Seasons of War

by Abraham Daniel

  ‘It would be fascinating,’ Eiah agreed. ‘I hear Farrer-cha’s doing well?’

  ‘He’s made more out of that city than I could have. But then I was never particularly brilliant with administration. I had other skills, I suppose,’ Otah said. ‘Enough about that. Tell me about your family. How is Parit-cha? And the girls?’

  Eiah let herself be distracted. Parit was well, but he’d been kept away from their apartments three nights running by a boy who worked for House Laarin who’d broken his leg falling off a wall. It had been a bad break, and the fever hadn’t gone down quickly enough to suit anyone. It seemed as if the boy would live, and they were both happy to call that a success. Of Otah’s granddaughters, Mischa was throwing all her free time into learning to dance every new form that came in from Galt, and wearing the dance master’s feet raw in the effort. Gaber had talked about nothing besides the steam caravan for weeks, but Eiah suspected it was more Calin’s enthusiasm than her own. Gaber assumed that Calin rose with the sun and set with the moon.

  Eiah didn’t realize how long she’d been telling the small stories of her family until the overseer came out with an apologetic pose and announced that the Emperor’s meal was waiting. Otah made a show of rubbing his belly, but when Eiah joined him, he ate very little. The meal was fresh chicken cooked in last year’s apricots, and it was delicious. She watched her father pluck at the pale flesh.

  He looked older than his years. His skin had grown as thin as paper; his eyes were always wet. After his hands had fallen to their weakness, the headaches had begun. Eiah had tried him on half a dozen different programs of herbs and baths. She wasn’t convinced he’d followed any of them very closely.

  ‘Stop,’ Otah said. Eiah took a pose that asked clarification. He frowned at her, his eyebrows rising as he spoke. ‘You’re looking at me as if I were a particularly interesting bloodworm. I’m fine, Eiah-kya. I sleep well, I wake full of energy, my bowels never trouble me, and my joints don’t ache. Everything that could be right about me is right. Now I’d like to spend an evening with my daughter and not my physician, eh?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Papa-kya,’ she said. ‘It’s only that I worry.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘and I forgive you. But don’t let tomorrow steal what’s good about tonight. The future takes care of its own. You can write that down if you like. The Emperor said it.’

  The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen forever.

  Idaan rose before the dawn as she always did, parting the netting silently and stealthily walking out to her dressing chamber so as not to disturb Cehmai. She was not so important a woman that the servants wouldn’t leave her be or that armsmen were needed to hold the utkhaiem and councilmen at bay. She was not her brother. She picked a simple robe of dusty red and rich blue and fastened all the ties herself. Then sandals and a few minutes before a mirror with a brush and a length of stout ribbon to bring her hair into something like order.

  No one had assigned her the daily task of carrying breakfast to the Emperor. It was one she’d simply taken on. After two weeks of arriving at the kitchens to collect the tray with its plates and bowl and teapot, the servant who had been the official bearer simply stopped coming. She’d usurped the work.

  That morning, they’d prepared honey bread and raisins, hot rice in almond milk, and a slab of roast pork with a pepper glaze. Idaan knew from experience that she would end with the pork and the honey bread. The rice, he might eat.

  The path to the Emperor’s apartments was well-designed. The balance between keeping the noises and interruptions away - not to mention the constant possibility of fire - and getting the food to him still warm meant a long, straight journey almost free from the meanderings to which the palaces were prone. Archways of stone marked the galleries. Tapestries of lush red and gold hung on the walls. The splendor had long since ceased to take her breath away. She had lived in palaces and mud huts and everything in between. The only thing that astounded her with any regularity was that so late in her life, she had found her family.

  Cehmai alone had been miraculous. The last decade serving in court had been something greater than that. She had become an aunt to Danat and Eiah and Ana, a sister to Otah Machi. Even now, her days had the feel of relaxing in a warm bath. It wasn’t something she’d expected. For that, it wasn’t something she’d thought possible. The nightmares almost never came now; never more than once or twice in a month. She was ready to grow old here, in these halls and passageways, with these people. If anyone had the poor judgment to threaten her people, Idaan knew she would kill the idiot. She hoped the occasion wouldn’t arise.

  She knew something was wrong as soon as she passed through the arch that led to Otah’s private garden. Four servants stood in a clot at the side door, their faces pale, their hands in constant motion. With a feeling of dread, she put the lacquer tray on a bench and came forward. The oldest of the servants was weeping, his face blotchy and his eyes swollen. Idaan looked at the man, her expression empty. Whatever strength remained in him left, and he folded to the ground sobbing.

  ‘Have you sent for his children?’ Idaan asked.

  ‘I . . . we only just . . .’

  Idaan raised her eyebrows, and the remaining servants scattered. She stepped over the weeping man and made her way into the private rooms. All together, they were smaller than Idaan’s old farmhouse. It didn’t take long to find him.

  Otah sat in a chair as if he were only sleeping. The window before him was open, the shutters swaying slow and languorous in the breeze. The motion reminded her of seaweed. His robe was yellow shot with black. His eyes were barely open and as empty as marbles. Idaan made herself touch his skin. It was cold. He was gone.

