He put one foot in front of the other, his mind growing empty with the rhythm. His muscles slowly warmed. The pain retreated from his ears. With enough effort, the air became almost comfortable. The sun rose quickly behind him, as if in a hurry to finish its day’s passage and return the world to darkness.
When he paused to relieve himself on a tree—his piss steaming in its puddle—he took off the leather cloak. If he got too warm, he’d start to sweat. Soaking through his inner robes was an invitation to death. He wondered how many of Balasar’s men knew that. With his sad luck, all of them.
They wouldn’t see a low town today. They had overrun one yesterday—the locals surprised to find themselves surrounded by horsemen intent on keeping any word from slipping out to the North. There would be another town in a day or two. If Sinja was lucky, it might mean fresh meat for dinner. The rations set aside by the townsmen to see them through the winter might feed the army for as much as half a day.
They paused at midday, the cooks using the furnaces of the steam wagons to warm the bread and boil water for tea. Sinja wasn’t hungry but he ate anyway. The tea was good at least. Overbrewed and bitter, but warm. He sat on the broad back of a steam wagon, and was preparing himself for the second push of the day and estimating how many miles they had covered since morning when the general arrived.
Balasar rode a huge black horse, its tack worked with silver. As small as the man was, he still managed to look like something from a painting.
“Sinja-cha,” Balasar Gice said in the tongue of the Khaiem. “I was hoping to find you here.”
Sinja took a pose of respect and welcome.
“I’d say winter’s come,” the general said.
“No, Balasar-cha. If this was real winter, you could tell because we’d all be dead by now.”
Balasar’s eyes went harder, but his wry smile didn’t fade. It wasn’t anger that made him what he was. It was determination. Sinja found himself unsurprised. Anger was too weak and uncertain to have seen them all this far.
“I’d have you ride with us,” the general said.
“I’m not sure Eustin-cha would enjoy that,” Sinja said, then switched to speaking in Galtic. “But if it’s what you’d like, sir, I’m pleased to do it.”
“You have a horse?”
“Several. I’ve been having them walked. I’ve got good enough fighters among my men, but I can’t speak all that highly of them as grooms. A horse with a good lather up in this climate and with these boys to care for it is going to be tomorrow night’s dinner.”
“I have a servant or two I could spare,” Balasar said, frowning. Sinja took a pose that both thanked and refused.
“I’d take the loan of one of your horses, if you have one ready to ride. Otherwise, I’ll need to get one of mine.”
“I’ll have one sent,” Balasar said. Sinja saluted, and the general made his way back to the main body of the column. Sinja had just washed down the last of the bread with the dregs of his tea when a servant arrived with a saddled brown mare and orders to hand it over to him. Sinja rode slowly past the soldiers, grim-faced and uncomfortable, preparing for their trek or else already marching. Balasar rode just after the vanguard with Eustin and whichever of his captains he chose to speak with. Sinja fell in beside the general and made his salute. Balasar returned it seriously. Eustin only nodded.
“You served the Khai Machi,” Balasar said.
“Since before he was the Khai, in fact,” Sinja said.
“What can you tell me about him?”
“He has a good wife,” Sinja said. Eustin actually smiled at the joke, but Balasar’s head tilted a degree.
“Only one wife?” he asked. “That’s odd for the Khaiem, isn’t it?”
“And only one son. It is odd,” Sinja said. “But he’s an odd man for a Khai. He spent his boyhood working as a laborer and traveling through the eastern islands and the cities. He didn’t kill his family to take the chair. He’s been considered something of an embarrassment by the utkhaiem, he’s upset the Dai-kvo, and I think he’s looked on his position as a burden.”
“He’s a poor leader then?”
“He’s better than they deserve. Most of the Khaiem actually like the job.”
Balasar smiled and Eustin frowned. They understood.
“He hasn’t posted scouts,” Eustin pointed out. “He can’t be much of a war leader.”
“No one would post scouts this late in the season,” Sinja said. “You might as well fault him for not keeping a watch on the moon in case we launched an attack from there.”
