Seasons of War

by Abraham Daniel

  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.

  ‘What’s the matter, sweet?’ he asked, hurrying to her. ‘What’s happened?’

  In the steady glow of the lantern, Liat’s face seemed veiled by shadows. Her eyes were reddened and swollen, her skin flushed with recent tears. She attempted a smile.

  ‘I need something, Maati-kya. I need you to speak with Nayiit.’

  ‘Of course. Of course. What’s happened?’

  ‘He’s . . .’ Liat stopped, took a deep breath, and began again. ‘He isn’t leaving with me. Whatever happens, he’s decided to stay here and guard her children.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kiyan,’ Liat said. ‘She set him to watch over Danat and Eiah, and now he’s decided to keep to it. To stay in the North and watch over them instead of going home with me. He has a wife and a child, and Otah’s family is more important to him than his own. And what if they see that he’s . . . what if they see whose blood he is? What if he and Danat have to kill each other?’

  Maati sat beside Liat and folded her hand in his. The corners of her mouth twitched down, a mask of sorrow. He kissed her palm.

  ‘He’s said this? That he’s staying in Machi?’

  ‘He doesn’t have to,’ Liat said. ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at them. Whenever I talk about the spring and the South, he smiles that false, charming way he always smiles and changes the subject.’

  Maati nodded. The lantern flame hissed and shuddered, setting the shadows to sway.

  ‘What is this really?’ he asked, gently as he could. Liat pulled back her hand and took a pose that asked clarification. There was anger in her eyes. Maati chewed his lower lip, raised his eyebrows.

  ‘He enjoys a duty that was designed, from what you told me, to be enjoyable for him. To give him the sense of redeeming himself. He’s made friends with Otah’s children—’

  ‘His other children,’ Liat said, but Maati had known her too long and too well to let the barb turn him aside.

  ‘And they’re very easy to make friends with. Danat and Eiah are charming in their ways. And Nayiit doesn’t want to talk about plans he can’t really make. About his own child who might already be dead. About a wife he doesn’t love and a city that’s fallen to the Galts. Why would he want to talk about that? What is there in any of that to cause him anything but pain?’

  ‘You think I’m an idiot,’ Liat said.

  ‘I think he hasn’t told you that he’s staying. That’s something you’ve decided, and you don’t reach conclusions that wild unless there’s something more going on,’ he said. ‘What it is, sweet?’

  Liat’s face squeezed tight, her brows and mouth and eyes seeming to pull in together like those of a fighter bracing to take a blow.

  ‘I’m frightened. Is that what you want to hear? All right, then. I’m frightened.’

  ‘For him.’

  ‘F
or all of us!’ Liat stood and began to pace. ‘For the people I knew in Saraykeht. For the people I’ve met here. And the ones I haven’t met. Do you know how many people the Galts have killed?’

  ‘No, love.’

  ‘No one does. No one knows how bloody this has been. No one knows how much more they’ll want before it’s over. I knew what the world was when I came here.’

  ‘You came here to change the world by slaughtering all of Galt,’ Maati said.

  ‘Yes, Maati. Yes, so that this wouldn’t happen. So that we wouldn’t change!’ She was weeping now, though he couldn’t hear it in her voice. The tears only ran unnoticed down her cheeks as she moved, restless as a trapped bird. ‘I don’t know the Galts. I don’t love them. I don’t care if they all die. What’s going to happen to us? What’s going to happen to him? What’s already happened?’

  ‘It’s hard, isn’t it? When there’s nothing to distract you from it,’ Maati said. ‘Harder, I mean. It’s not ever easy. You had the organization of the city to keep your mind busy, but that’s done, and now there’s nothing but the waiting. I’ve felt it too. If I didn’t have the binding to work on, I’d have sunk into it.’

  Liat stopped. Her hands worried at each other.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ she said. ‘I keep half-expecting that it will all go back to what it was. That we’ll go back to Saraykeht and carry on with the business and talk about that terrible year when the Galts came the way we talk about a bad cotton crop.’

  ‘It won’t, though.’

  ‘Then what’s going to happen to him?’

  ‘Him? Just Nayiit? He’s the only one you wonder that of?’

  The tears didn’t stop, but a smile as much sorrow as otherwise touched her.

  ‘He’s my son. Who else matters?’

  ‘He’s going to be fine,’ Maati said, and even he heard the conviction in his voice. ‘The Galts will be turned back, because I will turn them back. Our children won’t die. Theirs will. We won’t go hungry. They will. Nayiit won’t be harmed, and when this is all finished with, he won’t stay here with Otah-kvo. He’ll go, because he has a child of his own in Saraykeht, and he isn’t the kind of man who can walk away from that.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’ Liat asked. Her tone was a plea.

  ‘Either he’s Otah’s son, and Otah sacrificed his freedom and his dignity to keep Danat and Eiah safe. Or he’s mine, and you had to force me away.’

  ‘Or he’s mine,’ Liat said. ‘Then what becomes of him?’

  ‘Then he’ll be beautiful and lovely beyond all mortals, and age gracefully into wisdom. And he’ll love his child the way you love him,’ Maati said. ‘Silly question.’

  Liat couldn’t help but laugh. Maati rose and took her in his arms. She smelled of tears - wet and salt and flesh. Like blood without the iron. He kissed the crown of her bowed head.

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘I know what to do. Cehmai’s here to help me, and Otah’s bought us the time we need. Nothing bad will happen.’

