An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet)

by Daniel Abraham

  Servants brought maps of the city, of the low towns to the south, and the mountains and mines to the north. Machi hadn’t been built to withstand a war; there were no walls to defend, no pits that the enemy would have to bridge. The only natural barrier—the river—was already frozen solid enough to walk across. Any real defense would have to be on the black-cobbled streets, in the alleys and tunnels and towers. They talked late into the night, joined by the Khai Cetani and Ashua Radaani, Saya the blacksmith and Kiyan when she wasn’t out among the tunnels spreading the word and making preparations. Sinja’s shame, if it was still there, was hidden and his advice was well considered. By morning, even the Khai Cetani suffered interruption from Sinja-cha. Otah took it as another sign that the Khai had changed.

  If things went poorly, there was still the mine in the northern mountains. A few people could take shelter there. Eiah and Danat. Nayiit. If the binding failed, they could send Maati and Cehmai there as well, sneaking them out the back of the palace in a fast cart while the battle was still alive. Otah didn’t imagine that he would be there with them, and Sinja didn’t question him.

  Afterward, Otah looked in on his children, both asleep in their chambers. He found the library where Cehmai and Maati were still arguing over points of grammar so obscure he could hardly make sense of them. The night candle was guttering and spitting when Otah came at last to his bed. Kiyan sat with him in silence for a time. He touched her, tracing the curve of her cheek with the knuckles of one hand.

  “Do you believe Sinja?” he asked.

  “What part of it?”

  “Do you think that this General Gice really believes the andat are too dangerous to exist? That he wants them destroyed? What he said about killing the poet…I don’t know what to think of that.”

  “If burning the library is really one of his demands, then maybe,” Kiyan said. “I can’t think he’d want the books and scrolls burned if he hoped to bind more andat of his own.”

  Otah nodded, and lay back, his gaze turned toward the ceiling above him, dark as a moonless sky.

  “I’m not sure he’s wrong,” Otah said.

  Wordless, she drew his mouth to hers, guided his hands. He would have thought himself too tired for the physical act of love, but she proved him wrong. Afterward, she lay at his side, her fingertips tracing the ink that had been worked into his skin when he had been an eastern islander leading one of his previous lives. He slept deeply and with a feeling of peace utterly unjustified by the situation.

  He woke alone, called in the servants who bathed and dressed a Khai. Or, however briefly, an Emperor. Black robes, shot with red. Thick-woven wool layered with waxed silk. Robes of colors chosen for war and designed for cold. He took himself up through the great galleries, rising toward the surface and the light, being seen by the utkhaiem of both Machi and Cetani, by the common laborers hurrying to throw vast cartfuls of rubble into the minor entrances to the underground, by the merchants and couriers. The food sellers and beggars. The city.

  The sky was white and gray, vast and empty as a blank page. Crows commented to one another, their voices dispassionate and considering as low-town judges. High above, the towers of Machi loomed, and smoke rose from the sky doors—the sign that men were up there in the thin, distant air burning coal and wood to warm their hands, preparing for the battle. Otah stood on the steps of his palace, the bitter cold numbing his cheeks and biting at his nose and ears, the world smelling of smoke and the threat of snow. Distant and yet clear, like the voice of a ghost, bells began to ring in the towers and great yellow banners unfurled like the last, desperate Unfallen leaves of the vast stone trees.

  The Galts had come.

  SNOW FELL gently that morning, drifting down from the sheet of clouds above them in small, hard flakes. Balasar stood on the ridgeline of the hills south of the city. Frost had formed on the folds of his leather cloak, and the snow that landed on his shoulders didn’t melt. Before him, the stone towers rose, seeming closer than they were, more real than the snow-grayed mountains behind them. No enemy army had marched out to meet him, no party of utkhaiem marred the thin white blanket, still little more than ankle-deep, that separated Balasar from Machi. Behind him, his men were gathered around the steam wagons, pressed around the furnace grates that Balasar had ordered opened. The medics were already busy with men suffering from the cold. The captains and masters of arms were seeing that every clump of men was armed and armored. Balasar had been sure to mention the warm baths beneath Machi, the food supplies laid in those tunnels—enough, he assumed, to keep two cities alive for the winter.