“And how was it that a son of the Khaiem found himself working as a laborer?” Balasar asked, eager, it seemed, to change the subject.
As he swayed gently on the horse, Sinja told the story of Otah Machi. How he had walked away from the Dai-kvo to take a false name as a petty laborer. The years in Saraykeht, and then in the eastern islands. How he had taken part in the gentleman’s trade, met the woman who would be his wife, and then been caught up in a plot for his father’s chair. The uncertain first year of his rule. The plague that had struck the winter cities, and how he had struggled with it. The tensions when he had refused marriage to the daughter of the Khai Utani. Reluctantly, Sinja even told of his own small drama, and its resolution. He ended with the formation of the small militia, and its being sent away to the west, and to Balasar’s service.
Balasar listened through it all, probing now and again with questions or comments or requests for Sinja to amplify on some point or aspect of the Khai Machi. Behind them, the sun slid down toward the horizon. The air began to cool, and Sinja pulled his leather cloak back over his shoulders. Dark would be upon them soon, and the moon had still not risen. Sinja expected the meeting to come to its close when they stopped to make camp, but Balasar kept him near, pressing for more detail and explanation.
Sinja knew better than to dissemble. He was here because he had played well up to this point, but if his loyalty to the Galts was ever going to break, it would be soon and all three men knew it. If he held back, hesitated, or gave information that seemed intended to mislead, he would fall from Balasar’s grace. So he told his story as clearly and truthfully as he could. There wasn’t a great deal that was likely to be of use to the general anyway. Sinja had, after all, never seen Otah lead an army. If he’d been asked to guess how such an effort would end, he’d have been proved wrong already.
They ate their evening meal in Balasar’s tent of thick hide beside a brazier of glowing coals that made the potato-and-salt-pork soup taste smoky. When at last Sinja found himself without more to say, the questions ended. Balasar sighed deeply.
“He sounds like a good man,” he said. “I’m sorry I won’t get to meet him.”
“I’m sure he’d say the same,” Sinja said.
“Will the utkhaiem turn against him? If we make the same offers we made in Utani and Tan-Sadar, can we avoid the fighting?”
“After he beat your men? It’s not a wager I’d take.”
Balasar’s eyes narrowed, and Sinja felt his throat go a bit tighter, half-convinced he’d said something wrong. But Balasar only yawned, and the moment passed.
“How would you expect him to defend his city?” Eustin asked, breaking a stick of bread. “Will he come out to meet us, or hide and make us dig him out?”
“Dig, I’d expect. He knows the streets and the tunnels. He knows his men will break if he puts them in the field. And he’ll likely put men in the towers to drop rocks on us as we pass. Taking Machi is going to be unpleasant. Assuming we get there.”
“You still have doubts?” Balasar asked.
“I’ve never had doubts. One bad storm, and we’re all dead men. I’m as certain of that as I ever was.”
“And you still chose to come with us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
Sinja looked at the burning coals. The deep orange glow and the white dust of ash. Why exactly he had come was a question he’d asked himself more than on
ce since they’d left Tan-Sadar. He could say it was the contract, but that wasn’t the truth and all three of them knew it. He flexed his fingers, feeling the ache in his knuckles.
“There’s something I want there,” he said.
“You’d like to be the new Khai Machi?”
“In a way,” Sinja said. “Something I’d ask from you instead of my share of the spoils, at least.”
Balasar nodded, already knowing what Sinja was driving toward. “The Lady Kiyan,” he said.
“I don’t want her raped or killed,” Sinja said. “When the city falls, I’d like her handed over to me. I’ll see she doesn’t do anything stupid or destructive.”
“Her husband and children,” Eustin said. “We will have to kill them.”
“I know it,” Sinja said, “but she’s not from a high family. She’s got no standing aside from her marriage. She won’t pose a threat.”
“And for her sake, you’d betray the Khai?” Balasar asked.
Sinja smiled. This question, at least, he could answer honestly and without fear.