  ‘It will,’ Liat said into his shoulder, and then with something that sounded like hope and surrender, ‘Only make it happen to someone else.’

  They stood in silence for a while. Maati felt the warmth of Liat’s body against him. They had held each other so many times over the years. In lust and shame, in love and pleasure. In sorrow. Even in anger. He knew the feel of her, the sound of her breath, the way her hand curled round his shoulder. There was no one in the world who he would ever be able to speak with the way he spoke to her. They knew things between them that even Otah could never share - moments in Saraykeht, and after. It wasn’t only the great moments - the birth of Nayiit, the death of Heshai, their own last parting; there were also the small ones. The time she’d gotten ill on crab soup and he’d nursed her and cared for the still squalling Nayiit. The flute player with the dancing dog they’d given a length of silver at a firekeeper’s kiln in Yalakeht. The way the autumn came to Saraykeht when they were still young.

  When she left again, there would be no one to talk to about those things. When she went to the South again and he became the new Dai-kvo, there would be no one to remind him of those moments. It made them more precious. It made her more precious.

  ‘I’ll protect you,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, love. I’ll protect us all.’

  He heard approaching footsteps, and he could feel it in Liat’s body when she did as well. She stepped back, and he let her, but he kept hold of one hand. Even if only for a moment. An urgent knock came at the door, and Cehmai’s voice.

  ‘Maati-kvo!’

  ‘Come in. Come in. What’s the matter?’

  The poet’s face was flushed, his eyes wide. It took a moment for him to catch his breath before he could speak.

  ‘The Khai says you should come. Now,’ Cehmai gasped. ‘Sinja’s back.’

  22

  When Sinja finished his report and was silent, Otah forced his breath to be deep and regular, waiting until he could speak. His voice was tight and controlled.

  ‘You have spent the season fighting beside the Galts?’

  ‘They were winning.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’

  He was thinner than Otah remembered him. The months on the road had left Sinja’s face drawn, his cheekbones sharp. His skin was leathery from the sun and wind. He hadn’t changed his robes, and he smelled of horses. His casual air seemed false, a parody of the certain, amused, detached man whom Otah had sent away, and Otah couldn’t say if it was the captain who’d changed more or himself.

  Kiyan, the only other person in the chamber, sat apart from the pair of them, at the couch nearest the fire. Her hands were fists in her lap, her spine straight and still as a tree. Her face was expressionless. Sinja’s gaze flickered toward her, and then came back to Otah. The captain took a pose that apologized.

  ‘I’m not trying to be light about this, Most High,’ Sinja said. ‘But it’s truth. By the time I knew they weren’t attacking the Westlands, I could no more have excused myself and ridden on than flapped my arms and flown. I did what I could to slow them, but yes, when they called on us, we fought beside them. When they needed interpreters, we spoke for them. I suppose we could have thrown ourselves on their spears and died nobly, but then I wouldn’t be here to warn you now.’

  ‘You betrayed the Khaiem,’ Otah said.

  ‘And I’m betraying the Galts now,’ Sinja replied, his voice calm. ‘If you can judge the balance on that, you’re smarter than I am. I’ve done what I’ve done, Most High. If I chose wrong, I’ll apologize, except I don’t think I have.’

  ‘Let it go,’ Otah said. ‘We’ll deal with it later.’

  ‘I’d rather do it now,’ Sinja said, shifting his weight. ‘If I’m going to be drowned as a traitor, I’d like to know it.’

  Otah felt the rage rise up in his breast like a flame uncurling. He heard it in his ears.

  ‘You want pardon?’

  ‘For the boys too,’ Sinja said. ‘I swear I’ll do everything I can to earn it.’

  You’ll swear anything you like and break the oath when it suits you, Otah thought. He bit his lip until he thought it might bleed, but he didn’t shout. He didn’t call for the armsmen who waited outside the great blue doors. It would have been simple to have the man killed. It would have even felt like justice, he thought. His own man. His friend and advisor. Walking beside the Galtic general. Giving him advice. But the rage wasn’t only rage. It was also fear. And despair. And so no matter how right it felt, it couldn’t be trusted.

  ‘Don’t ask me for anything again.’

  ‘I won’t, Otah-cha.’ And then a moment later, ‘You’re a harder man than when I left.’

  ‘I’ve earned it.’

  ‘It suits you.’

  A rattle came from the door, and then a polite scratching, and Cehmai, Maati, and Liat came in the room. Their faces were flushed, and Maati’s breath was heavy as if he’d been running. Otah frowned. He wouldn’t have chosen to hav
e Liat here, but she’d helped Kiyan with the preparations of the city and the quartering of the refugees of Cetani, so perhaps it was for the best after all. He took a general pose of greeting.

  ‘What’s . . . happened,’ Maati wheezed.

  ‘We have a problem,’ Otah said.

  ‘The Galts?’ Liat asked.

  ‘Ten thousand of them,’ Kiyan said, speaking for the first time since Sinja had begun his report. Her voice was solid as stone. ‘Foot soldiers and archers and horsemen. They won’t reach us today. But tomorrow, perhaps. Three days at the most.’

  Maati’s face went white and he sat down hard, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Liat and Cehmai didn’t move to help him. The room was silent except for the murmur of the fire. Otah let the moment pass. There was nothing he could say just now that they wouldn’t think for themselves in the next few heartbeats. Cehmai recovered the fastest, his brows rising, his mouth going tight and hard.