An Autumn War

21

Sinja woke, stiff with cold, to the sound of chopping. Outside the tent, someone with a hand axe was breaking the ice at the top of the barrels. It was still dark, but morning was always dark these days. He kicked off his blankets and rose. The undyed wool of his inner robes held a hit of the heat as he pulled on first one outer robe and then another with a wide leather cloak over the top that creaked when he fastened the wide hone broochwork.

Outside his tent, the army was already breaking camp. Columns of smoke and steam rose from the wagons. Horses snorted, their breath pluming white in the light of a falling moon. In the southeast, the dawn was still only a lighter shade of black. Sinja walked to the cook fire and squatted down beside it, a howl of barley gruel sweetened with winepacked prunes in his hands. The heat of it was better than the taste. Wine could do strange things to prunes.

The army had been marching for two and a half weeks. At a guess, there were another three before they reached Machi. If there was no storm, Sinja guessed they would lose a thousand men to frostbite, most of those in the last ten days. He squinted into the dark, implacable sky and watched the faintest stars begin to fade. 't'here would still be over nine thousand men. And every man among them would know that this battle wasn't for money or glory. Or even for love of the general. If by some miracle Otah turned the Galts back from the city, they would die scattered in the frozen plains of the North.

This battle would be the only time in the whole benighted war that the Galts would go in knowing they were fighting for their lives.

"You want more?" the cook asked, and Sinja shook his head. Around him, the members of his personal guard were moving at last. Sinja didn't help them break down the camp. He'd left most of the company behind in Tan-Sadar. They were, after all, on a deadly stupid march that, with luck, would end with them sacking their own hones. It wasn't duty that could be asked of a green recruit of his first campaign. Sinja had taken time handpicking this dozen to accompany him. 't'here wasn't a man among them he liked.

The last tent was folded, poles bound together with their leather thongs, and put on the steam wagon. The fires were all stamped out, and the stin made its tardy appearance. Sinja wrapped the leather cloak closer around his shoulders and sighed. This was a younger man's game. If he'd been as wise as the average rat, he'd be someplace warm and close now, with a good mulled wine and a plate of venison in mint sauce. The call sounded, and he began the walk north. Cold numbed his face and made his cars ache. The air smelled of dust and smoke and horse dung-the miasma of the moving army. Sinja kept his eyes to the horizon, but the only clouds were the high white lace that did little but leach blue from the sky; there was no storm coming today. And still the dusting of snow that had fallen in the last weeks hadn't melted and wouldn't before spring. The world was pale except where a stone or patch of ground stood free of snow. "There it was black.

Ile put one foot in front of the other, his mind growing empty with the rhythm. His muscles slowly warmed. The pain retreated from his ears. With enough effort, the air became almost comfortable. The sun rose quickly behind him, as if in a hurry to finish its day's passage and return the world to darkness.

When he paused to relieve himself on a tree-his piss steaming in its puddle-he took off the leather cloak. If he got too warm, he'd start to sweat. Soaking through his inner robes was an invitation to death. He wondered how many of Balasar's men knew that. With his sad luck, all of them.

They wouldn't see a low town today. They had overrun one yesterday-the locals surprised to find themselves surrounded by horsemen intent on keeping any word from slipping out to the North. 'T'here would he another town in a day or two. If Sinja was lucky, it might mean fresh meat for dinner. The rations set aside by the townsmen to see them through the winter might feed the army for as much as half a day.

They paused at midday, the cooks using the furnaces of the steam wagons to warm the bread and boil water for tea. Sinja wasn't hungry but he ate anyway. The tea was good at least. Overbrewed and bitter, but warm. He sat on the broad back of a steam wagon, and was prepar ing himself for the second push of the day and estimating how many miles they had covered since morning when the general arrived.

Balasar rode a huge black horse, its tack worked with silver. As small as the man was, he still managed to look like something from a painting.

"Sinja-cha," Balasar Cice said in the tongue of the hhaiem. "I was hoping to find you here.,,

Sinja took a pose of respect and welcome.

