An Autumn War

by Daniel Abraham

  Sinja felt a genuine smile blooming on his lips. When he laughed, Balasar laughed with him.

  "Well," Sinja said. "As long as we're agreed on all that. Go ahead. Convince me that you're going to prevail against the poets."

  "They talked for what seemed like the better part of the evening. Outside, the storm slackened, the clouds broke. By the time a servant boy came to light the lanterns, a moon so full it seemed too heavy to rise glowed in the indigo sky. Gnats and midges buzzed through the open windows, ignored by both men as they discussed Balasar's intentions and strategies. The general was open and forthcoming and honest, and with every unfolding scheme, Sinja understood that his life was worth whatever Balasar Gice said it was worth. It was up to him to convince the general that letting him live after he'd heard all this wouldn't be a mistake. It was a clever tactic, all the more so because once Sinja understood the trick, it lost none of its power.

  Afterward, armsmen escorted him to a small, well-appointed bedchamber with windows too narrow to crawl out and a bar on the outside of the door. Sinja lay in the bed, listening to the nearly inaudible hiss and tick of the candle flame. His body felt poorly attached, likely to slip free of his mind at any moment. Light-headed, he washed his face in cold water, cracked his knuckles, anything to bring his mind to something real and immediate. Something the Galtic general had not just torn away.

  It was as if he had fallen into a nightmare, or woken to something worse than one. He felt as if he'd just watched a man he knew well die by violence. The Galt's plan would end the world he had known. If it worked. And in his bones, he knew it would.

  The hours passed, the night seeming to stretch on without end. Sinja paced his room or sat or lay sleepless on the bed, remembering the illness he had felt after his first battle. This was the same disease, back again. But the more he thought about it, the more his mind tracked across the maps he and the general had considered, the more his conviction grew.

  The turncoat poet and the army were only a part of it-in some ways the least. It was the general's audacity and certainty and caution. It was the force of his personality. Sinja had seen commanders and wardens and kings, and he could tell the sort that fated themselves to lose. Balasar Gice was going to win.

  And so, Sinja supposed with a sense of genuine regret, the right thing was to work for him.

  6

  The poet's house was warm, the scent of trees thick in the air. The false dawn, prolonged by the mountains to the east, had just come, the sun making its way above the peaks to bathe the world in light. Through the opened door, N9aati could hear the songs of birds deep in the yearly quest to draw mates to their nests. The dances and parties of the utkhaiem were much the same-who had the loveliest plumage, the more enticing song. There were fewer differences between men and birds than men liked to confess.

  He sat on a couch, watching Cehmai at one side of the small table and Stone-Made-Soft at the other. Between them was the game hoard with its worn lines and stones. The game had been central to the binding Manat [)oru had performed generations ago that first brought Stone-blade-Soft into existence, and as part of the legacy he bore, Cehmai had to play the game again-white stones moving forward against the black-as a reaffirmation of his control over the spirit. Fortunately, Nlanat Doru had also made Stone-Made-Soft a terrible player. Cehmai tapped his fingertips against the wood and shifted a black stone in the center of the hoard toward the left. Stone-Made-Soft frowned, its wide face twisted in concentration.

  "No word yet," Cehmai said. "It's early days, though."

  "What do you think he'll do?" Maati asked.

  "I'm trying to think, please," the andat rumbled. "They ignored it. Cehmai leaned back in his seat. The years had treated him kindly. The fresh-faced, talented young man Maati had met when he first came to Machi was still there. If there was the first dusting of gray in the boy's hair, if the lines at the corners of his mouth were deeper now, and less prone to vanish when he relaxed, it did nothing to take away from the easy smile or the deep, grounded sense of self that Cehmai had always had. And even the respect he had for Maati-no longer a dread-touched awe, but still profound in its way-had never failed with familiarity.

  "I'm afraid he'll do the thing," Cehmai said. "I suppose I'm also afraid that he won't. There's not a good solution."

