Seasons of War

by Daniel Abraham

  He had known that his daughter was angry with him. He had encouraged the high families to import wives for their sons. They had come from Bakta, Eymond, Eddensea. Women of middling birth commanded huge dowries. The coffers of the utkhaiem had dropped, but a handful of children had been born. A few dozen, perhaps, in every city. It hadn’t been enough. And so he’d conceived the plan to join with Galt, old enemies made one people. Yes, it left behind a generation of Khaiate women. And Galtic men, for that. No doubt they would feel angered, lost, discarded. It was a small price to pay for a future.

  The Comfort House Empire, she’d called it the last time they’d spoken. And her father, her father, the Procurer King. She said it, and she spat.

  Thinking of it stung.

  A flock of gulls wheeled below him and to the south. Lemon rice and river trout rested warm on his fingers and in his mouth. When he was alone, he still ate like a laborer.

  He wondered if he had been wrong. Perhaps in the approach he had taken, trying to find women capable of bearing children for the cities. Perhaps in speaking to Eiah about it in the terms he’d used. Perhaps in failing to accept her criticism, in speaking harshly. Eiah had accused him of turning his back on the women whom Sterile had wounded because they were inconvenient. Eiah was one of those women, and the injury she’d suffered was as deep as any of his own. Deeper.

  It might, he supposed, have been enough to turn her against him. She had always been close to Maati. She had spent long evenings at the library of Machi, where Maati had made his home. She had known Nayiit, the man that Otah had fathered and Maati had called son. In the many years that he had struggled with being merely the Khai Machi, Eiah had made a friend and an uncle of Maati Vaupathai. There was little reason to believe that she would withhold her loyalty from Maati now.

  The wheeling gulls landed, leaving the sky to itself. The fleet had long passed the horizon, and Otah wished he had some magical glass that would let him see it still. It was a short enough voyage to Chaburi-Tan. Shorter if the pirates and raiders came out to confront them. He wished Sinja had stayed behind. In the failing light, the gaudy sunset turning to gray, he wanted his old friend back and was only half-startled to realize he meant Maati as much as Sinja.

  A servant emerged from the darkened arches at the pavilion’s edge and came forward. Otah knew the news he carried before he spoke. Idaan Machi had answered his summons and awaited at his pleasure. Otah ordered that she be brought to him. Her and more food.

  Do what needs doing, Sinja said from his memory.

  He heard her soft footsteps and didn’t turn around. His belly was knotted, and the fish before him smelled suddenly unpleasant. Idaan walked past him and stood at the edge of the pavilion, looking down the height of the tower. Her outer robe was dark, the hem fluttering as if she were about to fall or take flight. When she turned back to him, her expression was mild.

  ‘Lovely view,’ she said. ‘But still nothing beside Machi. Do you miss the towers?’

  ‘No,’ Otah said. ‘Not really. They’re too cold to use in the winter, too hot in the summer, and the tracks they use to haul things up the side have to be replaced every fifth year. They’re the best example I know of doing a thing just to show it’s possible.’

  Idaan lowered herself to a cushion opposite him. The fading glow of western clouds silhouetted her.

  ‘True enough,’ she said. ‘Still. I miss them.’

  She considered the bowls of food before them, then took a scoop of rice and fish on two curled fingers. Otah smiled. His sister chewed appreciatively and took a pose that opened a negotiation.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘There’s something I want from you.’

  Idaan nodded, but didn’t speak. Otah squinted out into the wide air above Saraykeht.

  ‘There’s too much,’ he said. ‘Even turning everything I can manage over to Sinja and Danat and Ashua Radaani, there’s too much.’

  ‘Too much to allow for what?’ She knew, he thought, what was coming.

  ‘Too much for me to leave,’ he said. ‘Being Emperor is like being the most honored slave in the world. I can do anything, except that I can’t. I can go anywhere, except that I mustn’t.’

  ‘It sounds awful.’

  ‘Don’t laugh. I’m not saying I’d rather be lifting crates at the seafront, but senior overseer of a courier service? Something with a few dozen chests of silver lengths and a favorite teahouse.’

  ‘Fewer meetings like this one,’ Idaan suggested.

  ‘That,’ Otah said. ‘Gods yes, that.’

  Idaan scooped up another mouthful of rice, chewed slowly, and let her dark eyes play across his face. He didn’t know what she saw there. After a swallow of water and a small sigh, she spoke.

  ‘You want me to find Eiah,’ she said.

  ‘You know what Maati looks like,’ he said. ‘You have the experience of living among low towns and hiding who you are. You understand poets as well as anyone alive, I’d guess.’

  ‘And I know what I’m looking for,’ she said, her voice light and conversational. ‘Anyone else, and you’d have to bring them into your confidence. Explain what you wanted to know and why. Well, Sinja-cha perhaps, but you’ve sent him off the other direction.’

  This is madness, Otah thought but didn’t say. She is a killer. She was born without a conscience. However she may seem now, she slaughtered her brothers and the father she loved. She’s got the eyes of a pit hound and the heart of a butcher.