"I'd say winter's cone," the general said.

"No, Balasar-cha. If this was real winter, you could tell because we'd all be dead by now."

Balasar's eyes went harder, but his wry smile didn't fade. It wasn't anger that made him what he was. It was determination. Sinja found himself unsurprised. Anger was too weak and uncertain to have seen them all this far.

"I'd have you ride with us," the general said.

"I'm not sure Eustin-cha would enjoy that," Sinja said, then switched to speaking in Galtic. "But if it's what you'd like, sir, I'm pleased to do it."

"You have a horse?"

"Several. I've been having them walked. I've got good enough fighters among my men, but I can't speak all that highly of them as grooms. A horse with a good lather up in this climate and with these boys to care for it is going to he tomorrow night's dinner."

"I have a servant or two I could spare," Balasar said, frowning. Sinja took a pose that both thanked and refused.

"I'd take the loan of one of your horses, if you have one ready to ride. Otherwise, I'll need to get one of mine."

"I'll have one sent," Balasar said. Sinja saluted, and the general made his way back to the main body of the column. Sinja had just washed down the last of the bread with the dregs of his tea when a servant arrived with a saddled brown mare and orders to hand it over to him. Sinja rode slowly past the soldiers, grim-faced and uncomfortable, preparing for their trek or else already marching. Balasar rode just after the vanguard with Dustin and whichever of his captains he chose to speak with. Sinja fell in beside the general and made his salute. Balasar returned it seriously. h, ustin only nodded.

"You served the Khai NIachi," Balasar said.

"Since before he was the Khai, in fact," Sinja said.

"What can you tell me about him?"

"I-fie has a good wife," Sinja said. Eustin actually smiled at the joke, but Balasar's head tilted a degree.

"Only one wife?" he asked. "'That's odd for the Khaiem, isn't it?"

"And only one son. It is odd," Sinja said. "But he's an odd man for a Khai. He spent his boyhood working as a laborer and traveling through the eastern islands and the cities. lie didn't kill his family to take the chair. He's been considered something of an embarrassment by the utkhaiem, he's upset the I)ai-kvo, and I think he's looked on his position as a burden."

"He's a poor leader then?"

"He's better than they deserve. Most of the Khaiem actually like the job."

Balasar smiled and Eustin frowned. "I'hey understood.

"He hasn't posted scouts," Eustin pointed out. "He can't he much of a war leader."

"No one would post scouts this late in the season," Sinja said. "You might as well fault him for not keeping a watch on the moon in case we launched an attack from there."

"And how was it that a son of the Khaiem found himself working as a laborer?" Balasar asked, eager, it seemed, to change the subject.

As he swayed gently on the horse, Sinja told the story of Otah Nlachi. How he had walked away from the I)ai-kvo to take a false name as a petty laborer. The years in Saraykeht, and then in the eastern islands. How he had taken part in the gentleman's trade, met the woman who would be his wife, and then been caught up in a plot for his father's chair. The uncertain first year of his rule. The plague that had struck the winter cities, and how he had struggled with it. The tensions when he had refused marriage to the daughter of the Khai I Otani. Reluctantly, Sinja even told of his own small drama, and its resolution. He ended with the formation of the small militia, and its being sent away to the west, and to Balasar's service.

Balasar listened through it all, probing now and again with questions or comments or requests for Sinja to amplify on sonic point or aspect of the Khai Machi. Behind them, the sun slid down toward the horizon. The air began to cool, and Sinja pulled his leather cloak hack over his shoulders. Dark would he upon them soon, and the moon had still not risen. Sinja expected the meeting to come to its close when they stopped to make camp, but Balasar kept him near, pressing for more detail and explanation.

Sinja knew better than to dissemble. He was here because he had played well up to this point, but if his loyalty to the Galts was ever going to break, it would be soon and all three men knew it. If he held hack, hesitated, or gave information that seemed intended to mislead, he would fall from Balasar's grace. So he told his story as clearly and truthfully as he could. There wasn't a great deal that was likely to he of use to the general anyway. Sinja had, after all, never seen Otah lead an army. If he'd been asked to guess how such an effort would end, he'd have been proved wrong already.