  She found a stool, pulled it to his side, and sat with him one last time. His hand was stiff, but she wrapped her fingers around his. For a long while, she said nothing. Then, softly so that just the two of them could hear, she spoke.

  ‘You did good work, brother. I can’t think anyone would have done better.’

  She remained there breathing the scent of his rooms for the last time until Danat and Eiah arrived, a small army of servants and utkhaiem and councilmen at their backs. Idaan told Eiah what she needed to know in a few short sentences, then left. The breakfast was gone, cleared away. She went to find Cehmai and tell him the news.

  Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced. It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of renewal is paid.

  ‘No,’ Ana said. The ambassador of Eymond lifted a finger, as if begging leave to interrupt the Empress. He made a small noise at the back of his throat. Ana shook her head. ‘I said no. I meant no, Lord Ambassador. And if you raise your finger to me again like I was a schoolgirl talking out of turn, I will have it cut off and set in a necklace for you.’

  The meeting room was as silent as a grave. Even the candle flames stood still. The dark-stained wood of the floor and beautifully painted abstract frescoes of the walls seemed out of place, too rich and peaceful for the moment. A back room at a teahouse was the better venue for this kind of negotiation. Ana enjoyed the contrast.

  She knew when she first heard of Otah Machi’s death that she was going to have to be responsible for holding the Empire together until Danat regained his balance. She hadn’t yet lost a parent. Her husband and lover now had neither of his. The lost expression in his eyes and the bewildered tone in his voice made her heart ache. And so when their partners and rivals in trade took the opportunity to renegotiate treaties in hopes of winning some concession in the fog of grief, Ana found herself taking it personally.

  ‘Lady Empress,’ the ambassador said, ‘I don’t mean disrespect, but you must see that—’

  Ana raised her finger, the mirror of the man’s gesture. He went silent.

  ‘A necklace,’ she said. ‘Ask around if you’d like. You’ll find I have no sense of proportion. None.’

  Very quietly, the ambassador took the scroll up f
rom the table between them and put it back in its satchel. Ana nodded and gestured to the door. The man’s spine could have been made of a single, un-articulated iron bar as he left. Ana felt no sympathy for him.

  The Master of Tides came in a moment later, her face amused and alarmed. Ana took what she thought was the proper pose to express continuity. The Khaiate system of poses was something that was best born into and learned from infancy. She did her best, and no one had the audacity to correct her, so Ana figured she was close enough.

  ‘I believe that is all for the day, Most High,’ the Master of Tides said.

  ‘Excellent. We got through those quickly, didn’t we?’

  ‘Very quickly,’ the woman agreed.

  ‘Feel free to offer any other audiences the choice of meeting with me or waiting for my husband until after the mourning rites.’

  ‘I will be sure to sketch out the options,’ the woman said in voice that assured Ana that she would make room in her schedule to help Danat with his father’s arrangements.

  Ana found her mother in the guests’ apartments. Her return trip had been postponed, the steam caravan itself waiting for her. The blue silk curtains billowed in the soft breeze; the scent of lemon candles lit to keep the insects away filled the air. Issandra sat before the fire grate, her hands folded on her lap. She didn’t rise.

  Ana would never have said it, but her mother looked old. The sun of Chaburi-Tan had darkened her skin, making her hair seem brilliantly white.

  ‘Mother.’

  ‘Empress,’ Issandra Dasin said. Her voice was warm. ‘I’m afraid our timing left something to be desired.’

  ‘No,’ Ana said. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered. Tell Father that I appreciate the invitation, but I can’t leave my family here.’

  ‘He won’t hear it from me,’ Issandra said. ‘He’s a good man, but time hasn’t made him less stubborn. He wants his little girl back.’

  Ana sighed. Her mother nodded.

  ‘I know his little girl is gone,’ Issandra said. ‘I’ll try to make him understand that you’re happy here. It may come to his visiting you himself.’

  ‘How are things at home?’ Ana asked. She knew it was a telling question. She started to take a pose that unasked it but lost her way. It wasn’t part of their conversation anyway.

  ‘The word from Galt is good. The trade routes are busier than Farrer’s seafront can accommodate. He’s filling his coffers with silver and gems at a rate I’ve never seen,’ Issandra said. ‘It consoles him.’

  ‘I am happy here,’ Ana said.

  ‘I know you are, love,’ her mother said. ‘This is where your children live.’

  They talked about small things for another hour, and then Ana took her leave. There would be time enough later.

  The Emperor’s pyre was set to be lit in two days. Utani was wrapped in mourning cloth. The palaces were swaddled in rags, the trees hung heavy with gray and white cloth. Dry mourning drums filled the air where there had once been music. The music would come again. She knew that. This was only something that had to be endured.

  She found Danat in his father’s apartments, tears streaking his face. Around him were spread sheets of paper as untidy as a bird’s nest. All of them were written upon in Otah Machi’s hand. There had to be a thousand pages. Danat looked up at her. For the length of a heartbeat, she could see what her husband had looked like as a child.

  ‘What is it?’ Ana asked.

  ‘It was a crate,’ Danat said. ‘Father left orders that it be put on his pyre. They’re letters. All of them are to my mother.’