  "He could take a middle course," Maati said. "Demand that the Gaits hand back Riaan on the threat of taking action. If the Dai-kvo tells them that he knows, it might be enough."

  The andat lifted a thick-fingered hand, gently touched a white stone, and slid it forward with a hiss. Cehmai glanced over, considered, and pushed the black stone he'd moved before back into the space it had come from. The andat coughed in frustration and set its head on balled fists, staring at the hoard.

  "It's Odd," Cehmai said. "There was a time when I was at the school-before I'd even taken the black robes, so early on. There was a pigeon that had taken up residence in my cohort's rooms. Nasty thing. It would flap around through the air and drop feathers and shit on us all, and every time we waved it outside, it would come hack. Then one day, one of the boys got lucky. He threw a hoot at the poor thing and broke its wing. Well, we knew we were going to have to kill it. Even though it had been nothing but annoyance and filth, it was hard to break its neck."

  "Were you the one that did it?" Maati asked.

  Cehmai took a pose of acknowledgment.

  "It felt like this," the younger poet said. "I won't enjoy this, if it's what we do."

  The andat looked up from the board.

  "Has it ever struck you people how arrogant you are?" it asked, huge hands taking an attitude of query that bordered on accusation. "You're talking of slaughtering a nation. Thousands of innocent people destroyed, lands made barren, mountains leveled and the sea pulled up over them like a blanket. And you're feeling sorry for yourself that you had to wring a bird's neck as a boy? How can anyone have feelings that delicate and that numbed both at the same time?"

  "It's your move," Cehmai said.

  Stone-Made-Soft sighed theatrically-it had no need for breath, so every sigh it made was a comment-and turned back toward the game. It was essentially over. The andat had lost again as it always did, but they played to the last move, finishing the ritual humiliation once again.

  "We're off to the North," Cehmai said as he put the stones hack into their trays. ""There's a new vein the Radaani want to explore, but I'm not convinced it's possible. Their engineers are swearing that the structure won't collapse, but those mountains are getting near lacework."

  "Eight generations is a long time," Maati agreed. "Even without help, the mines would have become a maze by now."

  "I fear the day an earthquake comes," Cehmai said as he stood and stretched. "One shake, and half these mountains will fold up flat, I'd swear it."

  `°I'hen I suppose we'd have to spend months digging up the bodies," Maati said.

  "Not really," the andat said. Its voice was placid again, now that the game was ended. "If we make it soft enough, the bodies will float up through it. If stone is water, almost anything floats. We could have a whole field of stone flat as a lake, with mine dogs and men popping up out of it like bubbles."

  "What a pleasant thought," Cehmai said, gently sarcastic. "And here I was wondering why we weren't invited to more dinners. And you, Maati-kvo? What's your day?"

  "More work in the library," Maati said. "I want the place in order. If the Dai-kvo calls for me ..."

  "He will," Cehmai said. "You can count on that."

  "If he does, I want the place left in order. A sane order that someone else could make sense of. Baarath had the thing put together like a puzzle. 'look me three years just to make sense of it, and even then some of it I just went through book by book and made my own classifications."

  "Well, he had a different opinion than yours," Cehmai said. "He wanted the library to be a place to bury secrets, not display them. It was how he made himself feel as if he mattered. I don't suppose I can blame him
too much for that."

  "I suppose not," Maati agreed.

  The three of them walked along the wooded path that led to the palaces of the Khai. The stone towers of Machi rose high above the city, bright with the light of morning, and the smoke of the forges plumed up from the metalworkers' district in the south. Maati kept company with Cehmai and Stone-Made-Soft as far as the compound of House Radaani, where a litter and donkeys were waiting. They took poses of farewell, even the andat, and Maati sat on the steps of the compound to watch them lumber away to the North.

  In the days since he, Otah, and Liat had broken the news to Cehmai, Maati had found himself less and less able to do his work. The familiar stacks and shelves and galleries of the library were uncomforting. The songs of the singing slaves in the gardens seemed to pull at him when he caught a phrase of their melodies. He found himself seeking out food when he wasn't hungry, wine when he had no thirst. He walked the streets of the city and the paths of the palaces more than he had in living memory, and even when his knees ached, he found himself tinconsciously rising to pace the rooms of his apartments. Restless. He had become restless.