They ate their evening meal in Balasar's tent of thick hide beside a brazier of glowing coals that made the potato-and-salt-pork soup taste smoky. When at last Sinja found himself without more to say, the questions ended. Balasar sighed deeply.

"He sounds like a good man," he said. "I'm sorry I won't get to meet him."

"I'm sure he'd say the same," Sinja said.

"Will the utkhaiem turn against him? If we make the same offers we made in Utani and Tan-Sadar, can we avoid the fighting?"

"After he heat your men? It's not a wager I'd take."

Balasar's eyes narrowed, and Sinja felt his throat go a bit tighter, halfconvinced he'd said something wrong. But Balasar only yawned, and the moment passed.

"How would you expect him to defend his city?" Eustin asked, breaking a stick of bread. "Will he come out to meet us, or hide and make us dig him out?"

"Dig, I'd expect. He knows the streets and the tunnels. He knows his men will break if he puts them in the field. And he'll likely put men in the towers to drop rocks on us as we pass. 'hiking hlachi is going to be unpleasant. Assuming we get there."

"You still have doubts?" Balasar asked.

"I've never had doubts. One bad storm, and we're all dead men. I'm as certain of that as I ever was."

"And you still chose to come with us."

"Yes, sir."

"Why?"

Sinja looked at the burning coals. The deep orange glow and the white dust of ash. Why exactly he had come was a question he'd asked himself more than once since they'd left'I n-Sadar. He could say it was the contract, but that wasn't the truth and all three of them knew it. He flexed his fingers, feeling the ache in his knuckles.

"There's something I want there," he said.

"You'd like to he the new Khai Machi?"

"In a way," Sinja said. "Something I'd ask from you instead of my share of the spoils, at least."

Balasar nodded, already knowing what Sinja was driving toward. "I'he Lady Kiyan," he said.

"I don't want her raped or killed," Sinja said. "When the city falls, I'd like her handed over to me. I'll see she doesn't do anything stupid or destructive."

"Her husband and children," F, ustin said. "We will have to kill them."

"I know it," Sinja said, "hut she's not from a high family. She's got no standing aside from her marriage. She won't pose a threat."

"And for her sake, you'd betray the Khai?" Balasar asked.

Sinja smiled. 't'his question, at least, he could answer honestly and without fear.

"For her sake, sir, I'd betray the gods."

Balasar looked at Eustin, his eyebrows rising as if asking an unvoiced question. Eustin considered Sinja for a long moment, then shrugged. Grunting, Balasar shifted and pulled a wooden box from under his cot. He took a stoppered flask from it-good Nantani porcelain-and three small drinking howls. With growing unease, Sinja waited as Balasar poured out water-clear rice wine in silence, then handed one howl to Eustin, the next to him.

"I have a favor to ask of you as well," Balasar said.

Sinja drank. The wine was rich and clean and made his chest bloom with warmth, but not so much he lost the tightness in his throat and between his shoulders.

"We can go in," Eustin said. "Waves of us. Small numbers, one after the other, until we've dug out every nook and cranny in the city. But we'll lose men. A lot of them."

"Most," Balasar said. "We'd win. I'm sure of that. But it would take half of my men."

"That's had," Sinja said. "But there is another plan here, isn't there?"

Balasar nodded.

"We can send a man in who can tell us what the defenses are. Who can send word or sign. If we're lucky, perhaps even a man who can help with planning the defense. And, in return, take the woman he wants."

Sinja felt his mind start to spin. The rice wine made it a bit harder to think, but a hit easier to grin. It was ridiculous, except that it made sense. Ile should have anticipated this. I Ie should have known.

"You want to send me in? As a spy?"

