I want to be a good man, he’d said. And I’m not.
With a sigh she began the long trek back to the city, to the palaces, to Kiyan and Maati and the bathhouses and her bed. The city, as she passed through its streets, was alive. The refugees of Cetani had not all waited in the camp. Or perhaps Kiyan had meant to start bringing them into the city. Whatever the intention had been, they had come, and Machi had poured itself out to make them welcome, to offer them food and wine and comfort, to pull news and gossip from them. The sun was gone, and the darkness was cold, and yet the city was full as a street fair. And as chaotic.
She found Kiyan in the palaces looking as exhausted as she herself felt. Otah’s wife waved her near to the long, broad table. Wives of the utkhaiem were consulting one another, writing figures on paper, issuing orders to wide-eyed servants. It was like the middle of a trading company at the height of the cotton harvest, and Liat found it strangely comforting.
“It can be done,” Kiyan said. “It won’t be pleasant, but it can be done. I’ve had word from the Poinyat that we can use their mines, and I’m expecting the Daikani any time now.”
“The mines?” Liat said. The exhaustion made her slow to understand.
“We’ll have to put people in them. They’re deep enough to stay warm. It’s like living in the tunnels under the city, only rougher. The ones in the plain will even have their own water. There’s food and sewage to worry about, but I’ve sent Jaini Radaani to speak with the engineers, and if she can’t convince them to find a solution, I’ll be quite surprised.”
“That’s good,” Liat said. “Things at the bridge are under control. We’ve set up a tent for the physicians down there, and there’s food enough. There will be more tomorrow, but I think they’ve all been seen to.”
“Gods, Liat-cha. You look like death and you’re cold. Let me have someone see you to the baths, get you warm. Have you eaten?”
She hadn’t, but she pushed the thought aside.
“I need something from you, Kiyan-cha.”
“Ask.”
“Nayiit. He needs…something. He needs something to do. Something that he can be proud of. He came back from the battle …”
“I know,” Kiyan said. “I know what happened there. It was in Otah’s letter.”
“He needs to help,” Liat said, surprised at the pleading tone of her own voice. She hadn’t known she felt so desperate for him. “He needs to matter.”
Kiyan nodded slowly, then leaned close and kissed Liat’s cheek. The woman’s lips felt almost hot against Liat’s chilled skin.
“I understand, Liat-kya,” she said. “Go and rest. I’ll see to it. I promise you.”
Weeping with fatigue, Liat found her way to her apartments, to her bedchamber, to her bed. Her belly ached with hunger, but she only drank the full carafe of water the servants had left at her bedside. By the time her body learned that it had been tricked, she would already be asleep. She closed her eyes for a moment before pulling off her robes and woke, still dressed, in the morning. The light sifted through the shutters, pressing in at the seams. The night candle was a lump of spent wax, and the air didn’t smell of the dying wick. There was something, though. Pork. Bread. Liat sat up, her head light.
She stripped off yesterday’s robes, sticky with sleep sweat, and pulled on a simple sitting robe of thick gray wool. When she stepped out to the main rooms, Kiyan was still arranging the meal on its table.
Thick slices of pink-white meat, bread so fresh it still steamed, trout baked with lemon and salt, poached pears on a silver plate. And a teapot that smelled of white tea and honey. Liat’s stomach woke with a sharp pang.
“They told me you hadn’t eaten last night,” she said. “Either of you. I thought I might bring along something to keep you breathing.”
“Kiyan-cha …” Liat began, then broke off and simply took a pose of gratitude. Kiyan smiled. She was a beautiful woman, and age was treating her gently. The intelligence in her eyes was matched by the humor. Otah was lucky, Liat thought, to have her.
“It’s a trick, really,” Kiyan said. “I’ve come pretending to be a servant girl, when I actually want to speak with Nayiit. If he’s awake.”
“I am.”
