Seasons of War

by Daniel Abraham

  He took a pose that acknowledged Maati’s decision. The poet hesitated, nodded, and walked to the riverside. Idaan leaned close to Ana, whispering all that had happened which the girl could not see.

  Kiyan-kya—

  Sunset isn’t on us yet, but it will be soon. Maati is sulking, I think. Everyone’s frightened, but none of us has the courage to say it. I take that back. Idaan isn’t afraid. Just after Maati refused to take Ana Dasin with him to this thrice-damned meeting, Idaan came to me and said that she was fairly certain that if Vanjit kills us all, she’ll die of starvation herself within the year. Vanjit’s hunting ability hasn’t impressed her, and Idaan has a way of finding comfort in strange places.

  Nothing has ever come out the way I expected, love. It seemed so simple. We had men who could sire a child, they had women who could bear. And instead, I am sending the least reliable man I know to save everything and everyone by talking a madwoman into sanity. If I could find any way not to do this, I’d take it. I appealed to what Maati and I once were to each other when I tried to convince him to accept Ana’s company. It was more than half a lie. In truth I can’t say I know this man. The boy I knew in Saraykeht and the man we knew in Machi has become a stew of bitterness and blind optimism. He wants the past back, and no sacrifice is too high. I wonder if he never saw the weakness and injustice and rot at the heart of the old ways, or if he’s only forgotten them.

  If I had it all to do again, I’d have done it differently. I’d have married you sooner. I’d never have gone north, and Idaan and Adrah could have taken Machi and had all this on their heads instead of my own. Only then we’d have been in Udun, you and I, and I would have had your company for an even shorter time. There is no winning this game. I suppose it’s best that we can only play it through once.

  You wouldn’t like what’s become of Udun. I don’t like it. I remember Sinja saying that he kept your wayhouse safe during the sack, but I haven’t had the heart to go and look. The river still has its beauty. The birds still have their song. They’ll still be here when the rest of us are gone. I miss Sinja.

  There’s something I’m trying to tell you, love. It’s taking me more time than I’d expected to work up the courage. We all know it. Even Maati, even Ana, even Eiah. None of us can speak the words; not even me. You’re the only one I can say this to, because, I suppose, you’ve already died and so you’re safe from it.

  Love. Oh, love. This meeting is all we can do, and it isn’t going to work.

  Maati left in twilight. The stars shone in the east, the darkness rising up like a black dawn as the western sky fell from blue to gold, from gold to gray. Birdsong changed from the trills and complaints of the day to the low cooing and complexities of the night. The river seemed to exhale, and its breath was green and rotting and cold. Maati had a small pack at his side. In the light of the failing day and the flickering orange of the torches, he looked older than Otah felt, and Otah felt ancient.

  He tried to see something familiar in Maati’s eyes. He tried to see the boy he’d gone drinking with in dark, lush Saraykeht, but that child was gone. Both of those children.

  ‘I will do my best, Otah-kvo,’ Maati said.

  Otah bit back his first reply, and then his second.

  ‘Tomorrow’s going to be a very different day, Maati-cha,’ Otah said. Maati nodded. After so much and so long, there should have been more. Sinja appeared for a moment in the back of Otah’s mind. There had been no last good-bye for him. If this was to be the ending between the two of them, Otah thought he should say something. He should make this parting unlike the others that had come before. ‘I’m sorry it’s come to this.’

  Maati took a pose that agreed but kept the meaning as imprecise as Otah had. One of the armsmen called out, pointing at the looming threat of the Khai Udun’s palaces. In a wide window precisely above the river, a light had appeared, glittering like gold. Like a fallen star.

  Ana and Danat were in a corner of the quay, their arms wrapped around each other. Idaan stood among the armsmen, her expression grim. Eiah sat alone by the water, listening. Otah saw Maati’s gaze linger on her with something like sorrow.

  With a lantern in his unsteady hand, Maati walked off along the ruined streets that ran beside the river. Otah guessed it would take him half a hand to reach the palaces.

  ‘All right,’ Idaan said. ‘He’s gone.’

  Otah turned to look at her, some pale attempt at wit on his lips, and saw that the comment hadn’t been meant for him. Idaan crouched beside Eiah. His daughter’s face was turned toward nothing, but her hands were digging through the physician’s satchel. Danat glanced at Otah, confusion in his eyes. Eiah started drawing flat stones from her bag and laying them gently on the flagstones before her.

  No, he was wrong. Not stones, but triangles of broken wax. The contents of old, broken tablets with symbols and words inscribed on them in Eiah’s hand.

  ‘You could try being of help,’ Idaan said and gestured toward the shards at his daughter’s knees. ‘There’s a piece that goes right here I haven’t been able to find.’

  ‘You did enough,’ Eiah said, her hands shifting quickly, fitting the breaks together. Already the wax was taking the shape of five separate squares, the characters coming together. ‘Just going to the campsite and bringing back the bits you did was more than I could have asked.’

  ‘What is this?’ Otah asked, though he already knew.

