An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet)

by Daniel Abraham

  “And if the Dai-kvo didn’t come?” Otah asked. “How long has he been mulling over Liat’s report that the Galts have a poet of their own? I’ve sent word. I’ve sent messages. The world can’t afford to wait and see if the Dai-kvo suddenly becomes decisive.”

  “And you speak for the world now, do you?” There was acid in Maati’s tone, but Otah could hear the fear behind it and the despair. “If you insist on charging out into whatever kind of war you find out there, take one of us with you. We’ve lived there. We know the village. Cehmai’s still young. Or strap me on the back of a horse and pull me there. Leave Nayiit out of this.”

  “He’s a grown man,” Otah said. “He’s not a child any longer. He has his own mind and his own will. I thought about refusing him, for your sake and for Liat’s. But what would that be to him? He’s not still wrapped in crib cloths. How would I say that I wanted him safe because his mother would worry for him?”

  “And what about his father,” Maati said, but it had none of the inflection of a question. “You have an opinion, Most High, on what his father would think.”

  Otah’s belly sank. He dried his hand on his sleeve, only thinking afterward that it was the motion of a commoner—a dockfront laborer or a midwife’s assistant or a courier. The Khai Machi should have raised an arm, summoned a servant to dry his fingers for him on a cloth woven for the purpose and burned after one use. His face felt mask-like and hard as plaster. He took a pose that asked clarification.

  “Is that the conversation we’re having, then?” he asked. “We’re talking about fathers?”

  “We’re talking about sons,” Maati said. “We’re talking about you scraping up all the disposable men that the utkhaiem can drag out of comfort houses and slap sober enough to ride just so they can appease the irrational whims of the Khai. Taking those men out into the field because you think the armies of Galt are going to slaughter the Dai-kvo is what we’re talking about, and about taking Nayiit with you.”

  “You think I’m wrong?”

  “I know you’re right!” Maati was breathing hard now. His face was flushed. “I know they’re out there, with an army of veterans who are perfectly accustomed to hollowing out their enemies’ skulls for wine bowls. And I know you sent Sinja-cha away with all the men we had who were even half trained. If you come across the Galts, you will lose. And if you take Nayiit, he’ll die too. He’s still a child. He’s still figuring out who he is and what he intends and what he means to do in the world. And—”

  “Maati. I know it would be safer for me to stay here. For Nayiit to stay here. But it would only be safe for the moment. If we lose the Dai-kvo and all he knows and the libraries he keeps, having one more safe winter in Machi won’t mean anything. And we might not even manage the winter.”

  Maati looked away. Otah bowed his head and pretended not to have seen the tears on his old friend’s cheeks.

  “I’ve only just found him again,” Maati said, barely audible over the splashing water. “I’ve only just found him again, and I don’t want him taken away.”

  “I’ll keep him safe,” Otah said.

  Maati reached out his hand, and Otah let him lace his fingers with his own. It wasn’t an intimacy that they had often shared, and against his will, Otah found something near to sorrow tightening his chest. He put his free hand to Maati’s shoulder. When Maati spoke, his voice was thick and Otah no longer ignored his tears.

  “We’re his fathers, you and I,” Maati said. “So we’ll take care of him. Won’t we?”

  “Of course we will,” Otah said.

  “You’ll see him home safe.”

  “Of course.”

  Maati nodded. It was an empty promise, and they both knew it. Otah smoothed a palm over Maati’s thinning hair, squeezed his palm one last time, and stood. He was moved to speak, but he couldn’t find any words that would say what he meant. Instead he turned and softly walked away. His servants and attendants waited just outside the garden, attentive as puppies whose mother has left them. Otah waved them away, as he always had. And as he might not do again. The Master of Tides brought the ledger that outlined the rest of his day, and the day after, and was suddenly perfectly blank after that. In two days, he would be traveling with what militia he could, and there was no point planning past that. As the man spoke, Otah gently took the book from him, closed it, and handed it back. The Master of Tides went silent, and no one followed Otah when he walked away.

