Seasons of War

by Abraham Daniel

  ‘We can make the river in seven days if we go through the night. Large Kae will fight against it for the horses’ sake,’ Maati said.

  ‘I’ll fight against it for yours,’ Eiah said. ‘There was a reason I was trying to make this journey restful.’

  ‘I’m fine. I’ll last to Utani and years past it, you watch.’ He sighed. His flesh seemed about to drip off his bones from simple exhaustion. ‘You watch.’

  ‘Crawl back,’ Eiah said. ‘Rest. I can do this alone.’

  ‘You’d fall asleep,’ Maati said.

  ‘And use you for a pillow, Uncle. I’m fine. Go.’

  He looked back. There was a place for him. Irit had made it up with two thick wool blankets. He couldn’t see it in the night, but he knew it was there. He wanted nothing more than to turn to it and let the whole broken world fade for a while. He couldn’t. Not yet.

  ‘Eiah-kya,’ he said softly. ‘About your binding. About Wounded . . .’

  She turned to him, a shadow within a shadow. He bent close to her, his voice as low as he could make it and still be heard over the clatter of hooves on stone.

  ‘You know the grammar well? You have it all in mind?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Could you do it without it being written? It’s usual to write it all out, the way Vanjit-cha did. And it helps to have that there to follow, but you could do the thing without. Couldn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Eiah said. ‘Perhaps. It isn’t something I’d thought about particularly. But why . . . ?’

  ‘We should postpone your binding,’ Maati said. ‘Until you are certain you could do it without the reference text.’

  Eiah was silent. Something fluttered by, the sound of wings against air.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Eiah said, her words low, clipped, and precise. Maati squeezed his hands together. The joints had started aching sometime earlier in the night. The ancient dagger scar in his belly itched the way it did when he’d grown too tired.

  ‘If you were performing the binding, and something happened so that you couldn’t see,’ Maati said. ‘If you were to go blind when you’d already started . . . you should know the words and the thoughts well enough to keep to it. Not to slip.’

  ‘Not pay its price,’ Eiah said. Meaning, they both knew, die. A moment later, ‘She’d do that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Maati said. ‘I don’t know anything anymore. But be ready if she does.’

  Eiah shifted the reins, the pattern of the horses’ stride altered, and the cart rocked gently. She didn’t speak again, and Maati imagined the silence to be thoughtful. He shifted his weight carefully, turned, and let himself slip down to the bed of the cart. The wool blankets were where he’d remembered them. Feeling his way through the darkness reminded him of his brush with blindness. He told himself that the shudder was only the cold of the morning.

  The shifting of the cart became like the rocking of a ship or a cradle. Maati’s mind softened, slipped. He felt his body sinking into the planks below him, heard the creak and clatter of the wheels. His heart, low and steady, was like the throbbing drum at the wayhouse. It didn’t sound at all unwell.

  On the shifting edge of sleep, he imagined himself capable of moving between spaces, folding the world so that the distance between himself and Otah-kvo was only a step. He pictured Otah’s awe and rage and impotence. It was a fantasy Maati had cultivated before this, and it went through its phases like a habit. Maati’s presentation of the poets, the women’s grammar, the andat. Otah’s abasement and apologies and humble amazement at the world made right. For years, Maati had driven himself toward that moment. He had brought on the sacrifice of ten women, each of them paying the price of a binding that wasn’t quite correct.

  He watched now as if someone else were dreaming it. Dispassionate, cold, thoughtful. He felt nothing - not disappointment or regret or hope. It was like being a boy again and coming across some iridescent and pincered insect, fascinating and beautiful and dangerous.

  More than half asleep, he didn’t feel the tiny body inching its way to him until it lay almost within his arms. With the reflex of a man who has cared for a baby, instincts long unused but never forgotten, he gathered the child close.

  ‘You have to kill her,’ it whispered.

  21

  Otah stood in the ruins of the school’s west garden. Half a century before, he’d been in this same spot, screaming at boys not ten summers old. Humiliating them. This was where, in a fit of childish rage, he had forced a little boy to eat clods of dirt. He’d been twelve summers old at the time, but he recalled it with a vividness like a cut. Maati’s young eyes and blistered hands, tears and apologies. The incident had begun Maati’s career as a poet and ended his own.

  The stone walls of the school were lower than he remembered them. The crows that perched in the stark, leafless trees, on the other hand, were as familiar as childhood enemies. As a boy, he had hated this place. With all its changes and his own, he still did.

  Ashti Beg had told them of Maati’s clandestine school. Of Eiah’s involvement, and the others’. Two women named Kae, another - Ashti Beg’s particular confidante - named Irit. And the new poet, Vanjit. Ashti Beg had escaped the school and the increasingly dangerous poet and her false baby, the andat Blindness. Or Clarity-of-Sight.

  Three days after Eiah had left her in one of the low towns, she had lost her sight without warning. The poet girl Vanjit taking revenge for whatever slight she imagined. In a spirit of vengeance, Ashti Beg had offered to lead Otah to them all. Under cover of night, if he wished.

