An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet)

by Daniel Abraham

  “Are you well?” Kiyan asked.

  “Fine,” Liat said. “It’s just my head has been tender. It’s often like that when the Khai Saraykeht changes the tax laws again or the cotton crops fail. It fades when the troubles pass.”

  Kiyan nodded, but didn’t pull back her hand.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” Kiyan asked.

  “Tell me that Otah’s come back with Nayiit, the Galts all conquered and the world back the way it was.”

  “Yes,” Kiyan said. Her eyes lost their focus and her hand slipped back to her side of the table. Liat regretted being so glib, regretted letting the moment’s compassion fade. “Yes, it would be pretty to think so.”

  Liat took her leave. The palaces were alive with servants and slaves, the messengers of the merchant houses and the utkhaiem keeping the life of the court active. Liat walked through the wide halls with their distant tiled ceilings and down staircases of marble wide enough for twenty men to walk abreast. Sweet perfumes filled the air, though their scents brought her no comfort. The world was as bright as it had been before she’d come to Machi, the voices lifted in song as merry and sweet. It was only a trick of her mind that dulled the colors and broke the harmonies. It was only the thought of her boy lying dead in some green and distant field and the dull pain behind her eyes.

  When she reached the physicians, she found the man she sought speaking with Eiah. A young man lay naked on the wide slate table beside the pair. His face was pale and damp with sweat; his eyes were closed. His nearer leg was purple with bruises and gashed at the side. The physician—a man no older than Liat, but bald apart from a long gray fringe of hair—was gesturing at the young man’s leg, and Eiah was leaning in toward him, as if the words were water she was thirsty for. Liat walked to them softly, partly from the pain in her head, partly from the hope of overhearing their discussion without changing it.

  “There’s a fever in the flesh,” the physician said. “That’s to be expected. But the muscle.”

  Eiah considered the leg, more fascinated, Liat noticed, with the raw wounds than with the man’s flaccid sex.

  “It’s stretched,” Eiah said. “So there’s still a connection to stretch it. He’ll be able to walk.”

  The physician dropped the blanket and tapped the boy’s shoulder.

  “You hear that, Tamiya? The Khai’s daughter says you’ll be able to walk again.”

  The boy’s eyes fluttered open, and he managed a thin smile.

  “You’re correct, Eiah-cha. The tendon’s injured, but not snapped. He won’t be able to walk for several weeks. The greatest danger now is that the wound where the skin popped open may become septic. We’ll have to clean it out and bandage it. But first, perhaps we have a fresh patient?”

  Liat found herself disconcerted to move from observer to observed so quickly. The physician’s smile was distant and professional as a butcher selling lamb, but Eiah’s grin was giddy. Liat took a pose that asked forbearance.

  “I didn’t mean to intrude,” she said. “It’s only that my head has been troubling me. It aches badly, and I was wondering whether…”

  “Come, sit down, Liat-kya,” Eiah cried, grabbing Liat’s hand and pulling her to a low wooden seat. “Loya-cha can fix anything.”

  “I can’t fix everything,” the physician said, his smile softening a degree—he was speaking now not only to a patient, but a friend of his eager student and a fellow adult. “But I may be able to ease the worst of it. Tell me when I’ve touched the places that hurt the worst.”

  Gently, the man’s fingers swept over Liat’s face, her temples, touching here and there as gently as a feather against her skin. He seemed pleased and satisfied with her answers; then he took her pulse on both wrists and considered her tongue and eyes.

  “Yes, I believe I can be of service, Liat-cha. Eiah, you saw what I did?”

  Eiah took a pose of agreement. It was strange to see a girl so young and with such wealth and power look so attentive, to see her care so clearly what a man who was merely an honored servant could teach her. Liat’s heart went out to the girl.

  “Make your own measures, then,” the man said. “I have a powder I’ll mix for the patient, and we can discuss what you think while we clean the gravel out of our friend Tamiya.”