  He strode through the palaces, ignoring the poses of obeisance and respect that bloomed wherever he went. He didn’t have time for the forms and rituals. He didn’t have time to respect the traditions he was about to put his life in danger to protect. He wasn’t entirely sure what that said about him. He took the wide, marble stairs two at a time, rising up from the lower palace toward his personal apartments. When he arrived, Kiyan wasn’t there. He paced the rooms, plucking at the papers on the wide table he’d had brought for him. Maps and histories and lists of names. Numbers of men and of wagons and routes. It looked like a nest for rats: the piled books, the scattered notes. It was vaguely ridiculous, he thought as he read over the names of the houses and families who had sworn him support. He was no more a general than he was a tinsmith, and still, here he was, the man stuck with the job.

  He didn’t recall picking up the map. And yet there it was, in his hands. His eyes traced the paths he and his men might take. He and the men Maati had called disposable. It wasn’t the first time he’d wished Sinja-cha were still in the city, if only to have the dispassionate eye of a man who had actually fought in the field. Otah was an amateur at war. He had the impression that it was a poor field for amateurs. He traded the map for the lists of men and studied it again as if there were a cipher hidden in it. He didn’t notice when Kiyan and Eiah arrived. When he looked up from his papers, they were simply there.

  His wife was calm and collected, though he could see the strain in the thinness of her lips and the tightness of her jaw. Her hair was grayer now than the image of her in his mind. Her face seemed older. For a moment, he was back in the wayhouse she’d taken over from her father, years ago in Udun. He was in her common room, listening to a flute player fumble through old tunes that everyone knew, and wondering if the lovely fox-faced woman serving the wine had meant to touch his hand when she poured. From such small things are lives constructed. Something of his thought must have shown in his face, because her features softened and something near a blush touched her cheeks as Eiah lowered herself to a couch and collapsed. He noticed that her usual array of rings and jewels were gone; but for the quality of her robe, she could have been a merchant’s daughter.

  “You look spent, Eiah-kya,” Otah said. Then, to Kiyan, “What’s she been doing? Carrying stones up the towers? And what’s happened to jewelry?”

  “Physicians don’t wear metalwork,” she said, as if he’d asked something profoundly stupid. “Blood gets caught in the settings.”

  “She’s been with them all day,” Kiyan said.

  “We had a boy come in with a crushed arm,” Eiah said, her eyes closed. “It was all bloody and the skin scraped off. It looked like something from a butcher’s stall. I could see his knuckle bones. Dorin-cha cleaned it up and wrapped it. We’ll know in a couple days whether he’ll have to have it off.”

  “We’ll know?” Otah asked. “They’re having you decide the fate of men’s elbows?”

  He saw a dark glitter where his daughter’s eyes cracked just slightly open. “Dorin-cha will tell me, and then we’ll both know.”

  “She’s been quite the asset, they say,” Kiyan said. “The matrons keep trying to send her away, and she keeps coming back. They tell her it’s unseemly for her to be there, but the physicians seem flattered that she’s interested.”

  “I like it,” Eiah said, her voice slurring. “I don’t want to stop. I want to help.”

  “You don’t have to stop,” Otah said. “I’ll see to it.”

  “Thank you, Papa-kya,” Eiah murmured.
r />   “Off to your bed,” Kiyan said, gently shaking Eiah’s knee. “You’re already half-dreaming.”

  Eiah frowned and grunted, but then came to her feet. She stumbled over to Otah, genuine exhaustion competing with the theatrics of being tired, and threw her arms around his neck. Her hair smelled of the vinegar the physicians used to wash down their slate tables. He put his arms around her. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes. His baby girl, his daughter. He would see her tomorrow, and then he would march out into the gods only knew what.

  Tomorrow, he told himself, I will see her again tomorrow. This won’t be the last time. Not yet. He kissed her forehead and let her go.

  Eiah tottered to her mother for another kiss, another hug, and then they were alone. Kiyan gently plucked the papers from his hands and put them back on the desk.