  ‘My work,’ Eiah said. ‘My binding. I hoped I’d have time. Before we actually came across Vanjit-cha, there was the chance she was spying on us. She’d always planned to kill me by distracting me during the binding. But now, and for I think at least the next hand and a half, her attention is going to be on Maati-kvo. So . . .’

  Idaan shook her head, clearing some thought away, and gestured to the captain of the guard.

  ‘We’ll need light,’ she said. ‘Eiah may be able to work puzzles in the dark, but I’m better if I can see what I’m doing.’

  ‘I thought you couldn’t do this,’ Otah said, kneeling.

  ‘Well, I haven’t managed it yet,’ Eiah said with a wry smile. ‘On the other hand, I’ve studied to be a physician. Holding things in memory isn’t so difficult, once you’ve had the practice. And there’s enough here, I think, to guide me through it, no matter what Maati-kvo believes.’

  Idaan made a low grunt of pleasure, reached across Eiah and shifted a stray chunk of wax into place. Eiah’s fingers caressed the new join, and she nodded to herself. Armsmen brought the wild, flickering light close, the waxwork lettering seeming to breathe in the shadows.

  ‘Maati’s warnings,’ Otah said. ‘You can’t know what will happen if you pit your andat against hers.’

  ‘I won’t have to,’ Eiah said. ‘I’ve thought this through, Papa-kya. I know what I’m doing. There was another section. It was almost square with one corner missing. Can anyone see that?’

  ‘Check the satchel,’ Idaan said as Otah plucked the piece from the hem of Eiah’s robe. He pressed it into her hand. Her fingertips traced its surface before she placed it at the bottom of the second almost-formed tablet. Her smile was gentler than he’d seen from her since he’d walked into the wayhouse. He touched her cheek.

  ‘Maati doesn’t know you’re doing this, then?’ Otah asked.

  ‘We didn’t think we’d ask him,’ Idaan said. ‘No disrespect to Eiah-cha, but that man’s about half again as cracked as his poet.’

  ‘No, he isn’t mad,’ Eiah said, her hands never slowing their dance across the face of the broken tablets. ‘He’s just not equal to the task he set himself. He always meant well.’

  ‘And I’m sure the two dozen remaining Galts will feel better because of it,’ Idaan said acidly. And then, in a gentler voice, ‘It doesn’t matter what story you tell yourself, you know. We’ve done what we’ve done.’

  ‘I wish you would stop that,’ Eiah said.

  Idaan’s surprise was clear on her face, and apparently in her silence as well. Eiah
shook her head and went on, her tone damning and conversational.

  ‘Every third thing you say is an oblique reference to killing my grandfather. We all know you did the thing, and we all know you regret it. None of this is anything to do with that. Papa-kya and Maati love each other and they hate each other, and it doesn’t pertain either. Maati’s overwhelmed by the consequences of misjudging Vanjit, and he might not be if he weren’t hauling Nayiit and Sterile and Seedless along behind him.’

  Idaan looked like she’d been slapped. The armsmen were crowded so close, Otah could hear the low flutter of the torches burning, but the men pretended not to have heard.

  ‘The past doesn’t matter,’ Eiah said. ‘A hundred years ago or last night, it’s all just as gone. I have a binding to work, and I’d like to make the attempt before Vanjit blinds Maati and walks him off something tall. I think we have something like half a hand.’

  They worked together in silence, three pairs of hands putting the wax into place quickly. There were still sections missing, and some parts of the tablets were shattered so thoroughly that Eiah’s markings were all but lost. His daughter passed her fingertips slowly over each of the surfaces, her brow furrowed, her lips moving as if reciting something under her breath. Whether it was the binding or a prayer, Otah couldn’t guess.

  Idaan leaned close to Otah, her breath a warm and whispering breeze against his ear.

  ‘She takes the tact from her mother’s side, I assume?’

  His tension and fear gave the words a hilarity they didn’t deserve, and he fought to contain his laughter. The quay was dark around them; the torches kept his eyes from adapting to the darkness. It was as if the world had narrowed to a few feet of lichen-slicked flagstone, a single unshuttered window in the distance, and countless, endless, unnumbered stars.

  ‘All right,’ Eiah said. ‘I can’t be disturbed while I do this. If we could have the armsmen set up a guard formation? It would be in keeping with my luck to have a stray boar stumble into us at the wrong moment.’

  The captain didn’t wait for Otah’s approval. The men shifted, Idaan and Danat with them. Only Otah stayed. As if she saw him there, Eiah took a querying pose.

  ‘You may die from this,’ he said.

  ‘I’m aware of it,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter. I have to try. And I think you have to let me.’

  ‘I do,’ Otah agreed. Smiling, she looked young.

  ‘I love you too, Papa-kya.’

  ‘May I sit with you?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to distract you, but it would be a favor.’

  He brushed the back of her hand with his fingertips. She took him by the sleeve of his robe and pulled him down to sit beside her. The fingers of her left hand laced with his right. For a moment, the only sounds were the gentle lapping of the river against the stone, the diminished hush of torch fire, the cooing of owls. Eiah leaned forward, her fingertips on the first tablet. Otah let go, and both of her hands caressed the wax. She began to chant.