His voice came from the shadows of his bedchambers. Nayiit stepped out. His hair pointed in a hundred directions. His eyes were red and puffy. A thin sprinkling of stubble cast a shadow on his jaw. Kiyan took a pose of greeting. He returned it.
“How can I be of service, Kiyan-cha?” he asked. Liat could tell from the too-precise diction that he’d spent his night drinking. He closed his bedroom doors behind him as he stepped in, and Liat more than half thought it was to protect the privacy of whatever woman was sleeping in his bed. Something passed across Kiyan’s sharp features; it might have been compassion or sorrow, understanding or recognition. Liat couldn’t say, and it was gone almost as soon as it came.
“That’s the question, Nayiit-cha. I have something to ask of you. It may come to nothing, and if you should have to act upon my request, I’m afraid I won’t be in a position to repay you.”
Nayiit came forward slowly and sat at the table. Kiyan filled a plate for him as she spoke, casual as if she were a wayhouse keeper, and he a simple guest.
“You’ve heard the gossip from Cetani, I assume,” she said.
“They’ve fled before the Galts. The Khai—both of them—are in the rear. To protect the people if the Galts come from behind.”
“Yes,” Kiyan said. “It’s actually more complex than that. Otah has invented a scheme. If it works, he may win us a few months. Perhaps through the winter. If not, I think we can assume the Galts will be here shortly after the last of our cousins from Cetani have arrived.”
It was a casual way to express the raw fear that every one of them might die violently before the first frost came. Our lives are measured in days now, Liat thought. But Kiyan had not paused to let the thought grow.
“There is an old mine a day’s ride to the north of Machi. It was dug when the first Khai Machi set up residence here. It’s been tapped out for generations, but the tunnels are still there. I’ve been quietly moving supplies to it. A bit of food. Blankets. Coal. A few boxes of gold and jewels. Enough for a few people to survive a winter and still have enough to slip across the passes and into the Westlands when spring came.”
Nayiit took a pose that accepted all she said. Kiyan smiled and leaned forward to touch Nayiit’s hands with her own. She seemed at ease except for the tears that had gathered in her eyes.
“If the Galts come,” she said, “will you take Eiah and Danat there? Will you …”
Kiyan stopped, her smile crumbling. She visibly gathered herself. A long, slow breath. And even still, when she spoke, it was hardly more than a whisper.
“If they come, will you protect my children?”
You brilliant, vicious snake, Liat thought. You glorious bitch. You’d ask him to love your son. You’d make caring for Danat the proof that my boy’s a decent man. And you’re doing it because I asked you to.
It’s perfect.
“I would be honored,” Nayiit said. The sound of his voice and the awestruck expression in his eyes were all that Liat needed to see how well Kiyan had chosen.
“Thank you, Nayiit-kya,” Kiyan said. She looked over to Liat, and her eyes were guarded. They both knew what had happened here. Liat carefully took a pose of thanks, unsure as she did what precisely she meant by it.
THE LIBRARY of Cetani was much smaller than Machi’s. Perhaps a third as many books and codices, not more than half as many scrolls. They arrived on Maati’s doorway in sacks and baskets, crates and wooden boxes. A letter accompanied them, hardly more than a terse note with Otah’s seal on it, telling him that there was no living poet to ask what texts would be of use, that as a result he’d sent everything, and expressing hope that these might help. There was no mention of the Galts or the Dai-kvo or the dead. Otah seemed to assume that Maati would understand how dire the situation w
as, how much depended on him and on Cehmai.
He was right. Maati understood.
He’d left Cehmai in the library, looking over their new acquisitions, while he sat in the main room of his apartments, marking out grammars and forms. How Heshai had bound Seedless, what he would have done differently in retrospect, and the variations that Maati could make—different words and structures, images and metaphors that would serve the same purpose without coming too near the original. His knuckles ached, and his mind felt woolly. It was hard to say how far into the work they’d come. Perhaps as much as a third. Perhaps less. The hardest part would come at the end; once the binding was mapped out and drafted, there was the careful process of going through, image by image, and checking to see that there were no ambiguities, no unintended meanings, no contradictions where the power of the andat might loop back upon itself and break his hold and himself.