  There was no need. Otah knew the way.

  The armsmen had gone first, scouting from what little cover there was. No sign of life had greeted them, and they had arrived to find the school cleaned, repaired, cared for, and empty. They had come too late, and the wind and snow had erased any clue to where Maati and Eiah and the other women had gone. Including the new poet.

  Idaan emerged from the building, walking toward him with a determined galt. Otah could see the ghost of her breath. He took a pose that offered greeting. It seemed too formal, but he couldn’t think of one more fitting and he didn’t want to speak.

  ‘I’d guess they left before you reached Pathai,’ Idaan said. ‘They’ve left very little. A few jars of pickled nuts and some dry cheese. Otherwise, it all matches what she said. Someone’s been here for months. The kitchen’s been used. And the graves are still fresh.’

  ‘How many boys died here, do you think?’ Otah asked.

  ‘In the war, or when the Dai-kvo ran the place?’ Idaan asked, and then went on without waiting for his reply. ‘I don’t know. Fewer than have died in Galt since you and . . . the others left Saraykeht.’

  She had stumbled at mentioning Danat. He’d noticed more than once that it wasn’t a name she liked saying.

  ‘We have to find them,’ Otah said. ‘If we can’t make her change this soon, the High Council will never forgive us.’

  Idaan smiled. It was an odd and catlike expression, gentle and predatory both. She glanced at him, saw his unease, and shrugged.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s only that you keep speaking as if there was still a High Council. Or a nation called Galt, for that. If this Vanjit has done what for all the world it seems she’s done, every city and town and village over there has been blinded for weeks now. It isn’t winter yet, but it’s cold enough. And even if they had gotten some of the harvest in before this, it would only help the people on the farms. You can’t walk from town to town blind, much less steer one of these soup pots on wheels.’

  ‘They’ll find ways.’

  ‘Some of them may have, but there’ll be fewer tomorrow. And then the next day. The next,’ Idaan agreed. ‘It doesn’t matter. However many there are, they aren’t Galts anymore.’

  ‘No? Then what are they?’

  ‘Survivors,’ Idaan said, and any amusement that had been in her voice was gone. ‘Just survivors.’

 
They stood in silence, looking at nothing. The crows insulted one another, rose into the air, and settled again. The breeze smelled of new snow and the promise of frost.

  Inside the stone walls, the armsmen had made camp. The kitchen was warm, and the smell of boiling lentils and pork fat filled the air. Ana Dasin and Ashti Beg sat side by side, talking to the air. Otah tried not to watch the two blind women, but he found he couldn’t turn away. It was their faces that captured him. Their expressions, their gestures thrown into nothingness, were strangely intimate. It was as if by being cast into their personal darkness, they had lost some ability to dissemble. Ashti Beg’s anger was carved into the lines around her mouth. Ana, by contrast, betrayed an unexpected serenity in every movement of her hands, every smile. Three empty bowls lay beside them, evidence of Ana’s appetite. Their voices betrayed nothing, but their faces and their bodies were eloquent.

  As the sun set, the cold grew. It seemed to radiate from the walls, sucking away the life and heat like a restless ghost. That night, they slept in the shelter of the school. Otah took the wide, comfortable room that had once belonged to Tahi-kvo, his first and least-loved teacher. The wool blankets were heavy and thick. The night wind sang empty, mindless songs against the shutters. In the dim flickering light from the fire grate, he let his mind wander.

  It was uncomfortable to think of Eiah in this place. It wasn’t only that she was angry with him, that she had chosen this path and not the one he preferred. All that was true, but it was also that this place was one part of his life and that she was another. The two didn’t belong together. He tried to imagine what he would have said to her, had she and Maati and the other students in Maati’s little school still been encamped there.

  The truth he could not admit to anyone was that he was relieved to have failed.

  The shadows at the fire grate seemed to grow solid, a figure crouching there. He knew it was an illusion. It wasn’t the first time his mind had tricked itself into imagining Kiyan after her death. He smiled at the vision of his wife, but the dream of her had already faded. It was a sign, and since it was both intended for him and created by his mind, it was perfectly explicable. If killing his daughter was the price it took to save the world, then the world could die. He took little comfort in the knowledge.

  In the morning, Danat woke him, grinning. A piece of paper flapped in the boy’s hand like a moth as Danat threw open the shutters and let the morning light spill in. Otah blinked, yawned, and frowned. Dreams already half-remembered were fading quickly. Danat dropped onto the foot of Otah’s cot.

  ‘I’ve found them,’ Danat said.

  Otah sat up, taking a pose that asked explanation. Danat held out the paper. The handwriting was unfamiliar to him, the characters wider than standard and softly drawn. He took the page and rubbed his eyes as if to clear them.

  ‘I was sleeping in one of the side rooms,’ Danat said. ‘When I woke up this morning, I saw that. It was in a corner, not even hidden. I don’t know how I missed it last night, except it was dark and I was tired.’