“For her sake, sir, I’d betray the gods.”
Balasar looked at Eustin, his eyebrows rising as if asking an unvoiced question. Eustin considered Sinja for a long moment, then shrugged. Grunting, Balasar shifted and pulled a wooden box from under his cot. He took a stoppered flask from it—good Nantani porcelain—and three small drinking bowls. With growing unease, Sinja waited as Balasar poured out water-clear rice wine in silence, then handed one bowl to Eustin, the next to him.
“I have a favor to ask of you as well,” Balasar said.
Sinja drank. The wine was rich and clean and made his chest bloom with warmth, but not so much he lost the tightness in his throat and between his shoulders.
“We can go in,” Eustin said. “Waves of us. Small numbers, one after the other, until we’ve dug out every nook and cranny in the city. But we’ll lose men. A lot of them.”
“Most,” Balasar said. “We’d win. I’m sure of that. But it would take half of my men.”
“That’s bad,” Sinja said. “But there is another plan here, isn’t there?”
Balasar nodded.
“We can send a man in who can tell us what the defenses are. Who can send word or sign. If we’re lucky, perhaps even a man who can help with planning the defense. And, in return, take the woman he wants.”
Sinja felt his mind start to spin. The rice wine made it a bit harder to think, but a bit easier to grin. It was ridiculous, except that it made sense. He should have anticipated this. He should have known.
“You want to send me in? As a spy?”
“Take a couple good horses in the morning, and ride hard for the city,” Eustin said. “You’ll arrive a few days ahead of us. You were the Khai’s advisor before. He’ll listen to you, or at least let you listen to him. When the time comes for the attack, you guide us.”
The captain made a small gesture with one hand, as if what he’d said was simple. Go into Machi, betray Otah and everyone else he’d known this last decade. If I turn against the general, Sinja thought, it’ll be a bad death when these men find me.
“It will be faster this way,” Balasar said. “Fewer people will die on both sides. And, because you ask, the woman is yours. Safe and unharmed if I can do it.”
“I have your word on that?” Sinja asked.
Balasar took a pose that accepted an oath. It wasn’t quite the right vocabulary, but it carried the meaning. Sinja felt unpleasantly like he was looking down over a cliff. His head swam a little, and the tightness in his body fell to knotting his gut. He held out his bowl and Balasar refilled it.
“I’ll understand if it’s too much,” Balasar said, his voice soft. “It will make things easier for both sides and it won’t change the way the battle falls, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a terrible thing to ask of you. Take a few days to sit with it if you’d like.”
“No,” Sinja said. “I don’t need time. I’ll do the thing.”
“You’re sure?” Eustin asked.
Sinja drained his cup in a gulp. He could feel the flush starting to grow in his neck and cheeks, the nausea starting in his belly and the back of his throat. It was strong wine and a bad night coming.
“It needs doing, and it’s the price I asked,” Sinja said. “So I’ll do it.”
CEHMAI SAT forward in his chair. The white marble walls of their workspace glowed with candlelight, but Maati didn’t find the brightness reassuring. He was sitting as quietly as he could manage on a red and violet embroidered cushion, waiting. Cehmai lifted one of the wide yellow pages, paused, and turned it over. Maati saw the younger poet’s lips moving as he shaped some phrase from the papers. Maati restrained himself from asking which. Interruptions wouldn’t make this go any faster.
The simple insight that Eiah had given him that night in the baths had taken the better part of two weeks to work into a draft worthy of consideration. Fitting the grammars so that the nuances of corruption and continuance—destruction and creation, or more precisely the destruction of creation—reinforced one another had been tricky. And the extra obstacle of fitting in the structures to protect himself should things go amiss had likely tacked on an extra three or four days to the process.
And still, it had taken him only weeks. Not years, not even months. Weeks. The structure of the binding was laid out now. Corruption-of-the-Generative, called Sterile. The death of the Galt’s crops. The gelding of its men. The destruction of its women’s wombs. Once he had seen the trick of it, the binding had flowed from his pen.