  In part it was the knowledge that Liat and Nayiit were in the city, in the palaces even. At any time, he could seek them out, invite them to eat with him or talk with him. Nayiit, whom he had not known since the boy was shorter than little Danat was now. Liat, whose breath and body he had once said he would never he whole without. They were here at last.

  In part it was the anticipation of a courier from the Dai-kvo, whether about his own work or Liat's case against the Galts. And of the two, he found the Galtic issue the lesser. Liat's argument was enough to convince him that they did have a rogue poet, but the chances that he would bind a new andat seemed remote. There in the middle of Galt without references, without the Dai-kvo or his fellow poets to work through the fine points of the binding, the most likely thing was that the man would try, fail, and die badly. It was a problem that would solve itself. And if the Dai-kvo took Liat's view and turned the andat loose against Galt, the chances of tragedy coming to the cities of the Khaiem was even less.

  No, his unease came more from the prospect of his own success. He had lived so long as a failure that the prospect of success disturbed him. He knew that his heart should have been singing. He should have been drunk with pride.

  And yet he found himself waking in the night, knotted with anger. In the darkness of his room, he would wake with the night candle over half burned, and stare at the netting above his bed as it shifted in barely felt drafts. The targets of his rage seemed to shift; one night he might wake with a list of the wrongs done him by Liat, the next with the conviction that he had suffered insult at the hands of Otah or the I)ai-kvo. With the coming of dawn, the fit would pass, insubstantial as a dream, the complaints that had haunted him in darkness thin as cheesecloth in the light.

  And still, he was restless.

  He made his way slowly through the palaces and out to the city itself. The black-cobbled streets were alive with people. Carts of vegetables and early berries wound from the low towns toward the markets in the center of the city. Lambs on rough hemp leads trotted in ignorance toward the butchers' stalls. And wherever he went, a path was made for him, people took poses of respect and welcome and he returned them by habit. He paused at a cart and bought a meal of hot peppered beef and sweet onions wrapped in waxed paper. The young man running the cart refused to accept his lengths of copper. Another small amenity granted to the other poet of Machi. Maati took a pose of thanks as best he could with one hand full of the food.

  The towers of Machi seemed to touch the lowest clouds. It had been years since Maati had gone up one of the great towers. He remembered the platform swaying, its great arm-thick chains clanking against the stones as he rose. That far above the city, he had felt he was looking out from a mountain peak-the valley spread below so vast he'd imagined he could almost see the ocean. Not remotely truth, but what it felt like all the same. Looking at the towers now, he remembered what Cehmai had said. If there were an earthquake, the towers would certainly fall. For an instant, he imagined the stones pattering down in a deadly rain, the long, slumped piles of rubble that would lie where they fell. The corpses of giants.

  He shook himself, pushing the darkness away, and turned back toward the palaces. He wondered, as he trundled toward the library, where Nayiit was today. He had seen the boy-a man old enough to have a child of his own, and still in Maati's mind a boy-several times since his arrival. Dinners, dances, formal meetings. They had not yet had a conversation as father and son. Maati wondered whether he wanted them to, or if the reminder of what might have been would be too uncomfortable for them both. Perhaps he could track the boy down, show him through the city for a day. Or through the tunnels. There were a few teahouses still in business down in their winter quarters. That was the sort of thing only a local would know. Maybe the boy would be interested....

  He paused as he rounded the slow curving path toward the library. Two forms were sitting on its wide stone steps, but neither of them was Nayiit. The older, rounder woman wore robes of seafoam green embroidered with yellow. Liat's hair was still as dark as when she'd been a girl sitting beside him on a cart leaving Saraykeht behind them. Her head still took the same just-off angle when she was speaking to someone to whom she was trying especially to he kind.