  Smoke rose from the tops of the towers and from the city itself. Banners flew. He heard a horseman approaching him from behind, and he glanced back to see Eustin on a great bay mare. The beast’s breath was heavy and white as feathers. Balasar raised a hand, as Eustin cantered forward, pulled his mount to a halt, and saluted.

  “I’m ready, sir. I’ve a hundred men volunteered to come with me. With your permission.”

  “Of course,” Balasar said, then looked back at the towers. “Do you really think they’d do it? Sneak out. Run north and try to hide in the low towns out there?”

  “Best to have us there in the event,” Eustin said. “I could be wrong, sir. But I’d rather be careful now than have to spend the cold part of the season making raids. Especially if this is the warm bit.”

  Balasar shook his head. He didn’t believe that the Khai Machi Sinja had described to him would run. He would fight unfairly, he would launch attacks from ambush, he would have his archers aim for the horses. But Balasar didn’t think he would run. Still, the poets might. Or the Khai might send his children away for safety, if he hadn’t already. And there would be refugees. Eustin’s plan to block their flight was a wise one. He couldn’t help wishing that Eustin might have been with him here, at the end. They were the last of the men who had braved the desert, and Balasar felt a superstitious dread at sending him away.

  “Sir?”

  “Be careful,” Balasar said. “That’s all.”

  A trumpet called, and Balasar turned back to the city. Sure enough, there was something—a speck of black on the white. A single rider, fleeing Machi.

  “Well,” Eustin said. “Looks like Captain Ajutani’s come back after all. Give him my compliments.”

  Balasar smiled at the disdain in Eustin’s voice.

  “I’ll be careful too,” he said.

  It took something like half a hand for Sinja to reach the camp. Balasar noticed particularly that he didn’t turn to the bridge, riding instead directly over the frozen river. Eustin and his force were gone, looping around to the north, well before the mercenary captain arrived. Balasar had cups of strong kafe waiting when Sinja, his face pink and raw-looking from his ride, was shown into his tent.

  Balasar retuned his salute and gestured to a chair. Sinja took a pose of thanks—so little time back among the Khaiem and the use of formal pose seemed to have returned to the man like an accent—and sat, drawing a sheaf of papers from his sleeve. When they spoke, it was in the tongue of the Khaiem.

  “It went well?”

  “Well enough,” Sinja said. “I made a small mistake and had to do some very pretty dancing to cover it. But the Khai’s got few enough hopes, he wants to trust me. Makes things easier. Now, here. These are rough copies of the maps he’s used. They’re filling in the main entrances to the underground tunnels to keep us from bringing any single large force down at once. The largest paths they’ve left open are here,” Sinja touched the map, “and here.”

  “And the poets?”

  “They have the outline of a binding. I think they’re going to try it. And soon.”

  Balasar felt the sinking of dread in his belly, and strangely also a kind of peace. He wouldn’t have thought there was any part of him that was still held back, and yet that one small fact—the poets lived and planned and would recapture one of the andat now if they could—took away any choice he might still have had. He looked at th
e map, his mind sifting through strategies like a tiles player shuffling chits of bone.

  “There are men in the towers,” Balasar said.

  “Yes, sir,” Sinja said. “They’ll have stones and arrows to drop. You won’t be able to use the streets near them, but the range isn’t good, and they won’t be able to aim from so far up. Go a street or two over and keep by the walls, and we’ll be safe. There won’t be much resistance above ground. Their hope is to keep you at bay long enough for the cold to do their work for them.”

  Three forces, Balasar thought. One to clear out the houses and trading shops on the south, another to push in toward the forges and the metalworkers, a third to take the palaces. He wouldn’t take the steam wagons—he’d learned that much from Coal—so horsemen would be important for the approach, though they might be less useful if the fighting moved inside structures as it likely would. And they’d be near useless once they were underground. Archers wouldn’t have much effect. There were few long, clear open spaces in the city. But despite what Sinja said, Balasar expected there would be some fighting on the surface, so enough archers were mixed with the foot troops to fire back at anyone harassing them from the windows and snow doors of the passing buildings.