  Otah’s eyes able now to focus, his mind more fully awake, he turned his attention to the letter.

  Ashti-cha—

  We have decided to leave. Eiah says that Maati-kvo isn’t well, so we’re all going to Utani so that she can get help caring for him. Please, if you get this, you have to come back! Vanjit is just as bad as ever, and I’m afraid without you here to put her in her place, she’ll only get worse. Small Kae has started having nightmares about her. And the baby! You should see the way it tries to get away. It slipped into my lap last night after the Great Poet had gone to sleep and curled up like a kitten.

  They’ve almost finished loading the cart. I’m going to sneak back in once we’re almost under way so that she won’t find it. You have to come back! Meet us in Utani as soon as you can.

  The letter was signed Irit Laatani. Otah folded the paper and tapped it against his lips, thinking. It was plausible. It could be a trick to send them off to Utani, but that would mean that they knew where Otah and his party were, and the errand they were on. If that was the case, there was no reason for misleading them. Vanjit and her little Blindness could stop any pursuit if she wanted it. Danat coughed expectantly.

  ‘Utani,’ Otah said. ‘They’re going north, just the way you’d planned. This is where you tell me how clever you were for heading there at the first?’

  Danat laughed, shaking his head.

  ‘You were right, Papa-kya. Coming here was the right thing. If Maati wasn’t ill, they’d have been here.’

  ‘Still. It does mean they’ve stopped hiding. That’s a risk if they’ve only got one poet.’

  Danat took a questioning pose.

  ‘This poet,’ Otah said. ‘She’s their protection and their power. As long as she has the andat in her control, they think that they’re safe. In truth, though, she can only defend against things she knows. As long as there is only one poet, a well-placed man with a bow could end her before she could blind him. And then none of them are defended.’

  ‘Unless there’s a second binding. Another andat,’ Danat said, and Otah took a confirming pose. Danat frowned. ‘But if there had been, then Irit would have said so, wouldn’t she? If Eiah had managed to capture Wounded?’

  ‘I’d expect her to, yes,’ Otah said.

  ‘Then why would they go?’

  Otah tapped the letter.

  ‘Just what the woman said. Because Maati’s ill,’ he said. ‘And because Eiah decided that caring for him was worth the risk. If he’s bad enough to need other physicians’ help, they may well be going slowly. Keeping him rested.’

  ‘So we go,’ Danat said. ‘We go now, and as fast as we can manage. And attack the poet before she can blind us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Otah said. ‘Burn the books, stop them from binding the andat. Go back, and try to put the world back together again.’

  ‘Only . . . only then how do we fix the people in Galt? How do we cure Ana?’

  ‘There’s a decision to make,’ Otah said. ‘Doing this quickly and well means letting Galt remain sightless.’

  ‘Then we can’t kill the poet,’ Danat said.

  Otah took a long breath.

  ‘Think about that before you say it,’ he said. ‘This is likely the only chance we’ll have to take them by surprise. The Galts in Saraykeht are safe enough. The ones in their own cities are likely dead already. The others could be sacrificed, and it would keep us alive.’

  ‘And childless, so what would the advantage be?’ Danat said. ‘Everything you’d tried to do would be destroyed.’

  ‘Everything I wanted to do has already been destroyed,’ Otah said. ‘There isn’t a solution to this. Not anymore. I’m reduced to looking for the least painful way that it can end. I don’t see how we take these pieces and make a world worth living in.’

  Danat was silent and still, then took Otah’s hand.

  ‘I can,’ Danat said. ‘There’s hope. There’s still hope.’

  ‘This poet? Everything Ashti Beg says paints her as angry and petty and cruel at heart. She hates the Galts and thinks little enough of me. That’s the woman we would be trying to reason with. And if she chooses, there is more than Galt to lose.’

  Danat took a pose that accepted the stakes like a man at a betting table. He would put the world and everything in it at risk for the chance that remained to save Ana’s home. Otah hesitated, and then replied with a pose that stood witness to the decision. A feeling of pride warmed him.

  Kiyan-kya, he thought, we have raised a good man. Please all the gods that we’ve also raised a wise one.

  ‘I’ll go tell the others,’ Danat said.

  He rose and walked for the door, pausing only when Otah called after him. Danat, at the doorway, looked back.

  ‘It’s the right choice,’ Otah said. ‘No matter how poorly this happens, you made the right choice.’

  ‘There wasn’t an option,’ Danat said.

  It had been clear enough that
no matter what the next step was, it wouldn’t involve staying at the school. Under Idaan’s direction, the armsmen were already refilling the water and coal stores for the steamcarts, packing what little equipment they had used, and preparing themselves for the road. The sky was white where it wasn’t gray, the snow blurring the horizon. Ashti Beg sat alone beside the great bronze doors that had once opened only for the Dai-kvo. They were stained with verdigris and stood ajar. No one besides Otah saw the significance of it.