  The younger looked thin and coltish beside her. Her robes were deep blue shot with white, and Eiah had her hair up, held in place with thick silvered pins that glittered even from here. She was the first to catch sight of him, and her thin arm rose, waving him nearer. He was too thick about the belly these days to trot or he would have.

  "We've been waiting for you," Eiah said as he drew near. Her tone was accusing. Liat glanced up at him, amused.

  "I was seeing Cehmai off on his journey," Maati said. "He's going to the Radaani mines in the North. A new vein, I think. But I did take the longer way hack. If I'd known you were waiting, I'd have been here sooner.

  Eiah considered this, and then without word or gesture visibly accepted the apology.

  "We've been talking about marriage," Liat said.

  "I)id you know that Liat-cha never got married to anyone? Nayiit's her son. She had a baby, but she's never been wed?"

  "Well, the two things aren't perfectly related, you know," Maati began, but Eiah rolled her eyes and took a pose that unasked the question.

  "Eiah-cha and I were going to the high gardens. I've packed some bread and cheese. We thought you might care to join us?"

  "You've already eaten," Eiah said, pointing to the waxed paper in his hand.

  ""Phis?" Maati said. "No, I was feeding this to the pigeons. Wait a moment, I'll get a jug of wine and some bowls...

  "I'm old enough to drink wine," Eiah said.

  "Three howls, then," Maati said. "Just give me a moment."

  He walked back to his apartments, feeling something very much like relief. The afternoon trapped with old scrolls and codices, books and frail maps was banished. He was saved from it. He threw the waxed paper with the remaining onions into a corner where the servants would clean it, took a thick earthenware jug of wine off his shelves, and dropped three small wine bowls into his sleeve. On his way back out to the steps, where he was certain no one could see him, he trotted.

  DANAT'S COUGH HAD RETURNED.

  Otah had filled his day playing Khai Machi. He had reviewed the preparations for the Grand Audience he was already past due holding. There was an angry letter from the Khai "Ian-Sadar asking for an explanation of Otah's decision not to take his youngest daughter as one of his wives that he responded to with as much aplomb as he could muster. His Master of Stone-responsible for keeping the books of the cityhad discovered that two of the forms from which silver lengths were struck had been tampered with and reported the progress of his investigation into the matter. The widow of Adaiit Kamau demanded an audience, insisting again that her husband had been murdered and demanding justice in his name. T
he priests asked for money for the temple and the procession of the beasts. A young playwright, son of Oiad How of House How, had composed an epic in the honor to the Khai Machi, and asked permission to perform it. Permission and funding. The representative of the tinsmiths petitioned for a just distribution of coal, as the ironworkers had been taking more than their share. The ironworkers' explaining that they worked iron, not-sneering and smiling as if Otah would understand-tin. And on and on and on until Otah was more than half tempted to grab a passing servant, put him on the black lacquer chair, and let the city take its chances. And at the end, with all the weight of the city and the impending death of Galt besides, the thing that he could not face was that Danat's cough had returned.

  The nursery glowed by the light of the candles. Kiyan sat on the raised bed, talking softly to their son. Great iron statues of strange, imagined beasts had been kept in the fire grates all day and pulled out when night fell, and as he quietly walked forward, Otah could feel the heat radiating from them. The physician's assistant-a young man with a serious expression-took a respectful pose and walked quietly from the room, leaving the family alone.

  Otah stepped up to the bedside. Danat's eyes, half closed in drowse, shifted toward him and a smile touched Otah's mouth.

  "I got sick again, Papa-kya," he said. His voice was rough and low; the familiar sign of a hard day.

  "Don't talk, sweet," Kiyan said, smoothing I)anat's forehead with the tips of her fingers. "You'll start it again."

  "Yes," Otah said, sitting across from his wife, taking his son's hand. "I heard. But you've been sick before, and you've gotten better. You'll get better again. It's good for boys to be a hit ill when they're young. It gets all the hardest parts out of the way early. Then they can be strong old men.