"'lake a couple good horses in the morning, and ride hard for the city," Eustin said. "You'll arrive a few days ahead of us. You were the Khai's advisor before. I Ie'Il listen to you, or at least let you listen to him. When the time conies for the attack, you guide us."

The captain made a small gesture with one hand, as if what he'd said was simple. Go into Nlachi, betray Otah and everyone else he'd known this last decade. If I turn against the general, Sinja thought, it'll he a bad death when these men find me.

"It will be faster this way," I3alasar said. "hewer people will die on both sides. And, because you ask, the woman is yours. Safe and unharmed if I can do it."

"I have your word on that Sinja asked.

Balasar took a pose that accepted an oath. It wasn't quite the right vocabulary, but it carried the meaning. Sinja felt unpleasantly like he was looking down over a cliff. His head swam a little, and the tightness in his body fell to knotting his gut. He held out his bowl and Balasar refilled it.

"I'll understand if it's too much," Balasar said, his voice soft. "It will make things easier for both sides and it won't change the way the battle falls, but that doesn't mean it isn't a terrible thing to ask of you. 'lake a few days to sit with it if you'd like."

"No," Sinja said. "I don't need time. I'll do the thing."

"You're sure?" Eustin asked.

Sinja drained his cup in a gulp. He could feel the flush starting to grow in his neck and cheeks, the nausea starting in his belly and the back of his throat. It was strong wine and a had night coming.

"It needs doing, and it's the price I asked," Sinja said. "So I'll do it."

Cehmai sat forward in his chair. The white marble walls of their workspace glowed with candlelight, but Nlaati didn't find the brightness reassuring. He was sitting as quietly as he could manage on a red and violet embroidered cushion, waiting. Cehmai lifted one of the wide yellow pages, paused, and turned it over. Nlaati saw the younger poet's lips moving as he shaped sonic phrase from the papers. Nlaati restrained himself from asking which. Interruptions wouldn't make this go any faster.

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 Gait'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 hack 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, Maatikvo, 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 hook that the Dal-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 hack 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."

Nlaati 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. Nlaati 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 I)ai-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. Nlaati 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, \Iaati thought, for some other path. But in the end, the man only sighed.

"I think you've found the thing, \laati-kvo. There are some passages I'd want to think about. 'T'here might be ways we can refine it. But I think we'll he ready to try it well before the thaw."

A tension that Nlaati hadn't known he was carrying released, and he grinned like a boy. Ile 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 hind more of the andat. The cities would be safe again. Nlaati 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 lie could. \laati supposed the prospect of binding Sterile was more disturbing to Cehmai than to him. lie hoped, as he walked back tip the stairways and corridors to his rooms, that Cchmai would be able to adjust to the new way of things. It couldn't be easy for him. lie was at heart a gentle man, and the world was a darker place than it had been.

\Iaati'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. lie 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, Nlaati-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. lie kissed her palm.

"He's said this? That tic's staying in \Iachi?"

"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."

Nlaati 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 he 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 Nlaati 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 he 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," Hat 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?"

Hat's face squeezed tight, her brows and mouth and eyes seeming to hull 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."

"For all of us!" I fiat 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."

"Thu came here to change the world by slaughtering all of Galt," \laati said.

" 1'es, Nlaati. Yes, so that this wouldn't happen. So that u'e 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 hard, isn't it' When there's nothing to distract you from it," NIaati said. "I larder, 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. 11cr hands worried at each other.

"I can't stop thinking about it," she said. "I keep half-expecting that it will all go hack 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. "'l'he Galts will be turned hack, 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?" Hat asked. Her tone was a plea.

"Either he's Otah's son, and Otah sacrificed his freedom and his dignity to keep I)anat 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 he 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 Saravkeht when they were still young.

When she left again, there would he no one to talk to about those things. When she went to the South again and he became the new I)aikvo, there would he 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." lie heard approaching footsteps, and he could feel it in Liat's body when she did as well. She stepped hack, 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.

"N1aati-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.

"'I'he Khai says you should come. Now," Cehmai gasped. "Sinja's back."