  Eiah’s touch was harder, less assured. Where the physician had hardly seemed present, Eiah gave the impression of grabbing for something even when pressing with the tips of her fingers. It was an eagerness Liat herself had felt once, many years ago.

  “You seem to be doing very well here,” Liat said, her voice gentle.

  “I know,” the girl said. “Loya-cha’s very smart, and he said I could keep coming here until Mama-kya or the Khai said different. Can I see your tongue, please?”

  Liat let the examination be repeated, then when it was finished said, “You must be pleased to have found something you enjoy doing.”

  “It’s all right,” Eiah said. “I’d still rather be married, but this is almost as good. And maybe Papa-kya can find someone to marry me who’ll let me take part in the physician’s house. I’ll probably be married to one of the Khaiem, after all, and Mama-kya’s running the whole city now. Everyone says so.”

  “It may be different later, though,” Liat said, trying to imagine a Khai allowing his wife to take a tradesman’s work as a hobby.

  “There may not be any Khaiem, you mean,” Eiah said. “The Galts may kill them all.”

  “Of course they won’t,” Liat said, but the girl’s eyes met hers and Liat faltered. There was so much of Otah’s cool distance in a face that seemed too young to look on the world so dispassionately. She was like her father, prepared to pass judgment on the gods themselves if the situation called her to do it. Comfortable lies had no place with her. Liat looked down. “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps there won’t be.”

  “Here, now,” the physician said. “Take this with you, Liat-cha. Pour it into a bowl of water and once it’s dissolved, drink the whole thing. It will be bitter, so drink it fast. You’ll likely want to lie down for a hand or two afterward, to let it work. But it should do what needs doing.”

  Liat took the paper packet and slipped it into her sleeve before taking a pose of gratitude.

  “We should have a lunch in the gardens again,” Eiah said. “You and Uncle Maati and me. Loya-cha would come too, except he’s a servant.”

  Liat felt herself blush, but the physician’s wry smile told her it was not the first such pronouncement he’d been subjected to.

  “Perhaps you should wait for another day,” he said. “Liat-cha had a headache, remember.”

  “I know that,” Eiah said impatiently. “I meant tomorrow.”

  “That would be lovely,” Liat said. “I’ll talk with Maati about it.”

  “Would you be so good as to get the stiff brushes from the back and wash them for me, Eiah-cha?” the physician said. “Tamiya’s anxious to be done with us, I’m sure.”

  Eiah dropped into a pose of confirmation for less than a breath before darting off to her task. Liat watched the physician, the amusement and fondness in his expression. He shook his head.

  “She is a force,” he said. “But the powder. I wanted to say, it can be habit-forming. You shouldn’t have it more than once in a week. So if the pain returns, we may have to find another approach.”

  “I’m sure this will be fine,” Liat said as she rose. “And…thank you. For what you’ve done with Eiah, I mean.”

  “She needs it,” the man said with a shrug. “Her father’s ridden off to die, her mother and her friend the poet are too busy trying to keep us all alive to take time to comfort her. She buries herself in this, and so even if she slows us down, how can I do anything but welcome her?”

  Liat felt her heart turn to lead. The physician’s smile slipped, and for a moment the dread showed from behind the mask. When he spoke again, it was softly and the words were as gray as stones.

  “And, after all, we may need
our children to know how to care for the dying before all that’s coming is done.”

  MAATI RUBBED his eyes with the palms of his hands, squinted, blinked. The world was blurry: the long, rich green of the grass on which they lay was like a single sheet of dyed rice paper; the towers of Machi were reduced to dark blurs that the blue of the sky shone through. It was like fog without the grayness. He blinked again, and the world moved nearer to focus.

  “How long was I sleeping?” he asked.

  “Long enough, sweet,” Liat said. “I could have managed longer, I think. The gods all know we’ve been restless enough at night.”

  The sun was near the top of its arc, the remains of breakfast in lacquered boxes with their lids shut, the day half gone. Liat was right, of course. He hadn’t been sleeping near enough—late to bed, waking early, and with troubled rest between. He could feel it in his neck and back and see it in the slowness with which his vision cleared.