  ‘Will you do it?’ he said aloud.

  Idaan didn’t answer at once. A gust of wind pushed at her sleeve and drew a lock of gray hair out behind her like a banner from the mast of a fighting ship. Otah’s hands ached, and he forced his fists to open by an act of will.

  ‘Maati hunted me once,’ she said, hardly louder than the wind. ‘It only seems fair to return the favor.’

  Otah closed his eyes. Perhaps it was an empty task. Eiah might very well have nothing to do with Maati’s schemes. She might truly be working with some low-town physician, hoping through her own hard work to atone for her father’s misdeeds. For his misdeeds. When he looked up, his sister was considering him with hooded eyes.

  ‘I will have a cart and driver ready for you in the morning,’ he said. ‘You’ll be able to take whatever fresh horses or food you need along the way. I’ve written the orders up already.’

  ‘All the horses and food we need along the way?’ Idaan said. ‘You’re right. Being Emperor must be raw hell.’

  He didn’t answer her. She finished the rice and fish. The clouds behind her had gone dark, and since neither had called for candles or torches, the only light was the cold blue moon and the fiery embers in the brazier. Idaan took a pose that accepted his charge.

  ‘You don’t want to negotiate payment?’ he said.

  ‘I’m just pleased you’ve decided to do the thing. I was afraid you’d put it off until it was too late,’ Idaan said. ‘One question, though. If I find her, and she is the one, what action should I take?’

  Meaning should Idaan kill her, kill Maati and as many of the other fledgling poets as she could to prevent them from accomplishing their aims.

  Do what needs doing.

  ‘Nothing,’ Otah said, nerve failing. ‘Do nothing. There will be couriers in Pathai. You can send the fastest of them back. I’ll give you a cipher.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Idaan said. ‘It’s a lot of time on the road, sending me out and then someone else back. And then waiting while you make your way to Pathai or wherever the trail leads.’

  ‘If you find her, send word,’ Otah said. ‘You aren’t to act against her.’

  Idaan’s smile was crooked with meanings he couldn’t quite follow. Otah felt anger growing in his spine, only it wasn’t rage so much as dread.

  ‘I’ll do as you say, Most High,’ Idaan said. ‘I’ll go at first light.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Idaan rose and walked back toward the arches. He heard her pause for a moment and then go
on. The stars had come out, glimmering in the darkness like gems thrown on black stone. Otah sat in silence until he was sure he could walk, and then went down to his rooms. The servants had left him a bowl of candied fruit, but he couldn’t stand the prospect.

  A fire burned in the grate, protecting the air from even the slightest chill and tainting it with tendrils of pine smoke. The summer cities had always been overly vigilant of cold. Thin blood. Everything south of Udun was plagued by thinness of the blood. Otah came from the winter cities, and he threw open the shutters, letting in what cold there was. He didn’t notice that Danat was there until the boy spoke.

  ‘Father.’

  Otah turned. Danat stood in the doorway that led to the inner chambers. He wore the same robe that he had before, but the cloth sagged like an unmade bed. Danat’s eyes were rimmed with red.

  ‘Danat-kya,’ Otah said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I’ve done as you said. Shija and I went to the rose pavilion. Just the two of us. I . . . spoke with her. I broke things off.’

  ‘Ah,’ Otah said. He walked back from the open windows and sat on a couch before the fire. Danat came forward, his eyes glittering with unfallen tears.

  ‘This is my fault, Papa-kya. In a different world, I might have . . . I have been careless with her. I’ve hurt her.’

  Was I ever as young as this? Otah thought, and immediately pressed it away. Even if the question was fair, it was unkind. He held out his hand, and his son - his tall, thick-shouldered son - sat beside him, curled into Otah’s shoulder the way he had as a boy. Danat sobbed once.

  ‘I only . . . I know you and Issandra-cha were relying on me and . . .’

  Otah hushed the boy.

  ‘You’ve taken a willing girl to bed,’ Otah said. ‘You aren’t who she hoped you might be, and so she’s disappointed. Yes?’

  Danat nodded.

  ‘There are worse things.’ Otah saw again the darkness of Idaan’s eyes. He was sending the woman behind those eyes after his Eiah, his little girl. The ghost of nausea touched him and he stroked Danat’s hair. ‘People have done worse.’

  14

  Maati frowned at the papers before him. A small fire crackled in the brazier on his desk, and he was more than half-tempted to drop the pages onto the flames. Eiah, sitting across from him, looked no more pleased.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We’re moving backward.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Eiah asked, though she knew as well as he did.

  The few weeks that had passed since Vanjit’s successful binding had only grown more difficult. To start, the other students excepting Eiah were more distracted. The mewling and cries of the andat disrupted any conversation. Its awkward crawling seemed capable of entrancing them for a full morning. Perhaps he had known too much of the andat, but he held the growing impression that it was perfectly aware of the effect its toothless smile could have. And that it was especially cultivating the admiration of Ashti Beg.