It had been as if some small voice at the back of his mind was whispering the words, and he’d only had to write them down. Even now, squatting on this damnable cushion, his back aching, his feet cold, waiting for Cehmai to read over the last of the changes, he felt half drunk from the work. He was a poet. All the things that had happened in his life to bring him to this place at this time had built toward these days, and the dry pages that hissed and shushed as Cehmai slid them across each other. Maati bit his lip and did not interrupt.
It seemed like days, but Cehmai came to the final page, fingertips tracing the lines Maati had written there, paused, and set it down with the others. Maati leaned forward, his hands taking a querying pose. Cehmai frowned and gently shook his head.
“No?” Maati asked. Something between rage and dismay shot through his belly, only to vanish when Cehmai spoke.
“It’s brilliant,” he said. “It’s a first draft, but it’s a very, very good one. I don’t think there are many things we’d have to adjust. A few to make it easier to pass on, perhaps. But we can work with those. No, Maati-kvo, I think this is likely to work. It’s just…”
“Just?”
Cehmai’s frown deepened. His fingertips tapped cautiously on the pages, as if he were testing an iron pot, afraid it would be hot enough to burn. He sighed.
“I’ve never seen an andat fashioned to be a weapon,” he said. “There was a book that the Dai-kvo had that dated from the fall of the Second Empire, but he never let anyone look at it. I don’t know.”
“There’s a war, Cehmai-kya,” Maati said. “They killed the Dai-kvo and everyone in the village. The gods only know how many other men they’ve slaughtered. How many women they’re raped. What’s on those pages, they’ve earned.”
“I know,” Cehmai said. “I do know that. It’s just I keep thinking of Stone-Made-Soft. It was capable of terrible things. I can’t count the times I had to hold it back from collapsing a mine or a building. It had no respect for the lives of men. But there was no particular malice in it either. This…Sterile…it seems different.”
Maati clamped his jaw. He was tired, that was all. They both were. It was no reason to be annoyed with Cehmai, even if his criticism of the binding was something less than useful. Maati smiled the way he imagined a teacher at the school smiling. Or the Dai-kvo. He took a pose that offered instruction.
“Cutting shears and swords are both sharp. Before the war, you and
I and the men like us? We made cutting shears,” he said, and gestured to the papers. “That’s our first sword. It’s only natural that you’d feel uneasy with it; we aren’t men of violence. If we were, the Dai-kvo would never have chosen us, would he? But the world’s a different place now, and so we have to be willing to do things that we wouldn’t have before.”
“Then it makes you uneasy too?” Cehmai asked. Maati smiled. It didn’t make him uneasy at all, but he could see it was what the man needed to hear.
“Of course it does,” he said. “But I can’t allow that to stop me. The stakes are too high.”
Cehmai seemed to collapse on himself. The dark eyes flickered, searching, Maati thought, for some other path. But in the end, the man only sighed.
“I think you’ve found the thing, Maati-kvo. There are some passages I’d want to think about. There might be ways we can refine it. But I think we’ll be ready to try it well before the thaw.”
A tension that Maati hadn’t known he was carrying released, and he grinned like a boy. He could imagine himself as the controller of the only andat in the world. He and Cehmai would become the new teachers, and under their protection, they would raise up a new generation of poets to bind more of the andat. The cities would be safe again. Maati could feel it in his bones.
The rest of the meeting went quickly, as if Cehmai wanted to be away from the library as quickly as he could. Maati supposed the prospect of binding Sterile was more disturbing to Cehmai than to him. He hoped, as he walked back up the stairways and corridors to his rooms, that Cehmai would be able to adjust to the new way of things. It couldn’t be easy for him. He was at heart a gentle man, and the world was a darker place than it had been.
Maati’s mind was still involved in its contemplation of darkness when he stepped into his room. At first, he didn’t notice that Liat was there, seated on his bed. She coughed—a wet, close sound close to a sob. He looked up.
An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet) Page 35
