help thinking of Galt and his own cities as separate, as two empires in alliance. Farrer Dasin - indeed, most of the High Council - were sure to be thinking in the same ways. They were all wrong, of course, Otah included. They were marrying two families together, but more than that they were binding two cultures, two governments, two histories. His own grandchildren would live and die in a world unrecognizably different from the one Otah had known; he would be as foreign to them as Galt had been to him.

  And here, on this clear, crowded night, the cycle of ages was turning. He found himself irrationally certain that Farrer Dasin could be persuaded to lead, or at least to sponsor, a campaign against the pirates at Chaburi-Tan. They had done this. They could do anything.

  The signal came: flutes and drums in fanfare as the cloth lanterns rose to the dais. Otah stood up and the crowd before him went silent. Only the sound of a thousand breaths competed with the songbirds and crickets.

  Otah gave his address in the tones appropriate to his place, practiced over the course of years. He found himself changing the words he had practiced. Instead of speaking only of the future, he also wanted to honor the past. He wanted every person there to know that in addition to the world they were making, there was a world - in some ways good, in others evil - that they were leaving behind.

  They listened to him as if he were a singer, their eyes fastened to him, the silence complete apart from his own words in the hundred throats of the whisperers echoing out into the summer night. When he took the pose that would end his recitation, he saw tears on more than one face, and on the faces of more than one nation. He made his way to Farrer Dasin and formally invited the man to speak. The Galt stood, bowed to Otah as a gesture between equals, and moved forward. Otah returned to his seat with only the lightest twinge of trepidation.

  ‘Are you sure you should let him speak?’ Sinja murmured.

  ‘There’s no avoiding it,’ Otah replied, still smiling. ‘It will be fine.’

  The councilman cleared his throat, stood in the odd, awkward style of Galtic orators - one foot before the other, one hand in the air, the other clasping his jacket - and spoke. All of Otah’s worst fears were put at once to rest. It was as if Issandra had written the words and spoke them now through her husband’s mouth. The joy that was children, the dark years that the war had brought, the emptiness of a world without the laughter of babes. And now, the darkness ended.

  Otah felt himself begin to weep slightly. He wished deeply that Kiyan had lived to see this night. He hoped that whatever gods were more than stories and metaphors took word of it to her. The old Galt bowed his head to the crowd. The applause was like an earthquake or a flood. Otah rose and held his hand out to Danat as Farrer Dasin did the same with his daughter. The Emperor-to-be and his Empress meeting here for the first time. There would be songs sung of this night, Otah knew.

  Ana was beautiful. Someone had seen to it that the gown she wore flattered her. Her face was painted in perfect harmony with her hair and the gold of her necklace. Danat wore a black robe embroidered with gold and cut to please the Galtic eye. Farrer and Otah stepped back, leaving their children to the center of the dais. Danat tried a smile. The girl’s eyes fluttered; her cheeks were flushed under the paint, her breath fast.

  ‘Danat Machi?’ she said.

  ‘Ana Dasin,’ he replied.

  The girl took a deep breath. Her pretty, rodentlike face shone. When she spoke, her voice was strong and certain.

  ‘I will never consent to lie down with you, and if you rape me, I will see the world knows it. My lover is Hanchat Dor, and I will have no other.’

  Otah felt his face go white. In the corner of his eye, he saw Farrer Dasin rock back like a man struck by a stone and then raise a hand to his face. Danat’s mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. The whisperers paused, and then a heartbeat later, the words went out where they could never be called back. The voice of the crowd rose up like the waters of chaos come to drown them all.

  6

  Maati relived his conversation with Cehmai a thousand times in the weeks that followed. He rose in the morning from whatever rough camp or wayhouse bed he’d fallen into the night before, and he muttered his arguments to Cehmai. He rode his weary mule along overgrown tracks thick with heat and heavy with humidity, and he spoke aloud, gesturing. He ate his evening meals with the late sunset of summer, and in his mind, Cehmai sat across from him, dumbfounded and ashamed, persuaded at last by the force of Maati’s argument. And when Maati’s imagination returned him to the world as it was, his failure and shame poured in on him afresh.

  Every low town he passed through, the mud streets empty of the sound of children, was a rebuke. Every woman he met, an accusation. He had failed. He had gone to the one man in the world who might have lightened his burden, and he had been refused. The better part of the season was lost to him now. It was time he should have spent with the girls, preparing the grammar and writing his book. They were days he would never win back. If he had stayed, perhaps they would have had a breakthrough. Perhaps there would already be an andat in the world, and Otah’s plans ruined.

  And what if by going after Cehmai, Maati had somehow lost that chance? With every day, it seemed more likely. As the trees and deer of the river valleys gave way to the high, dry plains between Pathai and ruined Nantani, Maati became more and more sure that his error had been catastrophic. Irretrievable. And so it was also another mark against Otah Machi. Otah, the Emperor, to whom no rules applied.

  Maati found the high road, and then the turning that would lead, given half a day’s ride, to the school. To his students. To Eiah. He camped at the crossroads.

  He was too old to be living on muleback. Lying in the thin folds of his bedroll, he ached as if he’d been beaten. His back had been suffe
ring spasms for days; they had grown painful enough that he hadn’t slept deeply. And his exhaustion seemed to make his muscles worse. The high plains grew cool at night, almost cold, and the air smelled of dust. He heard the skittering of lizards or mice and the low call of owls. The stars shone down on him, each point of light smeared by his aging eyes until the whole sky seemed possessed by a single luminous cloud.

  There had been a time he’d lain under stars and picked out constellations. There was a time his body could have taken rest on cobblestone, had the need arisen. There was a time Cehmai, poet of Machi and master of Stone-Made-Soft, had looked up to him.

  It was going to be hard to tell Eiah that he’d failed. The others as well, but Eiah knew Cehmai. She had seen them work together. The others might be disappointed, but Eiah alone would understand what he had lost.

  His dread slowed him. At this, his last camp, he ate his breakfast and watched the slow sunrise. He packed his mule slowly, then walked westward, his shadow stretching out ahead and growing slowly smaller. The shapes of the hills grew familiar, and the pauses he took grew longer. Here was the dry streambed where he and the other black-robed boys had sat in the evenings and told one another stories of the families they had already half-forgotten. There, a grouping of stumps showed where the stand of trees they had climbed had been felled by Galtic axes and burned. A cave under an outcropping of rock where they’d made the younger boys slither into the darkness to hunt snakes. The air was as rich with memory as the scent of dust and wildflowers. His life had been simpler then, or if not simpler, at least a thing that held promise.