Outside, the wind was blowing cold as it had since the middle morning. The city of tents that had sprung up at Machi’s feet would be an unpleasant place tonight. Liat had been entirely absent these last four days, helping to find Cetani a place within Machi. It was just as well, he supposed. If she were here, he’d only want to talk with her. Speak with her. He’d want to hold her. Enough time for those little pleasures when Seedless was bound and the world was set right. Whatever that meant anymore.
The scratch at his door was an annoyance and a relief both. He called out his permission, and the door swung open. Nayiit ducked into the room, an apologetic smile on his face. Behind him, a small figure waddled—Danat wrapped in robes and cloaks until he seemed almost as wide as tall. Maati rose, his back and knees protesting from having been too long in one position.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Nayiit said. “I told Danat-cha that you might be busy.…”
“Nothing that can’t wait a hand or two,” Maati said, waving them in. “It might be best, really, if I step away from it all. After a while, it all starts looking the same.”
Nayiit chuckled and took a pose that expressed his sympathy. Danat, red-cheeked, shifted his gaze shyly from one man to the other. Maati nodded a question to Nayiit.
“Danat wanted to ask you something,” Nayiit said, and squatted down so that his eyes were on a level with the child’s. His smile was gentle, encouraging. A favorite uncle helping his nephew over some simple childhood fear. Maati felt the sudden powerful regret that he had never met Nayiit’s wife, never seen his child. “Go ahead, Danat-kya. We came so that you could ask, and Maati-cha’s here. Do it like we practiced.”
Danat turned to Maati, blushing furiously, and took a pose of respect made awkward by the thickness of cloth around his small arms; then he began pulling books out from beneath his robes and placing them one by one in a neat pile before Maati. When the last of them had appeared, Danat shot a glance at Nayiit who answered with an approving pose.
“Excuse me, Maati-cha,” Danat said, his face screwed into a knot of concentration, his words choppy from being rehearsed. “Papa-kya’s still not back. And I’ve finished all these. I wondered …”
The words fell to a mumble. Maati smiled and shook his head.
“You’ll have to speak louder,” Nayiit said. “He can’t hear you.”
“I wondered if you had any others I could read,” the boy said, staring at his own feet as if he’d asked for the moon on a ribbon and feared to be mocked for it.
Behind him, where the boy couldn’t see, Nayiit grinned. This is who he would be, Maati thought. This is the kind of father my boy would be.
“Well,” he said aloud. “We might be able to find something. Come with me.”
He led them out and along the gravel path to the library’s entrance. The air had a bite to it. He could feel the color coming to his own cheeks. When he’d been young, a child-poet younger than Nayiit, he’d spent his terrible winter in Saraykeht with Seedless and Otah and Liat. In the summer cities, this chill would have been the depth of winter. In the North, it was only the first breath of autumn.
Cehmai looked up when they came in, a scroll case of shattered silk in his hand. A smear of dust marked his cheek like ashes. Boxes and crates lay about the main room, stacked man-high. One of the couches was piled with scrolls that hadn’t been looked over, two others with the ones that had. The air was thick with the smells of dust and parchment and old binder’s paste. Danat stood in the doorway, his eyes wide, his mouth open. Nayiit stepped around him and drew the boy in, sliding the doors closed behind them. Cehmai nodded his question.
“Danat was asking if we had any other books,” Maati said.
“You have all of them,” the boy said, awe in his voice.
Maati chuckled, and then felt the mirth and simple pleasure fade. The shelves and crates, boxes and piled volumes surrounded them.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, we have all of them.”
“How many do we have?” Otah asked.