  “Where’s Eiah got to?” he asked.

  “Back to her place with the physicians, I’d guess. I offered to wake you so that she could say her good-byes, but she thought it would be better if you slept.” Liat smiled. “She said it would be restorative. Can you imagine her using that kind of language a season ago? She already sounds like a physician’s apprentice.”

  Maati grinned. He’d resisted the idea of this little outing at first, but Cehmai had joined Eiah’s cause. A half-day’s effort by a rested man might do better for them than the whole day by someone drunk with exhaustion and despair. And even now the library seemed to call to him—the scrolls he had already read, the codices laid out and put away and pulled out to look over again, the wax tablets with their notes cut into them and smoothed clear again. And in the end, he had never been able to refuse Eiah. Her good opinion was too precious and too fickle.

  Liat slid her hand around his arm and leaned against him. She smelled of grass and cherry paste on apples and musk. He turned without thinking and kissed the crown of her head as if it were something he had always done. As if there had not been a lifetime between the days when they had first been lovers and now.

  “How badly is it going?” she asked.

  “Not well. We have a start, but Cehmai’s notes are only beginnings. And they were done by a student. I’m sure they all seemed terribly deep and insightful when he was still fresh from the school. But there’s less there than I’d hoped. And…”

  “And?”

  Maati sighed. The towers were visible now. The blades of grass stood out one from another.

  “He’s not a great inventor,” Maati said. “He never was. It’s part of why he was chosen to take over an andat that had already been captured instead of binding something new. And I’m no better.”

  “You were chosen for the same thing.”

  “Cehmai’s clever. I’m clever too, if it comes to that, but we’re the second pressing. There’s no one we can talk with who’s seen a binding through from first principles to a completion. We need someone whose mind’s sharper than ours.”

  There were birds wheeling about the towers—tiny specks of black and gray and white wheeling though the air as if a single mind drove them. Maati pretended he could hear their calls.

  “Perhaps you could train someone. There’s a whole city to choose from.”

  “There isn’t time,” Maati said. He wanted to say that even if there were, he wouldn’t. The andat were too powerful, too dangerous to be given to anyone whose heart wasn’t strong or whose conscience couldn’t be trusted. That was the lesson, after all, that had driven his own life and Cehmai’s and the Dai-kvo himself. It was what elevated each of the poets from boy children cast out by their parents to the most honored men in the world. And yet, if there were someone bright enough to hand the power to, he suspected he would. If it brought the army back from the field and put the world back the way it had been, the risk would be worth it.

  “Maybe one of the other poets will come,” Liat said, but her voice had gone thin and weary.

  “You don’t have hope for the Dai-kvo?”

  Liat smiled.

  “Hope? Yes, I have hope. Just not faith. The Galts know what’s in play. If we don’t recapture the andat, the cities will all fall. If we do, we’ll destroy Galt and everyone in her. They’ll be as ruthless as we will.”

  “And Otah-kvo? Nayiit?”

  Liat’s gaze met his, and he nodded. The knot in her chest, he was certain, was much like his own.

  “They’ll be fine,” Liat said, her tone asking for her own belief in the words as much as his. “It’s always the footmen who die in battles, isn’t it? The generals all live. And he’ll keep Nayiit safe. He said he would.”

  “They might not even see battle. If they arrive before the Galts and come back quickly enough, we might not lose a single man.”

  “And the moon may come down and get itself trapped in a teabowl,” Liat said. “But it would be nice, wouldn’t it? For us, I mean. Not so much for the Galts.”

  “You care what happens to them?”

  “Is that wrong?” Liat asked.

  “You’re the one who came to Otah-kvo asking that they all be killed.”

  “I suppose I did, didn’t I? I don’t know what’s changed. Something to do with having my boy out there, I suppose. Slaughtering a nation isn’t so much to think about. It’s when I start feeling that it all goes confused. I wonder why we do it. I wonder why they do. Do you think if we gave them our gold and our silver and swore we would never bind a fresh andat…do you think they’d let our children live?”