  “I’m not certain that worked as a punishment,” Otah said. “We’re halfway to raising a physician.”

  “It lets her feel she’s useful,” Kiyan said as she pulled him to the couch. He sat at her side. “It’s normal for her to want to feel she’s in control of something. And she isn’t squeamish. I’ll hand her that much.”

  “I hope feeling useful is enough,” Otah said. “She’s got her own will, and I don’t think she’d be past following it over a cliff if it led her there.”

  He saw Kiyan read his deeper meaning. I hope we are all still here to worry about it.

  “We do as well by them as we can, love,” she said.

  “I think about Idaan,” Otah said.

  Kiyan took his hand.

  “Eiah isn’t your sister. She isn’t going to do the things she did,” she said. “And more to the point, you aren’t your father.”

  For a moment, he was consumed by memories: the father he had met only once, the sister who had engineered the old man’s murder. Hatred and violence and ambition had destroyed his family once. He supposed it was inevitable that he should fear it happening again. Otah raised Kiyan’s hand to his lips, and then sighed.

  “I have to go to Danat. I haven’t seen him yet. Go with me?”

  “He’s asleep already, love. We stopped in on our way here. He won’t wake before morning. And you’ll have to find different stories to read to him next time. Everything you left there, he’s read to himself. Our boy’s going to grow up a scholar at this rate.”

  Otah nodded, pushing aside a moment’s guilt over the relief he felt. Seeing Danat was one less thing, even if it was more important than most of the others he’d already done. And there would be tomorrow. There would at least be tomorrow.

  “How is he?”

  “His color is better, but he has less energy. The fever is gone for now, but he still coughs. I don’t know. No one does.”

  “Can he travel?”

  Kiyan turned. Her gaze darted across his face as if he were a book that she was trying to read. Her hands took a querying pose.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Otah said. “Planning.”

  “For if you’re killed,” Kiyan said. Her voice made it plain she’d been thinking of it as well.

  “The mines. If I don’t come back, I want you to take to the mines in the North. Cehmai will go with you, and he knows them better than anyone. If you can, take the children and as much gold as you can carry and head west. Sinja and the others will be there somewhere, working whatever contract they’ve taken. They’ll protect you.”

  “You’re sending me to him!?” Kiyan asked softly.

  “Only if I don’t come back.”

  “You will.”

  “Still,” Otah said. “If…”

  “If,” Kiyan agreed and took his hand. Then, a long moment later, “We were never lovers, he and I. Not the way…”

  Otah put a finger to her lips, and she went quiet. There were tears in her eyes, and in his.

  “Let’s not open that again,” he said.

  “You could come away too. We could all leave quietly. The four of us and a fast cart.”

  “And spend our lives on a beach in Bakta,” Otah said. “I can’t. I have this thing to do. My city.”

  “I know. But I had to say it, just so I know it was said.”

  Otah looked down. His hands looked old—the knuckles knobbier than he thought of them, the skin looser. They weren’t an old man’s hands, but they weren’t a young man’s any longer. When he spoke, his voice was low and thoughtful.

  “It’s strange, you know. I’ve spent years chafing under the weight of being Khai Machi, and now that it’s harder than it ever was, now that there’s something real to lose, I can’t let go of it. There was a man once who told me that if it were a choice between holding a live coal in my bare fist or letting a city of innocent people die, of course I would do my best to stand the pain. That it was what any decent man would do.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Kiyan said.

  “Was I apologizing?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You were. You shouldn’t. I’m not angry with you, and there’s nothing to blame you for. They all think you’ve changed, you know, but this is who you’ve always been. You were a poor Khai Machi because it didn’t matter until now. I understand; I’m just frightened to death, love. It’s nothing you can spare me.”

  “Maati could be wrong,” Otah said. “The Galts may be busy rolling over the Westlands and none of it anything to do with Stone-Made-Soft. I may arrive at the Dai-kvo’s village and be laughed at all the way back north.”

  “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.
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br />   “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.