  Added to that, Vanjit herself had come almost disconnected from the rest. She would sit for whole days, the andat in her lap or at her breast, staring at water or empty air. Maati had some sympathy for that. She had shown him the most compelling of the wonders her new powers had uncovered, and he had been as delighted as she was. But her little raptures meant that she wasn’t engaged in the work at hand: Eiah, and the binding of Wounded.

  ‘There is something we can do,’ Eiah said. ‘If we set the classes in the mornings, just after the first meal, we won’t have had a full day behind us. We could come at it fresh each time.’

  Maati nodded more to show he’d heard her than from any real agreement. His fingertips traced the lines of the binding again, tapping the page each time some little infelicity struck him. He had seen bindings falter this way before. In those first years when Maati had been a new poet, the Dai-kvo had spoken of the dangers of muddying thoughts by too much work. One sure way to fail was to build something sufficient and then not stop. With every small improvement, the larger structure became less tenable, until eventually the thing collapsed under the weight of too much history.

  He wondered if they had gone too far, corrected one too many things which were not truly problems so much as differences of taste.

  Eiah took a pose that challenged him. He looked at her directly for perhaps the first time since she’d come to his study.

  ‘You think I’m wrong,’ she said. ‘You can say it. I’ve heard worse.’

  It took Maati the space of several heartbeats to recall what her proposal had been.

  ‘I think it can’t hurt. But I also think it isn’t our essential problem. We were all quite capable of designing Clarity-of-Sight with meetings in the evening. This’ - he rattled the papers in his hand - ‘is something different. Half-measures won’t suffice.’

  ‘What then?’ she said.

  He put the papers down.

  ‘We stop,’ he said. ‘For a few days, we don’t touch it at all. Instead we can send someone to a low town for meat and candles, or clear the gardens. Anything.’

  ‘Do we have time for that?’ Eiah asked. ‘Anything could have happened. My brother may be married. His wife may be carrying a child. All of Galt may be loading their daughters in ships, and the men of the cities may be scuttling off to Kirinton and Acton and Marsh. We are out here where there’s no one to talk to, no couriers on the roads, and I know it feels that time has stopped. It hasn’t. We’ve been weeks at this. Months. We can’t spend time we don’t have.’

  ‘You’d recommend what, then? Move faster than we can move? Think more clearly than we can think? It isn’t as if we can sit down with a serious expression and demand that the work be better than it is. Have you never seen a man ill with something that needed quiet and time? This is no different.’

  ‘I’ve also watched ill men die,’ Eiah said. ‘Time passes, and once you’ve waited too long for something, there’s no getting it back.’

  Her mouth bent in a deep frown. There were dark circles under her eyes. She bit her lower lip and shook her head as if conducting some conversation within her mind and disagreeing with herself. The coal burning in the brazier settled and gave off a dozen small sparks as bright as fireflies. One landed on the paper, already cold and gray. Ash.

  ‘You’re reconsidering,’ Maati said.

  ‘No. I’m not. We can’t tell my father,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘We could send to others, then,’ Maati said. ‘There are high families in every city that would rise up against Otah’s every plan if they knew the andat were back in the world. You’ve lived your whole life in the courts. Two or three people whose discretion you trust would be all it took. A rumor spoken in the right ears. We needn’t even say where we are or what’s been bound.’

  Eiah combed her fingers through her hair. Every breath that she didn’t answer, Maati felt his hopes rise. She would, if he only gave her a little more time and silence to convince herself. She would announce their success, and everyone in the cities of the Khaiem would know that Maati Vaupathai had remained true to them. He had never given up, never turned away.

  ‘It would mean going to a city,’ Eiah said. ‘I can’t send half-a-dozen ciphered letters under my own seal out from a low town without every courier in the south finding out where we are.’

  ‘Then Pathai,’ Maati said, his hands opening. ‘We need to step back from the binding. The letters will win us time to make things right.’

  Eiah turned, looking out the window. In the courtyard, the maple trees were losing their leaves. A storm, a strong wind, and the branches would be bare. A sparrow, brown and gray, hopped from one twig to another. Maati could see the fine markings on its wings, the blackness of its eyes. It had been years since sparrows had been more than dull smears. He glanced at Eiah, surprised to see the tears on her cheek.

  His hand touched her shoulder. She didn’t look back, but he felt her lean into him a degree.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said as if to the sparrow, the
trees, the thousand fallen leaves. ‘I don’t know why it should matter. It’s no secret what he’s done or what I think of it. I don’t have any doubts that what we’re doing is the right choice.’

  ‘And yet,’ Maati said.

  ‘And yet,’ she agreed. ‘My father will be disappointed in me. I would have thought I was old enough that his opinion wouldn’t matter.’

  He searched for a response - something gentle and kind and that would strengthen her resolve. Before he found the words, he felt her tense. He took back his hand, adopting a querying pose.