  “Thank you, Sinja-cha,” Balasar said. “I know how much doing this must have cost you.”

  “It needed doing,” Sinja said, and Balasar smiled.

  “I won’t insist that you watch this happen. You can stay at the camp or ride north and join Eustin.”

  “North?”

  “He’s taken it to guard. In case someone tries to slip away during the battle.”

  “That’s a good thought,” Sinja said, his tone somewhat rueful. “If it’s all the same, I’d like to ride with Eustin-cha. I know he hasn’t always thought well of me, and if anything does go wrong, I’d like to be where he can see I wasn’t the one doing it.”

  “A pretty thought,” Balasar said, chuckling.

  “You’re going to win,” Sinja said. It was a simple statement, but there was a weight behind it. A regret that soldiers often had in the face of loss, and only rarely in victory.

  “You thought of changing sides,” Balasar said. “While you were there, with all the people you know. In your old home. It was hard not to stand by them.”

  “That’s true,” Sinja said.

  “It wouldn’t have changed things. One more sword—even yours—wouldn’t have changed the way this battle falls.”

  “That’s why I came back,” Sinja said.

  “I’m glad you did,” Balasar said. “I’ve been proud to ride with you.”

  Sinja gave his thanks and took his leave. Balasar wrote out orders for the guard to accompany Sinja and other ones to deliver to Eustin. Then he turned to the maps of Machi. Truly there was little choice. The poets lived. Another night in the cold would mean losing more men. Balasar sat for a long moment, quietly asking God to let this day end well; then he walked out into the late-morning sun and gave the call to formation.

  It was time.

  Liat had expected panic—in herself and in the city. Instead there was a strange, tense calm. Wherever she went, she was greeted with civility and even pleasure. There were smiles and even laughter, and a sense of purpose in the face of doom. In the interminable night, she had been invited to join in three suppers, as many breakfasts, and bowls of tea without number. She had seen the highest of the utkhaiem sitting with metalsmiths and common armsmen. She had heard one of the famed choirs of Machi softly singing its Candles Night hymns. The rules of society had been suspended, and the human solidarity beneath it moved her to weep.

  She and Kiyan had taken the news first to the Khai Cetani and the captains of the battle that had once turned the Galts aside. When the plans had come from Otah’s small Council—where to place men, how to resist the Galts as they tried to overrun the city—the Khai Cetani had emerged with the duties of arming and armoring the men who could fight. As the underground city was emptied of anything that could be used as a weapon—hunting arrows, kitchen knives, even lengths of leather and string cut from beds and fashioned into slings—Liat had seen children too young to fight and men and women too old or frail or ill packed into side galleries, the farthest from the fighting. Cots lined the walls, piled with blankets. In some places, there were thick doors that could be closed and pegged from the inside. Though if the Galts ever came this far, it would hardly matter how difficult it was to open the doors. Everything would already be lost.

  Kiyan had made the physicians her personal duty—preparing one of the higher galleries for the care of the wounded and dying who would be coming back before the day’s end. They’d managed seventy beds and scavenged piles of cloth high as a man’s waist, ready to pack wounds. Bottles of distilled wine stood ready to ease pain and clean cuts. A firekeeper’s kiln, cauterizing irons already glowing in its maw, had been pulled in and the air was rich with the scent of poppy milk cooking to the black sludge that would take away pain at one spoonful and grant mercy with two. Liat walked between the empty beds, imagining them as they would shortly be—canvas soaked with gore. And still the panic didn’t come.

  By the entrance, one of the physicians was talking in a calm voice to twenty or so girls and boys no older than Eiah, too young to fight, but old enough to help care for the wounded. Kiyan was nowhere to be found, and Liat wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or dismayed.

  She sat on one of the beds and let her eyes close. She had not slept all the long night. She wouldn’t sleep until the battle was ended. Which meant, of course, that she might never sleep again. The thought carried a sense of unreality that was, she thought, the essential mood of the city. This couldn’t be happening. People went about the things that needed doing with a numb surprise that hell had bloomed up in the world. The men in their improvised leather armor and sharpened fire irons could no more fathom that there would be no tomorrow for them than Liat could. And so they were capable of walking, of speaking, of eating food. If they had been given time to understand, the Galts wouldn’t have faced half the fight that was before them now.

