Seasons of War (14 page)
Authors: Daniel Abraham
‘They’ll follow you any place you care to go, so long as they’re on the winning side,’ Sinja said. ‘Are you sure that’s going to be you?’
‘Yes,’ the general said, and the bare confidence in his voice was more persuasive than any reasoned argument he might have given. If the man had been trying to convince himself, he would have had a speech ready - why this insanity would work, how the army could overpower the andat, something. But Balasar was certain. The general sipped his water, waiting the space of five long breaths together. Then he spoke again. ‘You’re thinking something?’
‘You’re not stupid,’ Sinja said. ‘So you’re either barking mad, or you know something I don’t. No one can take on the Khaiem.’
‘You mean no one can face the andat.’
‘Yes,’ Sinja agreed. ‘That’s what I mean.’
‘I can.’
‘Forgive me if I keep my doubts about me,’ Sinja said.
The general nodded, considered Sinja for a long moment, then gestured toward the table. Sinja put down his bowl and stepped over as the general unrolled a long cloth scroll with a map of the cities of the Khaiem on it. Sinja stepped back from it as if there were an asp on it.
‘General,’ he said, ‘if you’re about to tell me your plans for this campaign, I think we might be ahead of where we should be.’
Balasar put a hand on Sinja’s arm. The Galt’s gaze was firm and steady, his voice low and strangely intimate. Sinja saw how a personality like his own could command an army or a nation. Possibly, he thought, a world.
‘Captain Ajutani, I don’t share these plans with every mercenary captain who walks through my door. I don’t trust them. I don’t show them to my own captains, barring the ones in my small Council. The others I expect to trust me. But we’re men of the world, you and I. You have something I think I could use.’
‘And you have nothing to lose by telling me,’ Sinja said, slowly. ‘Because I’m not leaving this building, am I?’
‘Not even to go speak to your men,’ the general said. ‘You’re here as my ally or my prisoner.’
Sinja shook his head.
‘That’s a brave thing to say, General. It’s only the two of us in here.’
‘If you attacked me, I’d kill you where you stood,’ Balasar said in the same tone of voice he’d used before, and Sinja believed him. Balasar smiled gently and nudged him forward, toward the table.
‘Let me show you why ally would be the better choice.’
Still, Sinja held back.
‘I’m not an idiot,’ he said. ‘If you tell me you plan to take over the Khaiem by flying through the sky on winged dogs, I’ll still clap you on the back and swear I’m your ally.’
‘Of course you will. You’ll say you’re my dearest friend and solidly behind me. I’ll thank you and distrust you and keep you unarmed and under guard. We’ll each avoid turning our backs on the other. I think we can take that all as given,’ Balasar said with a dismissive wave. ‘I don’t care what you say or do, Captain. I care what you
think
.’
think
.’
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
T
he 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, Maati 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 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, Maati 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 board with its worn lines and stones. The game had been central to the binding Manat Doru had performed generations ago that first brought Stone-Made-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, Manat 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 board 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 Galts 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 board.
‘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 back. Then one day, one of the boys got lucky. He threw a boot 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 back 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.’
‘Then 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. Took 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 unconsciously 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 be 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.
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