  The words were only words. He recognized a few of them, some phrases. Her voice went out on the cool night air as she moved slowly across each of the shattered tablets. When she reached the end, she went back to the beginning.

  Though there were no walls or cliffs to sound against, her voice began first to resonate and then to echo.

  30

  Maati traveled through the darkness alone. The sense of unreality was profound. He had refused Otah Machi, Emperor of the Khaiem. He had refused Otah-kvo. For years, perhaps a lifetime, he had admired Otah or else despised him. Maati had broken the world twice, once in Otah’s service, and now, through Vanjit, in opposition to him. But this once, Otah had been wrong, and he had been right, and Otah had acknowledged it.

  How strange that such a small moment should bring him such a profound sense of peace. His body itself felt lighter, his shoulders more nearly square. To his immense surprise, he realized he had shed a burden he’d been carrying unaware for most of his life.

  Maati traveled through the darkness of Udun alone, because he had chosen to.

  The brown vines and bare branches stirred in a soft breeze. The flutter of wings came from all around him, from nowhere. The air was cold enough to make his breath steam, and the voice of the river was a constant hush. With each step, some new detail of his path would come clear: an axe consumed by rust, a door still hanging from rotten leather hinges, the green-glowing eyes of some small predator. Cracks appeared in the paving stones, running out before him as if his passage were corrupting the city rather than revealing the decay already there.

  He and Vanjit carried a history together. They had known each other, had helped each other. She would see that it was the andat’s intervention that had turned him against her. The palaces of the Khai Udun grew taller and taller without ever seeming to come close until, it seemed between one breath and the next, he stepped into a grand courtyard. Moss and lichen had almost obscured the swirling design of white and red and gold stones. Maati paused, his lantern held over his head.

  Once, it would have been a breathtaking testament to power and ingenuity and overwhelming confidence. Columns rose into the black air. Statues of women and men and beasts towered over the entranceway, the bronze lost under green and gray. He walked alone into a welcoming chamber too vast for his lantern to penetrate. There was no ceiling, no walls. The river was silent here. Far above, wings fluttered in still air.

  Maati took a deep breath - dust and rot and, after a decade and a half of utter ruin, still the faint scent of smoke. It smelled like the corpse of history.

  He walked forward over parquet of ebony and oak, the pattern ruined and pieces pried up by water and time. He expected his footsteps to echo, but no sound he made returned to him.

  A light glimmered high up and to his left. Maati stopped. He lowered his lantern and raised it again. The glimmer didn’t shift. Not a reflection, then. Maati angled toward it.

  A great stone stairway swept up in the gloom, a single candle burning at its top. Maati made his way slowly enough to keep from tiring. The hall that opened before him was not as numbingly huge as the first chamber; Maati could make out the ceiling, and that the walls existed. And far down it, another light.

  The carpets underfoot had rotted to scraps years before. The shattered glass and fallen crystal might have been the damage of the elements or of the city’s fall. The next flight of stairs - equally grand and equally arduous - could only have been a testament to that first violence, long ago. A human skull rested at the center of every step, shadows moving in the sockets as Maati passed them. He hoped the Galts had left the grim markers, but he didn’t believe it.

  Here, Vanjit was saying, each of these is a life the soldiers of Galt ended. They were her justification. Her honor guard.

  He should have guessed where the candles were leading him. The grand double doors of the Khai’s audience chamber stood closed, but light leaked through at the seams. After so long in the dark, he half-expected them to open onto a fire.

  In its day, the chamber must have inspired awe. In its way, it still did. The arches, the angles of the walls, the thin ironwork as delicate as lace that held a hundred burning candles - everything was designed to draw the eyes to the dais, the black lacquer chair, and then out a wide, unshuttered window that reached from ceiling to floor. The Khai would have sat there, his city arrayed out behind him like a cloak. Now the cloak was only darkness, and in the black chair, Clarity-of-Sight cooed.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ Vanjit said from the shadows behind him. Maati startled and turned.

  Exhaustion and hunger had thinned the girl. Her dark hair was pulled back, but what few locks had escaped the bond hung limp and lank, framing her pale face.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Fear of justice,’ Vanjit said.

  She stepped out into the candlelight. Her robes were silken rags, scavenged from some noble wardrobe, fourteen years a ruin. Her head was bowed beneath an invisible weight and she moved like an ol
d woman bent with the pain for years. She had become Udun. The war, the damage, the ruin. It was her. The baby - the inhuman thing shaped like a baby - shrieked with joy and clapped its tiny hands. Vanjit shuddered.

  ‘Vanjit-cha,’ Maati said, ‘we can talk this through. We can . . . we can still end this well.’

  ‘You tried to murder me,’ Vanjit said. ‘You and your pet poisoner. If you’d had your way, I would be dead now. How, Maati-kvo, do you propose to talk that through?’

  ‘I . . .’ he said. ‘There must . . . there must be a way.’

  ‘What was I supposed to be that I wasn’t?’ Vanjit asked as she walked toward the black chair with its tiny beast. ‘You knew what the Galts had done to me. Did you want me to get this power, and then forget? Forgive? Was this supposed to be the compensation for their deaths?’