The bows had been made for killing bears. Each one stood taller than a man, the bow itself made of ash and horn, the drawstring of wire. It took a man sitting down and using both legs to draw it back. The arrows were blackened oak shafts as long as short spears. The tips—usually a wide, crossed head like twined knives—had been replaced by hard steel points made to punch through metal. The chief huntsman of the Khai Cetani nudged one with his toe, spat, and looked out through the trees toward the road below them.
“Two dozen,” he said. His voice had a Western drawl. “Sixty shafts, more or less.”
“More or less?” the Khai Cetani demanded.
“We’re fashioning more, Most High,” the huntsman said.
“How many men do we have who can use them?” Otah asked. “It won’t matter if we have a thousand bows if there’s only five men who can aim them.”
“Bear hunters are rare,” the huntsman said. “There aren’t any old ones.”
“How many?”
“Eight who are good. Twice that who know how the bow works. With practice …”
The Khai Cetani frowned deeply, and turned to Otah. Otah chewed at the inside of his lip and looked down and to the east. The trees here were thick, unlike the plains nearer to the newly abandoned city where the need for lumber had created new-made meadows. The leaves were red and gold, bright as fire. The days were still warm enough at their height, but the nights were cold and getting colder. Soon it would be freezing before morning, and soon after that—a week, ten days—it wouldn’t be thawing by midday.
“We have two and a half thousand men,” Otah said. “And you’re telling me only eight can work these things?”
“They’re not good for much apart from hunting big animals that need killing fast. And there aren’t many who care to do that, if they can help it,” the huntsman said. “Why learn something with no use?”
Otah squatted and took one of the bows in his hand. It was heavier than it looked. It would be able to throw the bolts hard. Otah wondered how close they could afford to get to the road. Too far back, and the trees would offer as much protection to the Galts as cover for Otah’s men. Too close, and they’d be seen before the time came. It wouldn’t take much skill to hit the belly of a steam wagon if you were near enough. He tossed the bow from hand to hand as he weighed the risks.
“Go ask for volunteers,” Otah said. “Ask on both sides of the road. Anyone who says they’re willing, test them. Take the twenty best.”
“A man who doesn’t know what he’s doing with this can scrape the meat off his legs,” the huntsman said.
Otah stopped tossing the bow and turned to consider the man. The huntsman blushed, realizing what he had just said and to whom. He took a pose of obeisance and backed away from the two Khaiem, folding himself in among the trees and vanishing. The Khai Cetani sighed and took a pose of apology.
“He’s a good enough man,” he said, “but he forgets his place.”
“He isn’t wrong,” Otah said. “If this were a better time to have our orders questioned, I’d have listened to him. But then, if it wer
e a better time, we wouldn’t be out here.”
The last of the men and women fleeing Cetani had passed them five days before, carts and wagons and sacks slung over hunched backs. For five days, the combined forces of Cetani and Machi had haunted these woods, sharpening their weapons and planning the attack. And growing bored and hungry and cold. Two nights ago, Otah had ordered an end to all fires. The smoke would give them away, and the prospect of a half-sleeping man dropping a stray ember on the forest floor was too likely. The men grumbled, but enough of them saw the sense of it that the edict hadn’t been ignored. Not yet.
It wouldn’t be many more days, though. If the Galts didn’t come, the men would grow restive and careless, and when the time came, it would be the battle before the Dai-kvo again, only this time, the Galts would march into Machi. The bodies left in the streets wouldn’t be of poets. They would be the families of every man in the hidden clumps that dotted the hills. Their mothers, fathers, lovers, children. Everyone they knew. Everyone that remained. That was good for another day. Perhaps two.
“You’re thinking of the frost,” the Khai Cetani said. “You’re worried that it’s going to come and drop our screen of leaves before the Galts do.”
Otah smiled.
“No, actually, I’d been worrying about other things entirely. Thank you for distracting me.”
The Khai Cetani actually chuckled.
“I’ll go and speak with my leaders,” he said, clapping Otah on the shoulder. “Keep their spirits up.”
An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet) Page 31