  “Mama-kya!” a man’s voice said close at hand. Nayiit’s. Liat’s eyes flew open.

  He stood in the aisle between beds, his eyes wide. Danat, pale-skinned and frightened, clung to her boy’s robes.

  “What are you doing still here?” Liat said.

  “Eiah,” Nayiit said. “I can’t find Eiah. She was in her rooms, getting dressed, but when I came back with Danat-cha, she was gone. She isn’t at the cart. I thought she might be here. I can’t leave without her.”

  “You should have left before the sun rose,” Liat said, standing up. “You have to leave now.”

  “But Eiah—”

  “You can’t wait for her,” Liat said. “You can’t stay here.”

  Danat began to cry, a high wailing that echoed against the high tiled ceiling and seemed to fill the world. Nayiit crouched and tried to calm the boy. Liat felt something warm and powerful unwind in her breast. Rage, perhaps. She hauled her son up by his shoulder and leaned in close.

  “Leave her,” she said. “Leave the girl and get out of this city now. Do you understand me?”

  “I promised Kiyan-cha that I’d—”

  “You can’t keep a girl fourteen summers old from being stupid. No one can. She made her decision when she left you.”

  “I promised that I’d look after them,” Nayiit said.

  “Then save the one you can,” Liat said. “And do it now, before you lose that chance too.”

  Nayiit blinked in something like surprise and glanced down at the still-wailing boy. His expression hardened and he took a pose of apology.

  “You’re right, Mother. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Go. Now,” Liat said. “You don’t have much time.”

  “I want my sister!” Danat howled.

  “She’s going to meet us there,” Nayiit said, and then swept the boy up in his arms with a grunt. Danat—eyes puffy and red, snot streaming f
rom his nose—pulled back to stare at Nayiit with naked mistrust. Nayiit smiled his charming smile. His father’s smile. Otah’s. “It’s going to be fine, Danat-kya. Your mama and papa and your sister. They’ll meet us at the cave. But we have to leave now.”

  “No they won’t,” the boy said.

  “You watch,” Nayiit said, lying cheerfully. “You’ll see. Eiah’s probably there already.”

  “But we have the cart.”

  “Yes, good thought,” Nayiit said. “Let’s go see the cart.”

  He leaned over, awkward with his burden of boy, and kissed Liat.

  “I’ll do better,” he murmured.

  You’re perfect, Liat wanted to say. You’ve always been the perfect boy.

  But Nayiit was rushing away now, his robes billowing behind him as he sped to the end of the gallery, Danat still on his hip, and turned to the north and vanished toward the back halls and the cart and the north where if the gods could hear Liat’s prayers, they would be safe.

  HOUSE SIYANTI had offered up its warehouses for the Khaiem—Machi and Cetani together—to use as their commandery. Five stories high and well back from the edge of the city, the wide, gently sloped roof had as clear a view of the streets as anything besides the great towers themselves. A passage led from the lower warehouse on the street level into the underground should there be a need to retreat into that shelter. In the great empty space—the warehouse emptied of its wares—Maati wrote the text of his binding on the smooth stone wall, pausing occasionally to rub his hands together and try to calm his unquiet mind. A stone stair led up to the second-floor snow doors, which stood open to let the sun in until they were ready to light the dozen glass lanterns that lined the walls. The air blew in bitterly cold and carried a few stray flakes of hard snow that had found their way down from the sky.

  Ideally, Maati would have spent the last day meditating on the binding—holding the nuances of each passage clear in his mind, creating step-by-step the mental structure that would become the andat. He had done his best, drinking black tea and reading through his outline for Corrupting-the-Generative. The binding looked solid. He thought he could hold it in his mind. With months or weeks—perhaps even days—he could have been sure. But this morning he felt scattered. The hot metal scent of the brazier, the wet smell of the snow, the falling gray snowflakes against a sky of white, the scuffing of Cehmai’s feet against the stone floor, and the occasional distant call of trumpet and drum as the armsmen and defenders of Machi took their places—everything seemed to catch his attention. And he could not afford distraction.