  It took a few breaths to realize that Liat was actually waiting for his answer, and several more before he knew what he believed.

  “No,” Maati said. “I don’t think they would.”

  “Neither do I. But it would be good, wouldn’t it? A world where it wasn’t a choice of our children or theirs.”

  “It would be better than this one.”

  As if by common consent, they changed the subject, talking of food and the change of seasons, Eiah’s new half-apprenticeship with the physicians and the small doings of the women of the utkhaiem now that their men had gone. It was only reluctantly that Maati rose. The sun was two and a half hands past where it had been when he woke, the shadows growing oblong. They walked back to the library, hand in hand at first, and then only walking beside each other. Maati felt his heart growing heavier as they came down the familiar paths, paving stones turning to sand turning to crushed white gravel bright as snow.

  “You could come in,” Maati said when they reached the wide front doors.

  In answer, she kissed him lightly on the mouth, gave his hand a gentle squeeze, and turned away. Maati sighed and turned to lumber up the steps. Inside, Cehmai was sitting on a low couch, three scrolls spread out before him.

  “I think I’ve found something,” Cehmai said. “There’s reference in Manat-kvo’s notes to a grammatic schema called threefold significance. If we have something that talks about that, perhaps we can find a way to shift the binding from one kind of significance to another.”

  “We don’t,” Maati said. “And if I recall correctly, the three significators all require unity. There’s not a way to pick between them.”

  “Well. Then we’re still stuck.”

  “Yes.”

  Cehmai stood and stretched, the popping of his spine audible from across the wide room.

  “We need someone who knows this better than we do,” Maati said as he lowered himself onto a carved wooden chair. “We need the Dai-kvo.”

  “We don’t have him.”

  “I know it.”

  “So we have to keep trying,” Cehmai said. “The better prepared we are when the Dai-kvo comes, the better he’ll be able to guide us.”

  “And if he never comes?”

  “He will,” Cehmai said. “He has to.”

  “Yes,” Nayiit said. “That’s him.”

  Otah’s mount whickered beneath him as he looked up at the Dai-kvo’s body. It had bee
n tied to a stake at the entrance to his high offices; the man had been dead for days. The brown-robed corpses of the poets lay at his feet, stacked like cordwood.

  They had taken it all for granted. The andat, the poets, the continuity of one generation following upon another as they always had. It grew more difficult, yes. An andat would escape and for a time the city it had left would suffer, yes. They had not conceived that everything might end. Otah looked at the slaughtered poets, and he saw the world he had known.

  The morning after the battle had been tense. He had risen before dawn and paced through the camps. Several of the scouts had vanished, and at first there was no way to know whether they had been captured by the Galts or killed or if they had simply taken their horses, set their eyes on the horizon, and fled. It was only when the reports began to filter back that the shape of things came clear.

  The Galts had fallen back, their steam wagons and horses making a fast march to the east, toward the village of the Dai-kvo. There was no pursuit, no rush to find the survivors of that bloody field and finish the work they’d begun. Otah’s army had been broken easily, and the Galts’ contempt for them was evident in the decision that they were not worth taking the time to kill.

  It was humiliating, and still Otah had found himself relieved. More of his men would die today, but only from wounds they already bore. They had given Otah a moment to rest and consider and see how deep the damage had gone.

  Four hundred of his men lay dead in the mud and grass beside perhaps a third as many Galts, perhaps less. Another half thousand were wounded or missing. A few hours had cost him a third of what he had, and more than that. The men who had survived the retreat were different from the ones he had spoken to at their cook fires before the fight. These men seemed stunned, lost, and emptied. The makeshift spears and armor that had once seemed to speak of strength and resourcefulness now seemed painfully naïve. They had come to battle armed like children and they had been killed by men. Otah found himself giving thanks to any gods that would listen for all the ones who had lived.