  ‘From when they were courting?’ Ana asked, sitting on the floor, her legs crossed.

  ‘After she died,’ Danat said. Ana plucked a page from the pile. The paper was brittle, the ink pale. Otah Machi’s words were perfectly legible.

  Kiyan-kya—

  You have been dead for a year tonight. I miss you. I want to have something more poetic to say, something that will do you some honor or change how it feels to be without you. Something. I had a thousand things I thought I would write, but those were when it was only me. Now, here, with you, all I can say is that I miss you.

  The children are starting to come back from the loss. I don’t know if they ever will. I have no experience with this. I had no mother or father. As a child, I had no family. I don’t have any experience losing a family.

  The closest thing I have to solace is knowing that, if I had gone first, you would have suffered all this darkness yourself. That I have to bear it is the price of sparing you. It doesn’t make the burden lighter, it doesn’t make the pain less, it doesn’t take away any of the longing I have to see you again or hear your voice. But it does give the pain meaning. I suppose that’s all I can ask: that the pain have meaning.

  I love you. I miss you. I will write again soon.

  Ana folded the letter. Thousands of pages of letters to the Empress who had died. The last Empress before her.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Danat said.

  ‘I love you. You know I love you more than anything except the children?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘If you burn these, I will leave you. Honestly, love. You’ve lost enough of him. You have to keep these.’

  Danat took a deep shuddering breath and closed his eyes. His hands pressed flat on his thighs. Another tear slipped down his cheek, and Ana leaned forward to smooth it away with her sleeve.

  ‘I want to,’ Danat said. ‘I want to keep them. I want to keep him. But it was what he asked.’

  ‘He’s dead, love,’ Ana said. ‘He’s dead and gone. Truly. He doesn’t care anymore.’

  When Danat had finished crying, his body heavy against her own, the sun had set. The apartments were a collection of shadows. Somewhere in the course of things, they had made their way to Otah Machi’s bed - a soft mattress that smelled of roses and had, so far as Ana could tell, never been slept in. She stroked Danat’s hair and listened to the chorus of crickets in the gardens. Her husband’s breath became deeper, more regular. Ana waited until he was deeply asleep, then slipped out from under him, lit a candle, and by its soft light gathered the letters and began to put them in order.

  And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.

  The world itself seemed to have conspired to make the day somber. Gray clouds hung low over the city, a cold constant mist of rain darkening the mourning cloths, the stones, the newly unfurled leaves of the trees. The pyre stood in the center of the grand court, stinking of coal oil and pine resin. The torches that lined the pyre spat and hissed in the rain.

  The assembly was huge. There weren’t enough whisperers to take any words he said to the back edges of the crowd. If there was a back. As far as he could see from his place at the raised black dais, there were only faces, an infinity of faces, going back to the edge of the horizon. Their murmuring voices were a constant roll of distant thunder.

  The Emperor was dead, and whether they mourned or celebrated, no one would remain unmoved.

  At his side, Ana held his hand. Calin, in a pale mourning robe and a bright red sash, looked dumbstruck. His eyes moved restlessly over everything. Danat wondered what the boy found so overwhelming: the sheer animal mass of the crowd, the realization that Danat himself was no longer emperor regent but actually emperor, as Calin himself would be one day, or the fact that Otah was gone. All three, most likely.

  Danat rose and stepped to the front of the dais. The crowd grew louder and then eerily silent. Danat drew a sheaf of papers from his sleeve. His farewell to his father.

  ‘We say that the flowers return every spring,’ Danat said, ‘but that is a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and untested.

  ‘The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced. It is
in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of renewal is paid.

  ‘And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.’

  Danat paused, the voices of the whisperers carrying his words out as far as they would travel. As he waited, he caught sight of Idaan and Cehmai standing before the pyre. The old poet looked somber. Idaan’s long face carried an expression that might have been amusement or anger or the distance of being lost in her own thoughts. She was unreadable, as she always was. He saw, not for the first time, how much she and Otah resembled each other.

  The rain tapped on the page before him as if to recall his attention. The ink was beginning to blur. Danat began again.

  ‘My father founded an empire, something no man living can equal. My father also took a wife, raised children, struggled with all that it meant to have us, and there are any number of men and women in the cities or in Galt, Eymond, Bakta, Eddensea, or the world as a whole who have taken that road as well.

  ‘My father was born, lived his days, and died. In that he is like all of us. All of us, every one, without exception. And so it is for that, perhaps, that he most deserves to be honored.’

  The ink bled, Danat’s words fading and blurring. He looked up at the low sky and thought of his father’s letters. Page after page after page of saying what could never be said. He didn’t know any longer what he’d hoped to achieve with his own speech. He folded the pages and put them back in his sleeve.

  ‘I loved my father,’ Danat said. ‘I miss him.’

  He proceeded slowly down the wide stairs to the base of the pyre. A servant whose face he didn’t know presented Danat with a lit torch. He took it, and walked slowly around the base of the pyre, cool raindrops dampening his face, his hair. He smelled of soft rain. Danat touched flame to tinder as he went, the coal oil flaring and stinking.